AFTER NEARLY three years of the deepest recession seen in Britain since the hungry thirties, there is still no conclusive evidence that 1993 will mark a return to growth.
Available indicators are analysed in depth almost daily in the Financial Times: optimisregularly hail some favourable statistic La potential breakthrough, but you can easilv tind almost identica stories in the back issues of two years ago.
For the four million-plus working dass people without work, and thousands of families whose houses have been repossessed, complacent Tory talk of 'green shoots', bumping along the bottom' and 'conditions now in place for recovery has become a particularly unfunny standing national joke.
But recovery, at least on a limited will eventually come. Moreover, it will almost be followed by another, probably even deeper, stump:
Recurrent economic crises are a permanent feature of the capitalist system. To understand why, it is necessary to look beyond superficial explanations of 'the business cycle and turn to the analysis developca, wen over a contrary ago, by Karl Marx.
Recessions, Marx argued, arise from *the growing incompatibility between the produc live development of society and its hitherto existing production relations*.
Capitalism is an irrational Ravenscraig steelworks, Trentham colliery and Cammell Laird shipyard stand idle, while experienced local workers, in need of jobs, are locked outside their gates.
It is not as if there is no need these facilities could produce. It is just that there is no profit for the bosses in providing them. That pensioners die o hypothermia, skilled engineers rot on the dole and dangerous ancient oil tankers destroy the environment matters little to our rulers.
But it was a different story Just live tars ago Every second rate 'entrepreneur Britain believed he or she coulo make more profit by stepping up output. The banks were happy to lend money for bosand hire workers to operate it, on the back of the flimsiest of business plans.
This process created additional markets for capitalists who produce the means of production, and provided more people with the money to buy consumer goods. Thatcher's economic miracle had brought permanent prosperity, or so it seemed.
course, the entire situation was unstable. The bosses have dreamt of maintaining an equilibrium at boom conditions the birth of capitalism. It is a dream that nas some sour every tie lating their approach to pay with a iow to crushing the union. They me in Birmingham on January 8 (ironi caly the day of the successful TSB strike) for this purpose.
Other banks are also lining up 1 est the union's resolve. Royal Ban of Sootland is sacking staff under its "Project Columbus' initative - whist Doning one of is directors a 6 milion The Co-Op Bank -virtually 100 per cent organised in BIFU - is setting up a 'consultative council to try to bypass the union.
Bank staff are now increasingly prepared to take action. The banks egged on by shareholders and the FU members that they can win.
• BARCLAYS Bank, which axe 3,000 jobs last year, has announced 3,500 redundancies since 1 January the bank's London clearing headquarters. Its closure could herald the end of teh cheque clearing system -with the loss of another 5,000 jobs in other major banks. Bankers flogging a dead Canary is that colossal monument to Thatcherism's failure, the Canary Wharf Manhattan on Thames' office block in London's Docklands. Three of the 11 banks that lent £600m to the project's developer, which is now in administration, are trying to sell their loans onto the secondary debt market at a fraction of their face value. If they are lucky, they will recover 10p in the pound. The move effectively values Canary Whart, which cost over £1500m to build, at just £60m.
Real wages increased for key groups of workers, amid constant talk of 'skill shortages' The sudden surge in demand Draw materials and even bank loans pushed up prices. Inflation began to increase.
most cases higher costs could not simply be passed on, because desperate rival suppliers were ready to undercut the competition simply to stay in business. The glut of goods down further. 30,000-200, 000 SoFT.
A MAJOR NEW OFFICE DEVELOPMENT ONE illustration of the way that recession destroys capital goods marker Some firms begin to cut back his reduces markets for other capitalists, and hundreds of thousands of workers are dumped on the dole. Banks hike up interest rates to cover bad debts, making most new investment prohibitively expensive. The bosses' boom turns to bust. Yet, dialectically, slumps contain within them the basis for capitalist recovery.