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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 46, 7 October 1933, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
When President Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act he expressed the belief that history would record it as the most important and far reaching legislation ever enacted by the American Congress: “It represents”, he said, “a supreme effort to stabilize for all time the many factors which make for the prosperity of the nation and the preservation of the American standard of living.”
To stabilize for all time – this is not possible in a world of flux, of constant motion, in which economic equilibriums are established to be shattered again. Least of all is it possible in a capitalist world – and still less so during its period of decline and decay. Nevertheless Roosevelt knew his ritual. He knew that the NRA would form the foundation upon which American imperialism hoped to make new advances and new conquests in the world market. Today the administrators are impatient to get this whole machinery in complete working shape in order to start seriously upon this advance. But today such an advance is also a problem much more complicated than before.
American capitalism in its early period of development had at hand all the prerequisites for monopoly capital within its own borders. When centered within the industrialized northeastern states, it found, by pushing westward, a mighty field of expansion for export of capital and export of means of production. But the resulting powerfully developed national economy, the vastly expanded productive forces and surplus of capital available produced also its opposite – growing interdependence upon world economy. American capitalism extended its structure throughout the world and acquired a world basis. Up to this point the law of uneven development of capitalism by which the various countries pass through their development in different forms and different tempi, has acted as a lever favoring the United States.
Through this uneven development, which, as comrade Trotsky reminds us, is more of a historical reality than a law, the United States reached its stage of combined development. This took on the form of a highly advanced industrial system alongside of a backward political ideology which is most directly reflected within the working class. The internal colonization, or rather the seemingly limitless expansion of the home market is, of course, the main factor and forms the basis for this retarded consciousness. Enormous capitalist profits and super profits allowed for a wide margin available for the maintenance of a higher standard of living for the labor aristocracy. Class collaboration unfolded to almost perfection and thereby reinforced the means of keeping the working class as a whole in subjection. Upon such a foundation the super structure of bourgeois democracy could attain its greatest triumphs and secure for itself a long lease of life.
But speaking in historical terms American imperialism arrived belatedly upon the world arena. It was therefore deprived of the luxury of floating leisurely with the upward current of growing capitalism as was enjoyed by British imperialism for an extensive period of time. The American counterpart was compelled to make a forced march at dramatic speed to acquire a world base. But its emergence coincided with the period when the capitalist system on a world scale had passed its peak and was heading in a downward direction. That its own inner contradictions have become vastly intensified by this process has already been proved by the crisis reaching its greatest proportions precisely in the highly advanced United States.
During the period of growing capitalism the unevenness of development of the various countries was far greater than now. Today the world has become more uniform. The backward countries have supplemented their backwardness with the latest industrial advances. Capitalist economy is world economy extending beyond the legal boundaries and intertwined among nations. Its outstanding feature is the interdependence of the various national economies. Each of the contending powers are dependent upon the world equilibrium and subject to all of its shocks and turns. Most of all is that the case of the United States because of its far flung interests. It should, therefore, not be necessary to reiterate the indisputable fact that when the United States penetrates further into the world market the mighty barriers of conflicting imperialist interests arise in all their imposing magnitude.
But this is only one side of the problem. Within the United States itself, its new world advance will impose a terrific strain upon the class relationship existing at present. This relationship can by no means be held within its present bounds even with the assistance of the NRA machinery, which is designed primarily for such a purpose. The slightly favorable turn in the economic conjuncture which is now in evidence tends by itself to spur the workers on to make increasing demands and thereby bring more to the surface and make more acute the conflicts engendered by the capitalist mode of production. With the NRA institutions attempting to check these conflicts they will assume more of a political character. At present the heavy crop of strikes which are spreading like wildfire everywhere indicates the future trend of developments.
In this country we are moving no longer within the orbit of conditions of the past. The margin of capitalist profits formerly available for the maintenance of a higher level for the labor aristocracy has become seriously narrowed. American capitalism, in order to effectively pursue its furious onslaught upon the world market, and to be prepared for the competition it meets, needs above all a low wage level throughout its industrial enterprises. To maintain the tranquility of class relationships of the past on this basis is not possible. We must therefore visualize the immediate future in the United States as one of sharply intensified struggles with the added phenomenon of disturbances reaching revolutionary proportions not at all out of the question.
No one can as yet predict whether a real and substantially favorable change in the economic conjuncture can be accomplished in the United States. But the conflicts and disturbances which will grow out of the efforts for its accomplishment can be foreseen. The formerly favorable lever for the United States constituted by the uneven development of capitalism has been turned into its opposite and is reacting against the United States. It is now compelled to seek the new roads of advance within a decaying world system. It is compelled to assume the major responsibility for checking further class disturbances and, if possible, for the crushing of further proletarian revolutions inevitably growing out of the more intense world exploitation. If to this is to be added the possibility of failure to arrive at a favorable change of economic conjuncture, then it is necessary to say that the perspectives for the United States assume a much more directly revolutionary character.
The relations of world economic forces have changed with the rise of American capitalism. With the shifting of the world economic center to the United States this change became more definite and more direct. But with this shift, there is also a corresponding shift – at first only slowly but sure to gain in momentum – of the revolutionary center from Europe to America. In a general sense we formerly counted upon the revolution to be accomplished in Europe first and upon the victorious European proletariat to fight to hold its own against reactionary America. It is now possible to say, still speaking in a general sense, that this outlook has been reversed by the dialectics of the relation of forces. Revolutionary struggles here move up to the very top of the agenda of historically immediate possibilities.
It is said in informed quarters that a reporter of an important capitalist paper ventured the prediction to Roosevelt: “If you do not succeed with the New Deal you will be known to posterity as the worst President the United States ever had.” Roosevelt answered laconically: “If I do not succeed with the New Deal I will be known to posterity as the last President of the United States.”
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