Raw Materials and International Control

H.R.G. Greaves

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351579919
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book, first published in 1936, addresses the need for a comprehensive study of the development of international control in the field of certain vital commodities and services. It traces tendencies of development in government policy, and shows the growth of governmental or semi-governmental machinery of an international kind, that aims at regulating the production and distribution of raw materials, foodstuffs and services.

II

GENERAL ECONOMIC PLANNING ORGANIZATION

I. THE BRITISH EMPIRE

THE British Empire has tried to co-ordinate some of its economic activities by means of inter-dominion and inter-colonial committees with advisory powers. The most important of these are the Imperial Shipping Committee, the Imperial Economic Committee, the Empire Marketing Board (discontinued since September 1933), and the Imperial Committee on Economic Consultation and Co-operation.

The Imperial Shipping Committee has achieved the most outstanding results. It grew directly out of the wartime organization of shipping, by virtue of a resolution passed at the Imperial War Conference in 1918 to the effect that inter-Imperial shipping should be brought under the review of a Board representing the governments of the Dominions, the United Kingdom, and the dependencies. In 1920, therefore, the Imperial Shipping Committee was set up, with two main functions to perform. First, it was to inquire into complaints made by any interested persons, bodies, or any of the nominating governments, and to report the results. Second, it was to survey imperial trade facilities and recommend improvements to governments. The composition of the Committee has remained the same as in 1920 except that a civil aviation expert was appointed in 1930 to join the five persons “experienced in shipping and commerce” who were originally provided for. Two of these have been shipowners. Besides the experts there is a representative from the United Kingdom, and one from each of the Dominions, from India, and from the Colonies and Protectorates. The two last are appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies while all the others are named by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In practice each government nominates its own representative, however, and the six experts also are appointed after consultation with the Dominions. In practice too the government delegates do not attend the meetings of the Committee, but send as substitutes men with shipping or commercial experience. The expenses of the Committee have always been charged to the United Kingdom, but there have been suggestions that they should be met by the Dominions as well.

The work of the Committee has developed solely along the lines of the first of its terms of reference. It has thus abandoned the possibility of becoming a policy-making body with supervisory or co-ordinating powers, and has become simply a quasi-judicial organ working on an ad hoc basis. It has dealt only with cases specially submitted to it, and as the inquiries which these have necessitated have covered wide ground it has not felt called upon to make a general investigation of shipping conditions. It is true that the work of the Committee has been very heavy; in twelve years it held 172 meetings, and published 29 reports, while many other findings and recommendations have not been made public. But in deciding against broad recommendations to the industry as a whole, based upon a comprehensive survey, the Committee has in fact repudiated the idea of a co-ordinated imperial shipping policy. By its own admission it has chosen to keep the good will of the shipping interests by refraining from too great a display of authority. Although successive Imperial Conferences have suggested that the Committee be given the power to compel the attendance of witnesses and to require the production of papers and accounts, the Committee itself prefers to work with the “goodwill of all those concerned with shipping.”¹

The Imperial Economic Committee was set up in 1925 as the result of a resolution passed by the Imperial Conference of 1923. It consists of two representatives of the United Kingdom and two of each of the Dominions, two appointed by the Colonial Office for the Colonies, and one by Rhodesia. In practice the High Commissioners have been the Dominions’ representatives. The Committee’s work is the investigation of market facilities and of foodstuffs and raw material supplies. It is to make and publish trade surveys, containing the main figures of imports and exports, both imperial and foreign, and its conclusions as to the success of Empire goods in competition with foreign. Two such reports have been made, one on rubber goods and the other on agricultural machinery. Investigations are made by special ad hoc committees, sometimes including experts. The results are reported confidentially to the governments concerned. The Committee’s proposals sometimes involve new or revised legislation, and publicity is at the discretion of the government concerned. The actual volume of work done by the Committee itself may be deduced from the fact that it employs only one secretary, who is also secretary to the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, one part-time clerical officer, and three assistants. Its annual expenses are £5,000, one-half of which is for salaries. But this apparent insufficiency of staff may have been accounted for by the existence of the Empire Marketing Board, with its four technical sub-committees and its staff of civil servants.

The Empire Marketing Board was created at the suggestion of the Imperial Economic Committee as an “executive commission to be responsible for the expenditure of the grant on a publicity campaign on behalf of Empire foodstuffs.” The grant in question was made by the Baldwin Government in 1924, in lieu of the preferential food duties urged by the Imperial Conference of 1923. It was set up in 1926 as an Advisory Body to the Dominions Office, but as the Dominions Secretary in fact always carries out the recommendations of the Board, its powers became executive rather than advisory. It was composed of twenty persons appointed by the Secretary for the Dominions, who was himself chairman. Five of these were either Ministers or officials of the United Kingdom, while the other fifteen represented the Dominions and the Colonial Empire and were appointed after consultation with the chairman of the Imperial Economic Committee. In supervising the expenditure of the grant the Board developed the two important functions of organizing market intelligence and granting funds to scientific bodies for carrying out research. The first included the development of the intensive state advertising which assisted Empire trade for a period. The Marketing, Film, and Agricultural Economics sub-committees were set up to do this work. They were composed both of members of the Board and of outside personnel working without pay. The fourth sub-committee dealt with applications for research grants. No research was done by the Board or its sub-committees, but only by scientific bodies. The Board was greatly hampered in its work by the uncertainty of its financial position. It was granted, in theory, £1,000,000 annually, but actually it received only half this amount. The rest was to be allowed to accumulate, and to be at the disposal of the Board whenever it was required. But the theoretical balance was swept away in 1931, and the Board had to be content with something like £250,000 a year. On 30th September, 1933, the Board ceased to function altogether, following a decision of the Imperial Committee on Economic Consultation and Co-operation. Some of the statistical work of the Board was transferred to the Imperial Economic Committee.

In some respects the most important of the imperial bodies is the Imperial Committee on Economic Consultation and Co-operation which has recently been set up. It was created upon a resolution of the Ottawa Conference for the purpose of surveying the economic relations between the Dominions, and to suggest any reorganization of existing committees that seemed advisable. It consists of two representatives of each participating government. More was hoped from this Committee than it has achieved. Its mandate would have permitted the thorough organization of imperial economics on rational lines. It might have been of incalculable benefit to the Empire, and laid the foundations of a wider international organization of economic activity on international lines. Its permanence would have enabled it to develop essential powers of supervision and direction. The Committee made a careful study of the organization and achievements of the eleven existing imperial bodies,¹ but its recommendations concerned the minor problems of appointment, financing, and co-operation, and failed entirely to consider the really significant questions of authority, scope of function, and policy. Yet it is these issues which will have to be studied if the Empire is to realize its desire to develop a united imperial economy.

II. THE U.S.S.R.

The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics is a political unit comparable in size with the British Empire, and in some measure comparable to it in its federal form. But, even apart from fundamental differences in social and political ideology, nothing could be more dissimilar than the economic organization of these two regions. Industry in Russia is divided into three categories: first, that which is important to the whole Union, second, that which is important to only one Republic, and finally, that which has only local importance.² In the first category there are at present twenty-six separate industries which have been completely organized on an all-Russia scale. In each of these industries the individual factories are grouped into Trusts, and these in turn into Combinations representing the industry on the Supreme Economic Council, which is the people’s commissariat responsible for all industrial organization. This council is called Vesenkha. Vesenkha nominates the directors of the Combinations, who in turn nominate the directors of the Trusts, who, again, nominate the factory directors. But all nominations must be passed by Vesenkha before becoming effective. Each Combination annually works out a plan for its industry based on the statistics and other information received from the Trusts and the factories, and submits it to Vesenkha. From there it goes to the Council of Labour and Defence, which in turn sends it on to the State Planning Commission, or Gosplan, the organ which is finally responsible for the economic planning of the Union. When Gosplan has examined and co-ordinated the various plans, these are returned to Vesenkha, which gives them back to the Combinations as mandates which they are then responsible for carrying out through the medium of their component Trusts.

It is perhaps significant that this organization is less the fruit of theory than of experience, and less a system imposed from above than one which has gradually evolved of itself. The factories which existed in 1921 were taken over by the Trusts and these began to be amalgamated into syndicates. For each industry there was also a distinct government department in the Supreme Economic Council which united the syndicate and the unamalgamated units of the industry for the purpose of planning and control. But as organization progressed the Syndicates gradually absorbed more and more of the autonomous units. By 1929 this process had advanced so far that several industries no longer needed a separate government department, having achieved complete syndicalization. A general reorganization then took place and the all-Russia syndicates were transformed into Combinations which were henceforth represented on the Supreme Economic Council as the governing body of their respective industries. The development in size of the Syndicates permitted an increase in their powers as well, and from the purely commercial bodies that they originally were, they evolved the directive and planning functions of the Combinations.

In view of the trend of industrial organization in capitalist countries to-day this evolution of government controlled industry has every significance. It not only demonstrates the reasonable and peaceful course which such evolution can take in certain circumstances, but it answers finally the objection to socialization on the ground of the alleged incompetence of government officials in industrial management, by showing that, in the event, it is actually the technicians of industry who become government officials. And in spite of many well-founded charges of technical incompetence in individual plants, the overwhelming success of Russian national economy even in these first difficult years cannot be denied. Already the soundness of their principle has been proved beyond a doubt.

Foreign trade is organized as systematically as domestic industry. Narcomtorg is the Commissariat of Foreign Trade. Like Vesenkha it has thirteen subsidiary Combin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• I. INTRODUCTION
• II. SOME GENERAL PLANNING BODIES
• III. GOAL
• IV. PETROLEUM
• V. SHIPPING
• VI. WHEAT
• VII. IRON AND STEEL
• VIII TIMBER
• IX. SUGAR
• X. COTTON
• XI. TIN
• XII. RUBBER
• XIII. NON-FERROUS METALS
• XIV. CONCLUSION
• Index