20 MAY 1949, Page 3

International Socialist Nightmare

A committee of experts at the International Socialist Conference at Baarn in Holland last Sunday presented a report to the full con- ference, in which were laid down the pre-requisites for a Socialist economy in Western Europe. There will have to be international planning of wages, international control of investment, and inter- national price authority, planned West European exports, and the replacement of competition in the manufacturing industries by a single control. It is not clear who the experts were who produced this report, or what exactly they were expert in, but they clearly had no intention of being bound down by bourgeois inhibitions— or, for that matter, by the irksome requirements of reality. Fortun- ately the nightmare picture which they conjured up of a single political party running the economic affairs of several countries at once, in accordance with a theory which has not so far been fully stated, seems to have frightened delegates at the conference as much as it would anyone else in his right mind. Reservations poured in from all sides, and notably from the British side. The experts were sent away to amuse themselves with drawing up schemes for public ownership of basic industries, international bulk buying, co-ordinated selling, a European investment bank and a European monetary fund. It may be possible to keep up for some years this process of referring large questions to experts and then rejecting their findings. But in view of the tendency, already amply demonstrated in this country, for yesterday's nightmare to become today's reality, it might be better if international Socialist conferences were abandoned for the time being.