Perhaps the most important political process since 1945 to have occurred within the advanced capitalist economy is the re-emergence of a multi-centred imperialism. From the position of absolute capitalist dominance which it enjoyed, the United States has now been forced to descend to arguing with Germany, Japan and other once despised enemies. The latest blackmailing and wrangling over the dollar is only one symptom of the developments which have the greatest, and gravest, consequences for the future class struggle inside the imperialist states.
I
The worsening general crisis of the world imperialist system is at present mainly expressed in the serious deterioration in the state of the international capitalist economy: Three out of seven of the most important imperialist powers - the U.S., Italy and Great Britain are in the grip of a recession, industrial production having fallen in relation to the same period last year. In Canada the recession could be over by the second quarter of 1971, developments in a fifth country - West Germany - are not yet clear: during Autumn 1970 there were indications of a possible recession. In particular there were symptoms of a fall in the rate of profit and a reduction in the level of private investment. During the first quarter of 1971 these signs were partly neutralized by an increase in production, especially consumption goods for the home market, but it is unclear if this represents only a temporary interruption of the cutback in production or whether it will transform itself into a new period of growth. In the short term what happens in West Germany will also determine developments in France and the Benelux countries. As for Japan, although the economy continues to expand, the rate of growth is perceptibly lower than hitherto. Since Autumn 1970, excess capacity has appeared affecting particularly in the electronics industry (1.5 million unsold colour televisions), household electrical goods and petrochemicals. In 1970 the number of bankruptcies reached a record figure of 9,500.
The deteriorating condition of the international capitalist economy can be measured by two phenomena which have appeared to a wider extent than at any time since the boom created by the Korean war. These are rising unemployment and the prolonged refusal of the big monopoly trusts to increase their investments in response to monetary 'incentives'.
The total number of unemployed in the seven principal imperialist powers must be near 10 million today, a larger figure than at any time since World War 2 (5 million in the U.S., 1.5 million in Italy, 1 million in Japan, 800,000 in Great Britain, 700,000 in Canada, 500,000 in France. Only Germany has so far escaped a serious level of unemployment.(1) The rate of unemployment is still higher in particular regions of these states. In the north-east states of the U.S.A. in Southern Italy, in Scotland, in Quebec and in British Columbia in Canada unemployment easily reaches 8% of the total work force. The rate is also much higher among young people. In the U.S. for example the rate of unemployment is 17.2% among young people and 35% among black youth.
Capitalist governments continue to rely on Keynesian and neo-Keynesian techniques to fight the recession. In the last analysis these techniques amount to a single factor: the creation of inflationary buying power. This technique enables the cumulative effects of the recession to be prevented. The recession is stopped at a certain stage (at the price of a new inflationary push and a further deterioration of the international monetary system when it draws the system's reserve currency - the dollar - into the whirlpool), but the creation of inflationary buying power does not bring about an automatic increase in industrial production. This is the second fundamental weakness of Keynesian practices besides generating inflation.
In the U.S.A., although money in circulation has been increased by 6% in 1970, industrial production has stagnated or fallen back. During the first quarter of 1971 the amount of money in circulation has been increasing at an annual rate of more than 11%, but industrial production stagnated and then dropped back. The reasons for this fall in production in response to monetary stimulants are not difficult to find. The level of industrial production depends essentially on productive investment. 'Under a capitalist regime the productive investment of the great monopolies is a function both of market tendencies and of fluctuations in the rate of profit. To make the trusts increase their investments, an expanding market and a predicted increase in the rate of profit are necessary. When the rate of profit is low, and there is excess productive capacity in numerous spheres of industry, even an important expansion of the market will not bring about an increase in productive investment when there is no tendency bringing about a change in other factors.
The deterioration of the international economic situation occurs at a time when military expenditure is higher than ever, when even Japan, which until now has stayed outside the arms race for the most part, takes the road of accelerated rearmament. It is not very likely however that a new increase of arms expenditure is a solution to the present problems of capitalism. To achieve the necessary boost armaments expenditure would have to be increased to a level that even the U.S. could not support outside a period of global war.
The capitalists will undoubtedly react in a different way. They will concentrate on two main strategies of attempting to enlarge international outlets and of increasing the rate of profit at the expense of the working class. The enlarging of international outlets indicates a necessity of the direct involvement of American imperialism in trade with the workers states (softening of embargoes with regard to the U.S.S.R., resumption of exports to China): an accelerated penetration into the markets of semi colonial countries; a new increase in inter imperialist competition. The attempt to raise profit at the expense of the working class means an effort to limit or suppress the only real liberty which workers have under a capitalist regime ... the power to collectively negotiate their wages, by the introduction of some form of 'incomes policy'. Such a policy is now advocated by practically every section of the international bourgeoisie. For capitalism the growth in unemployment, it is hoped, will serve the purpose of ensuring the more or less passive acceptance by the working class of the curtailment of wages. The accelerated integration of the union leaderships into the bourgeois state is calculated to achieve the same result. If the unions show themselves to be too recalcitrant, i.e. if the growing combativity of the workers forces the union bureaucracy to resist then anti union and anti strike legislation should serve to put right this 'lack of understanding.'
It follows that the deterioration of the economic condition of capitalism must translate itself into an intensification of class contradictions in the imperialist countries themselves. This will be superimposed on the revolution in the colonial and semi colonial countries. This intensification of struggle, which has been developing since May 68 and before, will reach new levels. The general crisis of the imperialist system must not be understood just as a crisis of overproduction (that's only one of its periodic aspects), but as a general crisis of instability in which revolutionary explosions, liberation movements of the oppressed people, the class struggle of the working class, the tensions between imperialist powers, monetary crises, so-called 'cultural' crises, conflicts with the bureaucratised workers' states, form a whole which increasingly undermines the cohesion of the system.
II
The main peculiarity of the present phase of the increasing general crisis of the imperialist system is that all the forces at present operating tend to precipitate the crisis in the form of a major social crisis inside the U.S. itself.
American imperialism came out of the Second World War as the absolute master of the capitalist world and possessing a pronounced economic and military superiority over the U.S.S.R. The enormous super-profits which the U.S.A. accummulated during and after this war, the enormous reserves which it had at its disposal, enabled it to assume uncontested leadership of the capitalist world for 20 years.
It vigorously pursued a policy of accummulation of capital and rapid modernizing of its own industry. It also, for other reasons, put capitalism in W. Europe and Japan back on its feet. In this it was of course helped by the reformist and stalinist bureaucrats who betrayed the post-war revolutionary upsurge. U.S. imperialism also participated in the conquest of the old decomposing colonial empires and the internal markets of its principal allies and rivals, and exported more than 60 thousand million dollars of Capital for this purpose. It played the role of world policeman for the capitalist system, surrounding the U.S.S.R. and the 'Peoples Democracies' with a network of military bases, maintaining in the U.S.A. and abroad a military establishment without precedent in history, studding the world with counter-revolutionary bases which it financed and equipped. It avoided a heightening of social contradictions in the U.S.A. itself by improving the living standards of an important section of the American working class, corrupting the union bureaucracy, while at the same time restricting the working class power (Taft Hartley Law), integrating its organisations into its policy of world expansionist politics (Cold War, MacCarthyism, etc.).
For several years now the limits of the power of American imperialism have been clearly revealed and it has suffered a number of setbacks. After failing to smash the Cuban revolution it has not been able to break the rise of revolution in Latin America. It has not been able to prevent a worsening of the relationship of force with respect to its principal rivals, and in particular with the West German dominated Common Market. The U.S. has not been able to prevent the awakening of black youth which has been transformed on one hand into the revolt in the ghettos and on the other into the growing radicalization of the whole student youth. It has not been able to prevent the growth of a powerful anti war movement which has now become the most powerful ever known in the history of colonial wars. The permanent deficit of the U.S. balance of payments and the permanent crisis of the international monetary system are the summarized expressions of all these setbacks. They express the growing inability of American imperialism to fulfil simultaneously all the tasks that its predominance over the capitalist world have imposed on it since 1945. They mark the beginning of the decline of this supremacy.
The enormous amount of capital used to finance the Vietnam war, to maintain a constantly expanding military establishment, to finance counter-revolutionary bases throughout the world and to monopolize the ownership of capitalist enterprises abroad have resulted in a holding back of the modernization of some important branches of U.S. industry. This has given rise to a situation where the most advanced technology is being used not by the U.S.A. but by its rivals. This is particularly the case in steel, naval construction, electrical construction and even partially in the car industry. The enormous foreign capital expenditure imposed on the U.S.A. by its imperialist position has especially slowed up the task of attenuating social contradictions in the U.S.A., increasing real wages, building schools, cheap housing, hospitals, etc.
The results are clearly visible. For four years there has been no rise in the real wages of the working class. The working class is feeling the joint pressure of inflation and tax increases. The great towns are literally falling apart. Sections of whole layers of the American population (youth, blacks, Chicanos, Women) have openly rebelled against a social structure which condemns them to the rank of second class citizens. It is only a question of time before the mass of the American working class joins this rebellion and transforms itself into a force with an irresistable anti capitalist revolutionary potential.
The most farsighted sections of the American bourgeoisie are perfectly conscious of this prospect and the dangers that it holds for the survival of their system. The crisis of leadership which affects this bourgeoisie at the present time, reflects the need it feels for a reorientation and a tackling of the internal contradictions (determined partly by the opposition of material interests and partly by different assessments and political choices) that it has to resolve on the road to this reorientation. The internal political life of the U.S.A. between now and the presidential elections at the end of 1972 will be dominated by the effort of this bourgeoisie to contain the terrifying social crisis which is ripening inside the United States, to 'reintegrate' at least partially the rebellious forces which have appeared and to reduce the costs of defence of the world capitalist system taken in charge by American imperialism: to consolidate the deteriorating competitive position in relation to its allies and rivals. Essentially these efforts mean that American imperialism is going to export to other capitalist powers part of the financial, economic, and social charges which result from the heightening of the general crisis of the imperialist system, and the American bourgeoisie will endeavour to use a part of the resources thus freed to alleviate the internal social contradictions in the U.S..
Blackmailing other states by threatening the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and Asia will probably suffice to force the imperialists in Western Europe and Japan to undertake a greater role in the military defence of 'free enterprise' in Europe and Asia. The European imperialist powers, the case of Japan is slightly more difficult, will possibly try to develop their own autonomous nuclear 'strike force' centered on French and British nuclear arms. This will be made easier by the entry of Britain into the Common Market.
In addition to these military manouvers and in order to consolidate the dollar, U.S. imperialism will attempt to combine increased protectionism and a decrease of capital exports from the U.S.A., with a new effort to re-equip U.S. industry so as to regain a lead in technology and labour productivity over its main European and Japanese rivals. The European bourgeoisies will have to react by speeding up the creation of the multinational companies which would alone be capable of competing with the multi-national companies dominated by U.S. Capital with some chance of success. This explains why the French bourgeoisie have abandoned the Gaullist veto on Britain's entry into the Common Market. The Soviet bureaucracy is aware of this danger and is trying to gain time by clamouring for a 'European security conference', and by supporting all the capitalist forces in Europe which hesitate to undertake the clash with the working class which is necessary for the success of these manoeuvres. It has met with a more favourable response than in the past, not only from European social democracy, but even from NATO. This is due to the face that American imperialism is not opposed a priori to a temporary political and military weakening of the West European imperialist powers in order to reinforce its policy of blackmail and pressure.
If the present crisis of U.S. imperialism reflects the reduction of the room for manoeuvre of the U.S. in relation to the enormous tasks that it has taken on, we should not conclude from this that its reserves have completely disappeared. If American predominance in the capitalist world has entered a decline, U.S. imperialism still retains an important margin of superiority over its principal rivals. It is not external events that will prevent the American bourgeoisie from finding a new temporary equilibrium, at the expense of its principal rivals. The most formidable obstacle which blocks the road to this new equilibrium is in the U.S. itself.
The present political radicalization in the West is potentially more explosive than that of the '30s. It embraces the most oppressed and exploited sectors of bourgeois society, above all the blacks and Chicanos, whose demands cannot be satisfied without the complete destruction of Capitalist society. American imperialism's political and social reserves are smaller than 40 years ago, its integration into the world economy is greater and although the class struggle is deeper, the margins for concessions to the working class are narrower than previously. The Rooseveltian governing coalition was built on the basis of granting concessions to the unions, the labour aristocracy and the union bureaucracy. The mass movement was reintegrated into the two party system by means of these concessions, thanks to the treacherous role played by the stalinists. Today it is more difficult to grant such concessions. The influence of reformist tendencies such as the C.P. is much less than in Roosevelt's time. The reintegration of the powerful movement of revolt into the two party system will be correspondingly more difficult, It is on this issue that a struggle will take place between those who strive to retain the social explosion within the present bourgeois framework and those who concentrate on that independent anti capitalist mass action of workers, exploited and oppressed, which in the last analysis will decide the capacity or incapacity of the American bourgeoisie to halt once more the social crisis which is ripening in the U.S. and therefore restrain it once more at the threshold of a fundamental shaking of the capitalist structure.
III
The Vietnam war has been the most important international confrontation in the world between imperialist forces and anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist forces in recent years. The struggle against the Vietnam war has been the principal unifying force of the radical opposition movement against capitalist power in the U.S. during the same period. In this context students, national minorities, trade unionists, feminists, radicalized workers, have been able to find a common objective in the struggle clearly directed against the interests of Capital and the bourgeois government in the U.S.
The size of the April 24th demonstration was a clear indication to the U.S. bourgeoisie that it could carry on with the Vietnam war only at the cost of broadening, and worse from its point of view, at the expense of a growing politicization of an increasing section of the American working class. Such a possibility would go against the fundamental strategy of the bourgeoisie for the coming period. For a whole section of the bourgeoisie the ending of the Vietnam war has become an urgent political task. A symptom of this was the recent conflict between the Nixon administration and the New York Times over the publication of various documents which crudely revealed the cynical way in which the successive governments of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon have lied in order to justify the war in Vietnam.
The deep divisions within the American bourgeoisie on the conditions for ending the Vietnam war reflect the dilemna with which imperialism is confronted on the world scale. An immediate retreat of U.S. troops from Vietnam in exchange for a liberation of American prisoners by the DRV would be regarded by the Vietnamese masses and the masses of S.E. and S. Asia as a colossal military, political and social defeat of imperialism. The expansion of the revolutionary process in the Indian peninsula would receive powerful encouragement from such an outcome. Imperialism's efforts are therefore concentrated on attempting to carry out a retreat in conditions which make the encouragement of revolutionary movements as limited as possible. Since the Soviet bureaucracy no longer wields enough prestige with Asian revolutionaries to effectively be able to betray their struggle, a wing of the American bourgeoisie wants to involve the Maoist bureaucracy in this task. This is the meaning of the ping-pong diplomacy between Washington and Peking.
From the beginning of the Sino Soviet conflict we have explained the fundamental source of the conflict not in terms of Mao's personality, nor in terms of the greater poverty or riches of one or the other wing of the bureaucracy, and still less by the more 'stalinist' character of Mao in relation to the leaders of the Soviet bureaucracy. The essential origin of the differences is to be found in the fact that imperialism has accepted a relationship of peaceful co-existence with the Kremlin, but has up till now refused to do the same with Peking. The relationship of the Maoist bureaucracy to imperialism on the one hand and to the masses on the other is a fundamental determinant of the situation. It was obvious that during the whole of the 60s these two relationships differed only quantitatively and not qualitatively from that of the Soviet bureaucracy in its various guises of Stalin, Khrushev and Brezhnev. This analysis has been confirmed by many tests - the Sino Indian military conflict, Vietnam, the struggle in Latin America, May'68 in France, the intervention of the Warsaw pact armies in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and in the struggle of the Palestinian people.
From the time when imperialism began to show its desire to establish relationships of peaceful coexistence with Peking, commercial exchanges, even 'good neighbour' relations similar to those it maintains with Moscow, one of the constant factors which determined the more radical and 'leftist' behaviour of the Maoist bureaucracy (and of orthodox Maoist groups through the world) began to disappear. Mao's international politics went through an evolution to the right. The cynical betrayal of the Bengali people's struggle for self determination, the no less cynical help extended to Madame Bandaranaike's cabinet (which has in fact made the Maoist bureaucracy enter into a Popular Front with Washington, London, Moscow, Belgrade, New Delhi and Islamabad) are not isolated incidents. At the same time as courageous young Maoists are being persecuted in Iran, the Shah's sister is received with great pomp in Peking and her brother feted as a 'fighter against Imperialism.' To buy the establishment of diplomatic relations with different semi colonial governments in Africa, Peking has not hesitated to grant them a certificate of 'non alignment' even of being 'progressive.' This even extends to the bloody counter-revolutionary government of the Cameroon. From the latest news, Peking would approve the entry of Britain into the Common Market in order to reinforce 'Europe' capitalist and imperialist but that's a secondary contradiction which Mao can brush aside, against the principal enemy, U.S. imperialism. As for this principal enemy, Mao would gladly do business with it as soon as it shows itself willing to negotiate.
There remain the second set of factors which determine the international politics of the Maoist bureaucracy, the relationship with the masses. The process of politicization of Chinese youth has run deep since the Cultural Revolution. The way in which this revolution was ended has put a stop to it, but the bureaucracy has not been able to suppress all of its effects. The Vietnamese revolution enjoys an exceptional prestige among young people throughout the world and including inside the People's Republic of China itself. This is a factor which imposes limits on the room to manoeuvre of the Maoist bureaucracy. So, despite its shift to the right, Peking has just granted further military aid to Hanoi. The Maoist bureaucracy is stumbling still further into its own internal contradiction.
When Stalin went over from the '3rd period' to the Popular Front policy, then to temporary alliance with Hitler, and finally to close collaboration with western imperialism, the international working class experienced the blackest phase of defeats and setbacks in its whole history. The Soviet working class was prostrate and demoralized with no perspective of autonomous action. The menace of fascism hovered over the whole world and obscured in the eyes of large sections of the proletariat the true counter revolutionary meaning of Stalinist policy. Today the right turn of the Maoist bureaucracy takes place in a completely changed world context. An impetuous growth and not a recoil of world revolution is taking place. It's not a period of temporary stabilization, but on the contrary, one of a new heightening of the general crisis of the imperialist system. Under these conditions the counter-revolutionary effects of Peking's rightist politics will be more limited than the equivalent politics of Moscow in the '30s and '40s. From this fact stems Washington's doubts on the ability of Peking to effectively stop the revolution in Asia, even if Mao was prepared to give every guarantee on the subject. In countries like Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Philippines, where the movement is still weak and therefore depends closely on the political, military and material aid of Peking, the rightward turn of the Maoist leadership could temporarily throw back the revolutionary process. In Vietnam, India, Ceylon and Indonesia, where the anger, experience and consciousness of the masses is already far advanced the chances of U.S. imperialism succeeding by diplomatic ping-pong are much more limited.
In any case imperialism's defeat in Vietnam would have much too stimulating consequences on the international upsurge of the revolution to be neutralized by the confusion which the right turn in Chinese policy will cause in some quarters. For a decade a new revolutionary vanguard has been formed and reinforced throughout the world and exists to some extend independently of the traditional leaderships of the mass movements. Inside this vanguard Trotskyists and Maoists are the principal organized currents. If the rightist course of Peking defines and reinforces itself, it will not be the world revolution which will suffer severe reverses, it will be the international Maoist current which will decompose. The whole sincerely revolutionary wing will abandon it and it will become reduced to a hard core of bureaucrats irremediably attached to a 'state guide.' This will present a tremendous opportunity for building the Fourth International. In colonial and semi-colonial countries the armed actions of the sections of the Fourth International in Argentina, Bolivia, India and other countries shows the possibilities which now exist for Trotskyism. In Europe and the United States the upsurge in the strike struggle has led in every country to the Fourth International strengthening its links with the working class. As the crisis of international capitalism deepens, it becomes more and more obvious than only an international organisation can face up to the problems with which the revolutionary left will be confronted. As the only centralised international revolutionary tendency, the Fourth International can confidently anticipate greater gains in the coming period even than those made in the last. The Turin conference of European trade union militants and the demonstration of 35,000 organised by the Fourth International in commemoration of the centenary of the Paris Commune is only a beginning.
5 July, 1971
(1) These figures are an understatement of reality since they only account for the partially unemployed in Italy, Japan and France, and not in the U.S., Britain and Canada. They do not include either the millions of people which as the bourgeois economists so elegantly put it 'have retired from the labour market' since they were in any case convinced that they would not be able to find a job.
(2) See notably the Editorial of Quatrieme Internationale no. 49, May '71 - 'La revolution permanente s'etend en Asie.' Among the secret documents published by the New York Times a memorandum sent by the Secretary of Defence MacNamara to President Johnson, dated the 16th March 1964, declares that the Vietnam war is considered by the whole words as a 'test of the capacity of the U.S. to help a nation (sic) to reply to a communist 'war of liberation'.'