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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
ENGLISH - LANGUAGE EDITION OF THE THEORETICAL ORGAN OF THE
INTERNATIONALEXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
THE NEW INTERNATIONAL SITUATION
-Number 8
Editorial
So there is to be a "summit" conference next May, after all. Un top of one postponement after another, a date has now been fixed at last
But we are already warned that the match in May will not be a pushover; that rather modest results are to be expected, that this will be in reality more of a prelude to other "summit" conferences than a meeting which will settle any-
The positive aspect of developments, more particularly since Khrushchev's journey to the United States and the conversations at Camp David, consists apparently in the renewed East-West contact, the suspension of ultimatums, the relaxation of tension and the continuation of
This attempted "détente" is in reality based on some kind of mutual misunderstanding which threatens to vanish more quickly than might be supposed.
The Kremlin continues to believe that the superiority acquired by the US SR in the field of atomic weapons, which will increase still more in the years to come, cannot but oblige the imperialist camp to consent to a reduction of armaments; and, above all, to the neutralization of berlin, now an imperialist outpost in the Soviet zone. This would consolidate the division of Germany in east Germany's favor.
Khrushchev counts on coming to Paris in May to obtain a compromise on Berlin in accordance with this point of view, without this question being linked with the unification of Germany. It is not excluded, however, that he will again fail before de Gaulle's refusal to yield on Berlin (supporting Adenauer), and the Americans, who otherwise fear the dislocation of the Atlantic alliance. Then it will be up to the Kremlin to make up its mind on the course to follow in the face of this impasse: whether to grant the Atlantic powers
Winter 1959-1960 further time to reflect, or to proceed to a separate peace treaty with east Germany.
In the latter case, the stormy summer feared for 1959 should arrive a year late. In spite of that, the imperialists are counting on being able to keep up the dialogue with the Kremlin thanks to proposals on the reduction of armaments. The insane competition which is now being carried on in this field, if it endangers the economic plans of the US SR and its ability to help the other workers' states and the underdeveloped countries, is also beginning equaliy to jeopardize the financial capacity even of a country like the United States, and to swallow up the sums remaining at its disposal for "peaceful competition" in the under-developed countries. But it remains to been seen whether the Kremlin Will accept that disarmament take precedence over, or be granted instead of, the compromise it wants on Berlin. In the meanwhile the laborious "summit" preparations have revealed some very interesting indications of certain new realities in the international situation which are going to characterize the decade into which we are now entering. The decade just ended, initiated by the historic defeat of American imperialism in Korea, and ending with the obvious superiority of the USSR in inter-continental and even inter-planetary atomic weapons, has to some extent set the seal on the decay of the formerly indisputable supremacy of the US.
This supremacy is now challenged right inside the Atlantic "partnership" by the new, rising capitalist power: the Franco-German alliance which dominates the Common Market. The relative decline in American power is reflected on the economic as well as the military and international planes.
The United States' share in world trade is de-
creasing, to the benefit of Germany, Japan and the workers' states.
Certain exports have gone into a marked decline since 1958, especially cars, steel, planes, hips — cut out by the products of other capitalist countries, or even by those of American firms based in Europe or Japan.
But most of all it is the financial situation which is beginning to exercise the American leaders, and which reflects the relative decline in the field of economic productivity properly so called and, at the same time, the boundless extension of the unproductive economics of armaments and military expenses in general.
Since the last quarter of 1957, the US A has been running a deficit in its balance of payments: $3 billion in 1958; more than $4 billion in 1959. Its foreign liabilities, on the other hand, rose to some $15 billion: a sum which, when added to the deficit in the balance of payments, about equals the total reserves of the country.
At the beginning of the past decade, moreover, the reserves exceeded by about $15 billion the total liabilities of the country. In 1955 the surplus was of the order of only $10 billion, and in 1959 it was almost nothing.
Under these conditions it becomes impossible even for the United States to be at one and the same time the "banker" and the "arsenal" of the capitalist world.
Whence the severe and oft-repeated warnings from Washington to its Atlantic partners to contribute more military expenditure, and to make pha help of the unsources at ped i disreal for the United States to maintain the armaments race and its international obligations, it will be forced to make severe cuts in the living standards of the
The titanic struggle at present being waged against the solid ranks of the steelworkers falls into this pattern.
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On the strictly military level, the advance chieved by the Soviet Union in the field of guided missiles, submarines, and even anti-aircraft defense is already big and quite probably irreversible.
In these circumstances it is no wonder that ›ther, developing capitalist powers contest supremacy, until recently well-established, of the United States within the Atlantic alliance. The main challenger is now the Franco-German partnership which dominates the Common Market, and whose ambition is to become the spokesman for the whole of continental capitalist Europe.
Whatever the future of this partnership and of the Common Market, it is a fact that we now
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL have to deal with a new capitalist power in the full course of its dynamic expansion. The Common Market is already the greatest exporter of finished goods and the greatest consumer of agricultural products in the world.
Inside the Six, trade has already doubled over the past five years, which cannot be said of any other region in the world.
On the other hand, from 1953, the output per head in this region increased two and a half times as much as in Britain, and much more rapidly than in the United States.
To this actual and potential power they plan to associate France's African empire, loosened and formally "de-colonized," which is the basis for French claims for an Atlantic triumvirate, a readjustment of NA TO, and a firm policy on Berlin. Franco-German coöperation in all these fields, including Europe's acquisition of its own atomic striking-power, is now close, in spite of differences, which still remain, between Paris and Bonn on their international economic orientation and their military obligations flowing trom the Atlantic alliance. The French and the Germans want a deciding voice on all the issues concerning Europe, and as a consequence on Berlin.
They also want military integration NA TO to be total, that is to say that decisions, including the deployment of the US Strategic Air Force, should be taken with their effective participation.
For the risk threatening the European power is to see itself exposed to atomic destruction, without American striking-power being completely committed in the battle, for fear of courting Soviet reprisals on the very soil of the United States.
De Gaulle has already argued this hypothesis clearly: however far-fetched, not to say absurd, it might seem at the present time.
But the decision, which now seems irrevocable, of the Franco-German alliance, with its own atomic power, far from diminishing this danger, will only render the international ituation more explosive, justifying all the fears und eventual steps of the US SR
In this new relationship of forces now in process of being established within the capitalist world, it is Britain which risks being relegated progressively to the third, if not the fourth, rank, coming after the United States, continental Europe and even Japan.
The painful choice forced upon her with the creation of the Common Market and its growing attraction for the zone of the Seven in the Free Trade Area, is illustrative of the long-term deterioration in British power. While the Six "Europeans" trade more with each other than with the Seven, the latter export more to the Six than among themselves.
It is hardly probable that Britain will be able semi-planned way. Besides, this enterprise does
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL for long to sustain an economic war against the Six, especially in the event of a heightened commercial offensive from the United States, determined to arrest the deterioration in its balance of payments and the beginning of its eviction, still however slight, from foreign markets.
In the equally probable event, on the other hand, of a new rise in the prices of raw materials, Britain could find that it is the first to suffer and is in the most unfavorable position to compete with the other capitalist powers.
For all these reasons 'efforts are now being made to avoid an economic war to the death within the Atlantic alliance, which, added to the existing political differences, could very well provoke a de facto dislocation of the alliance.
Imperialism, moreover, cannot now permit itself this luxury, without running the certain risk t a still more serious defeat in face of the growing strength of the US S R, China, the other workers' states and the colonial revolution.
The decade now opening will prove much more decisive so far as the competition between the two systems is concerned.
Imperialism enters this period in a condition characterized by the rebuilding of its economic power. This has even largely surpassed the pre-war level — thanks to the tremendous technological progress; to the stimulants to accumulation provided by European reconstruction; the advanced industrialization of the huge under-developed areas, in the dependent and colonial countries as well as in Europe itself; and by the immeasurable extension of the armaments economy, especially in the US
It is now possible that these stimulants are declining, and that capitalism will, in the decade now beginning, have to confront the classic difficulties of the past: relative saturation of the market in the face of new progress in productivIty; increased competition between the capitalist powers; recessions and crises more frequent and more profound. But as it will have, on the other hand, to face the more rapid, and especially the continuous, economic development of the workers' states and increasing economic competition from them in the field of the under-developed countries - that is to say the most vital market for capitalism — it will be compelled constantly to find compromise inter-capitalist solutions to safeguard some reasonable chances for survival. Since the stimulant, both of European reconstrucpation and the armaments economy seem now to be largely exhausted, there remains in reality only the way out of so-called "aid" to the underdeveloped countries on a large scale and in a not have an exclusively economic aspect.
It represents at the same time the only theoretical chance for capitalism to prevent these countries in the coming years from exploding in revolution under the pressure of their growing population and their economic development, insufficient to keep pace with this increase in population. It should be recognized that the competition into which capitalism is forced when confronted by the dynamic development of the socialist world system, acts at the same time as a stimulant prolonging its survival. This is thanks to some tentative attempts at a certain coördination of its action on a world plane, to an increased productive effort, to the acquisition of a measure of supranational class consciousness. But it remains to be seen to what extent this kind of inter-capitalist economic and political "planning" will be in a position partially to overcome the structural contradictions and antagonisms of the system, and show some practical effectiveness.
What is certain is that capitalism in the coming decade will not be decisively beaten only by economic competition. The revolutionary strength of the colonial and dependent peoples and the awakened proletariat of Europe and the US could alone overcome the resistance of capitalism and dam the stream of its lifeblood at its very source. Only the extension of the victorious socialist revolution into new regions really deprives capitalism of its economic and productive resources, drives it into an impasse and suffocates it.
On the other hand, so long as competition is limited to the exclusively economic plane, in the highly theoretical eventuality of the maintenance of an international and social status quo, the danger of war would remain equally real and enormous. We must categorically reject the myth criminally propagated by the professional opportunists of the labor movement, according to which the "balance of fear" has now become "unthinkable. preserves peace, or that war soever of armaments, but on the contrary "new In reality, not only is there no reduction powers, like France and Germany, in the process of endowing themselves with atomic arms.
The increased mechanization and automation ot atomic war and of "defense" against surprise attack, terribly increases the danger, including that from "accidents."
It can easily be imagined, on the other hand, that the only practical result of the "balance of fear" — and that in the best case — would be to neutralize the use of atomic weapons on the part of the principal belligerents, or to limit their use, and to conduct the war with the rest of the gamut of armaments, abundant and terrifying,
now possessed by one or the other.
concerned, also, the only guarantee against its outbreak was and remains the disarmament of capitalism by the revolution victorious in each country.
The IVth International resolutely rejects the affirmations of the opportunists - reformists and so-called "Communists" - in the international working-class movement, each of whom for different reasons peculiar to their special interests foster pacifist illusions combined with a policy of class-collaboration, and maintenance of the status quo and of capitalism.
For peace and capitalism are as irreconcilable
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the new decade which is opening, appeals to the workers and the colonial peoples of the whole world to exploit to the full the growing difficulties of imperialism. By acting in this way, they will extend the basis of socialist revolution in the world: and thus beat back the danger of war: help the workers' states to overcome the economic obstacles which stand in the way of a real socialist democracy in those countries; and lift the whole of humanity to the level of the wonderful, fantastic material and cultural possibilities that science and technique have already assured, for the wellbeing and genuine civilization of an organized socialist society.
as in the past.
The IVth International, on the threshold of January 1, 1960
Editorial Notes