For a long time, the productive forces
of society and the extent of capital have surpassed the frame of the national
states. Having agglomerated to financial groups under the leadership of their
banks, the giant trusts make the entire world their battlefield.
They have drawn their spiders' webs of investments and credits all over the globe. The world-wide direct capital investments of the USA, Japan, Great Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada are said to amount to nearly $1.5 trillions.
The financial stock of banks and states of these countries has even achieved a much higher volume. The international demands of the credit institutes in 1988 amounted up to $4.6 trillions. The foreign credits of imperialist states are very large, too. The statal credits for 136 so-called underdeveloped countries come to about $0.7 trillion.
Imperialism, means the struggle for trillions of extra-profits and for the corresponding privileges resulting from control of international capital stocks.
Imperialism, means economic plundering of and domination over foreign countries by means of the own nation.
Imperialism, means economic war between the imperialist powers.
Capital is international but its bases are situated in particular nations.
Here are the central administrations of the enterprises making their decisions on world-wide activities. Here they have the decisive influence upon their states which until now, at national and international level, represent the interests of the own capital.
Here are stationed the military means which, in case of need, may be used in order to ensure the own capital interests. Nevertheless, imperialism is not only or not in the first place an aggressive military policy, the violent conquest or defence of territories. The main features of imperialism are found in the field of economy.
Imperialism is the struggle for hegemony in the world, for dividing the world in own favour. Everybody aims to become the world's champion and number one.
The determining factor is the actual economic power. In the end, it is the factor military strength, too, depends on.
Imperialism does not necessarily mean ownership of colonies or territories. What is important is the economic predominance in spheres of influence.
On one and the same economic basis, imperialism has different forms in different countries. And it changes the forms according to the power relations between the imperialist countries, the class struggle and the peoples' struggle for freedom and national independence.
After the Second World War, Germany and Japan lost their colonial spheres of influence and all their foreign capital. In order to reconquer their spheres of influence, both powers needed peace and time. Because of this special situation the notion of imperialism seemed not to be suitable for them. But though having been defeated in the Second World War, these imperialist powers have recovered from that and intensively assume their place in the struggle for predominance in the world. They are imperialists, because, for a long time, they have won their power fromthe work made by other peoples and by cheating them. The extent of their capital brings them to playing that role.
Imperialism does not exclude co-operation between monopolies and different countries. Co-operation is necessary because of the international expansion of capital and the respective relations of forces. Co-operation is a method of advancing in competition by means of alliances (for instance - Airbus versus Boeing). It is also useful in order to get acquainted with the most modern technology of the "co-operation partners" with the aim to surpass them.
The more capital surpasses the national borders, the greater becomes the necessity for uniform economic zones which are not limited by national frames. This results in the necessity of co-operation between governments of different nations within such international economic zones.
Co-operation is based on common interest in dividing the world and in exploiting their own peoples.
It is an illusion to believe that co-operation and agreement function on another base than economic strength. Whatever the forms of co-operation may be, the main basis of the relations is and remains competition. Co-operation goes only as far as it strengthens one’s own position in competition. Thus, co-operation and international economic zones are nothing but new forms in which the imperialist powers struggle for hegemony.
The national commissions of millionaires, called governments, with all their economic, political and military means care for extending the influence of their own imperialism at the expense of their competitors. Therefore, our matter is neither to assist the European Community (EC) or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) nor to assist the many forms of co-operation between the great monopolies of the USA, Japan or Germany.
Capital has reached a level of concentration on which private property of means of production becomes more and more anachronistic. The means of production are socialised in the form of giant corporations which can no longer be managed by single capitalists. The stock corporations are the abolishment of private property on the basis of capitalism itself. They are a proof of the fact that the old private owners have become superfluous for managing the modern productive forces.
The corporations are concentrated on higher and higher levels within the frame of financial groups and the interlacing of their capital.
Capitalism itself makes capitalists superfluous.
More than ever before, imperialism separates private property from the discretional power of disposition of it. Especially in the sphere of banks which are at the centre of imperialist economy, disposal of the capital has been transferred into the hands of appointed managers, who are supervised solely by themselves.
The economy of imperialism with its high degree of socialisation does no longer have its source in private property in the classical sense. Further on, however, particular interests dominate, because capital did not disappear even if the means of production were transformed into state property. The interest of the respective particular capital in its own accumulation is at the centre and is pushed regardless the interests of society. In the framework of trusts and financial groups, the managers themselves care for their own private interests which can even undermine the corporate interest of the singular capital.
The financial and corporate groups try to get subsidies for almost all activities (investment, research, cost of wages, export etc.) from the state. At the same time, they try to pay the state the lowest possible sums of taxes.
Their economic strength, corruption and their representatives in the state apparatus and governments created the basis to do so. They use the state in order to ensure unprofitable investments for creating the necessary infrastructure for their projects and to shift their losses on society. They decide, and the state pays.
Sooner or later, hard competition among them forces the imperialist countries to concentrate their forces and strengthen the role of their states. Elements of state-planned economy, which were especially strong in both world wars, are more and more used as a method of conducting the economic war. Even the USA introduced forms of "industrial policy" to stop their decline.
The economy of imperialism is not market economy but an economy of monopolies strongly controlled by cartel agreements which does not take any steps without the assistance of the states. For a long time, the economy of free competition of the 19th century has crashed down in favour of state monopolistic economy. Objectively, this kind of economy paves the way for socialism, and socialism does nothing but fulfil what imperialism began. However, the predominance, of particular interests over socialised means of production must be broken in a revolutionary manner.
The imperialist powers try to mobilise the working people of their own countries for their world-wide struggle against other competitors. At present, the rivalry between the USA and Japan has become the focus of attention but in Germany, too, and in other imperialist countries, the ruling classes call for struggle against the USA or Japan. Or weaker imperialist countries such as France or Great Britain call for struggle against Germany etc.
The stronger an imperialist country has become by plundering other peoples, the more at least one part of its working class has the possibility to participate in doing so by the privileged position of the respective country in the world.
The industrial monopoly of England raised the standard of living for a privileged part of its working class, too, and, for a certain period, the standard of living even for its whole working class. Along with the decline of Great Britain as imperialist power the majority of its working class has more and more been reduced to poverty.
The privileged position of the USA caused a higher standard of living for an important part of the American workers. Along with the decline of US imperialism increasing portions of its working class have become poor.
On the other hand: as long as imperialist powers (such as Japan and Germany) ascend in relation to others, the standards of living of their working classes or of a part of them may, at least for a certain period, be raised.
Technological dominance, monopolies, trade unions and other advantages in competition result in extra-profits a part of which can be poured out to the workers in the form of higher wages or better social security.
The obtaining of extra-profits and privileges at the expense of other nations is not only the main interest of every imperialist country but also its most important possibility to raise the standard of living for its working class.
Every capital struggles for the prerogatives of its own nation and tries to win the respective working class on a nationalist basis. As long as there are some advantages to be gained the working class may be prevented from looking for its own revolutionary interest. This fact explains the predominance of forces collaborating with imperialism within the workers' movement of the leading imperialist countries.
Independently of the present power relations, the laws of capitalism and imperialism nevertheless, on a certain point, result in a deterioration of the standard of living of the broad majority of the peoples.
The main aim of capitalist production is not wealth for all or jobs for all but the highest possible profit. Accumulation of profit, that is the alpha and omega of capitalist production.
The possibility of high profits is the highest if the lowest possible number of employed people produce the highest possible quantity of high quality products for the world market within the shortest possible time with the lowest possible cost of material and staff. This makes superior technology necessary.
The laws of accumulation of capital inevitably result in the contradiction between widely extended production and limited possibilities of consumption of the broad masses.
Capital is not capable of getting the production and consumption into an equilibrium as profits will become the higher the lower the means of consumption, the wages, will be.
The superfluous productive forces must periodically be abolished to adapt production to the limited consumption. Productive forces are abolished by making people unemployed. Unemployment grows to the same extend as the internal markets become narrow in relation to higher productivity.
Since the seventies, a phase of development causing the official rate of unemployment to grow rapidly has been achieved in all industrial countries. Even in the richest countries poverty has become every day's life for millions of people.
Joblessness is a powerful means of reducing the wages. In the USA, this development has progressed the farest. Today, the majority of American workers and employees get lower real incomes than in the mid-sixties.
In Germany, this process of reducing the level of real wages started at the beginning of the eighties but is accelerating only now. In Japan, it started at the beginning of the nineties.
Capitalist economy produces an increasing portion of superfluous people who must be fed by others and are themselves widely excluded from productive activity. By this fact, the internal market becomes narrower. In the economic war, there is a growing number of killed and wounded who must be cared for in the hospitals of the "social system".
This development is accelerated by capital exports and the construction of uniform economic zones such as EC and NAFTA.
The narrower the internal market becomes by unemployment or by low or tendentially declining wages respectively, the more the enormous capital sums achieved by the work made by the working class are to flow into foreign countries. Thus, capital even more rapidly surpasses its national borders.
Modern techniques of communication, quicker ways of transport and the rising technical standard of many capitalist countries with a lower level of development make capital exports easier.
There is a strong tendency of dismantling the production of whole branches of industry in order to export such production into countries with a lower level of development or to import the respective products. All that does not earn maximum profits is subject to the tendency of being exported or closed down.
Especially concerned are the old industries of capitalism, the classical heavy industries such as the coal mining industry or the steel industry, shipbuilding and consumer goods industries, for instance the textile branch and the leather industry. This development is retarded by the competition within financial capital and by the resistance of workers' movement.
The more highly developed industries such as car industry, chemical industry, electrical industry and machine building industry, too, shift their production from the metropolitan centres into other capitalist countries. The US monopolies displaced great parts of their production to Latin and Central America and to Asia. Especially Mexico has been integrated within a uniform economic zone because of its vicinity to the USA. Japan exports its capital above all into the surrounding Asian countries. It massively expands into China. And Germany meanwhile has its own Latin America just before its front door - Eastern Europe.
The shapes of a new international, neo-colonialist division of labour are taking their clothes off. The leading imperialist powers consider themselves intelligent heads of systems, concentrating research and development, sales and after-sales service in their own countries and leave simple machine work and assembly to satellite peoples. First of all, production with high quality and pioneer technologies shall remain in the metropolitan countries.
Capital exports lead to an increase in mass unemployment in the own country, a decline of the working people’s standard of living and a shrinkage in the internal market of the imperialist countries. While the working class sets the value of its manpower in accordance with the national conditions and the corresponding needs, the monopolies tend to pose it as the value of international average manpower. This promotes wage standard falling down in direction of the wages of less developed capitalist countries (USA wages in direction of Mexican wages, German wages in direction of Eastern European wages). On the contrary, the standards in such less highly developed countries may be lifted a bit. This development depends on the extend of capital exports.
The causes of impoverishment of working classes in the imperialist countries are of national nature. They arise in the logic of the own financial capital. If Japanese monopolies produce more cheaply and more efficiently, they will be capable of ruining their opponents and of raising unemployment in other countries with their exports of capital and goods. Doing so, they use the contradictions within the ranks of their competitors, too. The ruin for the ones is the cheapening of supply material or consumer goods for the others who are enabled to maintain a low wage level. Furthermore, the interests in exports of capital and goods force them to agree, to a certain extent, to imports of the competitors' capital and goods into the own country. In this sense, monopoly capital of the imperialist countries sacrifices the interests of their own peoples in order to exploit other peoples more profitably.
Imperialism more and more depends on exploitation of other peoples and nations while, at the same time, declaring war to the working people in their own countries in the name of international competitiveness. The circle of those who, with a high standard of living, can profit from the growing parasitic role of their country is shrinking. This tends to undermine the readiness of the working class to be submitted to capital.
Imperialism tends not only to undermine the own internal market but the foreign markets, too.
For its extended production, imperialism requires raw materials chiefly found in the so-called underdeveloped countries. Capital exports into these countries serve to control the supply with raw materials. The cheaper raw materials are, the higher will the rate of profit for the monopolies be, the lower the prices of consumer goods in the own country and thereby the level of wages. At the same time, the corrupt cliques in these countries have to be well paid and their military to be equipped so that they are able to oppress their own peoples in the interest of imperialist dependency.
Dozens of countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia almost completely depend on the export of their raw materials. So their peoples pauperise with the decline of prices of raw materials. Today, the prices of raw materials (except for energy) are essentially lower than they were immediately after the Second World War. At the same time, the prices of investment goods, imported from the imperialist countries, grew. The plundering of the countries of the "Third World" is an essential precondition of imperialism.
From the beginning of the seventies the bourgeoisies of many capitalist countries tried to industrialise their countries by massively taking credits from the private banks of the metropolitan centres. The base of doing so was the surplus capital of the industrial states.
The money partially flew into ambitious projects of industrialisation. The aim was to create an industrial mass production, to export and thus to gain higher profits for the enterprises. The industries built up should serve paying the rents and redemption rates for the credits by export profits.
In most cases, it did not work out. Industrialisation with the aid of imperialism proved to be a new, even more efficient method of plundering the "underdeveloped countries".
Today the payment of interest rates and redemption rates to the creditor banks and states dominate as the main form of plundering.
They markedly surpass the transfers of profits accruing from capital which has been invested into production. The newly taken debts essentially serve paying the duties from the old debts. Thus, first of all, the "underdeveloped countries" promote the development of the imperialist monopolies and states.
More than ever before, the imperialist countries export branches of their old mass production car industry, steel industry, shipbuilding etc.) or support their creation respectively. In some countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico and Brazil, foreign capital mainly coming from Japan and the USA, induced a quick expansion of industrialisation. Great parts of the capital of processing industries of these countries are under the control of imperialist monopolies and banks.
But in other countries, too, the high degree of foreign debts to the imperialist states has the effect of developing the countries according to the demands of capital accumulation of the rich countries.
The difficulties of repaying the debts allow the creditor states directly to control the state budgets of "underdeveloped countries" and to rescue them at the expense of the peoples. The peoples of "underdeveloped countries" more and more work for the demands of the rich imperialist creditor states.
Not only the plundering of raw materials but also an industrial production tailored to the demands of the metropolitan centres and the debts produce the constraint to ensure the exported capital and the vital necessities of division of labour by all political and military means.
In an increasing extend, imperialism is parasitic and cannot exist otherwise.
The plundering of "underdeveloped countries" by capital exports hinders the "underdeveloped countries" from economic development. These countries become developed partially only. Innumerous persons fall in absolute poverty. Every year, 120 million people starve to death.
The bourgeoisies of the "underdeveloped countries" have secured a great part of their capital by exporting it into the imperialist centres where it increases the surplus capital and waits, in vain, for being employed for the demand of the peoples.
Disparity between the rich parasitic states of the North and the poor states of the South grows by reason of the logic of capital. Just relations in world economy between rich and poor states under the rule of imperialism are as impossible as just relations within the imperialist countries. The impoverishment of growing parts of their own peoples and the absolute impoverishment of the broad masses in the colonialised debtor countries are nothing but two sides of one and the same coin called capital.
Thus, large parts of world economy are restricted to become sales markets for imperialism. Hope for foreign investors who will develop the countries is a futile hope as the surplus wealth of the imperialist parasitic countries serves nothing but itself and its own reproduction.
Imperialism in the dependent economies of many "underdeveloped countries" produces unemployment and poverty, larger than in the metropolitan centres, because it ruins the domestic, technically underdeveloped branches of production in order to export its own commodities.
Large parts of population change into an army in reserve of imperialism. Because of economic disparity, millions of pauperised immigrants legally or illegally stream into the metropolitan centres. With their help, capital displaces the badly trained, unskilled labourers of the metropolitan centres and brings the level of wages even more down.
All imperialist countries see their salvation in heigh capital exports in order to confront against their competitors on their own market or on foreign markets directly. By this, competition is intensified, resulting in something like economic war.
The extent of capital exports is the most significant graduator of the world being divided in spheres of influence of imperialist powers.
In 1988, the USA had invested $337 billions in foreign direct investments, 50 per cent of them was concentrated in Western Europe and one third of this half in Great Britain and 20 per cent in Germany.
In 1992, Japan had invested $352 billions in foreign countries - 35-40 per cent of them in the USA (with growing tendency) and 15 per cent in Europe (40 per cent of these 15 per cent in Great Britain only).
In 1991, Germany had exported $155 billions by direct investments in foreign countries - more than a half of them in the EC and the absolutely biggest portion of this half in Great Britain (16 per cent). More than 30 per cent fell to the USA, other 5 per cent to Latin America.
Half of the capital exports from EC states into the USA come from Great Britain (that is the fourfold sum of that coming from Germany). Great Britain concentrates more than a half of its capital exports in the USA.
Japan, however, has almost closed its borders to capital exports from the USA and from Germany so far.
Till now, the USA is probably the world's largest investor of foreign capital. But Japan has nearly egalized and, in spite of its lower gross national product (GNP) in the eighties, has exported more capital than the USA. Germany is significantly weaker. Capital exports have been supported by creation of international economic zones in which capital and manpower can float freely.
Capital exports are to be contrasted with capital imports. While endeavouring to divide the world by capital exports, foreign capital itself penetrates the imperialist states and undermines them from the interior. Here Japan has advantages, too, because it leaves its country almost closed for capital imports while penetrating the world.
Though being the country with the highest share of direct investments in other countries in comparison with the GNP, Great Britain is invaded by USA capital, Japanese and German capital. More than a third of the British industry is in foreign capitalists' hands while the British local industry is declining.
Because of the impoverishment of its own people during a longer period of capital exports, Great Britain had become extraordinarily attractive for foreign direct investments. The decline of the USA in the eighties also becomes explicit as the foreign direct investments within the USA were twice in comparison with the direct investments of the USA abroad.
Additional to direct investments are capital exports by bank and statal credits. At the beginning of the eighties, the USA were the world's largest creditor. Almost 30 per cent of international credit were allotted to USA banks. Till the end of the eighties, however, the scene changed completely. The world's ten largest banks of today are Japanese ones. They unite almost 40 per cent of the international credits, the USA 15 per cent only. Japan concentrates its financial operations in the USA. In the USA, approximately 14 per cent of all bank assets (in California even 25 per cent) are under the control of Japanese banks.
Through its exploding national debts in the eighties, the USA made themselves dependent on foreign, especially Japanese, creditors. 30-40 per cent of USA government securities are bought by Japanese brokers.
Meanwhile, Japanese banks conquered London, the most important international financial market. About 40 per cent of Euro-credits are disposed of by Japanese banks having markedly surpassed the USA banks, German and Swiss banks.
It is true that Germany surpassed Great Britain, moved up close to France, but comes fourth till now. Its share in international credits sums up to less than 8 per cent.
The world's biggest creditor states of today are Japan and Germany while the USA changed into a debtor nation. This is a clear sign of a certain change of power relations.
US imperialism reacts to this weakened position by a strengthened co-operation with Japan. The USA is the main import country of Japanese capital. On the other hand, the USA is the biggest foreign capital investor into Japan. The high technology industries of Japan and of the USA have connected with each other in a lot of mutual stakes. Joint ventures between Motorola and Toshiba, alliances between IBM and Toshiba or Ricoh, between General Motors and Fanuc, the leading producer of robots, between General Motors and Isuzu, Ford and Mazda govern the scene.
The co-operation between the high technology industries of Japan and of the USA is called by the writer Konrad Seitz "the most important development of world economy of the ending 20th century" (Die japanisch-amerikanische Herausforderung, Berlin 1994, p. 225).
So the Japanese imperialism joins with its main competitor, the USA, and, together with it, penetrates Europe but without giving up the aim of winning the game against the USA.
Today, the Japanese imperialism develops most quickly while the USA and Germany suffer from a certain senility. But in the USA and in Germany, there are made feverish activities of modernisation in order to conquer and reconquer productivity and market shares. And in Japan, there exist some indicators of crisis.
The leading circles of all these countries restlessly set their working classes under pressure in order to submit them to the generals of the respective capital in their campaigns against Japan, the USA or Germany. Today the battles, first of all, are fought economically. The winners gain extra-profits at the expense of the other centres of power. And the struggling armies of the corporations staffs are promised booties if the enemy has been overwhelmed.
Because of its peculiar conditions, the Japanese imperialism has advantages and is at present able to develop its productive forces most quickly.
Firstly, by its capability of putting its possible short-term profits back behind long-term profits.
Secondly, by its capability of investing a larger portion of profits in production.
Thirdly, by its capability of systematically evaluating the most advanced experiences of all industrial countries and of adapting them in Japan (quality control within production, solution of obsolete forms of division of labour etc.).
Fourthly, by its capability of better planning the fields of research, investments and the most promising direction of productive forces by co-ordinated efforts on national and international level.
Fifthly, by its capability of co-ordinating the feudal traditions (loyalty of Samurai followers, spirit of fighting against enemies, unselfishness in relation to the own enterprise's clan etc.) to a national effort in order to overwhelm other nations, especially the former victorious power, the USA.
The German imperialism is the strongest power within the EC. Europe is its main bastion. At present, Germany counteracts its relative weakness in comparison with the USA and Japan above all with the support given by the EC and by alliances and compromises with others, especially with France. However, technologically (above all in the telecommunication industry) and from the aspect of the importance of its spheres of influence, it seems to be positioned behind the USA and Japan.
Therefore, the German imperialism tries to catch up and become the world's number one. By massively abolishing workplaces and by sweating the workers, it tries to snatch up the immense capital sums for conquering spheres of influence in Asia and America. First of all, its hope is oriented towards a uniform economic area from the Atlantic to the Ural, including 850 millions of people. Step by step, the EC is being extended.
However, on this way there arise innumerous difficulties. Russia on the one side is seriously weakened as an imperialist country but nevertheless defends its own interests against "Western influences". And until now, it is still an important military power. In Western Europe there are strong rivalries between Germany, France and Great Britain and also a considerable presence of capital coming from the USA and Japan.
In Eastern Europe, different imperialist powers are in rivalry for hegemony. The position of Germany is not uncontested.
How the power relations of the imperialist countries are and how and by which alliances they try to strengthen themselves has to be investigated much more precisely. More precisely we also have to analyse the international distribution of capital exports and the spheres of influence. Till now, we can make nothing but relatively vague statements.
Whatever the temporary advantages of one imperialist country are in comparison to the other ones, the other ones, too, try to acquire such advantages. But sooner or later and in different forms and degrees of development, they all suffer from their insoluble basic problems.
Communist Party of Germany (KPD)