The Communists and the Trusts. (1928)

From the August 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Communist Party declares that such trusts and combines can only be successfully fought by initiating an energetic price war.”

The above is the advice tendered to the Co-op. Societies by the Communist Party (“Workers’ Weekly,” July 6th). The particular trusts referred to are the drapery and cotton combines. Poor Teddy Roosevelt years ago had an election slogan, “Bust the Trusts,” but he demanded State Control as the means.

The Communists have a simpler method—”lower prices” ! While economic evolution inevitably causes competition to lead to monopoly, these Trust Busters—Capitalist or Communist—are doomed to failure. But it is somewhat pathetic to see the so-called Revolutionary Communists advocate a “remedy” which the Trusts themselves have used to “bust” would-be competitors. And the notion that Co-ops. can sustain lower prices than international trusts with large resources to gamble with—well, to say the least, the idea belongs to petty bourgeois and small shopkeepers’ “economics.” How are lower prices going to benefit the working class, whose wages are based on the cost of living?

Adolph Kohn