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. But technologically (above all
in the telecommunication industry) and from 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 to become itself 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 extended.
But
on this way there arise innumerous difficulties. Russia on the one side is
seriously weakened as 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, too, we 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 imperialism 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.
Does
Imperialism Mean Peace?
The leading big
powers promise peace. They declare that capital of today is dependent of
international co-operation and that therefore wars between them are no more
possible.
Indeed:
in the decades since the Second World War there was no direct war between them.
The reasons are clear.
Both
world wars began in Europe as wars between Germany on the one hand and France
and Great Britain on the other hand. The USA entered both wars later. After the
Second World War, the USA established themselves in Europe economically and
militarily. All European powers had been weakened, victors as well as losers.
The USA had become the almighty world power. Germany and Japan, the aggressive
imperialist powers which had started the First and the Second World War, were
economically and militarily so weakened that they have not been a match for the
USA till today. Meanwhile they recovered economically but are till now
essentially weaker, especially regarding military matters.
The
competition between imperialist powers was, for a long time, veiled by the
danger resulting from socialism and from the peoples' struggle for freedom,
later on from the rivalry between the new imperialist superpower Soviet Union
and the USA as the dominating Western superpower. After the breakdown of the
pseudo-socialist Soviet Union, competition between the old imperialist powers
has become more prominent.
Still
there are certain possibilities of expansion for the financial capital of the
leading imperialist countries.
It
has penetrated the broken down or still existing pseudo-socialist regimes and
tries to integrate them within a division of labour dominated by its interests.
Every power tries to make its own sphere of influence (America, Asia, Europe)
the centre of world economy.
Although
weakened, the USA imperialism is still hegemonic, has the largest GNP of all
imperialist countries and still concentrates 20 per cent of the world's
production (immediately after the Second World War 40 per cent). It still
concentrates the largest sum of exported capital, it is the world's most
powerful military power. Japan and Germany, though officially only, do not
dispose of own nuclear weapons.
A
war between the USA, Japan and Germany will be as long improbable as the power
relations will not have essentially changed to the disadvantage of the USA and
as Japan and Germany will not have been completely rearmed.
War will not be
possible as long as the equilibrium between the big powers will not have been so
disturbed that the struggle for predominance will be makeable by military means
only.
But
the power relations still continue slipping. The unsteady development of the
imperialist countries is one of the fundamental laws of capitalism. Japan and
Germany have the aim of reconstructing their old spheres of influence and of
expanding them, they strive for complete rearmament. At present, they try
economically to defeat the USA and by this to undermine the military hegemony of
the USA.
The
necessity of imperialist wars results from safeguarding the exported capitals or
the spheres of capital investment respectively and the supply of cheap raw
materials against one another. Having extended their economic activities far
beyond their own territories and living from the exploitation of the work of
other peoples, the imperialist countries made themselves highly armed in order
to defend their spheres of influence against liberation wars, against rivals or
other disturbers.
This
is the reason, too, for the fact that military expenditure has not been
essentially reduced after the break-down of the Soviet Union.
The
military expenditure worsens the living standard of people by charging them with
higher taxes and reducing the social security expenses and makes possible that
the armament industries get fantastic profits by their monopolist position. The
giant military expenditure especially of the USA retards the economic
development, too.
As
a result of the superiority of the USA in the decades after the Second World
War, wars were first of all conducted in order to defend or extend the
imperialist spheres of influence of their own. Often imperialist powers made use
of the tactics of the financing of civil wars with the aim to bring regimes
acceptable for them into power instead of intervening themselves with militarily
means. (So they did for instance in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola etc.)
The
decay of the pseudo-socialist multinational states into national states produced
a lot of wars, supported by imperialist powers which had the aim to extend their
own influence.
The
wars -in whatever form- conducted by imperialist states exclusively serve them
to carry on their economics and politics by other means, i.e. by militarily
ensuring their influence zones of the plundering of foreign nations. Now, Japan
and Germany start creating the conditions of militarily ensuring their great
power ambitions abroad. The motives are not that they feel responsible for the
world's peace but they want to ensure and to extend their spheres of influence
regained by capital exports.
Taking side
with imperialist countries in such wars cannot be our matter. Might they even
make out their operations to be humanitarian interventions in order to rescue
lives of people, such operations will remain types of imperialist influencing
control.
Is
imperialism able to be ecological?
Capitalism
does not only ruin the health of people but despoliates nature, too. Producing,
if possible, without poisoning the air, the water and the soil would reduce the
profits.
Producing
with priorly testing the effects on health of working people or the consequences
of the products for the consumers would reduce the profits.
Every
investment in preventing the damage of environment is a disadvantage of
location, a disadvantage in competition with those who do not do so. The
Japanese imperialism thanks its quick rise not only to the exhausting of
manpower but also to the exhausting of nature and thereby of health of people.
Protection
of environment may become an advantage in competition, too, provided the
elimination of damage becomes itself a branch of industry and a source of
profits.
Protection
of environment becomes in such case a mean for imperialism to dominate its
competitors. Especially the German imperialism is the world-wide leader of
environment techniques. At the same time, Germany continues undauntedly
participating in further poisoning the environment.
Methods
of producing recognised as harmful for the environment are used as long as the
investments are remunerated at a maximum amount. Techniques of production
friendly to the environment are not taken up as long as they do not result in a
maximum profit.
The
anarchy of capitalist production, which may in fact be capable of planning
within the frame of a single capitalist's own enterprise but not within the
frame of whole society, has disastrous consequences for the protection of
environment.
And
this because of the fact that the hole in the ozone layer, the dying of forests,
the pollution of air etc. are objective consequences of the activity of all
capitalists, subjectively perhaps not wanted by this or that factory owner, but
nevertheless inevitable.
The
poisoning of environment, having a more and more adverse effect on men, has
become a further source of impoverishment by sickness, crippling, premature
death and lifetime health impairment.
The
exhaustion of nature is also visible in built-in obsolescence of products and in
lavishing with raw materials and products which are thrown away on rubbish after
use.
Doing so is
-by increasing the price of commodities- a source of extra-profits. Careful use
of raw materials would cheapen the cost of living.
The parties responsible for damage to the environment
shift the consequences of their activities onto us as long as they can do so.
The rising of prices and taxes reduces the living standard of the working people
furthermore.
The most important precondition for ending the
poisoning of environment will be that producing for private profit interests is
no longer the main objective of production, i.e. that private capital will have
been expropriated. Imperialism which makes the striving for maximum profit the
main criterion of economy will never be capable of becoming an ecological social
system.
At best, it makes efforts of shifting the production
injurious for environment into other countries or of exporting toxic waste and
of rolling off the problem upon other nations in an imperialist manner.
This problem created by imperialism itself becomes a
mean of demonstrating its technical and moral superiority in comparison to
dependent capitalist states.
Ecological questions are far away from replacing the
social questions. On the contrary, the working class is most hard suffering from
damage to the environment while the rich idlers have the opportunity to protect
themselves very well.
Ecological questions depend on the property and
disposal relations in economy. The deciding matter is whether those disposing of
property of the means of production act in the interest of whole society or in
the interest of an end in itself such as the accumulation of capital (or the
ruthless fulfilling of plans in the pseudo-socialist countries). Ecological
problems have become important questions of class struggle. Ecological damage
hinders the unfolding of productive force as growing powers are tied to repair
of damage. Imperialism can neither be social nor ecological.
Surplus
Capital
The more the
living conditions of the working class in the industrial countries are
worsening, the more the surplus capital is augmented and strives desperately
after possibilities of investment.
On
the one hand higher profits, on the other hand narrowed internal markets - this
contradiction results in surplus capital. This is one of the reasons for the
exploding increase of surplus capital in Japan unequalled in history till now.
In Japan the rate of consumption is lowest. Industrial consumer goods are by 80
per cent more expensive than abroad. The level of prices in the high cartellised
market is generally high.
Surplus
capital further stems from the profit resulting from capital exports and flowing
back into the metropolitan centres. Especially Great Britain, the world's eldest
industrial country, has become a state of coupon owners who are getting large
parts of their profits from abroad. The economic activity of the British middle
class (bourgeoisie) within Great Britain is more and more concentrated on
administrating the own surplus capital as well as that of other countries. From
the world's most important industrial metropolis London has turned into the
world's biggest financial centre.
The
surplus capital is alimented, too, by surplus exports of commodities (above all
from Japan and Germany).
Because
of the growing contradiction between production and consumption, an increasing
portion of the commodities is exported. The upcoming nations such as Japan and
Germany have large surplus balances of trade. With the artillery of dumping
prices, every tries to fire the enemy to the ground. Above all, Japanese
monopolies are masters of dumping. They are forced to break all records of
export as the living standard of the own masses is relatively low and
additionally reduced by cartel prices.
Surplus
capital is also produced by advantages from currency relations. The more a
currency, as consequence especially of deficits in trade balance, is devalued
(like the dollar) the more the value of surplus capital of imperialist countries
with a stronger currency is increasing. The devaluation of the US dollar to the
half doubled the capacities of capital exports especially from Japan and
Germany. The impediments for commodities exports by means of devaluation of
currencies produce strong pressure in direction of expansion of capital exports.
The weaker a currency of a country is, the more the upcoming imperialist
countries are able to penetrate with their capital. In this way their decay is
accelerated. (Above all, Great Britain and the USA are examples of decay.)
On
international level, surplus capital is supplied by the profits of the
bourgeoisies of different raw material exporting countries, for example by the
revenues from the OPEC states and the million millions of dollars squeezed out
of the oppressed peoples and exported into the metropolitan centres by corrupt
cliques and families.
Beyond
the national money markets, there arose markets of Euro-money, of petrodollars
etc., administered by banking institutions acting on an international level.
Hundred thousands of millions of dollars drift from place to place outside the
borders of their countries chasing after investment. They form a strong basis
for currency speculations and other speculations.
Surplus
capital of imperialist countries increases with the exploitation of the workers
of the own country. Most flagrant is the exploitation of Japanese workers.
Because of their strong patriarchal half feudal mentality, it is possible to
submit them to the interests of monopolies in a higher extent than in Western
countries. They work very long, are easier satisfied with a relatively low
standard of living. This is the main source of the strength of the Japanese
imperialism. The modesty of Japanese workers is praised by the competitors as a
positive example for their own workers.
Lower
Rates of Investment
It
is the logic of capital that, in conformity with the systemic laws of capitalism
at a certain point, the rates of investment at home must sink as, because of the
narrowed internal markets, the enormous amounts of capital fail to have enough
possibilities of investment in production. The riper and the more worn out an
imperialist country is, the deeper are, in general, the rates of investment.
They are the lowest in the USA and in Great Britain, the highest in Japan.
But
the rates of investment decrease in all imperialist countries. On the face only,
the decreasing investment activity is the consequence of a lack of capital.
Having enough possibilities to make quick money by financial investments,
capital is less and less invested in production. It is the striving for maximum
profits which forces the financial bourgeoisie to remove capital masses from
production into financial investments. Decreasing investment rates demonstrate
the ascendancy of financial investors over industrial capitalists.
This
fact resulted in the paradox that within the imperialist countries a gigantic
surplus capital is confronted with a growing army of people who have been made
superfluous and jobless.
Between
these both poles there stands the barrier of capital with its chasing after
maximum profits. Manpower and the created richness cannot come together because
surplus money must be transformed into capital and is not destined for creating
labour places or satisfying the basic needs of the broad masses of unemployed or
the pauperising people in employment. By the logic of capital itself, surplus
capital cannot be used for satisfying the needs of the own population. Expecting
this would be a daydream.
The
fact that imperialism, at the same time, produces large surplus capital and a
growing surplus of manpower is a problem by which imperialism will be ruined.
Instead of being used for fulfilling the needs of the
own people and of other peoples, surplus capital becomes a mighty source of
financial speculations massively disturbing industrial production. Surplus
capital becomes a source of a more and more aggressive expansion in the struggle
for supremacy in the world. And it is the basis for a growing parasitic role of
monopoly bourgeoisie which dissipates its richness in a manner similar to that
of the perished aristocracy of the 18th century.
Valves
for Surplus Capital
Besides the
capital exports, the surplus capital is seeking for profitable parking places in
financial speculations, encumbrances and luxury consumption.
Financial
Speculations
Accumulated by
industrial concerns and financial groups, surplus capital increasingly plunges
into objects of financial investment. On international level, stock markets,
real estate markets, arts markets, bond markets, currency markets etc. boom
under the pressure of workless capitals. A wave of speculation has caught
imperialism. Buying and selling is the motto. The producing of material goods is
of secondary importance.
Having
broken relatively free, money markets have an obstructing influence on
production by their high expectations in profits.
The
majority of surplus capital is concentrated in the hands of banks. The banks use
the largest part of their means not for production. In this respect, they are
not at all prepared to take risks.
On
the other hand, industrial concerns are more and more transformed into banks
with annexed workbenches and research departments.
They
prefer to invest surplus capital in stocks, state bonds and whatever forms of
financial business instead of investing it in production. Whether Mitsubishi,
Siemens or General Motors - profits gained by financial business dominate the
profits gained by industrial production.
Why
should they troublesomely convert new techniques in production while it is
possible to buy whole trusts and sell them with million millions of profits? Or
while they are able to buy real estates for hundreds of millions and to sell
them more expensively or while they are able to make much more money by
speculating with rates of exchange, commodity prices etc.?
Finance
capital has an insatiable passion of opening new markets for capital
investments. It finds them in unrestrainedly indebted states, enterprises and
the working people. Above all, Wall Street is turning gigantic wheels in
financial speculations. The strength of the Japanese imperialism partly consists
in investing larger parts of surplus value in production than the USA or Germany
do. But the reduced surplus capital in Japan, too, froths over into financial
investments
Elaborated
with a never seen productivity, the richness has more and more been used as play
money by a very small social stratum.
The
supremacy of the financiers over the producers is no casual event but a product
of over ripeness of imperialism and its process of rotting.
The
big banks are melted with the industrial combines so closely that their
speculative activity cannot simply be surgically eliminated from the economic
life. On the contrary, in growing extent, it penetrates the normal business
activities of the chairmen of industrial enterprises.
The
money investment markets as a whole have developed to a relatively independent
economic factor. As money is a commodity like other commodities, too, money
transactions and all kinds of financial investment business increase along with
the growth of freely disposable capital and the amount of national income. The
international flow of capital is by thirty times higher than the foreign trade
with material goods. And the sales of the financial sector surmount the trade
with material goods by a multiple. The profits gained on the financial markets
are often higher than the profits gained in industrial production. This again
becomes a criterion for capital invested in industrial production, too, and
undermines the readiness to invest capital in the industrial production of the
imperialist countries. It also promotes the fact that "industrial
capital" strives for the creating of profits with state support or by cut
in wages. Further it promotes the export of industrial production with
below-average profit rates into other capitalist countries in which higher
profit rates may be gained.
In
spite of its relative independence, the financial sphere is not separate from
production but involved in capital accumulation in production, from which it
gets its means in the end.
On
the one hand, the jugglers of finances get growing parts of the surplus value
off the industrial producers. On the other hand, they remain nevertheless
dependent on the latter, because they do not create any surplus value by
themselves.
Of
course, the stock markets are blown up by speculations with surplus capital, but
nevertheless the stock courses continue reflecting the profit expectations in
production. The growing relative independence of financial markets does not mean
that these could completely peel off
to become a "symbol economy". This itself is caused by
difficulties of capital accumulation in production.
The
normal overproduction crises are associated by crises of financial markets such
as stock exchange crashes, currency crises or real estate crises which reinforce
them or break out independently of them. In stock exchange crashes, large masses
of surplus capital are exterminated. Currency crises accompany the decline of
some imperialist countries and the rise of other ones. Real estate crises
disturb the whole credit system as they diminish the coverage of credits and
thus make their repayment uncertain.
Indebtedness
Capital surplus
is the source of indebtedness unsteadily grown on international level especially
during the eighties. In the USA but also in Japan and Germany (and in many other
countries of the world), the national debts exploded, and with them the debts of
enterprises and consumers, too. Thereby new, artificial markets were created.
The huge need for capital in tendency led to a high level of interest rates. For
that reason, industrial production is heavily impeded in addition.
The
banks did not only submit industrial concerns but also the states. The means for
doing so are national debts. As surplus cannot be used for the needs of working
people -this would be in contradiction to the logic of capital- it becomes the
basis for the fact that the capitalist state and the enterprises exist beyond
their means. Both spend what has not been got by working. But in the course of
wage disputes, the working class is told that those values only, which have been
produced priorly, can be distributed. In the USA, the total encumbrances amount
up to 12 million millions of dollars, that is the two-and-a-half-fold of the GNP
In
the hands of capital, surplus capital changes from a blessing into a curse for
the working people as they are forced to pay the gigantic encumbrances. The
national debts must be repaid with increased taxes, with inflation and worsened
social security, the debts of enterprises with additionally increased
productivity of labour, with cut in wages or with unemployment in the case of
bankruptcy. The creditor banks shift the risks of indebtedness of
"underdeveloped countries" by reduced tax payments or by bankruptcies
upon society. The debts of "underdeveloped countries" are paid by
absolute impoverishment.
The
working people become more and more the debt-slaves of financial investors and
have to bring sacrifices for the financial investors' speculative businesses and
have to work for the financial investors' chasing after interest. The tendency
of declining standard of living is reinforced by this kind of plundering by bank
capital.
On
the other hand, working people, too, borrow more and more money in order to
satisfy their level of needs rising with the quick technical progress. By doing
so, their standard of living is declining additionally.
An important
part of demand of the imperialist countries is financed by credits and thus is
an anticipation of future. Surplus capital is the source of sham booms quickly
bursting into pieces. It is an additional reason of crises and pauperisation
created by crises.
Luxury
consumption
A part of
surplus capital is wasted in a fantastic luxury consumption by the financial
bourgeoisie which shows its richness as openly as, in past, the aristocracy of
perished feudalism did.
A growing part
of capital owners stopped working because they can live by their capital
investments free from worries. Worklessness is the precondition for their
luxurious life style. On the other hand, joblessness of millions of working
people is the basis of impoverishment of broad masses. The contrast between the
poor and the rich, between the working class and the capitalist class, becomes
starker.
Organised
crime
A part of
surplus capital is produced by organised crime. Trade with drugs, illegal
exports of toxic waste, prostitution and gambling bring untaxed super profits
which, in different forms, flow back into the circle of economy.
One
has to add thousands of millions earned by tax evasion as well as bribe money.
The imperialist economy has a strong tendency to violate valid law and to commit
crimes because of the possibility of increasing profits by doing so. Criminal
practices are not least a possibility of creating new markets and improving
profits which would be too low in ordinary business.
How
do the imperialist countries try to get out of the crisis?
Before all, the
USA and Germany have to face strong phenomena of crisis but in a growing extent
Japan, too. Their permanent aim is Improving their competitiveness against
others. But in last consequence, all means to improve the competitiveness aim at
ruining the competitors before being ruined by them, aim at making other peoples
work more for the winner's profit. More or less all means serve to increase
productivity and to diminish the demand for manpower. The losers are, above all,
the masses of working people in all countries.
*
Technological
progress
Technological
progress is the most important weapon by which capital tries to defend its
existence. The incantation are innovations in the pioneer industries supplied by
a greatest possible potential of researchers, engineers, specialists and skilled
workers. The aim is production of key products which have to be realised, if
possible, in a monopolistic way in order to create extra-profits and new
possibilities of accumulation of capital.
Japan
strives for predominance in communication technology. Japanese monopolies are
very concentrated on semiconductor industry by which silicium as raw material
for chips and the memory chips themselves are produced. The memory chips are the
electronic components for computers, machines, consumer goods etc. In
strategical view, control of the semiconductor industry is more important than
control of oil. Today, Japanese electronics monopolies rule over the half of the
world market of integrated circuits, a market of which two thirds had been ruled
over by American monopolies at the beginning of the eighties. A similar
development took place on the market for production machines of memory chips.
The
pressure to concentrate greatest possible financial means on pioneer industries
coerces everywhere (even in the USA) into making common, co-ordinated efforts by
state, research institutions (think tanks) and monopolies, i.e. into entering a
higher level of socialisation.
The
means spent, for example, for research, development and production of a
one-megabyte chip amount to thousands of millions and surpass the powers even of
the biggest monopolies.
Under
the pressure to be concentrated on high technology, financial capital tends to
strive for abolishing the old branches of industry (coal mines, steel factories,
shipyards, textile industries etc.) as well as agriculture. Such branches shall
become the matter of satellite states, ascending capitalist countries which can
produce such traditional mass products in a cheaper way by subordinating
themselves to the leading high-technology states within a certain division of
labour.
So
capital shall be set free for occupation of technological key positions. The
preaching of concentration on key industries silently includes capital exports
and predominance over other countries.
And
it includes growing unemployment, too, as new products depreciate the means of
production of old products which are substituted by them. (For example, record
production is replaced by CD production.) As these new production branches often
are linked with reduced time of production, they also have a less demand for
manpower. Quick, even revolutionary technical progress has already existed since
decades. And it has not hindered mass unemployment but, on the contrary, was a
reason for it.
Technological
progress, applied in a capitalist manner, leads to reduced working hours and
thus reduces the demand for manpower, too. And profit is increased at the same
time.
A lot of
proposals to improve co-operation between state, industry and science correspond
with the aim of sponsoring technological progress.
*
Improved division
of labour
Some other
measures serve to support the productivity by improvements of organisation of
job requirements (e.g. lean production).
Departing
from the Japanese practice, all imperialist monopolies have discovered the gold
in the heads of their staff in order to elicit reserves of productivity for
their economic war and thus for higher profits. In a high extent, American and
German enterprises change over to lean production. In fact, in the
technologically high-complicated production productivity can hardly be increased
by staff waiting only for commands from the top. The high level of technical
forces to enlarge the competencies to a certain degree, for example, in order to
perform quality control already within the process of production. Functions of
work are enriched in order to heighten attention and interest in work. The
division of labour between mental and physical work to a limited degree is
reduced, too, in order better to elicit the productive potential of workers.
Productive
forces of today require creative men. And this especially in order to avoided
failures which, on the level of a highly advanced technology, cost a lot of
money.
Nevertheless,
imperialism will never be able to awaken the creativity of working people in an
extraordinary extent. Private control over the means of production and the
corresponding hierarchy and arrogance, the growing concentration of capital and
thus of decisions, the parasitic wealth, the application of capital for dubious
financial business and growing social insecurity are, on the long run, no
fertile soil favourable for increasing the motivation of the working class.
Increased
productivity is placed as a weapon against working people to make them jobless
and to lower their standard of living. Lean production, generally adopted, will
lead to the dismissal of a half of the employed.
*
Flexible working
hours and extension of working time
Intensification
of efficiency of work per unit of time is strived for with different methods.
The basic motive is calling, if possible, for work only if work really is needed
(instead of fixed working hours with unproductive phases). Types are part-time
jobs, flexible working hours with inclusion of extended working times if
necessary etc.
Under
the conditions of capitalism, however, every increase in productivity reduces
the demand for manpower and thus raises unemployment.
Productivity
is the artillery with which in economic war one warring party tries to destroy
the position of the other. New products and procedures, improved machinery are
the wonder weapons with which the enemy shall be overpowered.
The
more efficient technical weapons are used by one capitalist against the other
one, the bigger becomes the amount of wounded and dead soldiers on the side of
the working class in all countries.
Under the
conditions of capitalism, increasing the productivity results in aggravating the
contradiction between production and consumption and thus in deepening the
crises and enforcing the international competition.
*
Cuts in wages
The insoluble
contradiction between production and consumption results in a retardation of the
growth of industrial production and, in tendency, in declining rates of profit.
The very simple method of increasing the profit rates consists in cuts in wages.
Today, all imperialist countries compete with each other by reducing the wages.
Such cuts in wages may most evidently show that the imperialist countries do not
only lead their rivalry against each other but each country against its own
working class, too.
*
Cuts in public
expenditure
The reduction
of social welfare, too, is a mean for raising the profits. Assistance for
unemployed and social assistance are cut down in order to increase the readiness
to assume low-income jobs.
They
are shortened, too, because the state has to save money in order to satisfy the
demands of the capitalists for subsidies and to collect the money for repaying
the national debts. The systems of social security are eroded in order to create
new markets for the huge insurance trusts.
All that
results in the imperialist countries' decreased capability of pacifying their
inherent contradictions with the aid of social expenditure.
*
Reduction of taxes
for capital
Profits
remaining in every enterprise canbe increased by reducing
the capital taxes. Initiated by the USA, the maximum tax rates for capitals
profits in all imperialist countries have partly been reduced very largely since
the early eighties. The pretext was to allow the enterprises higher investments
because they allegedly suffered from a lack of capital. At last, however, the
surplus capital grew, because the investment rates continued everywhere falling
down in spite of the sunken capital taxes and increased profits. The causes of
sinking investment rates do not consist in a lack of capital, but in narrowed
internal markets and at the same time, in a growing productivity.
Profits
gained by financial business or by speculation often are lower taxed than
profits from production. This fact evidently demonstrates the predominance of
the finance system over production. The interest on debts can be subtracted from
the capital income to be taxed not only in the USA. By this, running into debts
is supported.
Increasing
the surplus capital and thus the basis of lucrative investment possibilities by
all means is the trademark of imperialism being overripe.
Everywhere
decreased capital taxes are compensated by increased indirect taxes. This, too,
leads to lowering the standard of living and thus to an aggravation of the
contradiction between production and consumption. In conclusion, the supporting
of investments by reducing the capital taxes exactly aggravates the
contradictions which led to the sunken investment rates.
Does
more investments mean more workplaces?
Cuts
in wages, increased productivity and reduced capital taxes allegedly are
necessary to enlarge the means for investments in order to create more jobs by
doing so.
In
reality, there does not at all exist any lack of capital but a large capital
surplus. By this all methods of increasing the profits tend to be methods
further to increase this capital surplus.
By
the way, investments are no cure-all for joblessness but, on the contrary, they
create joblessness, under the conditions of capitalism, on the level of whole
society as they replace manpower by machines without creating new jobs for the
dismissed manpower in a planful manner. Under the conditions of capitalism,
technical progress is a sharp weapon against the working class. What a curious
increase of productivity which, on the one hand, destroys the productive forces
of millions of people and, on the other hand, increases these forces for less
and less people on the level of individual enterprises? Whatever methods of
increasing the productivity will be adopted they will at best serve to give
certain enterprises or economies advantages in competition with other ones. As a
whole, joblessness is increased by these means. Caused by the world capital, the
worldwide joblessness is increasing while some imperialist countries are able
to moderate the consequences for themselves at the expense of other peoples.
Fascism
and Racism
Everywhere, fascist forces become stronger. This reflects the enforced
rivalry between the imperialist nations. Struggling for dividing the world, they
all fight for a better place in the sun for their respective monopoly capital.
Doing so, they demand the expansion of their territories and the open oppression
of other nations.
Fascism
works on oppressing the contradictions within its own country and on submitting
all things to the international expansion of the capital of its own nation in
order to change the power relations to its own country's favour.
In
Germany and Japan, fascist forces are revanchists, too. They openly strive for
the restoration of the previous imperialist empire of the time before the end of
the Second World War. And they consider the fact that they did not win the war
to be the root of all evil.
Fascism
and imperialism belong together.
Racism and national arrogance
have their roots in the real economic predominance of some superior nations over
other ones. Racism is an apology of the parasitic role imperialism is playing by
plundering other nations. In all imperialist countries, nationalism and fascism
are promoted to strengthen the forces for submitting rival countries and for
creating new possibilities of the own development at the expense of other
peoples.
Future
Accumulation of
capital as an end in itself comes to its borders as it undermines its own basis
on national and international level. Imperialism is the worst enemy of
imperialism by itself.
Above
all, the danger of a dramatic break-down of the financial system rises because
surplus capital is invested in a lot of speculative objects and devalued in
different forms. And this by the impossibility of debtors further to pay
interest rates and redemption rates or by the devaluation of the blown up values
of stocks and of real estates.
The
industrial development of capital will bring impoverishment to a growing number
of people in the metropolitan centres as well as in the "underdeveloped
countries". Capitalism and imperialism have crossed their zenith and enter
a phase of stagnation and decline.
But
at the same time, there are fantastic technological possibilities. Electronics
are the means for inserting more and more functions of the human brain in the
control mechanisms of machines, installations and consumer goods. A production
process in which working hours can be reduced to a minimum and in which men more
than ever before are able to concentrate themselves on the "realm of
freedom" may become reality.
What
a nonsense that these revolutionary possibilities are used by the imperialist
states as weapons of war in order to undermine the wealth of nations.
The
revolutionary technical development partly makes industries, which were the
backbone of ascending capitalism, superfluous.
Coal,
originally the most important source of energy for steam-machines and
electricity, is on retreat. Production of electricity by industrial waste heat
and by regenerative energy such as solar energy is on advance.
Superconductors
seem possible, in which the transport losses of energy are reduced to a minimum.
Decentralisation of producing electricity by combined heat and power generation
and methods of saving energy could strongly diminish consumption of energy.
Geothermal energy, water power and wind power will, on the long run, be superior
sources of energy.
Steel,
the supporting leg of machine construction, automobile industries and
construction industry, is more and more replaced by new materials of superior
quality. Electronics replace mechanics, make very miniature machines and
products possible. Thereby, the consumption of materials such as steel is
sinking.
Copper
cables as conductive material are more and more replaced by essentially more
efficient fibre glass cables. 30 kilograms of fibre glass, a synthetic material,
replace one ton of copper wire.
More
than ever before, the revolutionary technical possibilities of today require
plans on the scale of whole society to prevent technical progress from changing
to a social regress. A social authority has to work for seeking possibilities
how, in spite of a rapid change, everybody can be active in a productive way.
Today here and tomorrow there.
The
possibilities to acquire knowledge, to develop individual capabilities, to
satisfy individual needs and to plan and rule social processes have objectively
grown because of the electronic revolution. The productive forces of information
techniques can only be used within a social and economic order which
consequently places on decentralisation and on acting on one's own authority.
Such a democratic society is impossible with the high-centralised financial
capital which subjugates us to its interest in maximum profits.
The
contradiction between the wonderful possibilities mankind has elaborated and the
incapacity of finance capital to use them for the sake of working people is
growing.
The
working class, being the biggest productive force, has to choose between being
subjugated to its exploiters in their struggle for international predominance
and hoping to get some crumbs of loot at the expense of other peoples on the one
hand and striving for the aim to take the immense technological possibilities in
their own hands and using them for the sake of whole society and of all peoples
on the other hand. The precondition for this latter consists in liberating
itself from every kind of exploitation and taking its fate in the own hands. The
precondition for this alternative is expropriation of capital.
The
working class has to choose between joining the plundering of other peoples on
the one hand and struggling for an order of society which will be able to help
other peoples in an unselfish manner.
A
working class which joins the exploitation of other peoples will never be able
to liberate itself The basis for the emancipation of working class is
overthrowing the capital.
By
the bourgeoisie, the immense technical possibilities created by the inventions
and efforts of working people are not used for satisfying our needs better and
better but for accumulating its own capital and strengthening its respective
position in dividing the world into spheres of influence.
By
the bourgeoisie, the immense productive forces are used insofar only as they
promise profits for the owners of capital. This leads to an ever growing
squandering of productive forces. The demand for working together, for
satisfying social relations is undermined by competition, by the control power
of private owners. More work along with less satisfaction through work
corresponds to the absolute logic of the profit system and, at the same time,
undermines the readiness for performance and thus productivity.
The
immense richness and technological possibilities which have been created by us
become a
threat
for us. Instead of satisfying our basic needs they serve as a weapon to reduce
our standard of living and world-wide to struggle for economic, political and
military predominance.
Therefore,
time is objectively ripe to snatch the means of production off the private
control of profiteers and to socialise them. Modern productive forces since long
have outgrown the private ownership which, till now, has tried to force them
into its limited frame.
Industrial
production without social means (banks, state means, stock-holders) without
socially created preconditions (infra-structure) and without a high degree of
socialised production (organised cooperation and division of labour within a
trust and in its outside relations) is today no more possible. The private
control over the means of production must be abolished. This only would result
in a revolutionary liberation of the capabilities of the working people.
This
only would result in circumstances where proceeds of socialised work which might
guarantee everybody a live without grieves become the source of wealth for all
and not for the impoverishment of the many.
This only would result in reciprocal support as decisive for the direction of development instead of the struggle of all nations against each other.
Communist
Party of Germany (KPD)