§ 31 The collapse of capitalism, and the classes

In this manner, at the outset, the war contributed to the centralization and organization of the capitalist economy. That which the syndicates, the banks, the trusts, and the combined undertakings, had not yet fully achieved, was speedily finished by State capitalism. It created a network out of all the organs regulating production and distribution. Thus it prepared the ground even more fully than before for the time when the proletariat would be able to take the now centralized large-scale production into its own hands.

It was inevitable that the war, whose burden pressed so heavily on the working class, should in due course lead to a rising of the proletarian masses. The leading characteristic of the war was that it was murderous to an unparalleled degree. The levying of troops advanced with giant strides. The proletariat was positively decimated on the battlefields. The reports show that down to March, 1917, the number of dead, wounded, and missing totalled 25 millions; by 1 January, 1918, the number of the killed had been approximately 8 millions. If we assume the average weight of a soldier to 750 lb., this means that between 1 August 1914, and 1 January 1918, the capitalists had brought to market twelve hundred million pounds of putrid human flesh. To estimate the real loss on human beings, we must add a few millions permanently invalided. Considering syphilis alone, this disease has been diffused by the war to an almost incredible extent, so that infection is now nearly universal. In consequence of the war people have become far less fit physically; the most healthy, the most effective elements, those which formed the flower of the nations, have been destroyed. It need hardly be said that the brunt of the losses was borne by the workers and the peasants.

In the great centres of the warring States we can find whole communities of those who have been crippled and monstrously mutilated; men whose faces have been shot away, wearing masks, sit in misery as living tokens to the delights of bourgeois civilization.

The proletariat, however, was not simply massacred at the front. In addition, intolerable burdens were laid upon the shoulders of those who remained alive. The war necessitated a frenzied expenditure. At the very time when the factory owners were piling up immense profits which became distinctively known as ' war profits', the workers were being subjected to heavy taxation for war purposes. The cost of the war continued to increase beyond measure. In the autumn of 1979, at the peace conference, the French minister for finance declared that the war had cost the belligerents more than a trillion francs. The significance of such figures is far from easy to grasp. In former days the number of miles between one star and another was stated in similar terms. Now they are used to figure out the cost of these years of criminal slaughter. A trillion is a million millions. Such has been the upshot of the war devised by the capitalists. According to another estimate, the cost of the war was as follows

Subsequently, the costs of the war increased even more, attaining figures astounding in their magnitude. Vast sums have to be raised in order to meet these costs. Naturally, therefore, the capitalist States have already begun to impose heavy burdens on the working class: either by direct taxation; or by taxes on articles of consumption; or, finally, in order to make the bourgeoisie too contribute by a deliberate advance in the price of goods from patriotic motives. Prices have continued to rise. But the manufacturers, and especially those who have been manufacturing things wanted for the war, have pocketed unheard-of gains.

The Russian manufacturers were able to secure more than double the previous dividends, and in certain undertakings the profits were positively fabulous. Here are some of the figures: the naphtha firm of the Mirosyev Brothers paid 40 per cent; Danshevsky Ltd, 30 per cent; the Kalfa tobacco factory, 30 per cent; and so on. In Germany, during the years 1913 and 1914, the net profits in four branches of industry, namely chemical works, explosives, metal works, and motor car works, amounted to 133 millions; during the years 1915 and 1916 the total profits in the same branches amounted to 259 millions, practically double. In the United States the profits of the Steel Trust during the first half of 1916 were three times as great as the profits during the first half of 1915. The total profits of the Trust in 1915 were 98 million dollars; in the year 1917 they were 478 million dollars. Dividends of 200 per cent were several times declared. Many more examples could be given. There was a similar huge increase in banking profits. During the war, the small fry among the manufacturers were ruined, whilst the big sharks were incredibly enriched. As for the proletariat, this fell under the yoke of taxes and rising prices.

The chief articles produced during the war were shrapnel, shells, high explosives, heavy guns, tanks, aeroplanes, poison gas, gunpowder, etc. An incredible quantity of these requisites was manufactured. In the United States, new towns grew up like mushrooms round the powder factories. The owners of the new powder factories, in their eagerness for profits, conducted work so carelessly that explosions were common. Of course the manufacturers of munitions made huge profits, so that their businesses flourished amazingly. But as far as the common people were concerned, matters grew continually worse. Things of real value, such as can be eaten, worn, etc., were produced in ever-diminishing quantities. With powder and shot people can shoot and can destroy, but powder and shot are of no use for food or clothing. The whole strength of the belligerents was, however, devoted to the production of powder and other instruments of death. The production of ordinary utilities was increasingly reduced. The workers were drafted into the armies, and productive industry was entirely turned to the purposes of war. There was continually a greater dearth of useful goods. Hence arose shortage of food and exorbitant prices. LACK OF BREAD, LACK OF COAL, LACK OF ALL USEFUL GOODS, AND MOREOVER A WORLDWIDE LACK IN CONJUNCTION WITH WORLD-WIDE EXHAUSTION, SUCH WERE THE MAIN CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRIMINAL IMPERIALIST WAR.

Here are a few examples from different countries. In France during the opening years of the war, agricultural production diminished as follows:

In Britain the reserves of iron ore fell off as follows:

In other words, the reserves of iron ore were practically exhausted by the end of 1917.

In Germany the production of cast iron was as follows:

Owing to the lack of coal, the condition of industry throughout the world was desperate. In Central and Western Europe the main provider of coal was Britain. In Britain by the middle of 1918 the production of coal was reduced by 13 per cent. Already in 1917 the principal industries were practically without supplies of coal. Electrical works were receiving only one-sixth of the coal they needed, while textile undertakings were receiving only oneeleventh of the pre-war supply. At the time of the 'peace' conference at Versailles nearly all the countries in the world were affected by a terrible coal crisis. Factories were closed down for lack of fuel and the railway services were reduced. An extensive disorganization of industry and transport ensued.

The same thing happened in Russia. In 1917 the war had led to very bad conditions in the matter of coal supply. The industries of the Moscow district required 12,000,000 poods of coal per month [61 poods = 1 ton]. Kerensky's administration promised to supply 6,000,000 poods, half the normal amount. The actual supplies were as follows:

It is not surprising that Russian industry, far from displaying 'a tremendous expansion', was almost arrested. Here, as throughout the world, the ruin of capitalism was beginning. In 1917, under the Kerensky régime, the closure of factories attained the following dimensions:

Ruin was advancing with giant strides. If we wish to consider the rise in prices that resulted in part from scarcity and in part from the inflation of the currency, it suffices to turn to Britain, which of all the original belligerents was least affected by the war.

Here are the average prices of five of the chief articles of diet (tea, sugar, butter, bread, and meat):

Thus in the course of the war, even in Britain, prices were more than doubled, and the increase in wages was very far from keeping pace with the increase in the cost of living. In other countries, conditions were very much worse. They were especially bad in Russia, where the war proved positively ruinous, and where the country was reduced to the position of a tattered beggar dependent upon the favour of the lords of capital.

In the United States, which was even less affected by the war than Britain, between 1913 and 19 18 the prices of fifteen leading products increased by 160 per cent, while during the same period the rise in wages was only 80 per cent.

At length, even production for war purposes began to languish for lack of coal, steel, and other essentials. In every land, the United States alone excepted, poverty was rife; hunger, cold, and ruin, were advancing all over the globe. It need hardly be said that the chief sufferers from all these evils were the members of the working class, who thereupon attempted to protest. Upon them, now, war was declared, a war waged with the whole strength of the bourgeois robber States. In every land, in republican countries just as much as in monarchial, the working class was subjected to unexampled persecutions. The workers were not only deprived of the right to strike, but the slightest movement of protest was ruthlessly suppressed. In this way the dominion of capitalism led to civil war between the classes.

The resolution of the Third International concerning the White Terror gives a striking picture of the persecution of the workers during the war. It runs as follows: 'At the very outset of the war, the ruling classes who on the battlefields have slaughtered more than ten million men and have crippled and mutilated a vast number in addition - instituted in internal affairs a régime of bloody dictatorship (a bourgeois dictatorship). In Russia, the tsarist government shot and hanged the workers, organized antiJewish pogroms, and stifled every protest. The Austrian government savagely suppressed the risings of the peasants and the workers in Ukraine and Bohemia. The British bourgeoisie . butchered some of the finest representatives of the Irish people. The German imperialists breathed threatenings and slaughter, and the insurgent bluejackets were the first victims of their brutal wrath. In France, the authorities shot down the Russian soldiers who refused to defend the financial interests of the French bankers. In the United States, the bourgeoisie lynched the internationalists, sentenced many of the best proletarians to twenty years' imprisonment and shot down workers on strike.'

The capitalist system was breaking down. The anarchy of production had led to the war, and this had induced an enormous accentuation of the class conflict. Thus the war led to the revolution. Capitalism was beginning to disintegrate in two fundamental ways. (Refer to §13). The era of the collapse of capitalism had set in. Let us examine this collapse more closely.

Capitalist society was constructed upon one model throughout. A factory was organized just like a government office or like a division of the imperial army. At the top were the rich who commanded; at the bottom were the poor, the workers and the salariat, who obeyed; in between were the superintending engineers, the ' non-commissioned officers' the foremen, the higher grade employees, etc. It follows, therefore, that capitalist society can maintain itself in being so long only as the private soldier (drawn from the ranks of the workers) obeys the orders of the officer (drawn from the aristocracy, the landed gentry, or the wealthier bourgeoisie); so long only as in the government offices the subordinates obey the orders of their wealthy chiefs; and so long only as in the factories the workers continue to obey the highly paid managers or the factory owners who live upon surplus value. But as soon as the working masses realize that they are nothing but pawns in the hands of their enemies, the ties are broken that bind the private soldier to the service of the officer and that bind the worker to the service of the factory owner. The workers cease to attend to the orders of the factory owner; the private soldiers cease to attend to the orders of their officers; the civil servants cease to attend to the orders of their chiefs. Then begins the period in which the old discipline is relaxed, that discipline which enabled the rich to rule the poor, which enabled the bourgeoisie to fleece the workers. This period will inevitably continue until the new class (the proletariat) has subjugated the bourgeoisie, has forced the bourgeoisie to serve the workers, has established a new discipline.

Such a condition of affairs, in which the old order has been destroyed and the new order has not yet been created, can be ended in no other way than by the complete victory of the proletariat in the civil war.