Ernest MandelThe Laws of Uneven Development(December 1969)
FromNew Left ReviewI/59, January-February 1970.Copied with
thanks from Louis ProyectsMarxism Mailing List(September
2007).Marked up byEinde OCallaghanfor theMarxists Internet
Archive.
Before answering Martin NicolausscritiqueofWhere is America
going?, the origins and intended function of that article should be
explained. It is the transcript of a speech given to a seminar of
Finnish students at Helsinki, in the framework of a symposium
onAmerican imperialism today. It was not intended to be a global
analysis of the contradictions of American imperialism, still less
a broad outline of American or world perspectives, in the coming
decades. I do not consider myself an expert on US capitalism; there
are Marxists who are much better equipped to tackle such an
analysis, among them close friends of mine in the USA. It is
sufficient to recall the origin of this transcribed speech to
understand the limitations of the subject with which it dealt,
arising out of the needs of an elementary division of labour. Other
speakers, in the first place Perry Anderson, dealt at that same
symposium with the phenomenon of American imperialism, its
industrial-financial-military infrastructure and its repercussions
at home and abroad. To myself fell the task of outlining trends
inside American society which were slowly eroding its previous
relative social and political stability. It was taken for granted
that the worldwide activity of American imperialism, and its
contradictions, had been analysed by previous speakers and
assimilated by the audience. For this reason I mentioned them only
in passing.[1]Surely, even the harshest critic could not believe
that I underestimate the stupendous effects of the Vietnamese war
on social political and ideological developments in the USA.What
was the political purpose of my speech? It was, obviously, to
oppose the fallacies of that Third Worldism which, from Franz Fanon
and Lin Piao to Baran and SweezysMonopoly Capitaland Herbert
MarcusesOne-Dimensional Man, writes the American working class off
any medium-term revolutionary perspective.[2]It is clear that only
the most mechanistic and undialectical marxists would deny that the
national liberation movements in colonial and semi-colonial
countries, and their potential development into socialist
revolutions (under adequate proletarian leadership), are part and
parcel of the process of world revolution as it has unfolded for 40
years, since the second Chinese revolution of 192527.[3]This mean
that the inter-relationship between the colonial revolution and the
socialist revolution in the West (as well as the inter-relationship
between the colonial revolution and the political anti-bureaucratic
revolution in the so-called socialist countries) is complex and
manifold.The difference between revolutionary Marxists and
supporters of Third Worldism does not lie in the fact the first
deny this inter-relationship and the second uphold it. It lies in
two basically distinct approaches to the nature of that
inter-relationship. Revolutionary Marxists do not believe in a
fatal time-sequence, whereas Third Worldists do believe that
imperialism has first to be overthrown in all, or the most
important underdeveloped countries, before socialist revolution is
on the agenda again in the West. Lin Piaos famous thesis that the
countryside will have to encircle the cities is the most striking
expression of this idea. Revolutionary Marxists do not believe that
the loss of an important or even a decisive part of foreign
colonial domains will automatically create a revolutionary
situation inside the imperialist countries; they believe that these
losses will only have revolutionary effects if they first trigger
off internal material changes inside imperialist society itself.
Between world politics and revolution in the West there is a
necessary mediation: changes in the function of the economy,
changes in the relationship of forces between classes, changes in
the consciousness and militancy of different social groups.It is
now possible to clear up a misunderstanding which permeates all of
Nicolauss critique. When I spoke of internal developments as
against external effects upon US society, I did not have a
geographical but a social context in mind. The very argument which
Nicolaus attacks most strongly our thesis that inter-imperialist
competition is already and will be increasingly one of the forces
upsetting the relative internal stability of US imperialism should
have shown him this. After all, geographically, competition from
Western European and Japanese imperialism is not an internal but an
external factor in the USA. Why did I treat it the way I did?
Because I was looking for effects of world developments on social
forces, on classes and layers inside imperialist society. Without
this necessary mediation, historical materialism ceases to be a
guide to action and becomes an empty economism and fatalism.1. The
Universal Contradiction and Concrete Class StruggleFrom this point
of view, to speak of the world as one society, as one single
framework for political action, is an impermissible metaphysical
abstraction. It is quite true that imperialism has woven all
countries and societies of the world into a single net of world
market and world exploitation (with the exception of those
countries which, through a socialist revolution, have been able to
break out of this net). It is also true that monopoly capital of
the imperialist countries exploits in various forms and to various
extents the workers of its own country; workers of foreign
imperialist countries where it invests capital; workers of
underdeveloped countries; poor and middle peasants of these same
countries; peasants and artisans of its own country; nonmonopolized
sectors of the capitalist class of its own and foreign imperialist
countries; and practically the whole ruling class of underdeveloped
countries. But to draw from this the conclusion that the
differences in form and degree of this exploitation have become
secondary and insignificant or to argue that because exploitation
is universal, it is also homogeneous, is to have a completely
lopsided view of world reality under imperialism, yesterday as well
as to-day, and to open the road to disastrous analytical and
political mistakes.The historical specificity of imperialism in
this respect lies in the fact that although it unites the world
economy into a single world market, it does not unify world society
into a homogeneous capitalist milieu. Although monopoly capital
succeeds in extracting super-profits, directly or indirectly, out
of most of the people on earth, it does not transform most people
in the world into industrial producers of surplus-value. In short:
although it submits all classes and all nations (except those which
have broken out of its realm) to various forms of common
exploitation, it maintains and strengthens to the utmost the
differences between these societies. Although the United States and
India are more closely interwoven today than at any time in the
past, the distance which separates their technology, their
life-expectancy, their average culture, the way of living and of
working of their inhabitants, is much wider today than it was a
century ago, when there were hardly any relations at all between
these two countries.Only if we understand that imperialism brings
to its widest possible application the universal law of uneven and
combined development, can we understand world history in the 20th
century. Only if we understand this law of uneven and combined
development can we understand why, because of an integrated world
market, the first victorious socialist revolutions could break out
in three underdeveloped backward countries, Russia, Yugoslavia and
China. Only if we understand how this same law continues to operate
today can we understand that the decisive battle for world
socialism can only be fought by the German, British, Japanese,
French, Italian and American workers.In this day and age of
imperialism, more than in any previous epoch, the contradiction
between labour and capital emerges in a universal form. The days
when it was possible for that contradiction to show itself only
within a national ... sphere, are far behind us, writes Martin
Nicolaus. Permit me to point out the mistake in the first sentence,
and the non-sequitur of the second one. The contradiction between
labour and capital emerged in a universal form, tendentially from
the beginning of the capitalist mode of production (see in this
respect the significant passages of MarxsGrundrisse, well-known to
Martin Nicolaus), and factually from the beginning of the age of
imperialism, more than three-quarters of a century ago. In that
sense, neither the Russian Revolution, nor the Spanish Revolution,
nor the Chinese Revolution (to cite two victories and one defeat)
were any more national than the Vietnamese Revolution; all of them
were both expressions and focal points of the universal
contradiction, which did not manifest itself only in this day and
age. But to conclude from the universal character of class
contradictions to the necessary universal form of class struggle is
to presume immediate and total correspondence between objective
socio-economic developments and human action, i.e. to eliminate
from the picture the whole problem of national pecularities,
political forms, social relationship of forces, varieties of
consciousness and rle of organizations, in other words, Lenin,
Trotsky, Luxemburg and a lot of Marx and Engels too!Polemicizing
with Bukharin precisely on this subject, Lenin had this to say
during the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party:In order to
understand in what situation we find outselves, it is necessary to
say how we marched, and what led us to the socialist revolution. It
is imperialism which led us to it, it is (also) capitalism in its
primitive forms of (simple) commodity economy. It is necessary to
understand all this, for only if we take reality into
consideration, will we be able to solve questions like, for
instance, that of our attitude towards the middle peasants. In
fact, whence did this middle peasant arise in the epoch of a purely
imperialist capitalism? For he didnt even exist in the properly
speaking capitalist countries. If we connect the question of our
attitude towards this nearly medieval phenomenon of the middle
peasantry exclusively to the point of view of imperialism and of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, we shall never arrive at
making ends meet, and we shall only get bruises and bumps. If, on
the contrary, we have to change our attitude with regard to the
middle peasant, please make the effort to say, in the theoretical
part of the programme, whence he arises and what he is. He is a
petty commodity producer. This is the ABC of capitalism which we
have to state, because we have not yet got out of it.[4]Lenin
summarizes his position by stating that imperialism is a
superstructure of capitalism, and when it crumbles, the whole
capitalist foundation still subsists. Imperialism, in other words,
is a combined form of social development, locking together the most
backward and the most modern forms of economic activity,
exploitation and sociopolitical life, in variable forms, in
different countries. For that reason, socialist world revolution,
under imperialism, cannot be an instantaneous, simultaneous,
synchronized event in all or most countries of the world. It can
only be a process in which the imperialist chain is broken first in
its weakest links. In order to determine what link is the weakest
in each determinate phase of development, it is necessary precisely
to study the economic, social, political, cultural, historical
differences between various countries in the last analysis: the
different correlations of socio-political forces in these countries
which survive in spite of the universal form of contradiction
between labour and capital.2. Class Consciousness and
Socio-Economic ContradictionsMartin Nicolaus writes: There are no
more local contradictions, and no more economic contradictions in
the sense that is usually meant; all our contradictions and the
deeper they are, the truer this is, have universal causes and
universal effects; one baby in one room in one town who cries from
hunger throws the entire history of the world into question. This
is quite true, and nicely said. It is not new, for it was true also
a century ago. But it begs the real question. For the question
which I was discussing, the point of view against which Nicolaus
polemicizes is not whether the world economy has objectively been
united and socialized (this is ABC for Marxists, and I have myself
written this dozens of times). The question which I was asking is
this: when, why and how will the great majority of the American
working class (the white working class) revolt against all these
infants crying >from hunger in the world, and will stop that
hunger by making a socialist revolution.To refer us back, in answer
to that question, to the objective causal relations, is misleading.
After all, infants have been crying for many decades, and have not
American workers let them cry? Have not most of the American New
Left argued, till very recently, that the American working class
would never revolt against capitalism, for various reasons (because
it was corrupted; because it was integrated; because of the mass
media; because of its lack of revolutionary tradition)? Nicolaus
should admit that even for somebody who agrees entirely that
capitalist exploitation and alienation have universal causes and
universal effects, this question has still to be answered, by
something more than mere pious incantations (When (!) this
contradiction finally comes home to roost ...) or blind faith.Now
in the history of the world socialist movement, there are only
three fundamental answers to this question. One is the answer given
by utopian socialists, and various propaganda sects of very
different colours and origins, who all agree on one basic point:
that the working class (or mankind for that matter) will never move
towards socialism as long as it has not seen the light i.e. let
itself be persuaded by the particular creed of the particular sect
in question. The second answer, diametrically opposed but parallel
to the first one (and as fundamentally wrong) is that when
objective conditions are ripe (when the productive forces have
ceased to grow; or when misery has become unbearable; there are
many variations of fatalism), the workers will become socialists
and make a revolution. The third and correct answer, that of the
classical socialist movement, perfected by Lenin, says that workers
will make a revolution when (a) socialist consciousness has been
introduced in their midst by an organized vanguard; (b) this
consciousness merges with a growing militancy of the whole class,
which is a function of growing social contradictions, and (c) that
militancy emerges into an objective situation of sudden and extreme
instability of the ruling class (a pre-revolutionary situation, a
revolutionary crisis).Attempts to introduce socialist consciousness
into the American working class have been manifold and
uninterrupted for a century now. Sometimes they were broader,
sometimes they were more limited; sometimes they were effective and
sometimes miserably inadequate, but they never ceased. What has
obviously declined since the period of the great upsurge of the cio
and the sit-down strikes (or, if one prefers, since the postwar
strike wave) is the militancy of the American working class, i.e.
the objective class struggle itself. In order not to stumble into
the dual pitfalls of utopianism and fatalism, one has to ask the
question: what factors could determine a new rise of proletarian
class militancy and struggle, after more than two decades of
relative quiescence in the USA?[5]What factors are already
upsetting and will increasingly upset the relative social and
political equilibrium which the American capitalist class enjoyed
between the Second World War and the mid-sixties?When we examine
the question of the relative quiescence of the working class in the
richest imperialist country of the world, we have at least to take
that basic fact into consideration. It cannot be an accident that
the leading imperialist country has the weakest development of
socialist class consciousness in the working class. The precedent
which inevitably leaps to the mind is that of 19th century Britain.
The comments of Engels and of Lenin on that situation are
well-known. It may be useful to reproduce Engels opinion in full,
in order to examine whether there is an analogy between the English
situation of that time and the US situation to-day:As long as
Englands industrial monopoly lasted, the English working class has
participated to a certain degree in the benefits of that monopoly.
These benefits have been divided among it in a very unequal way;
the privileged minority appropriated the largest part, but even the
great mass received at least temporarily sometimes its part. That
is the reason why there has been no socialism in England since the
withering away of Owenism. With the collapse of the monopoly, the
English working class will lose this privileged position. It will
find itself one day reduced including the privileged and leading
minority to the same level as their working colleagues of foreign
countries. That is the reason why there will again be socialism in
England.[6]Industrial monopoly means of course a monopoly in
advanced industrial productivity of labour; there was no absolute
industrial monopoly of Britain, either in 1885 or even in 1845.
Once we refine Engels reasoning in this sense, the analogy with the
situation of the USA since the Second World War is evident. It is
hard to deny that American workers participated to a certain degree
in the benefits of US imperialisms monopoly of advanced industrial
productivity (technology). It is even harder for a Marxist to deny
that there is at least a partial causal link between this
participation i.e. the fact that the American working class enjoys
the highest standard of living of the world proletariat and the
absence of socialist class consciousness of that same class.Now
when Martin Nicolaus himself examines the probable causes for the
re-emergence of the contradiction between capital and labour in the
United States, he enumerates 14 factors, no less than 10 of which
are of a subjective nature, i.e. concern phenomena of
superstructure, and are therefore obviously begging the question.
To give only one example: why should growing involvement of
conscripted young soldiers in reactionary wars abroad automatically
lead to an opposition of a socialist nature? Were not these
soldiers also conscripted during the Korean War? Did this
involvement lead to a powerful socialist mass movement of soldiers,
to a rise of proletarian class consciousness of the American
working class? Of the four remaining factors, only two, the growing
industrialization of the South and the rapid decline of the
farmers, are objective processes which change relations of forces
to the advantage of the proletariat, but which do not lead directly
to increasing socialist class consciousness either. So there only
remain two basic factors on which Nicolaus can count fundamentally
to upset the relative social and political quiescence of the white
proletariat in the USA: absolute impoverishment and increasing
insecurity and instability of employment.But these two factors
suddenly fall from the sky, completely unrelated to the economic
analysis which preceeds them. They are even in opposition to the
main thesis of Nicolauss article, i.e. the thesis that the absolute
superiority of US imperialism in the capitalist world is growing,
and not declining. Surely, if this were so, monopolist
super-profits flowing to US capital would increase and not decrease
and its capacity to corrupt the American working class would grow,
and not decline. Surely, if US imperialism were all-powerful in the
realm of international capital, it would endeavour to export
instability of employment first to its weaker competitors, and
unemployment would consequently be lower in USA than in, say,
Germany, Britain and Japan.Nicolaus speaks darkly about an import
of colonial conditions into the US metropolis, and a process of
intensification of all exploitation, of reduction of all labour to
the status of colonial labour. Let us leave aside the obvious
exaggeration and over-simplification contained in this sentence:
long before the American working class saw its standard of living
depressed to the level of colonial labour, it would undoubtedly be
ready to make a socialist revolution! What is missing in this
sentence, and in the reasoning based upon it which involves all the
fourteen points, is the socio-economic rationale of US monopolists
behaviour. After all, they do not intensify exploitation out of
sheer wickedness, or because they are secretly conspiring to make
America ripe for communism. If, after having enjoyed for three
decades a situation of relative political and social stability in
their country, these monopolists suddenly act in a way to upset
that equilibrium, one cannot seriously assume that they do this
without being compelled to act in that sense. Now what compels them
to behave in that way? Once we formulate that question, we are
happily back where we started in the first place and where Nicolaus
assumed lightmindedly we should not have started: the specific
inner contradictions of US imperialism in a given span of time,
i.e. in the new phase of postwar development opened up somewhere
around 1965 and not the universal contradiction between capital and
labour, or the general contradictions of the epoch of
imperialism.3. The Laws of Motion of Capitalism in This
CenturyThere is only one basic driving force which compels capital
in general to step up capital accumulation, extraction of surplus
value and exploitation of labour, and feverishly to look for
profits, over and above average profit: this is competition.It is
true that there is not only competition between capitalists, but
also competition between capital and labour as well, i.e. the
attempt of capitalists to replace living labour by labour-saving
equipment, whenever there is full employment and the rate of
exploitation (of surplus-value) starts to decline as a result of a
more favourable relationship of forces between wage-labour and
employers. But capitalists attempts to stop this decline in the
rate of surplus-value is again not caused by their fundamentally
evil or anti-labour character, but by the compulsion of
competition. If they let labour get away with excessive wage
increases, their own rate of capital accumulation will decline,
they will fall behind in the competitive race and be unable to
introduce the most modern technology and finally be destroyed by
their competitors.Todays world is no longer a purely capitalist
world, and politicalmilitary considerations have played an
important rle in motivating some of the key decisions of US
imperialism during the last decades. Imperialism feels threatened
by the spread of social revolution and wants to stop it by all
means, including open warfare as in Korea and Vietnam. On the other
hand, a purely politico-military explanation of the world
involvement of US imperialism misses two important economic points:
first, that the very nature of capital accumulation, under monopoly
capitalism even more than under laissez-faire capitalism, creates
an economic compulsion to world-wide expansion for capital; second,
that the emergence of a capital surplus, inevitably linked with
monopoly capitalism itself in the leading imperialist nations,
creates a strong economic compulsion for building up a powerful
arms industry and military establishment. The existence of
noncapitalist states and of a powerful revolutionary upsurge in the
colonial world gave these processes a specific form; but in
themselves, they existed before the Second World War, and before
the October revolution at that.Two questions related to our subject
arise from this summary repetition of some of the basic origins and
features of imperialism. What are the effects of international
capital accumulation upon imperialist competition and rivalry,
under the specific circumstances of present-day world developments?
What are their effects on class relations inside the USA?The answer
to the first question can be read in all statistics relative to
basic international capital movements since the end of the Second
World War. For 20 years now, capital export has been larger and
more powerful than ever before, but it has been flowing primarily
between imperialist countries, and not from imperialist to
under-developed countries.[7]The worldwide upsurge of liberation
movements in the colonial and semi-colonial countries has created a
risk of loss of capital, which apparently more than offsets the
still higher rate of profit which foreign capital enjoys in these
countries.[8]Inasmuch as the world domain of imperialism has been
shrinking and not expanding, such a powerful international flow of
capital, and in general the stepping up of capital accumulation
during the past two decades (or, what is the same thing under
capitalism, the higher rate of economic growth) could only lead to
an intensification of competition, as well as to its necessary
corollary, an intensification of capital concentration. The
emergence of the multinational corporation, as the leading form of
organization of monopoly capitalism to-day, testifies both to
stronger international competition and greater international
concentration of capital.The answer to the second question is less
obvious and more controversial. But the inner logic of capitalism
leads us to the inescapable conclusion that as long as competition
clearly and unilaterally operates in favour of US imperialism, it
can neither threaten the standard of living of the working class,
not shatter the relative stability of employment. It is just not
true to write, as Nicolaus does: Short of a general Soviet
capitulation to capitalist investment-penetration, and short of
collapse of the Chinese revolution, both improbable, capitalism has
reached its limits and has no place to go but inward, in the
direction of greater intensification of all exploitation within its
boundaries. Nicolaus, after seeming to forget that the Third World
has been thoroughly penetrated not just since 1965 or 1945, but
since 1900; after seeming to forget that this penetration is still
far from complete, however, and that even in imperialist countries,
there is even today a powerful movement of industrialization going
on, is carried away by his manipulation of the abstraction
capitalism, and loses sight of the most important form of expansion
of imperialist powers since the beginning of this century: their
attempt to expand at the expense of their competitors. After all,
that is why two World Wars have broken out, and why the history of
the 20th century has been what it is.Thus US monopolists would much
sooner conquer their competitors markets and undermine employment
there, than to have huge overproduction and unemployment inside the
USA. If a point is reached where the US is forced to intensify
exploitation of American workers, it can only be because this
alternative course of action is being increasingly closed to it.
Yet this again can only be explained because the correlation of
competitive forces has become such that export of intensified
exploitation is increasingly impossible.Nicolaus introduces a few
additional facts to explain the need of intensified exploitation of
American workers by reasons other than those emanating from
increased international competition. He mentions inflation and
taxation.[9]But here again, he is begging the question. Inflation
has been present in the USA since the mid-thirties. Why hasnt it
prevented a rise of the standard of living of the American workers,
before it started to lead to a decline? Taxation has been steadily
increasing for a long time; why has it had to be stepped up the the
point where it starts cutting down real wages? Surely these two
questions are interrelated, arent they? Surely the pressure of
foreign imperialists to cut down the deficit of the US balance of
payments has something to do with them? Surely the relative decline
of the competitive position of US imperialism is expressed in the
fact that, whereas for a whole period (including that of the Korean
war) US imperialism could pay itself the luxury of a large deficit
in its balance of payments, a huge military establishment, and
large-scale military and economic outlays abroad, while keeping a
strongly positive trade account, today the mutual effects of
inflation at home and military outlays abroad have reduced the
trade surplus to the point where it might disappear
altogether?Nicolaus correctly mentions the rising cost of
maintaining the existing boundaries of the capitalist world, and
the rising trend to socialize (i.e. impose upon the backs of the
American workers) the costs of interventions and wars abroad. But
he forgets that again we are dealing here with relative and not
with absolute aggregates. An imperialist country can have a rising
military budget and a rising cost of living, while at the same time
real capital accumulation and real income of the workers are still
increasing instead of being reduced (this happened in the early
forties, the early fifties and the early sixties in the USA). What
is needed for this conjunction is a rise in real output and
national income making possible all these increases simultaneously.
Only if the rate of economic growth declines (or the rate of
inflation and military outlays increases in a much greater
proportion than real output) does military intervention abroad
imply increased exploitation of workers at home. This again depends
on how the capitalist world economy behaves, and what share of its
international market accrues to US imperialism. Even with a
stagnant world market, increased military outlays in the USA do not
automatically mean a declining standard of living for American
workers, as long as US imperialism has the possibility of receiving
a growing share of that market, at the expense of its competitors.
By eliminating inter-imperialist competition, Nicolaus takes all
logic out of his assessment of increasing exploitation of the
American working class.4. Back to the Fallacy of
Ultra-Imperialism?In order to deny any major role for
inter-imperialist competitions today, Martin Nicolaus has to
contend:a. that from the viewpoint of the major corporations in
industry and finance, national boundaries have long ceased to be
obstacles ... They naturally resist the pressures toward
protectionism and capitalist nationalism emanating from the
non-imperial or backward industries, chiefly from the smaller
manufacturers among them.b. that no major of whatever internal
economic structure sits idly by while another power masses its
forces for an attack on its industry ... On the two previous
occasions in this century when major national capitalisms have
entered into major export conflicts, the competition between them
necessarily rapidly escalates into protectionism, embargos,
financial blockades, colonial wars, and finally the First and
Second World Wars ... The threat which Mandel depicts, if it had
the magnitude he ascribes to it, would clearly be acasus belli.c.
that Mandels procedure of equating the economic sphere of US
capital with the territorial area of the USA is highly misleading
... The sphere of US capital is not confined to the territorial
nation, but of course extends in varying degrees throughout Canada,
Japan, the states of Europe and the Third World.d. that US banking
capital is predominant. The role of banks in competitive battles is
crucial, and becomes more so as the production advantages of one
antagonist over the other diminish ... The ability of European
industry to force a crisis on US industry thus depends on the
relative strength of the respective privately-controlled capital
reserves and credits ... These financial powers are based in US
imperialism.At first glance, these arguments are at least partially
in contradiction with each other and self-eliminating. If all major
corporations systematically and definitively resist pressures
toward protectionism and capitalist nationalism, how can one then
explain that major export conflicts, which Nicolaus modestly
assigns to major national capitalisms but in reality have always
involved major monopolistic corporations and imperialist powers,
could break out at all? Was it perhaps smaller manufacturers, and
not Messrs. Krupp and Thyssen, Vickers-Armstrong and Deterding,
Morgan and Rockefeller, who were responsible for the First and
Second World Wars? If the economic spheres of influence of
imperialism are not tied up with national state powers (the notion
of territoriality is dragged in here by the hair; what is involved
is the key role of states in these conflicts!), how can one then
explain the very same protectionism, embargos, financial blockades,
colonial wars and First and Second World Wars we have been talking
about? Is capital export and foreign capital investment a new
phenomenon? Wasnt it already well developed before and during the
First World War so much so in fact that innumerable liberal
pacifists and opportunist Social-Democrats were convinced that
imperialist wars would become impossible?[10]How can US banking
capital be predominant i.e. US imperialism control most of the
financial resources of the world and at the same time, firstly be
forced to neutralize the reduction of productive advantage of US
capitalists (where did the European and Japanese capitalists get
the capital for financing their huge outlays of productive
investment? They didnt borrow them from US bankers!) and secondly
be increasingly dependent for borrowing capital on the European
capital market?Nicolaus also alleges that the wage-costs of
American corporations should be calculated on world averages, given
the fact they transfer a growing part of their operations abroad.
In this, he seems to have lost his sense of proportion. What is the
fraction of total output of US industry produced abroad in
competition withus units of production at home excluding activities
complementary to domestic production, such as oil extraction?
Obviously, only a marginal proportion. What is the fraction of
total manpower employed by US industry beyond the frontiers of the
USA? Again, only a marginal one. Indeed, if US monopolies were ever
to succeed in transferring 30, 40 or 50 per cent of their output
of, say, automobiles, computers, airplanes and turbines, this could
only lead to a massive increase of unemployment in the USA itself.
What would be the consequence (and purpose) of this unemployment?
To erode the wage differentials between the USA and Europe (or even
the USA and Japan) by lowering the standard of living of the
American working class. Why would US monopolies ever embark on such
a course in the first place, if not under the compulsion of
international competition?The methodological toots of Nicolauss
mistakes lie in an inability to distinguish quantitative from
qualitative changes, relative from absolute superiority, the
beginning from the final outcome of a process. They are connected
with a gross underestimation of the State as the major instrument
of defence of the capitalist class interests today (against their
class enemies, against foreign competitors, and against the
menacingly explosive nature of the inner contradictions of the
system).The relationship of forces between various imperialist
powers can develop greatly to the advantage of one and at the
expense of another. A massive relative superiority on the European
continent was possessed by Germany, in the periods 1900-1916, and
1937-1944, and by France in the period 1919-1923. But that does not
transform the competitors of the predominant power into
semi-colonial nations, which have lost control over the means of
production of their country. Such semicolonial nations only arise
when in fact the key industries and banks in the country are owned
or controlled by foreign capitalists, and when for that reason, the
State itself fundamentally protects the interests of the foreign
imperialist class, as against those of the native bourgeoisie. That
is the situation in Greece, Brazil, Ghana or Iran today. It is
obviously not the situation in France, Britain or Italy, not to
speak of Japan or Western Germany. Quantitative changes in the
relationship of forces between imperialist powers are one thing; a
qualitative change in status, the transformation of an imperialist
country into a semicolonial country (as could have happened in
France, if Germany had won the Second World War, or as could have
happened in West Germany, if the 1945-47 trend had been maintained
and the Cold War had not broken out) is quite another thing. There
is not the slightest evidence to show that US imperialism controls
more than 10 per cent of the industrial means of production, and
much less of the financial means of exchange, of any other
imperialist power (with the exception of Canada, which is indeed a
border case). There is for that reason not the slightest evidence
that these powers have lost their basic independence as imperialist
powers, and have become US semi-colonies.In fact, if one studies
the evolution of the inter-relationship of forces between US
imperialism and its main foreign competitors, one has to conclude
that the USA reached the zenith of its power at the end of the
Second World War, and that its hegemony has ever since been in
decline. Of course, it still retains a great relative superiority.
This relative superiority might even increase again, if there is no
sufficient international interpenetration of capital on a European
scale, if European multinational corporations are not established
for systematic competition with US-based multinational corporations
on relatively equal terms. But independent ownership of capital,
independent control of the internal market and independent use of
State power, are still basic characteristics of European and
Japanese imperialists.[11]But what about US military superiority?
What of the possibility of new inter-imperialist wars? US military
superiority over its main competitors is, indeed, much more
striking than its relative economic superiority. But precisely
because there has come about a contradiction between the resurgence
of independent financial and industrial power of Western European
and Japanese imperialism, and their continuous military dependence
on the USA, the NATO and Nippo-American alliances are in deep and
permanent crisis. There is only one way in which this crisis can be
solved, in the long run (inasmuch as imperialism survives and the
present trend in relationship of forces is not fundamentally
altered): an adaptation of the military relationship of forces to
economic reality, the re-emergence of independent military strength
in Western Europe and Japan in the last analysis, the emergence of
independent nuclear deterrents in Western Europe (Franco-British,
or Franco-German-British, or even on a broader scale) and Japan.As
for new inter-imperialist wars, which the late Joseph Stalin
predicted in his political testament, they are indeed extremely
unlikely to break out, but not for reasons of US supremacy, but
because all imperialist powers are threatened by a much more deadly
menace then inter-imperialist competition: the menace of the
non-capitalist part of the world expanding through new victorious
revolutions. Against the so-called socialist countries and new
revolutions, imperialist powers indeed have an attitude of
collective solidarity, which makes the NATO and Nippo-American
alliances real alliances, in the common interest of the capitalist
class everywhere, and not simply stooge sets for US
expansion.Imperialist competition continues, and will continue,
including some very ruthless developments indeed; but it will
unfurl within the framework of that collective solidarity towards
the common enemy. Yet within that framework, the law of uneven
development continues to operate inexorably, causing the relative
decline of previously supreme powers and the emergence of newly
strengthened imperialist forces. The fate of US imperialisms
supremacy will be decided neither on the battle-field nor in the
Third World at least in the coming years.[12]It will be decided by
the capacity of Western European imperialists (and Japanese
imperialists) to set up colossal corporations, equivalent in
financial power and industrial strength to that of their US
competitors. I do not say that this development has already taken
place on a sufficient scale or that it is inevitable. I have
elsewhere made clear the obstacles and resistances towards that
process. I only state that, if it takes place, it will force US
imperialism greatly to intensify the exploitation of the American
working class, under the pressure of competition.The discussion on
ultra-imperialism is, in fact, an old one. It was initiated by
Kautsky after the outbreak of the First World War, and received at
that time a scathing reply by Lenin. It was revived during the
mid-twenties by various Social-Democrats (Hilferding, Vandervelde
and others), celebrating the constitution of the world steel cartel
as a triumph of ultra-imperialism and peaceful development; the
rebuff which history inflicted a few years later to that illusion
is still well known by everybody.Lenins answer to the fallacy of
ultra-imperialism can be summarized in one formula: the law of
uneven development.It is sufficient to pose the question clearly to
see that the answer can only be negative. For one couldnt conceive,
under capitalism, any other basis for the division in zones of
influence, of interests, of colonies etc., than the strength of the
participants of that partition, their economic, financial, military
strength etc. Now among these participants of partition, that
strength changes in a different way, for under capitalism, even
development of enterprises, of trusts, of industries, of countries,
is impossible.Lenin adds:But if one speaks about the purely
economic conditions of the epoch of finance capital, as about a
concrete historical epoch situated in the beginning of the XXth
century, the best answer to the dead abstractions about
ultra-imperialism... is to oppose to them the concrete economic
reality of the present-day world economy. Kautskys theory of
ultra-imperialism is completely void of meaning and can only, among
other things, encourage the deeply mistaken idea ... that the
domination of finance capital reduces the inequalities and
contradictions of the world economy, whereas in reality it
strengthens them.[13]The developments of the last year to go no
further into the recent past are a perfect illustration of the fact
that the law of uneven and combined development, strengthening the
inequalities and contradiction of the world economy, operates today
as it operated 50 years ago. In 1958, West Germanys exports of
machinery and transport equipment amounted to $3.9 billion, those
of the United States amounted to $6.3 billion, 62 per cent more
than the West German figure. In 1968, West German exports of
machinery and transport equipment had risen to $11.3 billion, as
against $14.5 billion by USA; the difference had declined to less
than 30 per cent. In 1969, the two figures will practically meet at
somewhere near $15 billion. Total West German exports were half of
US exports in 1958; in 1969, they will amount to more than
two-thirds of that figure.This industrial power is by no means
without relation to capital accumulation and financial strength.
The revaluation of the Deutsche Mark (in fact: the devaluation of
the dollar compared to the main European currency) is correlated
with a tremendous export of German capital. Net long-term private
capital export was $1 billion in 1967; $2.4 billion in 1968 and
probably more than $5 billion at the new exchange rate in 1969,
i.e. already more in absolute figures than US capital exports! In
fact, during the first semester of 1969 there were more bonds
issued in dm (including by US corporations) than in dollars, on the
international capital market.The sapping of the dollars strength by
foreign military outlays has so changed the financial relationship
of forces in favour of other major imperialist powers, that the US
government now undertakes systematic efforts to force them... to
spend more on rearmament (i.e. to redivide and so the speak
internationalize the common burden of defending the borders of the
capitalist world). But this is inconceivable without a military
strengthening of these powers (the strengthening of Japan is now on
the agenda, after that of Western Germany), which again shifts the
inter-imperialist relationship of forces at the expense of US
imperialism.5. The Politics of the DebateThe most astonishing
passages of Martin Nicolauss polemic are these in which he accuses
me of making sense only if I assume the pacification of the Soviet
Union, a military alliance between European capital and the ussr,
and peaceful coexistence. In other words, he seems to imply that
beneath Mandel lies de Gaulle. Here we have again a typical example
of how Martin Nicolaus is led astray by operating too much with
metaphysical abstractions, instead of understanding real,
contradictory social forces at work and in conflict with each
other.The competition between Western European and US imperialism
is a fact, visible for anybody who studies not only trade
statistics but polemics and debates in all capitalist circles on
both sides of the Atlantic. What did Gaullism represent in this
debate? An attempt to strengthen Western European imperialism by
outmoded techniques of 19th-century diplomacy (18th-century
dynastic diplomacy would perhaps be a more correct, if more severe
assessment, at that). The attempt to establish European
independence under the hegemony of one of its economically weakest
imperialist powers, France, was condemned to fail, independent
deterrent or not, as I pointed out in the early sixties. It could
only lead to a deterioration of the relative position of French
imperialism as compared with German and Italian imperialism, for
the capital squandered by De-Gaulle in hisforce de frappedetermined
a growing antiquation of French industrial equipment compared to
Italian and German plant and a growing exacerbations of social
tensions in France itself. His attempt at a diplomatic and economic
flirtation with Moscow was equally condemned to failure, because
over and above the obvious importance of commercial expansion
towards Eastern Europe, common to all European capitalists (and for
which German, British and Italian groups were often better equipped
than their French competitors), there was the staunch class
consciousness of the French bourgeoisie, which could not but
consider the Soviet Union, in spite of all the conservatism of its
leaders and the reformism of the French CP, as a class enemy with
whom no alliance was possible in the present world context.In fact,
the only durable change which occurred in the French economy under
de Gaulle, occurred in spite of de Gaulle: it was the constantly
growing integration of France into the Common Market. Today, 45 per
cent of French exports are directed to these countries, as against
22 per cent before 1958. This economic fact was strong enough to
create so much opposition inside the French bourgeoisie against de
Gaulles particular views on capitalist Western European integration
that it actually caused his downfall. I predicted this years ago in
the same way as I predicted that de Gaulle was blindly workingpour
le roi de Prusse, for German hegemony in a Common Market limited to
six countries.Now what is the main social and political ideology of
the advocates of European independence in Western European
capitalist and pettybourgeois circles? Is it Mandels thesis of
inter-imperialist competition? Not at all! It is an ideology very
close indeed to that of Martin Nicolaus and the thesis of
ultra-imperialism. Europe is in danger of being colonized by the
USA. This colonization is irresistible, unless Europe unites. In my
book on the Common Market, shortly to appear in English, I have
exposed the ideological function of this propaganda: it is to use
the endemic anti-Americanism of the European working class as a
means to tune down the class struggle in Europe, to disarm this
working class against capital concentration and capitalist
rationalization, and to collaborate with its own exploiters against
the common enemy: US imperialism.The idea of complete US
imperialist supremacy on a world scale, and the idea of Western
Europe and Japan being slowly but surely reduced to the status of
semi-colonial powers, logically leads to such conclusions. For
after all doesnt Marxism-Leninism teach that there is a basic
difference between an inter-imperialist conflict, and a conflict
between an imperialist power and an oppressed and exploited
semicolonial bourgeoisie? So it is the theory of absolute US
hegemony which leads to capitulation before the class enemy and to
class collaboration, and not at all the classical Leninist concept
of inter-imperialist competition, which I continue to uphold. This
theoretical prediction has already been borne out in practice, at
least twice: in the early fifties, when the French CP (and, to a
lesser degree, other CPs in Western Europe) were making a block
with Gaullists and speaking on the same platform with them against
US imperialism and the abandonment of national sovereignty, as if
France were a semi-colonial power, and not one competing gang in
the international brotherhood of robber barons and imperialists
plunderers; and in the early sixties, when, starting from that very
same assumption, certain Maoist groups proposed to support De
Gaulle in the Presidential elections against Mitterrand, using the
justification that de Gaulle was more anti-American than
Mitterrand.Our theory, at the contrary, does not lead to the
subordination of any sector of the international working class to
any sector of world capitalism. We stand for independent class
struggle of the working class in all capitalist countries, We stand
for independent organisation of the working class, defending its
own class interests and bent upon a socialist revolution. We do not
preach to American workers that they should ally themselves with
any sector of the ruling class, nor do we propose anything of the
kind to European workers. To say that bourgeois ideas lie
underneath such a clear strategy of independent working-class
struggle is somewhat preposterous.There is a lot in Martin Nicolaus
article with which we can agree. There is no doubt that we are
living in an epoch of tremendous socialization and
internationalization of productive forces, on a scale unexpected
even by Lenin or in Lenins time.[14]There is no doubt that the
basic contradiction in such an epoch is the contradiction between
capital and labour, in the process of production itself, and that
the direct road of the working class towards a socialist revolution
in the industrialized imperialist countries will be not through a
fight for wages, but through objective challenges against
capitalist relations of production. We have been writing this for
many years, and there is no reason to assume that this will not be
true in the United States too.It is also evident that the very
supremacy of US imperialism at the end of the Second World War
tended to involve the ruling class of the USA with all world
contradictions of imperialism, and tended to introduce all these
contradictions in some form into American society Itself. In spite
of all its accumulated wealth and reserves, even US imperialism has
proved itself unable in the long run to pay, at one and the same
time, the costs of playing world gendarme, of introducing reforms
into US society in order to avoid an exacerbation of social
tensions, and of financing a constant modernization of equipment to
assure a rate of productive capital accumulation which would enable
it to maintain its technological advance on all its competitors. It
is obvious that the origin of all the strains and tensions,
increasingly visible in US society since the early sixties, are
linked to world developments. We ourselves have pointed out many
times how great the impact of the colonial revolution and of the
Vietnamese war has been on the formation of a new revolutionary
youth vanguard in the USA, on the politicization of the Blacks, on
the emergence of a new radicalism among intellectuals, technicians
and public service employees. So we see no reason suddenly to deny
these evidences now. One should add that a new wave of objectively
revolutionary militancy of the West European working class, as well
as militant struggles of Eastern European workers, students and
intellectuals for socialist democracy not to speak of a parallel
rise of political revolution in the ussr could not fail likewise to
strengthen the rise of a new revolutionary vanguard and an upsurge
of mass radicalism in the USA.All these factors as well as many of
those which Nicolaus cites contribute to shake the relative
political and social stability of the USA, to stir up against class
consciousness in advanced American workers, and to facilitate the
eruption of a sweeping radicalization and massive class struggles
of the proletariat in that country. But all these subjective
factors, reacting from the social superstructure on class
relations, cannot be the main cause of a new mass radicalization of
that working class. The main cause can only be found in a change of
material conditions. The growing crisis of American imperialism can
only transform itself into a decisive crisis of American society
through the mediation of a growing instability of the American
economy. This is our key thesis. In this growing instability of the
American economy, the loss of US suzerainty over the whole
imperialist world, the relative decline of US economic superiority
vis-`-vis its imperialist competitors, and the sharpening
competition and redivision of the international capitalist market
of which the internal market of the USA is the most important
single sector will play an important role.In Where is America
going? I did not predict that the re-emergence of the contradiction
between labour and capital in the USA would present itself as a
re-run of some textbook accounts of the contract-bargaining
sessions between Reuther and GM. I only predicted that the American
working class, which today has trade-unionist but not socialist
class consciousness, would become radicalized from the moment the
capitalist system showed itself less and less able to deliver the
goods, i.e. to guarantee regular increases in real wages and a high
level of employment. For I argued that the relative stability of
American society during the past 30 years was basically not due to
some ideological factor (the alleged anti-communism of the working
class) but to this capacity of the system to deliver the goods.
Nicolaus agrees with me that this capacity is now declining, and
that the roots of that decline are to be found in the deterioration
of the world situation of American imperialism. It is hard to deny,
under these conditions, that the weakening of the competitive
position of US imperialism on the world market has something to do
with that deterioration.December 5 1969Top of the pageNotes1.In the
first paragraph ofWhere is America going?NLR 54, p.3.2.The latest
attempt to give a supposedly Marxist rationalization to Third
Worldism has been offered by Pierre Jale in his bookLimperialisms
en 1970(Maspero, Paris 1969). This is based on the assumption that
the contradiction between imperialism and the peoples of the Third
World is the main contradiction today (one can see here the havoc
this undialectical formula of Lin Piao has caused among sincere and
capable Marxists), while workers actions in the West remain
reformist, both because of the capacity of the system to guarantee
for a long time to come a high rate of growth (declining
fluctuations of the industrial cycle and a low level of
unemployment) and because of the predominance of rightist forces in
the labour movement. How this theory can be reconciled with the
reality of the class struggles in France May 1968 and Italy 1969,
which obviously tend more and more to outgrow the limits of
reformism and to challenge capitalist relations of production, or
with the reality of the world economy, characterized since 1965 by
a declining rate of growth, an increase in unemployment, and the
appearance in nearly all key sectors of industry of growing
over-capacity of production, is hard for me to understand.3.It is
useful to stress that Trotsky rejected any notion that the peoples
of the underdeveloped world had to wait till the Western
proletariat made its revolution, just as he opposed any Third-World
illusions. In his political testament, the May 1940Manifesto of the
Fourth International on The Imperialist War and the Proletarian
Revolution, he wrote:The perspective of permanent revolution in no
case signifies that the backward countries must await the signal
from the advanced ones, or that the colonial peoples should
patiently wait for the proletariat of the metropolitan centres to
free them. Help comes to him who helps himself. Workers must
develop the revolutionary struggle in every country, colonial or
imperialist, where favourable conditions have been established, and
through this set an example for the workers of other countries.It
will interest our readers that this was not a new position of
Trotskys, only acquired after the sad experiences of European
working-class defeats in the thirties. As early as August 5th,
1919, in a secret message to the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party, he wrote as follows:There is no doubt at all that
our Red Army constitutes an incomparably more powerful force in the
Asian terrain of world politics than in the European terrain. Here
there opens up before us an undoubted possibility not merely of a
lengthy wait to see how events develop in Europe, but of conducting
activity in the Asian field. The road to India may prove at the
given moment to be more readily passable and shorter for us than
the road to Soviet Hungary. The sort of army which at the moment
can be of no great significance in the European scales can upset
the unstable balance of Asian relationships of colonial dependence,
give a direct push to an uprising on the part of the oppressed
masses and assure the triumph of such a rising in Asia. (The
Trotsky Papers, I, 1917-22, p.623, The Hague
1964).4.Lenin,uvres,tome29, pp.167-8, Editions Sociales, Paris,
1962 my own translation.5.When I speak of relative quiescence I do
not deny that there have been strikes during these decades. But
obviously, nothing occurred on the scale of the post-war strikes,
not to speak of the 1936-37 sit-down wave.6.Engels:England 1845 and
1885, article published inCommonweal, March 1, 1885 I quote from
Marx-EngelsWerke, vol.21, pp.196-7, Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1962, and
have retranslated the text myself from German into English.7.This
applies of course only to private capital outflows. I do not have
to deal here with the phenomenon of the so-called public help to
Third-World countries in fact the creation, by the imperialist
states, of purchasing power for the heavy industry export
monopolies of their own countries.8.According to figures quoted by
E.L. Nelson and F. Cutler inThe International Investment Position
of the United States in 1967(Survey of Current Business, vol.48,
no.10, 1968, pp.24-25), the rate of profit calculated by capitalist
firms on USA direct capital investment in 1967 amounted to 12.3 per
cent in Latin-America, 14 per cent in Asia and 19.7 per cent in
Africa, as against only 10.1 per cent for direct capital
investments in imperialist countries (Canada, Western Europe,
Australia).9.It should be noted that, after having poked fun at me
in the beginning of his article for using the categories of
technological revolution, and inflation to explain some of the
causes of growing instability in American society, Nicolaus comes
back to exactly the same factors when he projects, in part IV of
his article, the development of a general crisis of overproduction.
We can easily drop the backlog of unfulfilled demand created by the
devastation of the Second World War; by no stretch of imagination
can this explain a seven or eight-year boom in the US economy in
the sixties. He is then left with only two explanations: (i) No
epoch-making technological innovations have materialized, which
would imply that the high rate of expansion of the last two decades
was due after all epoch-making technological innovations in the
electronics, nuclear energy, petrochemical and computer industries
as I contended. (ii) Both investment and demand become problematic
without the artificial and necessarily temporary stimulus of
inflation. Lets not start a dispute as to the necessarily temporary
character of inflation. But its key role in attempts to avoid a
major crisis of over-production I pointed out long ago (seeMarxist
Economic Theory, vol.II, pp.526-36, Merlin Press, London
1968).10.While imperialism necessitates a war of capitalists of one
country against those of all (?) other countries, it is unable to
realise such a war. The imperialists of each big power were forced
... to arrive at an understanding with the imperialists of another,
or several other big powers, and to conclude an alliance with them.
But by doing so, they have already started on the road of a very
important modification of imperialism itself ... It is not at all
excluded that the present war will end with an understanding
between the leading big powers of both camps for the partition and
exploitation of the world. We have even to take into account the
possibility that the world will see the spectacle, of which we
should be ashamed, that the imperialist International will become a
reality sooner than the International of the socialist parties.
Karl Kautsky,Die Neue Zeit, February 16th, 1917.11.All this is
explained in much more detail in my forthcomingEurope versus
America? Contradictions of Imperialism(NLB).12.I mean by this that
the economic repercussions of Third World liberation movements in
the coming years cannot by themselves cause a major upheaval in the
US economy. In fact, during the last 20 years these movements,
which implied the loss for capitalism of the biggest country in the
world China as a field of capital investment, coincided with a big
increase in the rate of growth of the imperialist economy. This
does, not of course, mean that the political, social and subjective
effects of Third World liberation struggles do not make a very
important contribution to shaking the equilibrium of imperialist
society.13.Lenin:uvres Choisies, I, pp.874, 852-3, Editions en
Langues Etrangres, Moscou 1946.14.But Nicolaus is mistaken when he
assumes that national boundaries and nation States have ceased to
be obstacles for this movement of internationalization of capital.
On the contrary: the more this movement increases, the stronger
becomes the contradiction between the survival of the nation state
and the tendency of productive forces to outgrow it. Nicolaus shows
a similar inability to understand the contradictory, dialectical
process of social change, in his polemic on the question of black
employment. My figure of the reduction of unskilled jobs in the USA
comes from Secretary of Labour Wirtz, (quoted in
Baran-Sweezy:Monopoly Capital, p.267, Monthly Review Press, 1966).
The official statistics of black employment in 1960 3.6 million
employed. Of these only 1 million were unskilled labourers (among
which a quarter of a million farm laborers), as against 887,000
semi-skilled workers, 357,000 craftsmen and foremen, and 292,000
technicians, professionals and clerically employed. The basic
process in American industry has been to displace labourers by
semi-skilled operatives. But at the same time, in the American
economy clerical jobs, and jobs of technicians and professionals,
have risen even more quickly (the number of professional, technical
and clerical jobs increased from 117 million in 1940 to 21 millions
in 1965, whereas the number of semi-skilled operatives and kindred
workers only rose from 95 to 14 millions). So it is perfectly
possible that, at one and the same time, there are many fewer jobs
as labourers, there are many more blacks employed in industry and
services as semi-skilled operatives, there are proportionally many
more black unemployed than white and there is a growing
inter-racial income gap and occupational segregation, which has a
powerful radicalizing impact on the black population.