Fragment of The End of Corporations Chapter III
A difference between the capitalist crisis of '30s and current crisis, is the structure of monopolies, the companies that dominate and settle in the centre of capitalism. What are monopolies? A group of companies that get together to dominate a branch of production, distribution, services of production in a country and act in agreement on prices, targets of production, distribution, services, etc, so as to eliminate competitors. According to Lenin, “… they reach an agreement on conditions of sales, terms of payment, etc; they share out the sales market. They determine the amount of product to produce. They determine the prices. They distribute the profits between the different companies, etc.” (4)
The surfacing of monopolies put an end to the stage of “free competition” in capitalism. Through these agreements the enterprises constitute a kind of league or union that allowed them to make headway in the combination of a branch of production in their country while trying to extend this domination to an international level. These leagues or unions developed as from 1860, essentially in the USA under the names of trusts and in Germany as cartels. In the USA they achieved a central leadership of the magnates such as Mellon, Morgan, Rockefeller, etc.
According to Lenin, the emerging of monopolies went through three moments: “…1) “1860-1880: the high pitch of the development of free competition. Monopolies are nothing but barely perceptible germs. 2) After the 1873 crisis, a long period of development of cartels, but these still constitute an exception are not solid yet; they still represent a passing phenomenon. 3) Boom in late XIX century and crisis on 1900-1903: cartels turn into one of the bases of the entire economic life. Capitalism has turned into imperialism” (5)
Monopolies constitute a Form of Accumulation that differs from what capitalism had seen so far. Form of Accumulation is constituted by the companies that use the capitalist class to accumulate capital over a determined period of time. Because there are many sectors of capitalist class, those sectors reflect different Forms of Accumulation that dominate, i.e.: different commercial, productive and financial that are active. But in a whole period of development of capitalism there is always on predominant Form of Accumulation around which the entire economy is structured.
As to the monopolies, as we have already seen, even though they have been surfacing since 1860 they have never appeared as dominating Form of Accumulation till the early XX century. Their structure proved to be complex because even if they predominated one branch of production, they are combined enterprises that host several branches because of the domination they acquire over one of them.
This is how Lenin explains it, “The so-called combination, i.e.: the converging of different branches of industry that by themselves represent either successive phases of the elaboration of some raw material… or else different branches where one acts as an auxiliary of another is an extremely important particularity of capitalism that has reached the peak of its development…” (6)
But even if monopolies are combined enterprises we must never forget that the combination is in the service of the dominion of one branch of production. For example, let us have a look at the metallurgic branch, its cartelization is based on the unionised group of companies agrees on the distribution and advances towards the control of companies that will provide raw material, machinery and supplies, agrees on loans and credits and makes headway towards the control of banks. That means that the cartel incorporates companies of different branches of production, but with the purpose of controlling a branch. That is why we define monopolies as groups of companies that reach agreements to dominate over a branch of production in a country.
In 1903, when these enterprises became the predominant Form of Accumulation, capitalist system – historically speaking – began its Highest Stage and final one, of decadence. Ever since XIV when capitalism began its ascent and the battle to displace feudalism and by 1903 it had been through two great stages: 1) primitive accumulation between XIV and XVII and 2) that of boom or apogee, about XVIII and XIX centuries.
Ratio P/E in the index S&P500 since 1880 -
The average PER (Price to Earnings Ratio)
of compound shares S&P was 32.6 points
in September 1929, a very similar average
to the PER of August 2007, about 28.5 points.
Lenin defined that as from 1903,” a third stage had begun and it had 5 features: 1) “Monopolies arise and they settle in the centre of economy and play a decisive role in economic life; 2) Monopolies are the outcome of merging bank capital with industrial capital and this spawns a financial oligarchy; 3) The process of exporting capitals acquires exceptional importance; 4) Monopolies tend to turn international and share out the world among them; 5) The territorial division of the world among the major imperialist powers culminates and the domination of the monopolies and financial capital is established…” (7)
Monopolies already tended to be international due to the existence of a capitalist world market, but the scope of its international domination over the branches of production, trade and finances, was still very limited in the early XX century was still very limited. Some of them had subsidiaries in other countries – in the oil industry, fir example – and they tried to carry out operations for their world expansion. But their world domination had not yet reached the dimensions that – as we shall see – were reached by the multinationals during the ´post-war or the multinational corporations as from 1980 and 1990, which are superior monopolist forms.
Differences in policies of the capitalist administrations in the 1929 and in 2007
The policy of the Hoover republican administration in the USA in ’29 was totally opposed to that of Bush-Obama in the 2007-2008. Hoover and other governments of capitalist powers did not implement bailouts; their policy was to “let the laws of the market work” and so let companies that had to fall, fall. During the first years after the ’29 crisis the magnitude of fiscal deficits created to save banks and monopolies was not even similar to what is registered nowadays.
The fiscal deficit in the years ’29 was about 2.5% of the GDP, while at present it is never under 20%. Hoover admitted serious problems with American economy but regarded the crisis as something transitory and that it was the local governments who were liable for carrying out the struggle against generalised unemployment and poverty. Capitalist governments refused to interfere with economy to solve the ´29 crisis because they feared this would be counterproductive policy.
In the early 30s, Hoover even dared to forecast that “recovery was round the corner” and he defended that American economy was to recover on its own and this led him to oppose state intervention firmly and he even criticised such European countries as Great Britain and France for adopting measures protecting the unemployed. His popularity nosedived. Hoover began to implement reforms towards the end of his mandate, but he could not appear in public without getting booed.
Roosevelt and the Democrat Party had a sweeping victory in the presidential elections in November 1932 and the policy of the American government swerved 180°: he launched the policy of New Deal that consisted in stimulating public expenditure by investing in infrastructure, executed all kinds of projects like hydroelectric works roads, schools and in general every kind of public works. Roosevelt’s policy did not save economy from the crisis, but it was vital to contain poverty and unemployment through grants and public works.
There is no doubt that leaders of capitalism have learned from 1929.When the current crisis began, the policy – as we have seen in chapter I was totally different: the governments of capitalist powers boosted bailouts and acted in a manner opposite to Hoover’s trying to prevent the great companies from going bankrupt and economy from sliding into depression.
Solution to the ´29 crisis: enormous destruction of productive forces in the II World War
New Deal did not pull American economy or the world out of the crisis. The contrary is true: between 1937 and 1938 economy suffered a serious relapse, “Against all the prognoses and efforts to reactivate economy and control stock market, restrict great operations, etc, depression did not end. Instead, since August 1937 till March 1938, there was a 50% relapse on the stock market and unemployment totalled over 10 million…” (8)
The Great Depression found no solutions in the measures of capitalist governments of those days; it was not the plans of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or those of Edouard Daladier in France, Or Neville Chambberlaine in England, or Hitler in Germany what pulled economy out of the crisis. According to Galvao: “What put an end to the Great Depression, was not the return to the production for consumption but the resort to unleashing the means of destruction of capital in the II World War. Unemployment was no longer a problem when millions of workers were absorbed by the armed forces and war production.” (9)
The outbreak of the II World War in September 1939 was what began to reactivate economy in the main capitalist countries who invested enormous sums of money in military expenditure. Investments made by states oscillated between $260 000 and $339 000 million of that time, almost $4 to $5 billion by today’s standards. The millionaire investments of capitalist governments were an enormous change in the flow of investments since the confection of the war budgets that implied enormous sum for the preparation of the conflict.
These budgets meant plans of adjustments that caused penuries and suffering for the masses because they consisted in cuts in social expenditures and increase of taxes. Just the same, it was all not sufficient for the resources of that day and mot of the countries had to go into heavy debt to afford the expenditure of war. The indebtedness forced governments to emit money without any gold reserve and this spawned strong inflation.
Since 1870, international trade had been functioning with gold standard, i.e.: the issue of gold to settle international transactions and debts as standard value, nations determined the parity of their currency with this standard value. But when countries at war were left with practically no more gold while all but the total amount of it was engaged in purchasing weapons and they began to replace these fixed rates by floating rates, i.e.: the price of the financial transactions and exchange rates were to be determined by the governments in a unilateral manner.
From what was happening in the powers that were getting ready for the war, neutral countries, and net exporters of weaponry or of raw materials and food had their harvest of gold in their reserve. For example, the American gold reserves that by 193 used to have 26% of world gold reserves soared up to 39% in 1918. The powers that were left without gold in their coffers began to use fiduciary money, printing money with no gold backing and this was what caused the great processes of hyperinflations of the nineties – for example Germany and Austria.
The lack of a stable system of payments caused the fall of world trade and pound sterling – which has so far been another reference currency – was being displaced by the dollar. At the same time, within the scope of industrial production, war needs definitely introduced mass production in series techniques as well as other numerous improvements in organisational techniques of industry. Also advertising developed and the fast expansion of advertising and propaganda cartel as means of communication.
Great amount of money was dedicated to research and development of all kinds of weaponry and as an outcome chemical industry made notable headway. The great demand of soldiers as well as their massive death during the war left the new industry in full expansion without labour force. This fact implied the need for women to join heavy industry; their numbers reached over 40% of the total composition of workforce and gave an extraordinary impulse to the movement for the claim for equal rights for women.
In this way, capitalism started on its way towards the solution of the crisis that had started in 1929 by the colossal development of destructive forces of mankind. II World War implied over 199 million of mobilised soldiers, equivalent to almost the entire population of the USA in those days, destruction of cities, infrastructure, concentration camps, the Holocaust, apart from the use – for the first time – of nuclear weapons in a military conflict. The final outcome was between 50 and 70 million casualties between the dead and the wounded.
After six years of war a significant part of Europe was devastates because combats were held on a territory much vaster than what was affected by the I World War. Due to air raid, cities were badly damaged and so were industrial areas that had been the main targets of these bomb raids. Berlin and Warsaw were reduced to heaps of rubble; London and Rotterdam were badly damaged, the economic structure of the continent that for centuries had been the centre of development of capitalism, was reduced to shambles with million of people living in extreme poverty.
In 1944 famine broke out because of the general devastation of farming and a wave of famine swept Holland and then the entire Europe, aggravated by the 1946-1947 relentless winter in the Northeast. After the war danger of starving was very real for millions of people. Scarcity of food was one of the most serious problems for millions of people and the situation became especially harassing in Germany, because between 1946 and 1947 the average daily consumption was of 1800 calories per person, not enough to keep good health on long term.
Supplies of coal diminished enormously. Hundreds of people froze to death in German homes. Railways that were among the main targets or air raids were destroyed and so were bridges and roads. Cargo boats had been sunk; small municipalities were practically isolated physically and economically due to lack of networks.
Due to stagnation of any growth of economies, high rates o unemployment and lack of food strikes and unrest accrued challenging capitalism. Two years after the war economies had not yet recovered pre-war levels and farming production stood at 83% of what it had been in 2038; industrial production reached 88% and exports not more than 59%
Plan Marshall, Keynesian regime and the “boom”
II World War marked the end of an economic period of capitalism characterized by crisis, stagnation and paralyses. But in 1945, after the war, capitalism resumed its march and entered the opposite period, that of great growth with high rates for nearly 30 years. It was known as the “post-war boom” How did capitalism manage to get out of the crisis of 1929 and from there to the boom? Three fundamental changes had been hatching in world capitalist economy and with the end of the II World War they became consolidated and produced the boom. The three changes are the following:
1) The USA imposed their hegemony and became dominant in World economy.
2) Keynesian regime of accumulation surfaced
3) The multinationals emerged as a form of accumulation superior to monopolies but adequate to the monopolist stage of capitalism,
1) Hegemony of the USA and domination of world economy
After the II World War, American imperialism imposed its global hegemony and this is the way Nahuel Moreno explained it: “… All the old colonial imperialisms reach the end of the war completely destroyed… as from the post-war, the entire capitalist world, including imperialist countries, had to accept American leadership and domination… The logical anti-imperialist rubs cannot change this situation and American hegemony prevails over the capitalist world and its leadership.” (10)
The growth of American hegemony was a trend of economy and of the world political situation of capitalism that had been hatching for several decades. In 1926, Leon Trotsky had anticipated this tendency in the structure of the capitalist world system that was completely modified as since 1945, “In these last years, the economic shaft of the world has shifted considerably. The relations between the USA and Europe have been radically modified… This evolution had been underway for a long time, there were symptoms indicating it, but not until very recently has it turned into an accomplished fact and now we are trying to work out the meaning of this formidable change in human economy and consequently in human culture… the USA are the owners of the capitalist world” (11)
In 1945, in the midst of the ruins caused by the II World War, American economy constituted a third of all the exports happening in the world; Americans possessed two thirds of all the existing gold reserves and they produced 550% of all the goods in the world market of manufactured goods. The hegemony and the colossal development of productive forces in the USA was the lifebelt that capitalist economy found in the post-war and the tool for the reconstruction of capitalism.
2) Keynesian regime of accumulation emerges
The emergence of the Keynesian regime was the other important change together with the hegemony of the USA. We define a regime of accumulation a form of functioning of capitalism, around the predominant Form of Accumulation, during a certain time. After the Plan Marshall, senile capitalism emerged from the II World War functioning in a very peculiar way, a phase with an uneven and combined development of world economy that we call Keynesian regime of accumulation.
This regime was a way of functioning of the capitalist system or economic formation historically given, also known as “welfare state”. It consisted of high salaries, full employment, economic concessions for the toiling masses, social achievements and increase of social wages, plans of public works and a great process of industrialisation all this imitating aspects of the model imposed by Roosevelt in USA as a response to the 1929 crash. Keynesian regime began in the forties, developed in the fifties and sixties and was depleted in the 70´s.
Pole of accumulation is the company or branch of production round which. From this point of view, Keynesian regime had the car industry and war industry as pole of accumulation. ¿How and why did the Keynesian emerge? In order to understand the political reasons that spawned the Keynesian regime we must go several years back and analyse the responses that capitalism posed to the ’29 crisis.
From the political point of view, capitalism has had two answers to the ’29 crisis, at that time the worst crisis of the capitalist system. In the USA the answer was the New Deal while in Germany it was the Nazi regime. Both of these regimes, even if diametrically opposed, had a common denominator: they sought for an answer to the global crisis. While New Deal sought a solution by means of agreements and manoeuvres against workers and their organisations, the Nazi regime sought the same by means of squashing of workers and their organisations, with concentration camps where the most aberrant methods of production in order to optimise the profits of the monopolies and the great companies.
The Nazi regime was due to the defeat of the proletarian revolution in Germany, while in the USA, the New Deal was a defensive regime for the bourgeoisie for the great companies could not defeat it. This is the way Leon Trotsky explained it: “At present, there are two systems that compete in the world to save the capital…the Fascism and the New Deal. Fascism based its programme on the dissolution of workers’ organisations, destruction of social reforms and the total annihilation of democratic rights… New Deal policy, which tries to save imperialist democracy… is only fully accessible to the really rich nations and from this point of view, it is an American policy par excellence.” (12)
Wall Street was another common denominator between both political regimes. The great corporations, monopolies and bakers of the USA boosted war industry in order to re-launch economy in Germany as well as in the USA and financed the arrival of Hitler to power. Wall Street financed the development of the industrial monopoly I.G. Farben, which was the basis of the power of the Nazi war machine. This is the way Anthony C. Sutton explains it: “Without the support of the German industrial cartel, I. G. Farben, Hitler would have continued living as an obscure historic note… Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have not been any I. G: Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler… The industrial Farben cartel was created by three Wall Street Corporations: Dillon, Read & Co., Harris, Forbes & Co, and National City. The Duponts, Standard Oil, International Harvester, General Motors and Ford – enterprises controlled by JP Morgan, had facilitated the rearmament of Germany… such enterprises as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), General Electric, International Business Machines (IBM), Alcoa and Dow Chemical were also implicated…” (13)
In September 2004, Toby Rogers, journalist of The Guardian, wrote on the history of the Bush family, “The grandfather of former president George Bush, senator Prescott Bush, was director and shareholder of companies that benefitted from their commercial relation with the financiers of the Nazi Germany… For decades of public life of the Bush family – American press made great efforts to skip a historic fact – that through the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Prescott Bush and his brother-in-law, George Herbert Walker, together with the German entrepreneur Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf Hitler before and during Second World War” (14)
The Nazis and the Nazi regime were annihilated in the war by the allied armies as a result of a formidable mobilisation of European masses and so they vanished as a possible alternative for capitalism. Meanwhile, Keynesian regime developed in the USA taking advantage of the low salaries and the unemployment among the working class after the depression and got support from new technologies that made the development of mass production for mass consumption.
The impulse of war industry allowed for mass export of tanks, aeroplanes and weapon to allied states and so develops the “military industrial complex” and pole of accumulation pole of accumulation of the Keynesian regime, which was essentially American. But as from the year 1945 – 47, as America became hegemonic in world capitalist economy, this form of functioning of capitalism was internationally set up.
In order for America to impose Keynesian regime for the whole world, it was first necessary to establish international agreements with the retreating powers, such as England and fundamentally they had to agree with Stalin and the CPSU. It would have been impossible to for the USA to initiate a chain of investments that Plan Marshall implied without agreeing previously with Stalin, because during the war and towards the end of it great revolutionary processes swept across Europe firstly to defeat the Nazis liberate the countries from Nazi-fascism and then to face up against famine and generalised post-war poverty.
Such processes as the Maki resistance in France or the Partisanos of Italy and Yugoslavia would have made it possible for workers to seize power in France and Italy and the Red Army to take over in Berlin and liberate the East of Europe. Communist militants had been part of the leadership and they headed the resistance that made the defeat of the Nazis in most European countries possible. An order from Kremlin would have been enough for Europe to become socialist and that the main European economies like France, Germany and Italy would turn Workers’ States, which would have changed the fate of mankind totally.
The evolution of the Standard & Poor’s rate 500 since 1881 until the current crisis connected to the most important political and economic events 500 from 1881 up to the current crisis, linked to the most outstanding political and economic events in the history of capitalism. Source: GMO
But the government of the USSR in charge of Stalin and Stalinist bureaucracy, decided to agree with allied powers: the USA and Great Britain and initiate the capitalist reconstruction of Europe. This was one of the greatest treasons of world proletariat and international socialist revolution by Stalin and the bureaucracy that governed the USSR. Stalin agreed with Churchill, representative of the retiring old English imperialism and Roosevelt the president of the USA, representative of emerging imperialist power. This is how the “world order” was born out of the Yalta and Postdam agreements.
As Nahuel Moreno put it: “… a front is established… between imperialism and Kremlin bureaucracy based on peaceful coexistence, nailed down in Yalta and Potsdam and the new world order: the UN, the sharing out of zones of influence. Even if the cold war with though rubs followed… generally they act in agreement with each other and defending this new world order… Stalin and Roosevelt divide the world into tow blocks controlled by American imperialism and Kremlin in order to halt, deviate, squash or control workers’ world revolution.” (15)
After the International Yalta and Postdam agreements and as from the year 1947, “Plan Marshall” was launched according to which the USA invested millions of dollars, which allowed for the reconstruction of world economy taking advantage of the massive destruction of productive forces, the famine, brutal unemployment and the poor wages of European proletariat and toiling masses. Let us insist that the USA could implement Plan Marshall because after the II World War their economy represented a third part of all the world exports, had two thirds of gold reserves and produced half of all the manufactured good.
After the launching Plan Marshall, world capitalist economy experimented growth at historic rates for several decades. Possibilities for capitalist enterprises of achieving high rates of exploitation due to a brutal slide-down of standards of living, work and wages that became consolidated with the war among European toiling masses proved to be a magnet to attract investors and European capitalist governments used these “comparative advantages” to their own benefit ant attracted them.
The “German Miracle”, for example, was the outcome of American investments that took advantage of the brutal reduction of living standards, achieve among others by Hitler and his concentration camps, apart from the division of Germany and its working class, the most powerful one in Europe and this facilitated the exploitation of German working class. The name of the plan passed on to history was the surname of the State Secretary of the USA, George Marshall who participated in the summit and he was the one who inspired the model, together with the English economist Lord Keynes.
American hegemony became clear in the manner in which the world trade was reestablished after the war under conditions imposed by Washington. In July 1944, a new international monetary system was established at the International Conference of Breton Woods and it determined agreements that were to replace the international monetary system of floating rates imposed after the Great Depression of the ‘30s for war expenditure.
The main goal of the new financial system was to return to fixed convertibility of currencies tied to the gold standard and Breton Woods decided that the dollar would be the pattern currency of the international monetary commercial and financial system, supported by the gold stored in the Federal Reserve of USA. Together with the dollar-gold parity, it was agreed that a International Monetary Fund (IMF), a World Bank (WB) and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Furtherance (IBRF) to regulate the newly created system.
The post war “boom”
Keynesian regime, as a regime of accumulation, allowed for the boom of world economy, with historic rates of growth that lasted for several decades. That was the economic base for the enormous social achievements attained by the masses in the USA, Europe, Japan and several underdeveloped countries. The boom granted stability to the political situation of imperialist countries, based essentially on important plans of public works for the reconstruction of Europe and Japan where the infrastructure had been badly damaged during the war.
The boom of world economy reached very important peaks of growth; in Great Britain at a rate of 17.5%, in the USA of 17.7 in 1950 and of 17.0 in 1969. In Japan, the peak of 36.5% was reached 1969 while in Germany and the remaining parts of Europe, economy reached 19% in 1968. (16) Toyotism and Taylorism became the base for the technologic pole to increase productivity of labour and commerce as well as international labour division was structured hinging round the axis of The USA– Europe.
The exploitation of the proletariats of both regions placed them in the centre of world and consolidated the Atlantic as the centre of world trade. As to the financial capital, one of the main features of the Keynesian regime was strong repression of speculative capital so in 1933, the Galss– Steagall Act was passed; in 1936 it was the Robinson-Patman and in 1937, the Miller-Tydings and they were combined with other previous, such as the Sherman anti-monopoly of 1890, and Clayton in 1914.
These laws sought to separate the deposit banks and the investment banks, to halt the great chains, unfair competition and to veto the participation of bankers in boards of firms. The anti-trust legislation of the Keynesian regime in the USA repressed speculative capitals that were placed in the London city. However, the great American firms could start monopolising the branches of production and trade because the monopolies of the remaining powers were shattered.
Now we have a general picture of the Keynesian regime. Its success was mainly due to super-exploitation of workers in the USA and Europe, the greatest proletariats, most concentrated and culturally most outstanding in the world, whose wages and standards of living were very much deteriorated by the crisis of the 30’s and the war.
3) Multinationals became predominant Form of Accumulation
The third reason but from the economic point of view the most important one due to which capitalism could get out of the stagnation of the period 1929/1945 and leap into the post war boom was the emerging of the multinationals as predominant Form of Accumulation. This fact proved to be the qualitative change in the process of capitalist production, for it made an unprecedented accumulation of capitals and profits possible and caused enormous changes in the structure and functioning of capitalism ¿How come that the multinationals became the predominant Form of Accumulation?
The surfacing and development of monopolies since 1860 allowed for development and expansion of capitalism that lasted for several decades traversed by the crisis of 1873-96 even if these crises were part of the expansion and growth. By contrast, since 1907 the crisis of that years as well as that of 1914-18 and the beginning of the 1st World War, already expressed that capitalism had entered a downhill slope and stagnation that led to the crack of ’29.
As Galbraith put it, the process of stagnation of capitalism happened as consequence of the erosion of monopolies as a form of accumulation. Why did the depletion of cartels and trusts happen? Because as they took over in economy, all the contradictions of capitalism became extremely sharper, firstly, because when concentration and centralisation of capitals in the different branches of production, the contradiction between the social character of production and the individual character of the appropriation of the wealth produced became sharper.
Socially produced wealth was getting more and more concentrated in fewer hands, the owners of monopolies, in a magnitude far above that of the industrial period when exploitation of child and female labour developed and ever increasing masses of workers were thrown into misery and poverty and crammed into great cities.
Monopolies sharpened this already existing social unevenness brutally, not only due to the extreme differentiation between the rich and the poor, but also because of the tensions and confrontations inside the capitalist class itself as an outcome of the fact that economic concentration implied also the bankruptcy and disappearing of minor sectors of capitalists in the hands of the more powerful trusts and cartels. Generalised poverty and the fall of the middle layer of the population aggravated by the monopolies caused consumption to dwindle and was a general brake on economy.
Secondly, monopolies sharpened the contradiction between the global character of production and the national states, because they started controlling branches of that production and trade within the national scope while at the same time they tended to develop internationally. As they began to dispute the world market, brutal struggles for markets cropped up among them and this was what constituted the base for both, the First and the Second World War. These contradictions showed the limitations of the cartels and the trusts to get as far as dominating world branches of production and trade.
The wars were the clashes and confrontations between the imperialist states to see which one of them would impose its own monopolies and, at the same time provides clear evidence that monopoly as a from of accumulation had entered the stage of its depletion. Capitalism needed a superior form of accumulation that would leap to the dominion of entire global branches of production and trade and this magnitude of centralisation and elimination of capitals and capitalists was only attainable by means of war.
The passage from predominance of monopolies to predominance of the modern multinationals
As we have seen, after the II World War all imperialisms emerged destroyed and it was on the USA, with its extraordinary development of productive forces, who could be up to the task of controlling world economy. This became concrete with the implementation of Plan Marshall that produced a change in capitalism: the modern multinationals displaced monopolies from the centre of world economy.
Plan Marshall, economic assistance for Europe from the USA was not disinterested: it was meant to extend their monopolies and finance their military bases abroad so as to consolidate their global dominance. American monopolies took advantage of the capitalist reconstruction of Europe to massively export their goods to European countries, boosting the economic reactivation as well as for their own implantation using Europe as the bridgehead for their world expansion.
It is no wonder that leading the post-war expansion there were the American enterprises: they had a good start with the unprecedented power of the home economy, their technological superiority and their enormous reserves of investment capital. By 1960, the USA had accumulated almost 50% of the direct foreign investments in the rest of the world. The Participation of England was 18% and Germany and Japan had barely 1.2% and 1.7%”… (17)
According to Noam Chomsky, Plan Marshall “created the framework for the investment of great amounts of American money in Europe, establishing the base for the modern multinationals. Some time later Reagan’s Department of Commerce explained that Plan Marshall “prepared the scenario for private investment of great quantities in Europe from the USA” tracing the groundwork for the Transnational Corporation that increasingly govern world economy”. (18)
That is to say, with the contribution of American State to Europe, American monopolies became multinationals. A good example of this is Ford, the car producing monopoly of the USA, who created an organisation in the entire Europe as early as 1967. The mutation of monopolies into modern multinationals is the fundamental structural change within the productive scope of the international division of labour and trade that is developed in capitalism with the Keynesian regime.
So, the capitalist system adopted the physiognomy that we know today, as Nahuel Moreno pointed out, “… The fact that I want to point out to is the emerging of the transnationals… With the exception of oil companies… that is to say, they are companies that have ten, twenty companies in different countries and all of them are coordinated working together.” (19)
Lenin had pointed out that the monopolies are national entities but that ever since early XX century, they tend to spread internationally Thirty years later and after the II World War, a great imperialist conflagration, the USA imposed their monopolies globally as part of the development of the Keynesian system. What difference is there between the multinationals and the monopolies? As we have seen, monopolies are the cartels and trusts, union or leagues of enterprises that control a branch of production in a country.
Multinationals are not leagues of enterprises: they are a sole enterprise that controls a branch of production at a global scope; consequently, they are as superior form of accumulation that contains and engulfs monopolies. II World War allowed capitalism to pass from an inferior form of accumulation and concentration of capitals to a superior one, because monopolies such as General Electric, Ford, Coca Cola, etc, which – through a complex process of fusions and purchases of companies that lasted decades – has managed to dominate a branch of production in the USA have now become a sole company on the global scope, with very strongly centralised headquarters.
The board of directors of shareholders and their presence in the multinationals are no longer organisms that engage in complex negotiations inside the union of enterprises in order to agree about goals of production and commercialisation as in cartels and trusts. By the period from 1945 to 47, American multinationals are a sole command that imposes targets of production and commercialisation, aware of an immense, almost unlimited and unchallenged global market because the monopolies of the remaining imperialist countries a shattered after the II World War and are therefore in economic and financial disadvantage.
Secondly, in the years 1946/47, In the years 1946/47 the boards of directors of American multinationals imposed targets of production and commercialisation knowing they could rely on extremely high rates of exploitation due to the deteriorated standards of living in Europe and the USA.
Furthermore, they could rely on the Yalta and Postdam political agreements that warranted the investment and implantation because they acted as a political shield against revolts or revolutions that might have expropriated them or in some way hamper their interest in obtaining profit. The political and economic conditions of the 1945/46 conjuncture were very favourable for beginning to control the world market. The board of directors of this venture is a centralised command leading at the same time units of production and commercialisation of different countries where they have branches and can plan the development of the production counting with the international labour division inside the company.
They can produce different parts of goods and assemble them in different countries, calculating their benefits ahead of time in accordance with the conditions of exploitations that they obtain negotiating with different governments. That means, form the point of view of accumulation of capital and the supreme aim of capitalism that is profit, the multinationals is a qualitatively superior form of accumulation of capital, better than cartels and trusts, monopolies emerged in the XIX century.
In 1946/47 years, these new forms of accumulation came across enormous possibilities of super-exploiting workers in Europe and the USA with Yalta and Postdam agreements and with the investments by the American imperialist state spending money to facilitate the infrastructure, transport, highways, bridges, supplies, etc everything necessary for its development. What else can a capitalist ask for?
That is to say, it is the transformation of American monopolies into multinationals and the existence of these companies as the predominant Form of Accumulation what supplies us with the most important structural explanation of the changes that have been taking place after the II World War. The implantation of the hegemony, Keynesian regime and the multinationals are the three elements that explain the post war boom and the historic rates of growth achieved after 1945.
Multinationals exacerbated the fundamental contradictions of capitalism
But we must never forget two key elements in the passage from the predominance of the multinationals of monopolies to the predominance of multinationals. One is that the hegemony of the USA as well as the Keynesian regime and the multinationals are the outcome of the brutal destruction of productive forces implied in the II World War. That is to say, mankind had to pay a very high price for the outcome of the existence of private property of means of production in all this process of centralisation of capitals that the passage from the predominance of monopolies to the predominance of the multinationals meant. I meant millions o casualties, liquidation of infrastructure and annihilation of productive forces.
The second element is that the post-war boom has never meant that capitalism had managed to overcome the imperialist stage, that of decadence. To the contrary, it all happened within this stage that Lenin had taught about, and so the multinationals are a form of monopolist accumulation, as were the monopolies that had cropped up in the XIX century: they are Forms of Accumulation in the imperialist stage of capitalism. There is a fundamental importance in this if we are to understand why the post-war boom wound up by aggravating the crisis of capitalism.
The development of the predominance of the multinationals did not act solving the historic crisis of capitalist system; to the contrary, it opened the enormous crisis in capitalism in the late 60s. Let us see how this happened. With the reconstruction of Europe and the boom, multinationals as a form of accumulation became more and more general as empires previously destroyed in the war, such as England, Germany, Japan, France, etc. and developed their own multinationals.
First of all, multinationals aggravated the contradiction between the world character of production and national states. As Moreno put it: “… The transnational, more than anybody else before, responds to the law of monopoly, i.e.: it needs the national state. There are semi-Marxist trends that say that they are great, because inevitably they will destroy national states… like this they will unite Europe and then Europe and the USA and then the USA and Japan and then we shall have the famous empire made out of transnationals … This is a lie, the transnational exacerbate the competition between them and it turns increasingly more brutal….”. (20)
The other contradiction that the multinationals are making extremely acute is the one between the social character of production and the individual appropriation, because within the scope of concentrating wealth in few hands, multinationals have caused an unprecedented process of excessive accumulation of capitals. This is how Moreno explained it: “The process of internationalisation of economy and the centralization of American imperialism and the great international monopolies – the transnationals – together with the speed of communications, allows a dazzling pace of obtaining surplus value, distribution of profit and accumulation on top of accumulation of capital. It is this very pace that accelerates the crisis of imperialist economy.” (21)
That is to say, because it is a superior form of accumulation, multinationals have achieved an unprecedented accumulation on top of accumulation of capital. But the accelerated process of over accumulation aggravated and exasperated the fall of the rate of profit. Who did this happen? That is how Moreno explains it: “Every enormous increase of the mass of surplus value recovers the rate of profit and allows them to overcome the conjectural crisis. But it prepares another crisis greater than that one: when the capital accrues tremendously, there is super-accumulation of capital that seeks investments from which to obtain profit; as the mass surplus value remains unchanged and the capital has increased the rate of profit slides down abruptly originating a new conjectural crisis.” (22)
The enormous supra accumulation of capital that the multinationals implied, became active demolishing the rate of profit and forced the capitalists to seek higher and higher rates of exploitation in order to sustain the equivalent of the magnitude to the capitals accumulated by the capitalists with the multinationals. Since no higher rate of exploitation could be achieved, the enormous fortunes and the capital accumulated by capitalists with the multinationals acted demolishing the rate of profit and so aggravated the crisis of capitalism, because the very accumulated capital requires more and more exploitation to preserve the rate of profit. This caused the outburst of the chronic crisis of economy that developed with recessive peaks that began to come one after the other without capitalism succeeding at overcoming it.
As Moreno explained it: “The final key to begin to understand all the phenomena that have been happening on the international arena since the late 60s, is the chronic crisis that has been going on since those days in world economy… it is constantly getting deeper and deeper and about every five years has been causing increasingly intense cyclical crises. The chronic crisis has been advancing from the peripheries towards the centre. This is a law that, to say the least of it, has been valid ever since 1966 – we believe that during the entire post-war… it has had three peaks or circumstantially acute crises. The first one since 1966-67, caused a fall of the rate of profit and American production… The second crisis happened between 1973 and 1975 and affecting the capitalist and imperialist countries as a whole… The third one starts in 1979 and also is extended to the entire world economy…” (23)
These recessive peaks happened because the fall of the rate of profit accrued fast and capitalism found it increasingly difficult to overcome the crises that stemmed out of them. Between 1970 and 1990, the rate of profit of the factories in the economies of G7 fell 40% with respect to the period of between 1950 and 70. By 1990, the rate of profit fell 27% compared to 1973 and nearly 45% compared to the highest level of 1955. (24) Contradictorily the recovery of the post-war world economy weakened American economy, “… it suffered a first period of stagnation in mid 50s. Between 61 and 66, the GDP increased an average 2.3% a year – very much under the averages of 6.1 between 1931 and 1950 or 5.2% between 1950 and 1955” (25)
With the multinationals, all the process of accumulation and surplus accumulation of capital and its speed have changed qualitatively due to the increase and speed of capital achieved. This accelerated the pace of the fall of the rates of profit and in this way also accelerated qualitatively the pace of the crisis of capitalism. This aggravation of the contradictions of capitalism started a dynamic that led the Keynesian regime to its final depletion. The depletion of the Keynesian regime led in its turn to the depletion of the multinationals as a form of accumulation.
From the point of view of the regime of accumulation, capitalism entered a transitional period that engulfs from 1966/67 up to the 80s, a decade in which new forms of accumulation crop up: the multinational corporations. At that time the Breton Woods commercial and exchange relations burst because in 1971, the gold reserves could barely reach a quarter of the official debts of the USA. The Nixon administration delivered a blow proclaiming free convertibility of dollar, Signed the Smithsonian Accord according to which he devaluated the dollar to 7.89% in relation to gold thus cheapening the debts and good of the USA in order to strengthen the world market for American products.
In February ’73, the dollar was devaluated a further 10%. Europe and Japan also abandoned the gold parity of their currencies and wrote a full stop to Breton Woods. The world returned to the floating rates and inflation began to accrue ushering in a long period of inflations that began to dawn and to sweep away the post-war agreements and the wages. World inflation aggravated with the oil crisis in ’73-75 that pushed the prices of crude oil and raw materials of the whole world.
Post war: a grievous cycle of destruction of productive forces in the Third World
Faced with the crisis of Keynesian regime, capitalism needed high rates of exploitation to revert the crisis so they directed their capitals more and more aggressively towards the Third World, where the conditions of exploitation were beginning to outshine those of Europe and the USA. But in the post- II World War, great revolutionary processes, wars and convulsions began to accrue as an outcome of the crisis of the old colonial powers such as France, England, Japan or Germany who used to control that region but now emerged destroyed after the II World War, and this had weakened their colonial dominance.
That is what caused a spectacular process of national liberation and the emergence of new nations. Due to this enormous world revolutionary process – mainly focused in the underdeveloped countries – the newly emerging imperialism, the USA, began acting as a global gendarme and defender of capitalism as such aiming at defeating the uprisings and revolutionary processes that were happening in the backward countries.
From Algeria to Vietnam, from Korea to China, Latin America or Middle East, invasions of American armed forces and the armies of other imperialist countries aimed at defeating the revolutionary processes. This is the fundamental difference between the post war and the I World War and the II World War. While during the I and II World Wars, it was the different imperialist countries that fought each other, in this post-war it was imperialist countries clashing against nations, peoples and revolutionary processes in the III World Countries that challenged their dominance.
Moreno explained it like this, “As from the post-war, the entire capitalist world, including the imperialist countries, had to admit American leadership and dominance… and the impossibility for the time being of new inter-imperialist wars… A stage of the character of wars is now closed and a new one is opened. The stage of inter-imperialist wars is over and the next stage of counterrevolutionary wars begins.” (26) From the economic point of view, the confrontations of imperialist armies against revolutionary processes stands for a spectacular development of destructive forces, in many aspects similar to that of the II World War.
Even though the revolutionary processes and the wars took place globally in the III World, there was a fundamental epicentre: the region of Asiatic South-East, where the greatest destruction of productive forces took place. As an outcome of this process a new axis of accumulation began in the Asiatic southeast and that was the key for the transition between Keynesian regime and globalisation. Axis of accumulation is the region and the different economies or countries that capitalism uses as platforms for their development during a determined period.
To illustrate the concept we may say that the axis of accumulations in the 1945/68 period was the duet the USA/Europe. The development of a new axis of accumulation in the Asiatic southeast was the outcome of a tremendous cycle of destruction of productive forces, which began with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and continued with the war in Korea between 1950 and 1953 with its toll of 779 000 fatal casualties, injured and mutilated in the American band and between 1 187 000 and 1.545 000 on the side North Korea, a total 2-5 million of civilians dead or wounded, 5 million left homeless and over 2 million refugees.
A new chapter began in the Asiatic southeast when the Japanese withdrew from Vietnam. After driving the Japanese troops out of the country, Vietnamese masses defeated French imperialism and declared the independence of Vietnam, whose war of liberation spread on to Laos, Cambodia and China. In order to halt the revolutionary process, the USA committed all kinds of historic horror and violations of human rights and yet they suffered a historic defeat.
The triumph of Vietnamese masses and the world was extraordinary, but the result of the destruction of productive forces that the Vietnam War implied was chilling. During that war 281 896 soldiers died and 300 000were wounded on the American military side. As for Vietnamese masses, this was a real hecatomb: 5 million and a hundred thousand dead civilians. A million and a hundred thousand soldiers and guerrillas died in combat and at least at least 600 thousand were wounded. American Armed Forces dropped 7 million tons of bombs, among them a great amount of chemical weapons: Napalm, bacteriological defoliants, etc. – forbidden in the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
During the II World War, all the bands involved dropped a million two hundred thousand tons of bombs and explosives. Vietnam outdid them almost 6 times. The defoliant orange agent used in the bombardments by the USA until 1971 is still polluting the country up to our days. In the remaining parts of the region, imperialism kept on committing thorough destructions of productive forces. Such was the case of Indonesia with the Suharto coup carried out with the support of the CIA, the dictatorship committed massacres between the years 1965 to 1967 with 1.5 million of people killed.
In Cambodia, the Stalinist dictatorship of Pol-Pot between 1975 and 1979 exterminated 2 million people, almost a third of the population. In China, the failure of the economic plan known as the “Great Leap Forwards” caused the death of almost 32 million people during the famine and natural catastrophes; this spawned massive demonstrations and increasing displeasure among the masses.
Stalinist bureaucracy headed by Mao just barely managed to contain the great ascent of masses in the Cultural Revolution, but with the failure of the “Great Leap...” there was fear of a new outburst. In view of the defeat in Vietnam, the USA changed their policy in the Asiatic Southeast and relocated to the agreement with the Chinese bureaucracy taking advantage of the crisis of the Mao administration. The Stalinist Mao regime needed another plan and seeing the pressure of the masses and of the soviet bureaucracy threatening to intervene, made an agreement with the USA. China committed herself to stop the revolution in Vietnam in consideration of American investments to revitalise economy.
The graph shows the falling tendency of the rates of profit of the main imperialist economies during the period 1950 /2000· Source: “The boom and the bubble” R. Brenner
The agreement was punctiliously complied with as far even as invading Vietnam in 1979. Moreno says: “Another colossal opportunity surfaced when, with the support of millions of Americans who demonstrated against the war, the Vietnamese toiling masses defeated American Armed Forces. Nothing would have been easier than to extend this triumph to Laos, Cambodia and the rest of the continent. But five years after, Maoist leadership attacked and invaded Vietnam… Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia suffer similar or worse penalties because of their betraying leaderships”. (27)
In December 1971, after the Nixon-Mao summit and with the endorsement of the Chinese bureaucracy acting like the brake on the revolution in the Asiatic southeast, capitalism rushed to invest in the coastal provinces of China, where “special zones” cropped up in a slow process of penetration of the multinationals.
The arrival of the investments, the settling of enterprises and capital took advantage of the inexistence of a proletariat with tradition in the region, ages-old famine among peasants and the betrayal of the revolutionary process by Peking. This is also the way that the famous “Tigers” surfaced: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong… all of them countries with dictatorial regimes that trample the most elementary democratic rights and squash every attempt at trade union organisation.
The “Tigers” of the Asiatic southeast acted as a magnet for investors because they offered a “paradise” for the voracity of the multinationals associated to native bourgeoisies. That is how the new “miracles” took place: the Japanese miracle and the miracle of the Tigers are products of brutish processes of destruction of productive forces in the region.
As soon as these processes were established, the axis of accumulation Japan – Asiatic southeast – the USA was constituted in transition of the Keynesian regime towards globalisation
Restoration of capitalism in the USSR, East of Europe, Cuba and China
The process of destruction of productive forces spread on to the Workers’ States. Between 1940 and 1970, because of the defeat of the Nazis, the generalised process of the old imperialisms and the revolutionary processes in various regions of the Third World, capitalism was expropriated in the countries of Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, etc. Twenty years later, as from the 70s, these countries began their way back to capitalism, and that mean the loss of important achievements brought about by the revolutions.
According to Martin Hernandez, “the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, nationalisation of economy and centrally planned economy achieved what no capitalist underdeveloped country could ever achieve in the entire history. The USSR showed spectacular development within all the fields. The unprecedented development of their economy made it possible to eliminate famine, unemployment, illiteracy, deficient housing and it also made massive access of the population to science and culture so much so that the USSR took the lead in the space race… the China and Cuba cases also show spectacular results on the economic scope that, later on could also be observed within other areas” (28)
The return of these countries to capitalism has not been the outcome of free choice by the masses; it was the produce of 70 years of policies of Stalinism made to repress violently workers and peoples. According to IWL-FI, “… restoration of capitalism was not peaceful. It was one of the most violent events of the history of mankind… it was not something circumstantial; it was a historic process… There were several milestones: the civil war, the triumph of Stalinism and the Nazi invasion on the USSR, the cold war and the massacred against the uprisings in Eastern Europe…” (29)
Between 1924 and 1953, the crimes committed by Stalin in the USSR caused the death of millions who died in the purges, famines, forced collectivisations and ethnic cleansings of Ukrainians, Chechens, etc. It has been estimated that in Yugoslavia 2 million died due to the vicious repression by the Tito administration between 1944 and 1977. The toiling masses of the socialist countries confronted the dictatorships of those days, but they were defeated.
This is the way Martin Hernandez explains it: “…several political revolutions challenged the Stalinist dictatorships and could only be defeated by means of direct military interventions aided by the troops of the former USSR; so the Berlin workers of 1953, Hungarian workers’ councils in 1956, the Czechoslovakian 1953 process and the multitudinous process of Solidarity in Poland in 1981. This is the way in which the conditions for “peaceful restoration” were prepared at the cost of forty or fifty million lives.” (30)
If the living standards were tough for the toiling masses under Stalinist regimes, the return of capitalism did nothing but to aggravate them. According to Martin Hernandez, “Restoration of capitalism in the former workers’ states does not prove ay superiority of capitalism but only its deep crisis… a catastrophic fall in economy and culture”… since the restoration of capitalism, birthrates are now negative due to the high rates of mortality caused by all kinds of diseases easily controlled in other countries.” (31)
Restoration of capitalism also meant serious development of destructive forces as the pinnacle of the 70 years of political betrayals of the “world official left” of Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev, Castro, Deng Xiaoping, Brezhnev and Gorbachov, and their policy of socialism “in only one country” and their systematic and permanent refusal to federate to build workers’ states.
All their policy of dissolving the III International at request of capitalist powers as part of Yalta and Postdam agreements made this vicious regression possible.The instauration of dictatorships of a sole party that committed massacres and persecutions, as well as the annihilation of oppositionists and of revolutionary Marxist wound up by crowning the policy of support from the left for the multinationals and a formidable tool to grant the capitalist system some more survival time.
The end of the Keynesian regime: what the Keynesian economists conceal
The growth attained by capitalism with the Keynesian regime has been clear: those who defend it and refer to themselves as “Keynesians” intend to prove that capitalism is capable of having a successful model that permits us to achieve economic improvements for the masses. These economists conceal the reasons for which in the years between 1945/68, capitalism produced the “boom”.
When such “Keynesians” as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini assert that “Keynesian regime” can be re-created in dour days and claim in a loud voice for economic stimulus, public works, income tax, and claim that with these measures it is possible to overcome the serious crisis that started in 2007, they simply lie.
They conceal that the regime inspired by Lord Keynes was possible because cities, bridges, roads, counties, municipalities and factories had been destroyed. There was a precondition for the development of Keynesian regime: the destruction of thousands of buildings, deposits and transports. And what is more important, millions of human lives had been destroyed on battlefields, concentration camps and with atomic bombs. Through the war, capitalism confirmed its decadence, its cruelty and its capacity of inflicting great suffering to the masses.
With the I & II World wars, imperialism overcame the crisis due to the colossal development of destructive forces and the classical mechanism that Marx had called burning or annihilation of capital. The destruction of productive forces that preceded the Keynesian regime was a formidable business for the great enterprises and a colossal leap in the development of destructive forces with its top expression: war industry.
Since the beginning of the crisis of world economy, millions of people in the world and movements such as Occupy Wall Street, 15-O and The outraged of the world declared themselves against the multinationals. Many Keynesians approach these movements and declare their solidarity. Are the Keynesians for or against the multinationals? When Krugman, Roubini, Stiglitz or other Keynesians begin with their deceitful speeches against the multinationals, it may be a good idea to ask them a simple question: How did the multinationals emerge? The answer is simple: from the Keynesian regime.
Perhaps many believe those who defend the Keynesian system as a form of functioning of world capitalism. Perhaps they will believe when they are told that it actually allowed a relative development of productive forces. Those boom decades seemed to be contradicting the Marxist theses about capitalist economy being in the imperialist epoch, of decadence and predomination of financial capital.
And yet, the study of Keynesian regime confirms the decadence of capitalism because it proves that it was because of Keynesianism the, a much higher form of accumulation and concentration of capital than that of its predecessors, surfaced.
Keynesianism was an economic regime that, for a short time, did not need financial capital because it emerged and developed due to American investments in Europe. That means, it could rely on a first-rate investor: the imperialist state of the USA. Multinationals and Keynesianism, are complementary elements: the former is the form of accumulation of the Keynesian regime; the latter is the regime of accumulation of the multinationals. This criticism by the Keynesians are hypocritical and a negation of the entire history of capitalism, not of its ancient history but of its modern history.
Multinationals elevated the crisis of capitalism to such a high level that, in their attempt to solve it, capitalists were compelled to launch increasingly vicious attacks on the masses. This is how Moreno explained it. “Only by achieving permanent and practically unlimited increase of exploitation can imperialism overcome the next momentary crises and the chronic crisis, for the increase of capital is constant and dazzling.” (39)
The contradictions of the Keynesian regime that evolved for the worse have been preparing conditions for the end of the “boom” and the transition towards a new world economic regime, totally opposed to Keynesist: globalization, a new regime with a new predominant Form of Accumulation, the Multinational Corporations.
Notes
(1), (2) & (3) John Kenneth Galbraith “The Great Crack” 1954
(4), (5), (6) &(7) Lenin. ”Imperialism, Superior Phase of Capitalism” (1916)
(8) & (9) João Henrique Galvão (PSTU), Brazil “The historic meaning of the ’29 Crisis” (Our highlights)
(10) João Henrique Galvão (PSTU), Brazil “The historic meaning of the ’29 Crisis” (Our highlights)
(11) León Trotsky. Europe and America, The two poles of workers’ movement and the accomplished types of reformism - 1926 New roles for America and Europe.
(12) León Trotsky. Fascism and the New Deal - Marxism and our epoch
(13) Antony C. Sutton “Wall Street and the ascent of Hitler”
(14) Toby Rogers. The Guardian September 2004
(15) Nahuel Moreno. Actualización del Programa de Transición. (1980) Thesis VII “Thirty years of great revolutionary triumphs
(16) Long waves, institutional changes, and historical trends. Minqi Li, Feng Xia, Andong Zhu.Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
(17) Peter Dicken “Las empress multinationals, los estates nation” Source: http://www.globalizacion.or/desarrollo
(18) Interviewing Noam Chomsky, http://www.ecaminos.org/leer.php/4920 (Our highlights)
(19) Nahuel Moreno. Escuela de cuadros Economía 1984.
(20) Nahuel Moreno. Escuela de cuadros Economía 1984.
(21), (22) & (23) Nahuel Moreno. Thesis on World Situation (Project by International Secretariat of the IWL, 20 de October de 1984) I. Chronic crisis of World Economy
(24) & (25) Robert Brenner “Turbulence in World Economy” Chapter III The beginning of the Crisis and Chapter II The long upturn
(26) Nahuel Moreno. Actualización del Programa de Transición. Thesis VII - Thirty years of great revolutionary triumphs
(27) Nahuel Moreno. Thesis on the World Situation International Secretariat of the IWL-FI 20/10/ 84 International Secretariat of the IWL-FI, 20/10/84
(28), (29), (30) & (31) Martín Hernández. “Restoration did not prove superiority of capitalism”. Marxism Alive 16- 2007
(32) USAID Population Reference Bureau. Data Box of the World population 2009
(33) Rodrigue Tremblay, "The Five Pillars of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex", September 25, 2006
(34), (35), (36), (37) & (38) Nahuel Moreno. Actualización del Programa de Transición. (1980) Tesis XIV
(39) Nahuel Moreno. Thesis on World Situation; International Secretariat of the IWL-FI – 20/10/ 84
