Since Nixon's speech on August 15, 1971, the forms of interimperialist competition have taken a spectacular turn. What was only hinted at before is now proclaimed in a loud voice. Occasionally, insults are again even being heard in fashionable society.
The background to this is the general slowdown in economic growth, the staggering decline in the rate of profit in countries like Great Britain, Italy, and Japan, and the series of recessions that have followed one another. Hardly has the recession in the American and West German economies ended than a new one is appearing in Great Britain, and the outlook is becoming gloomier in France as well.
This intensification of the economic difficulties of international capital is going hand in hand with a serious crisis of political leadership in the bourgeoisie (it is symbolic that three or four Common Market countries will be having legislative elections in the near future) and sharp social struggles in many places. As a result, "sacrosanct self-interest" is more than ever on the agenda.
The Markets in Eastern Europe
The American imperialists, who are very worried over the U.S. deficit, attempted to bring things back into balance through a de facto devaluation of the dollar. They counted on this move making their goods, which were now cheaper, sell better, especially in Western Europe and Japan. This was one of the main goals of Washington's diktat of August 15, 1971.
One year later, they are still wide of the mark. In spite of the fact that exchange rates were adjusted to the advantage of United States trade, the rate of increase in American exports lags behind that of imports. The continued inflation of the dollar obviously has something to do with this.
This is why Yankee imperialism has changed weapons. It no longer hopes to increase all of its exports whatever their category; it aims rather to fill 1088
two gaps that have gradually developed over the past decade in its competitive arsenal: the gaining of a virtual monopoly over the markets of the noncapitalist countries by its main competitors; the loss of its own monopoly over the market for public supplies (aviation, weapons) in Japan and Western Europe.
A full-scale American offensive on these two fronts began with the conference between Nixon and the new Japanese prime minister, Tanaka, in Honolulu and Kissinger's trips to Peking and Moscow. The Japanese purchases of Yankee military equipment and airplanes, the Chinese purchases of Boeing jets, and the Soviet purchases of American wheat will contribute toward correcting the American balance of trade during the coming year. An offensive in the export of planes and American military equipment to Western Europe will undoubtedly also develop on a large scale during the months to come.
These gains were certainly not made without favors being handed out in return. Nixon had to give Japanese imperialism permission to officially reestablish links with Peking, to the disadvantage not only of Chiang Kaishek, but even of American exports of industrial goods, steel goods, vehicles, and petrochemical products.
Nixon will be led to grant sizable credits. to the Soviet bureaucracy, since the USSR's present level of gold production is hardly adequate to pay for the anticipated purchases of American products. The exchange of Soviet natural gas for American industrial goods requires a new expansion of Soviet industry in Siberia - to which Yankee credits will undoubtedly contribute (this market has been taken away from the Japanese competitors, though they do not yet admit defeat). Aside from the already familiar diplomatic concessions made to the Chinese bureaucracy, the end of the blockade offers trade advantages as well, although more modest than those promised Moscow.
On the whole, it is the European imperialists who risk being the losers after all these maneuvers. Not only will their up to now privileged outlets in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and China be sharply cut into, but Japanese products-whose swelling amount in the United States Washington wants to restrict-will begin increasingly to compete with European products in European markets themselves.
This is why West German imperialism, not wishing to fall behind Washington and Tokyo, is rushing in its turn to Peking. This is the very meaning-at least on an economic levelof Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, which has been approved by the great majority of the German bourgeoisie.
Bickering Over Monetary Policy
On the monetary plane, there remains a deepgoing antagonism between the "bloc" of European imperialisms (including, this time around, Great Britain) and American imperialism.
All the imperialist countries that have a surplus in their balance of payments with the United States have built up sizabie amounts of depreciated dollars over the past few years. After 1969, these dollars were, in fact, no longer exchanged for gold. Since August 15, 1971, they no longer can be. In Europe, voices are more and more insisting that this cannot go on.
Indeed, in an economic system of international trade, no owner of goods or credit can be forced in the long run to accept a currency he no longer wants as a means of payment and exchange. The present system cannot last. It has already set off an unbridled speculation in gold, the price of which has reached $65-$70 an ounce on the free market, as against the "official" price of $38 between central banks. At last Gresham's law begins to take effect on an international scale. Bad money drives good money out of circulation. Even between European countries and with Japan, no country any longer wants to pay off its debts in gold. While they wait until they can exchange their dollar holdings, the European and Japanese bourgeoisies use them to buy up government stocks and property in the United States, that is, to appropriate part of the surplus value produced by the American proletariat.
Therefore, the imperialists are attempting to reorganize the world monetary system. But in the economic climate described above, these etforts are subject to two very contradictory restrictions. All the imperialist powers would like to avoid a shrinking of world trade. At the same time, each has to prevent a readjustment of the monetary system from resulting in a worsening of its own competitive position.
Let's just take one example. British imperialism has already lost the competitive advantage it gained by devaluing the pound sterling in 1969. Therefore it hangs onto the system of floating exchange rates, that is, onto its hope for a new devaluation (whether open or camouflaged), in order to preserve a small safety valve for an increasingly explosive social and political crisis.
But its partners and competitors, who were ready to go along with this mechanism in 1969, are more and more balking at seeing it become institutionalized, so to speak. While the English capitalists can obtain certain trade advantages by following the American example and altering the exchange rate for the pound, the Germans are refusing to pick up the tab the next time around. The industrialists on the other side of the Rhine are announcing that they would no longer be able to conserve their outlets if their products are constantly going to get more expensive as a result of changes in the rate of exchange. This is one of the reasons why Schiller was removed as the West German finance minister, since he insisted on defending a system of floating exchange rates.
Competition and Political Power
The most effective solution from the point of view of the European imperialists would be to go beyond the stage of joint recriminations against Washington's monetary policy to one of joint actions. Above all, this would October 9, 1972
mean establishing a monetary union within an expanded Common Market and to act as a single trade bloc (which would be the most powerful at the present stage) on the world market.
Such a monetary union, which has been under discussion for a long time, would obviously involve a decisive step toward setting up an imperialist superstate. It would be inconceivable in the present state of the capitalist economy without working out a common budgetary and fiscal policy and without an industrial and publicworks policy, that is, without the creation of a truly European government.
The Gaullist regime, which had voiced the most determined opposition to any transformation of the Common Market confederation into a federal state, finally went along with the idea of a European monetary union, all the while holding back from accepting everything that this implied.
The European summit conference, which is to take place in Paris October 19-20, had as its central goal the laying of the groundwork for this new stage in the economic integration of capitalist Europe. If Pompidou seemed to suddenly switch on this during the past few weeks, it's because he noticed that the "committed Europeans" in power in other capitals- Bonn in particular-are no longer ready to take effective action along this path.
The fact that the enthusiasm of German imperialism for Europe has chilled is by and large a response to two immediate concerns. On the one hand, Bonn is afraid that a monetary union put together without guarantees that basically unstable economies like those of Great Britain and Italy first restore their economic health (and the least tremor is apt to put the French economy in the same category) would mean that the German bourgeoisie would once again, and forever after, be picking up the pieces. In its opinion, it's not worth the trouble.
On the other hand, the immediate result of a decisive step toward a Buropean monetary union would be a sharp clash with American imperialism. And American imperialism has a top-notch weapon that it can rely on for blackmail: the withdrawal of some of its troops from Europe.
Because of the uneven development deriving from expansion of West German imperialism's economic and financial power and restriction of its military capacities, such a clash strikes the bourgeoisie for the moment as being too risky. Beforehand, France should be brought back into NATO, and an independent nuclear capacity for Europe should be created; in short, it must have a minimum of military strength on its own. Meanwhile, the word is prudence.
While the Common Market governments have decided in the final analysis to go ahead with the European summit conference in Paris in spite of everything, it is for reasons of prestige and internal politics rather than out of hopes for immediate progress on the road to integration. The furthest they will get is a modest "European monetary fund" designed to reduce somewhat the inequalities in the reciprocal balance of payments between the countries that belong to the Common Market.
For the moment, the big maneuvers in interimperialist competition militate against any substantial strengthening of the Common Market. A new stage in the European interpenetration of capital, and a new hardening of the American counteroffensive in trade would be necessary for the tactic of the leading capitalist groups in Germany and Great Britain to change.