The International Situation: A Study of Capitalism in Collapse
IV. Social Conditions Intensified
20th Century Eugen Varga English- The unprecedented destruction of industrial resources brought about by the war did not check the process of social differentiation. Quite the contrary, the proletarization of the intermediary classes, including the new middle-groupings of employees, officials, etc., and the concentration of wealth in the hands of the small clique of trusts, combines, and so on, have for the last ten years, made enormous strides in the more backward countries. The Stinnes combine is now the most important factor of the economic life of Germany.
The soaring of prices of all commodities coincident with the catastrophic depreciation of currency in all countries involved in the war meant a redistribution of the national incomes to the disadvantage of the working class, officials, employees, and small owners and all other persons with a more or less fixed income.
Thus we see that though Europe has been thrown back for a number of decades with reference to its material resources, the intensification of the social contradictions so far from having retrograded or been suspended, has, on the contrary, assumed a particular acuteness.
This cardinal fact is, of itself, sufficient to dispel any illusions of the possibility of a lasting and peaceful development under a democratic form of Government. The social differentiation proceeding along the line of economic decline predetermines the most intense, convulsive, and cruel nature of the class struggle.
The present crisis is only a continuation of the destructive work done by the war and the post-bellum speculative boom.
- Owing to the fact that agricultural products have risen in price, the country places have accumulated a large amount of cheap money. This produced the illusion that the villages were prosperous. The farmers did, indeed, succeed in paying off in paper money the debts they had contracted in currency at its face value. But the well-being of the farmer is not to be brought about merely by settling mortgages. The lack of labour power, the diminution of cattle, the scarcity of fertilisers, and the high cost of manufactured products brought European agriculture into a state of complete decline.
On the other hand, the universal impoverishment of Europe, rendering it incapable of purchasing the necessary amount of American or Canadian corn, resulted in getting the farming industry of the trans-atlantic countries into a critical situation. The ruin of the peasants and small farmers is going on not only in Europe, but also in the United States, Canada, Argentine, Australia, and South Africa. The capital newly acquired during the war is being used for buying up country estates. The village is being disintegrated, proletarianised, and pauperised, and is becoming the hotbed of discontent.
Owing to the fall of the purchasing power of money the position of State and private salaried employees has, as a rule, become even worse than that of the proletarians. This condition is tending to go on in the same manner. Having lost their usual stability, the middle and lower officials are becoming the factors of political unrest and undermine the government apparatus which they are called upon to serve. This “new middle state” which has been regarded by the reformists as the bulwark of conservatism, is in the present transitional period becoming a factor of revolution.
Capitalist Europe has completely lost its dominating position in the world economy. But, it was just this domination that had lent some relative equilibrium between its social classes. All the efforts of the European countries (England and partly France) to restore former conditions only tend to intensify their instability and disorganisation.
While the concentration of wealth, going on in Europe, has its foundations in the ruinous conditions of that Continent, in the United States the concentration of property and the extreme intensification of class distinctions are proceeding on the basis of the feverish growth of capitalist accumulation. The class struggle going on in America has assumed an extremely tense revolutionary character owing to the sharp vacillations produced by the general instability of the world market. The period of an unprecedented rise of capitalism is bound to be followed by an extraordinary rise of revolutionary struggle.
The emigration of workers and peasants across the ocean has always served as a safety valve to the capitalist régime in Europe. It grew during prolonged periods of depression and upon unsuccessful revolutionary outbreaks. At present, however, America and Australia are putting ever-growing obstacles in the way of emigration. Thus this safety-valve, so necessary to the capitalist régime, has ceased to exist.
The vigorous development of capitalism in the East, particularly in India and in China, has created new social foundations for the revolutionary struggle. The bourgeoisie of the Eastern countries has bound up its fate even more closely with foreign capital, and has thus become a very important weapon of capitalist domination. The contest between this bourgeois and foreign imperialism is the contest of a weaker competitor against a stronger rival, and is by its very nature only half-hearted and unreal. The development of the native proletariat paralyses the nationalistic-revolutionary tendencies of the capitalist bourgeoisie: At the same time the great masses of the peasants of the Oriental countries look upon the Communist vanguard as their real revolutionary leader. This is particularly true of the more progressive elements of these masses.
The combination of the military nationalistic oppression of foreign imperialism, of the capitalist exploitation by foreign and native bourgeoisie, and the survivals of the feudal disabilities are creating the conditions in which the immature proletariat of the colonial countries must develop rapidly and take the lead in the revolutionary movement of the peasant masses.
The revolutionary national movement in India and in other colonies, is today an essential component part of the world revolution to the same extent as the uprising of the proletariat in the capitalist countries of the old and the new world.