3: The Reemergence of the Inter-imperialist Struggle

There are certain fundamental trends inherent in the world system of the capitalist mode of production which cannot be overcome except on the basis of a revolutionary socialist reconstruction of society.

In the absence of such a reconstruction these trends appear and reappear again and again. It should be noted that these fundamental trends, which were already visible during the early stage of capitalist commodity production, became an overriding and irresistible tendency at the turn of the last century with the transformation of the old competitive capitalist system into full-fledged monopoly capitalism.

The most significant trend is the continuing struggle among the various huge capitalist cliques and combines, which are grouped into powerful multi-national corporations, to grab ever-larger shares of the world market. It is the operation of these powerful combines and multi-national conglomerates which has transformed the world market into a virtual combat zone for the most ferocious struggle between the largest capitalist states for the lion's share of the market.

In this struggle, each of the leading imperialist countries inevitably tries to line up the smaller capitalist countries as well as the oppressed countries on their respective sides.

While this struggle can be temporarily delayed, driven underground, or diverted, it nevertheless has reemerged again and again two frightful bloody imperialist wars notwithstanding.

Thus, the struggle waged between capitalist Germany and Britain since the early 1890s for industrial and economic hegemony has not disappeared What has happened is that Britain has become a junior partner of the U.S., and the axis of the economic struggle has shifted so that the struggle, so far as Europe is concerned and viewed in the light of economic hegemony is between capitalist Germany and the U.S.

French imperialism is attempting to resume its pre-war position as a dominant political power on the Continent and seeks to exert its own sway against both West Germany and Britain, which is regarded as a semi-satellite of U.S. finance capital.

The political aim of the U.S. in dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not just a military victory. It was also aimed at threatening the USSR at a time when the Red Army had already liberated what was then known as Manchuria and was moving swiftly onward. It was also primarily aimed at reducing the industrial and economic power of Japan, to reduce it to a satellite of the U.S., to get it out of the way as the principal imperialist rival of the U.S. in the Far East.

Thus it has been for the better part of a century that this small grouping of imperialist powers has struggled among themselves to dominate the world arena, each trying to vanquish the other in a virtual life-and-death contest. This struggle has arisen out of the very same original trends which set commodity capitalist production evolving into monopoly capitalism and bringing in its train the huge toll in destruction of both human and material resources.

FALSELY PRESENTED AS NEW PHENOMENON

What we see today in the extremely intensified character of the economic competition between the U.S. and its Japanese and West German rivals is an up-to-date version of what has characterized the entire preceding century of struggle among all the imperialist powers. It is the same old predatory struggle for capitalist markets in new conditions which means an intensification of the struggle against the working class in each of these countries, and more desperate attempts to fasten the yoke of neocolonial super-exploitation on the backs of the oppressed peoples. The efforts of the U.S. capitalist media to present it as a new phenomenon should be tirelessly and relentlessly unmasked. It should be explained to the millions of workers who will suffer the brunt of the economic competition between these rival trading powers.

What muffles this ferocious and unrelenting struggle and drives them to contain it, at least temporarily, in more or less polite discussion of common problems is the existence of the USSR, its socialist allies, and the militant national liberation movements of the world. Without these, the imperialist struggle would have broken out in violent confrontation a long time ago.

ATTEMPT TO DIVERT IMPERIALIST RIVALRY INTO ANTI-SOVIET STRUGGLE

It is not to be wondered at, then, that the efforts of U.S. imperialism are more and more bent on redirecting the struggle to one against the USSR.

Years of untiring efforts to contain the struggle on the basis of compromise and on the basis of live and let live, in the light of the existence of the USSR and other socialist countries, have proved fruitless. And only the attempt by U.S. imperialism to unify the imperialist rivals to achieve a semblance of a coalition and redirect the inter-imperialist struggle against the USSR remains as the last resort to contain irreconcilable imperialist contradictions.

Consider this: more than a decade ago, the U.S. and other imperialist countries sponsored a worldwide trade conference known as the Kennedy Round, the purpose of which was to break down tariff walls and protectionist measures which hindered imperialist trade and commerce. This Kennedy Round of trade negotiations was followed by the so-called Tokyo Round, which was convened in Tokyo really under the sponsorship of the U.S. and led by the U.S. trade delegate Strauss. It was attended by 102 countries.

Agreement was laboriously worked out to further liberalize trade, break down protectionist walls so as to facilitate trade and commerce "among the nations of the world," but in reality to facilitate the expansion of all the multi-national corporations and to prescribe certain limitations and abolish certain trade and commercial prohibitions which inhibited them all.

In a word, it was an attempt at widening free trade and to revive the long-dormant spirit of Adam Smith. To no avail. Hardly had the ink on the documents dried when a capitalist crisis, which seemed at the time in 1978 as far away, began to make its way slowly and became evident in January 1979.

PROTECTIONIST DEMANDS RISING

The Toyko Round seems to have been blown sky-high with the many holes that have been shot into it as a result of new protectionist demands made all over the capitalist world, and most loudly in the U.S.

Just yesterday (June 30, 1980), to pick one instance out of many, the Ford Motor Company, through its president Philip Caldwell, told the New York Times that nothing less than a 15% quota on Japanese auto imports would suffice. It need hardly be said that Chrysler Corporation, which is still teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, is fully in agreement. The steel and textile industries and others are only too willing to applaud Ford's turnaround on the question of free trade. The reason General Motors hasn't joined the chorus has nothing to do with any attachment to such shibboleths as free trade or a stable world order. General Motors is not threatened as much by Japanese and West German inroads, and would sooner see Ford's and Chrysler's stature diminished in order to establish its more complete domination of the auto industry of the U.S.

Such is the meaning of the cutthroat competition which the ruling class offers as an ideal for an orderly and rational economic system. The competition at home among the monopolies, especially during times of economic crisis, tends to become more and more directed outward. The attempt is made to transfer the contradictions that have brought about the new economic crisis into the world market at the expense of other capitalist countries and even more so the oppressed countries.

ECONOMIC CRISIS SCUTTLES TRADE TALKS

This is not to say that West Germany, Japan, France, and Great Britain are not resorting to the same tactics. An orderly, equitable division, as they call it, of the imperialist booty cannot survive a severe capitalist crisis. This has been proven time and time again and the virtual scuttling of the Tokyo Round of trade negotiations is the latest proof of it.

Nor can each of them restrain themselves from striving for hegemony and even monopoly over the others. Consider, for instance, what Business Week , the organ of U.S. big industry and high finance, says regarding a sector of U.S. industry which is of key significance:

"Few industries have been exempt from the erosion of U.S. industrial power. Even sectors where the U.S. still racks up tremendous trade surpluses have been losing their share of the world market steadily. The aircraft industry exported nearly $10 billion worth of products last year while only $1 billion worth of planes and parts were imported." (Business Week , June 30, 1980.)

The ratio in this exchange of aircraft, the reader will note, favors the U.S. 10 to 1. How much more can one expect?

Nevertheless, for this organ of aggressive finance capital, it is not enough. "U.S. domination is by no means as complete as it once was," says Business Week . (Our emphasis.) Indeed, nothing less than complete economic domination is needed to ensure complete political domination.

"America's 58% share of world airplane exports represented a significant decline from the 66% share of a decade ago." Further erosion, says Business Week, is almost inevitable as the European airbus attacks the U.S. monopoly of wide-bodied jets. The arrogance and belligerence of this approach can only be understood properly when one considers that 50%, 40%, or even 30% of the market in such a highly sophisticated and research-intensive industry, is considered a near monopoly.

EUROPEAN CHALLENGE TO U.S. AIRCRAFT MONOPOLY

It should also be noted that Business Week is trying to scare the American public in general and to exhort the so-called captains of the U.S. military-industrial complex to exert themselves more in view of the alleged danger that is posed by the European airbus. The airbus it should also be noted is a European attempt to present somewhat of a challenge to the U.S. virtual monopoly of the aircraft and aerospace industry.

The airbus is the product of a French, German, British, Spanish, and Dutch effort to give some competition to the U.S. in a field of technological competence in which the Europeans by no means consider themselves second-best. Nevertheless, despite the near monopoly of the U.S., which holds them down by political, diplomatic, and military means arising out of the results of the Second World War and the defeat of German imperialism, it is mostly a West German effort.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that capitalist Germany's aerospace industry only has about 50,000 employees, France 100,000, and Britain 200,000, while the U.S. has a million. (Figures from Barrons, June 30 and Wall Street Journal, June 24, 1980.) In the last chapter we showed that the Japanese aerospace industry has only 35,000.

It should be added however that U.S. multi-national aerospace corporations are so intimately linked with the Japanese aerospace industry that it pretty well assures the U.S. that any great leap forward, which poses a danger to the U.S., can be monitored quickly and in all probability squelched.

U.S. PENETRATION OF WEST GERMAN AEROSPACE INDUSTRY

So far as the European aerospace industry goes, the most important fact to remember vis-à-vis U.S. industries moaning about the relative decline of their share of the market, is that United Technologies Corporation holds a hefty 26% of the stock in the leading West German combine of the European aerospace industry that is building the airbus.

Of equal significance in relation to the U.S. military-industrial complex is that General Alexander Haig is the chairman of United Technologies Corporation. According to Barrons, the West German economics minister, Otto Graf Landsdorf, made a visit last February to his old friend, General Haig, in Brussels while he was Supreme Commander of NATO. "We have the impression," said the economics minister after the meeting was over, "that General Haig understands the problems and goals of our aerospace industry."

What this means, given General Haig's militarist approach and hostility to the USSR, is that he will seek to orient the West German aerospace industry in an anti-Soviet military direction This however is easier said than done although the West German ruling class is virulently anti-communist and anti-Soviet. This is because they nevertheless would like more elbow room for their own imperialist ventures and would rather not be in a stranglehold dictated by General Haig and his colleagues in the military-industrial complex.

BEHIND SCHMIDT'S VISIT TO MOSCOW

If we are to understand the near panic which gripped Washington when Chancellor Helmut Schmidt decided that he would make a trip to meet with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, we must understand that it is not any conciliatory attitude by Schmidt and the West German ruling class he represents.

Instead we must look to the underlying economic causes which have been the fundamental basis for conflict among the imperialists. These are what motivated Schmidt to openly defy President Carter and thereby demonstrate that West German imperialism has its own predatory imperialist interests to look out for. These he deems may be perhaps better served by continuing badly needed trade and commerce with the Soviet Union, especially natural gas and if possible oil, than by merely acting as a puppet of the U.S.

This, however, does not at all signify that the inter-imperialist conflicts have superseded the worldwide struggle between imperialism as a whole, notwithstanding its divisions and glaring contradictions, and the USSR, its socialist allies, and the national liberation movements. The struggle between these two antagonistic social systems based on two diametrically opposed social classes is still predominant.

It is a continuing ongoing struggle in which each step forward made by the workers and oppressed of the world undermines the foundations of imperialist rule and paves the way for its demise.

-- July 1, 1980

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