Socialist Challenge, 328/9 Upper Street, London NI 01-359 8180/9. 01-359 8371. Distribution/ Advertisin continual crisis.
and the currency snake'.
One way out of the complete collapse of credit system if the decline of the dollar continues would be to find a substitute reserve CULCHCY SUBSTITUTE Today not a single national currency can play that role. But a European-wide currency, given that the weight of all the European more significant than that of the United perhaps SUOSLILULC dollar for a certain period Of course. in the long run they would probably pay an identical price to that paid by 'self-financing the dollar. continuous speculation that currency, intensification of inflation correctly, in the long run they (not we) are all dead. services, lem in trying to una stopgap solutions which could last five, ten, micen years say exactly how long, because this depends essentially on the class struggle economy looked ISOlaLIOn attals currency. In has shown that you can't have a currency without a state.
DISMAL the past. In the United States, in the 19th century, they tried to get currencies SLalC local currencies.
have failed dismally, and it's hard to visualise the procedure which the European This week he looks at the relationship between the Europe.
In banks, used just for foreign and things of that sort In Deransus trade today is much operation.
States. could for the there are rate of growth.
There would 'SNAKE' 1300202118 Rut as Lord Kevnes said so arrangement, So there is a certain point for - one can't the ket.
and the very heavy But there is a real difficulty European currency reality, weaker countries There have been attempts in impose on make the jump. without They say — regional currencies, reduce operation, But generally such attempts opposite TeserVeS would German government's Germans marginal aid loans capitalists now want to follow: first have a currency in order up the process towards a federal state in the best of cases, wouldn't be a real currency; it would be a semi-currency, a pseudo-currency, a currency of account between the central covering or deficits in mutual balances of payments So it would really be a very hybrid and transitory form of The other difficulty is that still very great differences between the main European imperialist countries as to their rate of inflation and The Germans are in favour enlarged 'snake' among other because they have the most stable economy and the most to lose by a collapse of world trade and a collapse of European Common MarBut on the other hand, the German bankers, and finance capital, are not ready to pay a price Tor una snake: they will only put a very small fraction of the German reserves into the property of European monetary authority.
So if you end up giving the and especially Italy and Britain - very little in exchange for the additional constraints you them, then of course they're very hesitant to that that will their freedom without getting them out of the danger of a big balance of payments deficit.
Of course, if the German I capitalists were prepared to ERNEST MANDEL will put all our be very big inducement to British capitalism because such a risk would But that's Wildl the are saying all. be They are just promising small, semiand under these Anniversary of the Fourth International conditions the hesitations of the British and even the French capitalists are understandable.
So I think the project of German prime minister Helmut Schmidt is in trouble. In the best of cases it will only : partially realised, and there will be no substitute for the dollar in the immediate future under the given circumstances.
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of the Fourth International whose book "The Second Slump' has just been published, explained in the first part of an interview last week why the dollar is in
crisis of the dollar and the attempt to revitalise the European Monetary System