GAULLE ROCKS THE BOAT
PARIS, Nov, 10 -- During recent weeks, a severe crisis has. flared in ‘the European Common Market. Daily newspapers in France,. Holland. and Great Britain -- some of them as "responsible" as the - Paris Le Monde =~ are talking about a plan cooked up by the French © government to leave both the Common Market and NATO, the Washingtonsponsored military alliance. According to these reports, the plan may be ‘announced in spectacular fashion at de Gaulle's next press conference,
Spaak, the Common Market's Belgian "elder statesman,” rushed to Paris to try to bring’ the general to his senses. Even Adenauer, now nearly ninety years old, has made a pilgrimage to see the French sphinx and is now in Paris seeking to save his prain child, the Paris-Bonn axis, Among both bourgeois and working-class. circles, where’ the Common Market has come to be regarded as definitively ares established, there was considerable surprise over the | sudden crisis,
-* No doubt there is a large element of bluff in. dé Gaulle's. threats. He is not basically opposed to either the Atlantic military . alliance of Western imperialism or to "European integration" (among capitalist governments). What he wants is a change in balance. He wants to reduce what he considers to be the excessive weight of. American-imperialism and its closest allies and win promotion for France (and himself) to the status of “privileged ally" in. NATO and "leader" in the Common Market.
These objectives were crystallized in his plan to set-up a "NATO directorate" composed of the U.S., Britain and France, in which the decision on using nuclear weapons stationed in Europe would be exercised in common, Since France quite evidently cannot
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match U.S. imperialism in power, such a “directorate” has no chance of being constituted unless de Gaulle can succeed in speaking in the name of all six Common Market countries. This slight possibil-~ ity in turn presupposes. success in another. objective; i.e., to set up in. Paris a "political secretariat" of..the six Common Market countries, unifying their foreign and military policies, In practice, de Gaulle's scheme .boils down to weaning the West German bourgeoisie away from their position as "privileged" ally of Washington in return for.close collaboration with Paris,
These plans seemed to be enjoying some success so long as _.. . Adenauer remained chancellor, However, Marxist analysts pointed out at the time that the majority of the West German bourgeoisie, for self-evident economic and military reasons, felt that a course of systematic opposition to Washington would.be suicidal, Adenauer's persistence..along this line was a major factor in his displacement by Erhard,
With Erhard in the driver's seat, Western Germany dropped back into the well-worn rut of alignment with Washington, reducing the "Paris-Bonn axis" to a mockery, It is the only major European power to accept the Pentagon's multilateral nuclear force. It is now creating more and more obstacles to further West European econ= omic integration, turning instead toward broader trade relations with the U.S., Canada, the Commonwealth countries, Latin Americas Japan, etc, Lo oo ms ‘ae
_ The result was a new conflict. with Paris. De Gaulle reacted by initiating his current move. He threatened to leave the Common Market unless West Germany gives up its tariff barriers to the entry. of French wheat by mid December,
-., Under the Common Market Treaty, tariffs are to be abolished between the six countries not only for industrial but also agricultural goods, -Industrially, West Germany stands to gain from this, but agriculturally it can lose. somewhat since. the cost of. producing wheat in France:is lower than in Germany. Consequently, the Erhard government -procrastinated in lowering tariff.barriers in this field. This is a concession to the farmers of West Germany, who have great electoral weight in the ruling Christian-Democratic Union. Erhard fears defeat in next year's general elections should he precipitate an agricultural crisis by authorizing free entry of French wheat,
In addition, free entry of.French wheat would cut into imports of. wheat from the U.S., Canada, Australia and Argentina, . These countries are heavy buyers of West. German manufactured goods, They are thus in position to retaliate if wheat sales to West Ger~ many go down because of a shift to French sources.
It is possible that de Geulle's threat to leave the Common Market is nothing but blackmail aimed at easing his own difficulties. with French farmers, They are pressing him rather vigorously
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and he no doubt would like to appease them with an attractive gain in the West German‘ market as compensation for the steady decline in their real income.
In line with &ll this is an evident threat to move closer to Moscow. De Gaulle has broken the agreement between the NATO powers not to extend commercial credits to the Soviet Union for longer than five years; he has increased the volume of trade with the Soviet Union; and has even broached the Soviet government on supply=ing engines for the supersonic Concord airplane project in view of the British Labour government's decision to end. collaboration on this. 7
A pluff, however, can always: be called and the bluffer then has to make an. agonizing" decision, Should he "go for broke"? Given the peculiar character of the bonapartist regime in France. today and the French bourgeoisie's great dependence on their "savior, who appears politically irreplaceable to them under present circumstances, it cannot be excluded that de Gaulle will go through with his threat if the Wall Street and Diisseldorf poker players decide to sit it out.
The possibility of such a: .. desperate action could be strengthen-
ed by the conviction that French industry faces shrinking outlets in the Common Market due to stiffer German competition and to the import restrictions recently decreed in Italy (this may occur in Holland, too, before long) because of increasing payment deficits, The action would correspond with efforts to find "substitute" markets in Latin America (hence de Gaulle's recent junket there), in Africa (hence his effort to maintain cordial relations with some of the more radical African governments in countries like Algeria, Congo~ Brazzaville and Egypt) and in the workers states (hence his recognition of the Chinese People's Republic).
However, a close look at current trade figures and the nature of French exports shows that such an act would be a truly desperate one, making sense only for those sectors of French capitalism intimately. related to the state sector and marketing a large part of their products to the government (electronics, shipbuilding, aircraft, . ‘public works, armaments, coal mining, gas, electricity, etc.). To break from the Common Market would be utterly irrational for the major sectors producing durable consumer goods and industrial equipment. Their exports largely go to. ‘European countries,
What ‘makes the present phase in the development of Common ~~: Market relations especially delicate is the fact that de Gaulle's: maneuvers happen to coincide with an incipient recession in some basic sectors of industry in the Common Market (automobile, steel, coak, chemical, textiles) due to overexpansion in the previous phase and - the: protectionist measures undertaken: by the Italian capitalists to safeguard their own "internal market" in the face of declining industrial production and real income for the past six months in Italy.
- This explains why some leaders in the Common Market are seeking a dramatic step further in the direction of -economic. integration in order to counteract the impression that the whole delicate, -elaborately knotted fabric has suddenly begun to unravel.
PEKING