BOOMERANG IN EUROPE
Lens, Sidney
Boomerang in Europe By Sidney Lens Sidney Lens, hard-hitting American labor official, will take readers of The Progressive behind the scenes of most of the tension areas of the world as he swings...
...Two to three thousand proletarians were sent in teams to America to be shown the wonders of high production and workers with Frigidaires...
...American help only means more profits and more speed-up...
...A world-famed neutralist put it this way: "The Right hates you because you try to tell them what to do in the colonies, because you are ever talking about concessions to the colonials and to our workers...
...Why, then, should there be any ill-feeling towards us as a nation...
...So long as this cartel system exists, how can lower prices be passed on to the consumer...
...Force Ouvriere, the only real pro-American union, withdrew from the program with a blast...
...Not all employers, of course, but enough of them...
...The Socialists discredited themselves by agreeing to all kinds of bad measures just to keep an unstable non-Communist government in office...
...Employers make more profits and prefer to send their capital to Switzerland or the colonies, rather than to re-invest in better production methods in their own country...
...But so long as it has a strong price cartel it has no such incentive...
...One plant that accepted some U. S. technical assistance laid off 10 per cent of its work force a few weeks later...
...But that doesn't really explain it...
...The Left hates you because your talk is never followed by effective action and your policy only strengthens reaction in France...
...Each person he spoke to had to be assured first that I was not a typical Tory from the States, and second that I wouldn't bring an interpreter from the Mutual Security Administration...
...There are, of course, some minor irritants —the presence of American troops, the luxury-living of American government officials, American automobiles, all the trappings of wealth which make others envious...
...Our money thus has had the effect of strengthening the status quo and increasing frustration—and, in a cold war devoted to weakening Communism, it has been a great boon in keeping the Stalinist machine on its feet...
...Superficially it is hard to see why...
...And the Communists were able to say, "I told you so...
...If France could have maintained a Leftist government, the Socialists would still be strong, and decent legislation to reform the tax structure of France and to break the back of cartels would now be on the books...
...The Benton - Moody amendment eventually earmarked $100 million for a program that would simultaneously increase production and raise real wages...
...What was to happen to those workers who were replaced by increased productivity...
...No one could expect the French worker to desert Communism if he saw the rich grow richer and his own status remain the same or worse...
...With all the changes that have come about as a result of the Marshall Plan, the Communists can truly make hay of the fact that in the social sphere nothing has really changed...
...In parts of the shoe industry, for example, all buying is done through the syndicate...
...The stores in Paris this year seem filled...
...it doesn't become the basis of a dynamic effort to struggle out of the doldrums...
...This is the real problem of France —the semi-feudal, reactionary structure of industry, and stubborn resistance to rationalization...
...This is symbolic of the current state of anti-Americanism in France...
...Boomerang in Europe By Sidney Lens Sidney Lens, hard-hitting American labor official, will take readers of The Progressive behind the scenes of most of the tension areas of the world as he swings around the globe studying political and economic conditions during the next year...
...But the knowledge that American dollars were forthcoming gave our capitalists the courage to fight on to hold the empire...
...After more than a year and a half "productivity" is a dud...
...A rather peculiar point of view for American ears, this rejection of American aid...
...technical assistance, low cost loans, and in some cases machinery...
...The only kind of wage "boosts" he would consider were those based on "personal productivity" — bonuses for putting out more individual work...
...it boomerangs...
...Similarly the money that goes to the government only helps it resolve its financial crisis and prevent bankruptcy...
...As one Frenchman put it, the quantity of anti-Americans is no greater than a few years ago, but the quality of their hostility is deeper...
...For that we had no answer, even though each unemployed person would be a dazzling advertisement for Stalinism...
...This group determines labor (mostly anti-labor) policy, sets prices, and performs sundry other chores for manufacturing as well as retail businessmen...
...From the early 1920s on that industry has been de-capitalizing at an alarming rate...
...Productivity" became the new panacea and elaborate hoopla sold it to European workers...
...This attitude brought a deserved rebuke from the Catholic unions that such productivity programs "do not result in any advantages to consumers or workers...
...In return all they had to do was sign collective bargaining agreements with free unions and give the workers a decent share of the increased productivity...
...Furthermore, as more and more employers developed "productivity plans" it was evident that what they meant by "productivity" was piece-work and incentive plans to speed up the workers' efforts...
...Furthermore, CNPF is notoriously reactionary...
...a recalcitrant would soon find his sources of raw materials cut off...
...But it also forced a rupture between the Socialists and Communists, thus shifting the center of gravity of the government to the right...
...Even FO is willing to admit that now...
...The prices it sets, unfortunately, are usually those that can assure a profit even to the most inefficient marginal producer...
...For more than two years after the Marshall Plan, American labor leaders in Europe and at home were appalled at the failure of our aid to trickle down to the grass roots...
...It has been the policy of "half-solution," "half-idea" — a peculiar straddling of both the status-quo and anti-status-quo sides of the fence...
...Pan's AFRIEND of mine in Paris, a Catholic union leader, arranged for me to confer with several groups of workers...
...Working class standards in France and Italy were still below pre-war, despite a remarkable recovery in production and profit...
...Just before the Marshall Plan the government was on the verge of coming to terms with the Communist-led Viet Minh in Indo-China...
...Without the Marshall Plan 'dole' the pressure in France would have been from the left rather than the Right, and the country would have been forced to make some basic changes to get out of its rut...
...The tragedy of the break was that it destroyed the Socialist Party...
...That war alone takes the equivalent of all the Marshall Plan aid we have received...
...Another problem overlooked was the fact that France has a poor unemployment compensation plan...
...This is the result of a half-idea, a half-solution...
...That would weaken our capitalists, revive the Socialist Left, and force through the needed social changes...
...II A good example of this "half-idea" has been the now discredited "productivity" program...
...Finally, after much prompting, Washington took action...
...they have only resulted in increasing profits...
...Certainly Marshall Plan dollars helped make this possible...
...Lens has won national recognition for two books, "Left, Right and Center" and "The Counterfeit Revolution," and his controversial articles in the Yale Review, the Harvard Business Review, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Bulletin of the Foreign Policy Association.—The Editors...
...it has refused for years to sign collective bargaining agreements...
...The non-Communist unions would grow, France could become self-sufficient dollarwise, and living standards would improve, thereby doing fatal injury to Stalinist agitation...
...That's why much of our aid goes into a sieve...
...European capitalists were asked to accept U.S...
...We have strengthened the rich, our aid has weakened the non-Communist left, it has failed to seep down sufficiently to the working class, and above all our policy has set up a recurring dilemma...
...The whole look of—Paris is one of prosperity...
...As it is, the dollars have flowed into capitalist pockets, the rupture on the Left has presented France with an unstable government constantly fighting for a majority, and no dynamic program for housing, fiscal reform, or social legislation, has been forthcoming...
...The result was precisely what could have been expected...
...The only way out of the permanent French crisis is to get off the American dole...
...France desperately needs an economic plan to pump capital into the hardened arteries of its industry...
...It was a good idea, on paper, but it overlooked many facts—like the fact that the French employers are organized into the tightest little employers' union in the world, the Conseil Nationale du Patronat Fran~ cats...
...Now it needs to introduce better production and new machinery...
...There is the tragedy of the policy of half-solution...
...Should a businessman balk, CNPF has adequate means of enforcing discipline—through its banking connections and its buying arrangements...
...The head of the employers' organization was outspoken in rejecting the idea of automatic raises for workers when productivity increases...
...Yet there are many points worth noting...
...Autos crowd the streets...
Vol. 17 • February 1953 • No. 2
