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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 24, 12 June 1950, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
It is now certain that the British will not join the Schuman Plan for the pooling of French and German steel and coal resources. However, these two major steel-producing countries in Western Europe will be joined by four smaller producing nations, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Italy, in the negotiations ta begin in late June.
The immediate background for the French proposal is the attempt by the French government to have a decisive voice in the control of German steel and coal production. Faced with the necessity for bringing Germany into the military and economic, and thereby political, councils of Western Europe. this is probably the last alternative to achieve this control. And even then it may be too late.
However, equally as important are two recent reports of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. In December, 1949. it was announced that there were six million tons of idle steel capacity in Western Europe, all among the countries which have agreed to enter into these negotiations. And in January, 1950, a survey reported that by 1953 there would be eight million tons “excess capacity” out of a total capacity of 60 million tons.
Here is the basis for the German challenge to France’s steel industry. Germany, the largest exporter in Western Europe, the most efficient and lowest-cost producer in Western Europe, is cut off from her traditional markets in Eastern Europe at a time when there is “excess capacity” in steel.
Therefore the essence of the Schuman Plan – the creation of a high authority whose decisions would be binding on the participants – shows why Britain refuses to enter into the pooling agreement. The British steel industry has its markets protected by preferential tariff agreements among the British commonwealth nations and the sterling bloc as a whole.
This proposed high authority Would have ’the power to allocate markets, to set prices and costs (which would mean wages tool and to channel investment and raw material. It would be a supranational authority exerting decisive power over the entire area. At least the French government would like to have it so, with France in the leading role.
It is at this point that the British raised an important objection to the plan. To whom would this high authority with powers to bind the participating nations be responsible? Obviously, to no one – not even in the parliamentary sense. But it would certainly be susceptible to the pressures of the steel magnates and high government officials and owe its responsibility to them.
This in turn runs in conflict with the nationalistic policies of the British Labor government. Such an all-powerful authority would have decisive control over an important section of British industry.
The British Labor government, which has its base in the British working class, is committed to a policy of full employment at home, and the British workers are better paid than most European workers (which is not saying much). This full employment to a great extent depends upon their protected overseas markets. But the pool's high authority would not have this consideration and would undoubtedly carry out policies that would endanger the economic base of the BLP.
Thus while the British Labor government uses this valid argument for not going into this kind of a pooling agreement, it has not recognized its own argument at home. It has assiduously avoided giving the workers any direct control over the nationalized industries. but rather has set up boards with almost as little direct responsibility to the workers as the proposed high authority has to particular governments.
The other important question asked about this pooling scheme is whether it will be a cartel. The fact of the matter is that it cannot help but be one, given the nature of its activities, given the situation of “excess capacity” and the responsibility of this high authority. It will be a cartel on a regional basis initiated by the governments in order best to carry' out the cold war.
In addition, one of the main tasks of the pooling scheme is pointed out in the text of the plan itself: “Europe, with its resources thus increased [!], will be able to pursue one of its essential tasks: the development of the African continent.” The period of colonialism is more or less over in Asja, and capitalism has set its sights on new fields. Africa. It hopes to find new sources of cheap raw materials now that Southeast Asia and East Europe are no longer available. But it does not have the leisure of the late 19th century to carry it out. The social perspective remains but the possibilities of fulfillment have greatly diminished.
That this plan means one big cartel is seen in the problems it presents. Europe with a combined steel capacity of 60 million tons would be a formidable competitor of the United States for export markets. Therefore in the annual report of the Economic Commission for Europe, where this conception was previously presented, the suggestion is also made for a world-wide commodity agreement (read: market-dividing) in order to avoid this competition.
There is one important omission in the French proposal: iron ore. The proposal included soal and manufactured steel but not the source of the iron. And since France is the largest iron-ore producer in Europe and an important source of iron ore for German steel, the fact that it was not included tips the French hand and points to the method by which domination will be attempted. Everything connected with steel will be included in this supra-nationalboby except the iron, and France controls the most important sources.
But it is against the working class that the Schuman proposal strikes some of its heaviest blows. For one, it will make nationalization, even the bureaucratic social-democratic kind, meaningless. What can be the meaning of nationalized industry when the control is visted in some distant nonrepresentativeboby? It attempts to take away the basis for the struggle for workers’ control.
On another level it will subvert the struggle even for ordinary trade-union demands. If cost and pricing policy is in the hands of this high authority, then what is the point of striking?
These are some of the promises of this widely heralded plan for “unifying” Europe. It is a unity marked by struggles between the national states for the dominance of one among many, the preparation for the third world war, a new period of colonial exploitation in Africa, and against the demands of the working class.
The only real unity will be found in an independent Western Europe opposed to the war drives of United States and Russian imperialism.
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