V. International Relations

27. The economic condition of the world in general, and the decline of Europe in particular, presages a long period of hard times, disturbances, crises of a general and partial character, and so forth. The international relations inaugurated by the war and the Versailles Treaty are rendering the situation more and more hopeless. The trend of the economic forces tending to sweep away national boundaries and convert Europe and the rest of the world into one economic territory gave birth to imperialism but, on the other hand, the scuffle between the contending forces of this imperialism led to the creation of a multiplicity of new national boundaries, new custom-barriers and new armies. With regard to State administration and economy, Europe has been thrown back to the medieval state.

The soil which has been exhausted and laid bare is now being called upon to feed an army exceeding in numbers that of 1914, the hey-day of the “world in arms.”

28. The policy of France which is playing a dominant part in Europe today, is based upon the following two principles:

The blind rage of the usurer, ready to pounce upon and strangle an insolvent debtor and the greed of the predatory heavy industry striving to create favourable conditions for industrial imperialism to supplant financial imperialism with the aid of the Saar, Ruhr, and Upper Silesian Coal Basins.

But this striving runs counter to the interests of England, whose aim it is to keep the German coal away from the French ore, which, if brought together, would create the conditions necessary for the reconstruction of Europe.

29. Great Britain today has reached the high-water mark of her power. Having retained all her dominions, she also acquired new ones, nevertheless, it is just at this moment that it is becoming most evident that the dominating international position of England stands in contradiction to its actual economic decline. German capitalism, which from the standpoint of technique and organisation, is much more progressive than that of England, has been crushed by force of arms. The United States, having taken possession of both Americas, has now come out as a triumphant rival even more menacing than Germany was. The productivity of labour and of industry in the United States, owing to its superior organisation and technique, is now above that of England. Within the territory of the United States, from 65 to 70 per cent of the world’s petroleum is being produced upon which depends the automobile industry, tractor production, the fleet and aviation. England’s dominant position in the coal market which used to be almost a monopoly has been shaken. America has now assumed first place and her European export is ominously increasing. America’s commercial marine has nearly come up to that of England, neither is the United States content to put up any longer with England’s monopoly over the Atlantic cables. Great Britain has taken up a defensive position with regard to her industry and is now resorting to protective legislation against the United States under the guise of combatting the “unwholesome” German competition. Finally, while the English fleet, comprising a large number of battleships of the old-type, has been checked in its latest development, the Harding administration has taken up the Wilsonian programme of naval construction intended to secure the superiority of the American flag on the sea within the next couple of years.

The situation has become such that either England will be automatically pushed back, and, in spite of her victory over Germany, will become a second-rate power or, she will be constrained in the very near future to gather up all the power she had inherited from former times and engage in a mortal struggle with the United States.

This is just the reason why England is maintaining her alliance with Japan and is making concessions to France in order to secure the latter’s assistance or neutrality at any rate. The growth of the international role of the latter country within the European continent during the last year has been caused not by a strengthening of France, but by the international weakening of England.

Germany’s capitulation last May on the indemnity question signifies, however, a temporary victory for England, including as it does a supplementary guarantee of further economic decay of Central Europe, without in any way excluding seizure by France of the Ruhr district and Upper Silesian basin in the near future.

30. The antagonism between Japan and the United States which was temporarily veiled by the former’s participation in the war against Germany is now tending to come out into the open. In consequence of the war, Japan has approached the American coast having secured for itself a number of islands on the Pacific which are of great, strategic importance.

The crisis of Japanese industry, following upon its rapid expansion, has again put to the front the problem of emigration. Being very thickly populated and poor in natural resources, Japan must export either her goods or her men, but, whether she does the one or the other, she gets into collision with the United States: in California, in China, and in the Yap Islands.

Japan is spending one half of its budget on the maintenance of its army and fleet. In the impending struggle between England and the United States, Japan is going to play on the sea the same part as that played by France on land during the war with Germany. Japan today is making use of the antagonism between Great Britain and America but, when the final struggle between these two giants for world hegemony breaks out, Japan is going to be the battleground of that fight.

31. Both the original causes that called forth the recent great slaughter and the chief combatants that took part in it marked it as a European war, the crucial point of which was the antagonism between England and Germany. The intervention of the United States only widened the scope of the struggle, but it did not divert it from its original direction. The European conflict was being settled by world-wide means. The war settled the English-German and German-American quarrel in its own way, but it did not solve the problem of the relations between the United States and England. Now, however, this problem has been put forward prominently as one of the first order and the question of the American-Japanese as one of the second order. Thus the last war was in reality only a prelude to a genuine world war which is to solve the problem of imperialist autocracy.

32. This, however, forms only one focus of international policy which has yet another focus located in the Russian Soviet Federation and the 3rd International, brought about by the war. All the forces of the world revolution are arraying themselves against all the imperialist combinations.

Whether the alliance between England and France is going to be maintained or broken up, whether the Anglo-Japanese treaty is going to be renewed or not, whether the United States are going to join the League of Nations or not—all this is of little value so far as the interests of the proletariat or the securing of peace is concerned. The proletariat can see no guarantee for peace in the vacillating, predatory, and treacherous combinations of capitalist powers, whose policy turns to an ever increasing extent around the antagonism between England and America, fostering that antagonism and preparing for a new bloody outbreak.

The fact that some of the capitalist governments have concluded peace and commercial treaties with Soviet Russia does not mean that the bourgeoisie of the world has given up the idea of destroying the Soviet Republic. What we are witnessing now, is nothing but a change, a temporary change perhaps, of the forms and methods of struggle. The uprising caused by the Japanese troops in the Far East may serve as an introduction into a new stage of armed intervention.

It is altogether obvious that the longer the revolutionary movement of the world proletariat will go on, the more inevitably will the bourgeoisie be impelled by the contradiction of the international economic and political situation to make another bloody denouement on a world-wide scale.

If this should come to pass, the “restoration of capitalist equilibrium” consequent upon a new war would have to proceed under conditions of economic exhaustion and barbarity in comparison with which the present state of Europe might be regarded as the height of well-being.

33. In spite of the fact that the late war has furnished terrible evidence of the fact that “wars are unprofitable”—a truth lying at the bottom of bourgeois and socialist pacifism—the process of political, economic, ideological and technical preparation for a new war, is going on at full speed all through the capitalist world. Humanitarian anti-revolutionary pacifism has become an auxiliary force to militarism.

The social-democrats of every variety and the Amsterdam Trade unionists who are trying to make the workers of the world believe that they ought to adapt themselves to the economic and political conditions resulting from the war, are rendering the imperialist bourgeoisie most valuable services in the matter of preparing a new slaughter which threatens to completely annihilate civilisation.