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Title: Wars and Capitalism Author: Pëtr Kropotkin Date: 1914 Language: en Topics: economics, history, war Source: From: Kropotkin, Peter. Wars and Capitalism. Freedom Pamphlet. Freedom Press, London, 1914. Retrieved on March 1st, 2009 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/warsandcap.html][dwardmac.pitzer.edu]]. Proofread version retrieved on October 3rd, 2019, from [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=443. Notes: Translated from “La Science Moderne et l’Anarchie,” published by P.-V. Stock, Paris (February, 1913).
In 1883, when England, Germany, Austria, and Romania, taking advantage
of the isolation of France, leagued themselves against Russia, and a
terrible European war was about to blaze forth, we pointed out in the
Révolté what were the real motives for rivalry among States and the wars
resulting therefrom.
The reason for modern war is always the competition for markets and the
right to exploit nations backward in industry. In Europe we no longer
fight for the honor of kings. Armies are pitted against each other that
the revenues of Messrs. Almighty Rothschild, of Schneider, of the Most
Worshipful Company of Anzin, or of the most Holy Catholic Bank of Rome
may remain unimpaired. Kings are no longer of any account.
In fact, all wars in Europe during the last hundred and fifty years were
wars fought for industrial advantage and the rights of exploitation.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the great industries and world
commerce of France, backed by her navy and her colonies in America
(Canada) and Asia (in India), began to develop. Thereupon England, who
had already crushed her competitors in Spain and Holland, anxious to
keep her herself alone the monopoly of maritime commerce, of sea-power,
and of a Colonial Empire, took advantage of the Revolution in France to
begin a whole series of wars against her. From that moment England
understood what riches a monopolized outlet for her growing industry
would bring in. Finding herself rich enough to pay for the armies of
Prussia, Austria, and Russia, she waged during a quarter of a century a
succession of terrible and disastrous wars against France. That country
was compelled to drain herself in order to withstand these wars, and
only at this price was she able to uphold her right to remain a “Great
Power.” That is to say, she retained her right of refusing to submit to
all the conditions that English monopolists endeavored to impose upon
her to the advantage of their own commerce. She upheld her right to a
navy and to military ports. Frustrated in her plans for expansion in
North America, where she lost Canada, and in India, where she was
compelled to abandon her colonies, she received in return permission to
create a Colonial Empire in Africa on condition that she did not touch
Egypt; she was permitted to enrich her monopolists by pillaging the
Arabs of Algeria.
Later on, in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was Germany’s
turn. When serfdom was abolished as a consequence of the uprisings in
1848, and the abolition of communal property compelled young peasants in
a body to leave the country for the town, where they offered themselves
as “out-of-works” at starvation wages to the Masters of Industry,
Industry on a large scale began to flourish in several German States.
German manufacturers soon got to understand that if the working classes
were given a good technical education they would rapidly overtake great
industrial countries like France and England — on condition, be it well
understood, of obtaining for Germany advantageous outlets beyond her
frontiers. They knew what Proudhon had so well demonstrated: that a
trader can only succeed in substantially enriching himself if a large
portion of his produce is exported to other countries, where it can be
sold at a price not obtainable in the country where it was manufactured.
Since that time, in all the social strata of Germany — those of the
exploited as well as those of the exploiters — there was a passionate
desire to unify Germany at all costs: to build up a powerful Empire
capable of supporting an immense army and a strong navy, which would be
able to conquer ports in the North Sea and the Adriatic, and some day
ports in Africa and the East — an Empire which would be the dictator of
economic law in Europe.
For this plan to succeed, it was evidently necessary to break the
strength of France, who would have resisted, and who at that time had,
or seemed to have, the power of preventing its execution.
From these circumstances resulted the terrible war of 1870, with all its
sad consequences as regards universal progress, which we suffer from
even to-day.
By this war and this victory over France, a Germanic Empire — the dream
of Radicals, State Socialists, and partly of German Conservatives since
1848 — was at last constituted. And this Empire made itself felt and its
political power recognized, as well as its right to lay down the law in
Europe.
Germany, on entering a striking period of juvenile activity, quickly
succeeded in doubling and trebling her industrial productivity, and soon
increasing it tenfold; and now the German middle classes covet new
sources of enrichment in the plains of Poland, in the prairies of
Hungary, on the plateaus of Africa, and especially around the railway
line to Baghdad in the rich valleys of Asia Minor, which can provide
German capitalists one of the most beautiful skies in the world. It may
be so with Egypt also some day.
Therefore, it is ports for export, and especially military ports in the
Mediterranean Adriatic and in the Adriatic of the Indian Ocean — the
Persian Gulf — as well as on the African coast in Beira, and also in the
Pacific, that these schemers of German colonial trade wish to conquer.
Their faithful servant, the German Empire, with its armies and
ironclads, is at their service for this purpose.
But at every step these new conquerors meet with a formidable rival —
England bars the way.
Jealous of keeping her supremacy on the sea, jealous above all of
keeping her colonies for exploitation by her own monopolists, scared by
the success of Germany’s colonial policy and the rapid development of
her navy, England is redoubling her efforts in order to have a fleet
capable of infallibly crushing her German rival. England looks
everywhere for allies to weaken the military power of Germany on land.
And when the English press sow alarm and terror, pretending to fear a
German invasion, they well know that danger does not lie in that
quarter. What England needs is the power to dispatch her regular army to
where Germany, in accord with Turkey, might attack a colony of the
British Empire (Egypt, for instance). And for this purpose she must be
in a position to retain at home a strong Territorial army read to drown
in blood, if necessary, any working-class rebellion. For this reason
principally military arts are taught to young bourgeois, grouped in
squads of “scouts.”
The English bourgeoisie of to-day wants to act towards Germany as it
twice acted towards Russia in order to arrest, for fifty years or more,
the development of that country’s sea-power, — once in 1855, with the
help of Turkey, France, and Piedmont; and again in 1904, when she hurled
Japan against the Russian fleet and against Russia’s military port in
the Pacific.
That is why for the past two years we have been living on the alert,
expecting a colossal European war to break out from one day to another.
Besides, we must not forget that the industrial wave, in rolling from
West to East, has also invaded Italy, Austria, and Russia. These States
are in their turn asserting their “right” — the right of their
monopolists to booty in Africa and in Asia.
Russian brigandage in Persia, Italian plunder of the desert Arabs around
Tripoli, and French brigandage in Morocco are the consequences.
The Concert of brigands, acting in the service of the monopolists who
govern Europe, has “allowed” France to seize Morocco, as it has
“allowed” England to seize Egypt; it has “allowed” Italy to lay hold of
a part of the Ottoman Empire, in order to prevent its being seized by
Germany and it has “allowed” Russia to take Northern Persia, in order
that England might secure a substantial strip of land on the borders of
the Persian Gulf before the German railway can reach it.
And for this Italians, massacre inoffensive Arabs, French massacre
Moors, and the hired assassins of the Czar hand Persian patriots who
endeavor to regenerate their country by a little political liberty.
Zola had a good reason for saying: “What scoundrels respectable people
are!”
All States — we saw in our previous article — as soon as the great
industries and the huge trading concerns develop among their people,
become unavoidably involved in wars. They are driven to them by their
own manufacturers, and even by their own working classes, in order to
conquer new markets — that is, new sources of easily-obtained riches.
Moreover, in every State there exists nowadays a class — a clique, I
should say — infinitely more powerful than the manufacturing class, and
which also incites to war. It is composed of great financiers and rich
bankers, who intervene in international relations, and who foment wars.
It happens nowadays in a very simple way.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages most of the large Republican cities
of Italy ended by running up huge debts. When the period of decay of
these cities had begun, owing to their continued endeavors to conquer
rich Oriental markets, and the conquest of such markets had caused
endless wars between the Republican cities themselves, they began to
contract immense debts to their own rich Merchant Guilds. A like
phenomenon of bankers are willing to lend against a mortgage on their
borrowers’ future income.
Of course, it is principally the small States which are preyed upon.
Bankers lend them money at 7, 8, and 10 percent, and as a rule the loans
are “realized” in such cases at no more than 80 percent Of the borrowed
sum. So that, after deducting commissions to banks and middlemen, the
State very often does not receive even as much as three-quarters of the
amount inscribed in its ledger.
On these swollen or “watered” sums the State that has contracted debts
must in future provide both for interest and sinking fund. And when it
does not do so at the appointed term, the bankers are quite willing to
add the arrears of interest and sinking fund to the principal of the
debt. The worse the finances of the indebted State grow, the more
reckless the expenditure of its rulers, the more willingly are new loans
offered to it. Whereupon the bankers, after setting themselves up as a
“Concert,” combine to lay hands on certain taxes, certain duties,
certain railway lines.
In this way the financiers ruined Egypt, and later on caused it to be
practically annexed by England. The more foolish the expenditure of the
Khedive, the more he was encouraged. It was annexation by small
doses.[1] In the same way Turkey was ruined, in order to take her
provinces little by little. The same means, we are told, were employed
towards Greece, when a group of financiers egged her on to war with
Turkey, in order to seize part of her revenues. And in the same way
Japan was exploited by the great financial houses of the United States
before and during her wars with China and Russia.
As to China, for several years she has been partitioned by a syndicate
representing the great banks of England, France, Germany, and the United
States. And since the Revolution in China, Russia, and Japan demand to
be allowed to take part in this syndicate. They want to profit by it in
order to extend not only their spheres of exploitation, but also their
territories. The partitioning of China, prepared by bankers, is thus on
the order of the day.
In short, there is in the lending States a complete organization, in
which rulers, bankers, company promoters, concocters of business
schemes, and other interlopers, whom Zola has so well described in
“L’Argent,” joined hands in order to exploit whole States. Thus, where
simple folk believe they have discovered deep political reasons, there
are only plots hatched by the filibusters of finance, who exploit
everything: political and economical rivalry, national enmities,
diplomatic traditions, and religious conflicts.
In all the wars of the last quarter of a century we can trace the work
of the great financial houses. The conquest of Egypt and the Transvaal,
the annexation of Tripoli, the occupation of Morocco, the partition of
Persia, the massacres in Manchuria, the massacres and international
looting in China during the Boxer riots, the wars of Japan — everywhere
we find great banks at work. Everywhere financiers have had the casting
vote. And if up till now a great European war has not burst out, it is
simply because the great financiers hesitate. They do not quite know to
which side the millions involved will cause the scales to turn; they do
not know which horse to back with their millions.
As to the hundreds of thousands of human lives which the war would cost
— what have the financiers to do with them? The mind of a financier
works with columns of figures which balance each other. The consequences
do not come within his province; he does not even possess the necessary
imagination to bring human lives into his calculations.
What an abominable world would be unveiled if only somebody took the
trouble to study finance behind the scenes! We can guess it
sufficiently, if only from the wee corner of the veil lifted by “Lysis”
in his articles in La Revue, which appeared in 1908 in a volume entitled
“Contre l’Oligarchie Financière en France” (“Against the Financial
Oligarchy in France”).
From this work we can, in fact, see how four or five large French banks
— the Crédit Lyonnais, the Société Générale, the Comptoir National
d’Escompte, and the Crédit Industriel et Commercial — have come to
possess the complete monopoly of great financial operations in the
French money market.
The greater part, about four-fifths, of French savings, amounting every
year to nearly ÂŁ80,000,000, is poured into these great banks; and when
foreign States, both great and small, railway companies, towns, or
industrial companies from the five continents of the globe present
themselves in Paris to make a loan, they turn to these four or five
great banking companies, which have virtually the monopoly of foreign
loans, and have at their disposal the necessary machinery to boom them.
Needless to say that it was not the skill of the directors of these
companies that created their lucrative position. It was the State, the
French Government, in the first place, that protected and favored these
banks, and raised them to a privileged position which soon became a
colossal monopoly. Whereupon the other States — the borrowing States —
strengthened this monopoly. Thus, the Crédit Lyonnais, that monopolizes
the Russian loans, owes its privilege position to the financial agents
of the Russian Government, and to the Czar’s Ministers of Finance.
The amount of business transacted every year by these four or five
financial societies represents hundreds of millions of pounds. Thus, in
two years, 1906 and 1907, they distributed in loans ÂŁ300,000,000, of
which £220,000,000 were in foreign loans (“Lysis,” page 101). And when
we learn that the “commission” of these companies for organizing a
foreign loan is usually 5 percent for “the syndicate of intermediaries”
(apporteurs, through whose instrumentality the new loan is brought
about), 5 percent for the “guarantee syndicate,” and from 7 to 10
percent for the syndicate or trust of the four or five banks we have
just named, we see what immense sums go to these monopolists.
Thus, one single “intermediary” who “brought out” the loan of
ÂŁ50,000,000 contracted by the Russian Government in 1906 to crush the
Revolution, actually received — so “Lysis” tells us in his
just-mentioned book — a commissioned of 12,000,000 francs (£480,000).
We can, therefore, understand the occult influence on international
politics exercised by the powerful directors of these financial
societies, with their mysterious bookkeeping and with the plenary powers
that certain directors exact and obtain from their shareholders —
because they must be discreet when nearly half a million pounds have to
be paid to Monsieur So-and-so, ÂŁ10,000* to a certain Minister, and so
may millions, besides the orders of the Légion d’Honneur, to the Press!
There is not, says “Lysis,” one single large newspaper in France that is
not paid by the banks. This is clear. One can easily guess how much
money was distributed in this way among the Press during the years 1906
and 1907, when a series of Russian State loans, railway loans, and loans
for real estate banks were being prepared. How many “quill-drivers”
waxed fat on the loans — we see it in “Lysis’s” book. What a windfall,
in fact! The Government of a great State at bay! A revolution to be
crushed! Such luck is not to be met with every day!
No doubt everybody is more or less aware of that, and there is not a
single politician, in Paris or elsewhere, who does not know the workings
of all this jobbery, and who does not hear mentioned the names of the
women and men who have received large sums after each loan, great or
small. Russian or Brazilian. And each one, if he has the slightest
knowledge of business, knows to what degree this organization of great
financial houses is a product of the State, an essential attribute of
the State.
And it would be such a State — the powers and prerogatives of which our
politicians are so careful not to lessen — that most of the social
reformers expect to be the instrument for the emancipation of the
masses! What nonsense!
Be it stupidity, ignorance, or imposture — it is equally unpardonable in
people who believe themselves called to direct the fate of nations.
We have seen in the preceding chapter that industrial rivalries and the
desire of acquiring new markets for the export of home-made products are
the chief cause of wars in modern times. Let us now see how in modern
industry the States create a class of men interested in turning nations
into armies, ever ready to hurl themselves at one another.
There are now, as we know, immense industries giving work to millions of
men, and existing for the sole purpose of producing war material. It is,
therefore, entirely to the advantage of these manufacturers, and of
those who lend them the necessary capital, to prepare for war, and to
fan the fear that war is ever on the eve of breaking out.
We need not concern ourselves with the small fry — with the makers of
worthless firearms, trumpery swords, and revolvers that always miss
fire, such as are to be found in Birmingham, Liège, etc. These are not
of much account, although the trade in these firearms, carried on by
exporters who speculate in “Colonial” wars, has already attained a
certain importance. We know, for example, that English merchants
supplied firearms to the Matabele when they were about to rise against
the English, who were forcing them into serfdom. Later on, there were
French manufacturers, and even well-known English ones, who made their
fortunes by supplying firearms, cannons, and ammunition to the Boers.
And even now we hear of quantities of firearms imported by English
merchants into Arabia, which some day will cause risings among the
Arabian tribes, bring about the plundering of a few British merchants,
and consequently British “intervention to reestablish order,” to be
followed sooner or later by “annexation.”
However, such facts need not be multiplied. Bourgeois patriotism is
already well known, and far more serious cases have been witnessed
recently. Thus, during the war between Russia and Japan, English gold
was supplied to the Japanese (at a very high rate of interest), in order
that they might destroy Russia’s nascent sea-power in the Pacific, which
gave umbrage to England. But at the very same time the English colliery
companies sold 300,000 tons of coal at a very high price to Russia, to
enable her to send Rojdestvensky’s fleet to the East. Two birds were
killed with one stone: the owners of the Welsh collieries made a good
business out of it; the shareholders and the directors of the Welsh
colliery companies, taken from the nobility, the clergy, and the House
of Commons — every self-respecting company has representatives of these
three classes on its board of directors — increased their fortunes; and,
on the other hand, the Lombard Street financiers placed money at 9 or 10
percent in the Japanese loan, and mortgaged a substantial part of the
income of their “dear allies” as a security for the debt.
These are but a few facts among thousands of others of the same kind. In
fact, we should be apprized of fine things done by the ruling classes if
the bourgeois did not know how to keep their secrets! Let us, then, pass
on to the next category of facts.
We know that all great States have favored, besides their own arsenals,
the establishment of huge private factories, where guns, armor-plates
for ironclads of lesser size, shells, gunpowder, cartridges, etc., are
manufactured. Large sums are spent by all States in the construction of
these auxiliary factories, where the most skilled workmen and engineers
are to be found gathered together, ready to fabricate engines of
destruction on a great scale in case of a war.
Now, it is perfectly evident that the direct advantage of those
capitalists who have invested their capital in such concerns lies in
keeping up rumors of war in order to persuade us that armaments are
necessary, and even spreading panic if need be. In fact, they do so.
If the chances of a European war sometimes grow less, if the ruling
classes — though themselves interested as shareholders in great
factories of this kind (Anzin, Krupp, Armstrong, etc.), and in great
railway companies, coal mines, etc. — require pressing in order to make
them sound the war-trumpet, they are compelled to do so by Jingo opinion
fabricated by means of newspaper, and even by preparations made for
insurrections.[2]
In fact, does not that prostitute, the Press, prepare men’s minds for
new wars? Does it not hasten on those wars that are likely to break out?
And in this way does it not compel the Governments to double, to treble
their armaments? For example, did we not see in England, during the ten
years preceding the Boer War, the great Press, and especially the
illustrated papers, artfully preparing the people’s minds for the
necessity of a war, in order to “arouse patriotism”? To this end no
stone was left unturned. With much noise they published novels about the
next war, in which we were told how the English, beaten at first, made a
supreme effort, and ended by destroying the German fleet and
establishing themselves in Rotterdam. An English nobleman spent large
sums of money that a patriotic play might be acted all over England. The
play was too stupid to pay, even in second-rate theaters, but its
production played into the hands of those moneymakers and politicians
who intrigued with Rhodes in Africa that they might seize the Transvaal
gold mines and compel the black natives to work in them.
Forgetting the past, these self-styled “patriots” even went as far as
reviving the cult of England’s sworn enemy, Napoleon I., and since then
the work in this direction has never ceased. In 1904–5 they almost
succeeded in driving France, governed at that time by Clemenceau and
Delcassé, into a war against Germany — the Minister for Foreign Affairs
of the Conservative Government, Lord Lansdowne, having promised to
support the French armies with an army of 50,000 men, to be sent to the
Continent. Delcassé, having attached undue importance to this ridiculous
proposal, very nearly launched France into a disastrous war.
In general, the more we advance with our bourgeois State civilization,
the more the Press, ceasing to be the expression of what may be called
public opinion, applies itself to manufacturing warlike opinion by the
most infamous means. The Press, in all great States, is controlled by
two or three financial syndicates, which manufacture the public opinion
needed for the promotion of their enterprises. They own the large
newspapers, and the lesser ones are of no account. They are to be bought
at such low prices!
But this is not all. The gangrene spreads far deeper.
Modern wars no longer consist of a mere massacre of hundreds of
thousands of men in a few great battles: a massacre of which those who
have not followed the details of the great battles during the last war
in Manchuria and the atrocious details of the great battles during the
last war in Manchuria and the atrocious details of the siege and defense
of Port Arthur have absolutely no idea. Yet the three great historical
battles — Gravelotte, Potomac, Borodino (near Moscow) — each lasting
three days, and in which there were respectively 90,000, 100,000, and
110,000 men killed and wounded on both sides, — these battles were
child’s play in comparison to modern warfare, as we saw it in Manchuria.
To-day, great battles are fought on a front, not of five to ten miles as
before, but of thirty-five to forty miles; they no longer last three
days, as was the case in the just-named great battles, but seven days
(Lao-Yang) and ten days (Mukden); and the losses are 100,000 and 150,000
men on each side.
The ravages caused by shells, thrown with accuracy of aim at a distance
of three, four, or five miles, by batteries the position of which cannot
be made out, as they use smokeless powder, are unimaginable. The guns
are not fired haphazard any more. The position occupied by the enemy is
divided mentally into squares two-thirds of a mile wide, and the fire
from all the batteries is concentrated on each square successively, in
order to destroy everything to be found there.
When the fire from several hundred pieces of ordnance is concentrated on
such a square, there is no space of ten square yards that has not been
struck by a shell, not a bush that has not been cut down by the howling
monsters sent nobody knows whence. Seven or eight days of this terrible
fire drives the soldiers to madness; and when the attacking columns,
after having been repelled eight to ten times in succession,
nevertheless gain ground by a few yards every time, and finally reach
the enemy’s trenches, a hand-to-hand struggle begins. After having
hurled hand-grenades and pieces of pyroxyline at one another (two pieces
of pyroxyline tied together with a string were used by the Japanese as a
sling), Russian and Japanese soldiers rolled in the trenches of Port
Arthur like wild beasts, striking each other with the butt-end of their
rifles and with their knives, and tearing each other’s flesh with their
teeth.
The working classes of the West know nothing of this terrible return to
the most atrocious savagery which modern warfare brings forth; and the
middle class who know it take care not to tell them.
We were told that smokeless powder would render wars impossible, to
which we replied that this was sentimental nonsense. We now know that
with the return of modern warfare to the hand-grenade, the sling, and
the bayonet, war has returned to the most barbarous aspects of olden
days.
However, modern wars do not only consist of massacres, of massacre
brought to the pitch of rage — of a return to savagery. They also cause
the destruction of human labor on a colossal scale, and we continually
feel the effect of this destruction in time of peace by the increase of
misery among the poor, running parallel with the enrichment of the rich.
Every war destroys a formidable amount of all sorts of goods, including
not only the so-called war material, but also things most necessary to
everyday life and to society as a whole: bread, meat, vegetables, food
of all kind, beasts of burden, leather, coal, metal, clothing, and so
on. This represents the useful labor of millions of men during decades;
and all this is wasted, burnt, gutted in a few months. Even in time of
peace it is wasted, in anticipation of coming wars.
As this war material, these metals, and these stores must be prepared
beforehand, the mere possibility of a new war brings about in all our
industries shocks and crises that every one of us feels. You, and I, all
of us, we feel their effect in the smallest details of our life. The
bread we eat, the coal we burn, the railway ticket we buy, the price of
each article depends on rumors relating to the likelihood of war at an
early date — rumors propagated by speculators on a rise in the prices of
all this produce.
The great industrial crises which we have lately lived through were
certainly due — as we shall see in our next issue — to the anticipation
of wars.
The necessity for preparing, long beforehand, formidable quantities of
war material and accumulations of stores of every description, brings
about in all industries shocks and crises from which every one, and
especially the working man, suffers to a terrible extent. This fact was
to be observed quite recently in the United States.
Every one, no doubt, remembers the industrial crisis that devastated the
United States some three or four years ago. In a measure, it is not over
yet. Well, the origin of this crisis — whatever may have been said about
it by “scientific” economists, who know the writings of their
predecessors, but ignore real life — the true origin of this crisis lay
in the excessive production of the chief industries of the States,
carried on during several years in anticipation of a great European war
and of a war between Japan and the United States. Those who spread the
idea of these wars knew well the effect that the expectation of such
conflicts would exercise in stimulating certain American industries. In
fact, for two or three years a feverish energy reigned in extracting all
sorts of metals and coal, and in the manufacture of railway plant and
preserved articles of food, as well as all materials for clothing.
The extraction of iron ore and the manufacture of steel in the United
States reached quite unexpected proportions during these years. Steel is
the principal article of consumption in modern warfare, and the United
States manufactured it in a fantastical way, as well as those metals,
such as nickel and manganese, which are required in the manufacture of
various kinds of steel used for war materials. At the same time, the big
American concerns vied with one another as to who would speculate the
most in gun metal, copper, lead, and nickel.
The same thing happened with supplies of corn, preserved meat, fish, and
vegetables. Cottons, cloth, and leather followed closely. And as each
great industry gives rise to a number of smaller ones around it, the
fever of a production far in excess of the demand spread more and more.
Money-lenders, or rather credit-lenders, who supplied the manufacturers
with capital, profited of course by this fever, even more so that the
captains of industry.
Then, at a blow, production suddenly stopped, without it being possible
to ascribe the fact to any one of the causes to which preceding crises
had been attributed. The truth is, that from the day when the great
European financial houses were sure that Japan, ruined by the war in
Manchuria, would not dare to attack the United States, and that no
European nation felt itself sufficiently sure of victory to draw the
sword, European capitalists refused to give credit either to those
American bankers who kept up over-production, or to the Japanese
“Nationalists.”
The threat of an imminent war ceased. Steel factories, copper mines,
blast furnaces, dockyards, tanneries, all suddenly slowed down their
operations, their orders, their purchases.
It was worse than a crisis, it was a disaster. Millions of workers of
both sexes were thrown on the street and left in the most abject misery.
Great and small factories closed down. The contagion spread as during an
epidemic, sowing terror around.
Who will ever tell of the sufferings of millions of men, women, and
children, of broken lives during the crisis, while immense fortunes were
being made in anticipation of mangled flesh and the piles of human
corpses about to be heaped up in the great battles!
This is war; this is how the State enriches the rich, keeps the poor in
misery, and year by year reduces them more and more to subjection.
Now, a crisis resulting from the same causes as the one in the United
States will in all likelihood be produced in Europe, and especially in
England.
Towards the middle of the year 1911 the world was astonished at the
sudden and quite unforeseen increase in English exports. Nothing of
consequence in the world of economics led us to expect it. No reason for
it has been given, precisely because the only possible explanation is
that the orders cam from the Continent in anticipation of a war between
England and Germany. As we know, this war failed to break out in July,
1911; but if it had broken out, France, Russia, Austria, and Italy would
have been compelled to participate in it. It is evident that great
financiers, who supply speculators in metal, provisions, cloth, leather,
etc., with their credit, had been warned of the threatening turn
relations were taking between the two sea Powers. They knew that both
Governments were pressing forward their preparations for war, so they
hastened to give their orders, which increased English exports in 1911
beyond measure.[3]
To the same cause is also due the recent extraordinary rise in prices of
all provisions without exception, at a time when neither the yield of
last year’s harvest nor the accumulation of all kinds of goods in
warehouses justified the rise. The fact is also that the rise did not
affect provisions only; all goods were influenced by it. Orders
continued to pour in when no reason whatever, save the anticipation of
war, could be brought forward for this excessive demand.
And now it would be sufficient that the great Colonial speculators of
England and Germany agree about their share in the partition of Eastern
Africa, and to act in concert as regards “the spheres of influence” in
Asia and in Africa — that is to say, come to terms over the next
conquests- for a sudden stoppage of industry to take place in Europe
similar to the crisis from which the United States have suffered
recently.
In truth, this reduction began to be felt already at the beginning of
1912. That is why the Coal Companies and the Cotton Lords of England
proved so uncompromising towards their work people and drove them to a
strike. They foresaw a reduction of orders when they had already too
great a stock of goods and too much coal piled up around their mines.
When we closely analyze the facts arising from the activity of modern
States, we understand to what extent the whole life of our civilized
societies depends, not on the facts of economic developments in nations,
but on the manner in which various groups of monopolists and privileged
men, more or less favored by the State, react on these facts.
Thus it is evident that the entry into the arena of economics of such a
powerful producer in modern Germany, with her schools, her technical
education spread broadcast among her people, her youthful high spirits,
and her capacity for organization, of necessity changed the relations
between nations. A readjustment of forces was unavoidable. But, owing to
the specific organization of modern States, the adjustment of economic
forces is impeded by another factor of political origin: the privileges
and the monopolies constituted and upheld by the State.
In reality, modern States are specially constituted in order to
establish privileges in favor of the rich, at the expense of the poor.
The great financial houses of each nation always lay down the law in all
political matters of importance. “What will Baron Rothschild say to it?”
“What attitude will the syndicate of great bankers in Paris, Vienna, and
London take?” Such questions have become the dominant element in
political affairs and in the relations between nations. It is the
approval or disapproval of financiers that makes and unmakes Ministries
everywhere in Europe. True, that in England there is also the approval
of the State Church and of the brewers to be faced; but the Church and
the brewers are always in agreement with the great financiers, who take
care never to interfere with their partizans’ income. After all, as a
Minister is but a man who holds fast to his office, to his power, and to
the possibilities of enrichment which his post offers to him and to his
supporters, it necessarily follows that the question of international
relations is nowadays finally reduced to knowing whether the favored
monopolists of a particular State will take such or such an attitude
towards the favorites of the same caliber in another State.
Thus, the state of economical forces brought into action is determined
by the technical development of diverse nations at a certain time in
their history; but the use that will be made of these forces depends
entirely on the degree of servitude towards their Government to which
populations have allowed themselves to be reduced. The economical forces
which could produce harmony and well-being, and give a fresh impulse to
libertarian civilization if they had free play in society, — these
forces, being directed by the State, that is to say, by an organization
specially developed to enrich the rich and to absorb all modern progress
in order to benefit privileged classes — these same forces become an
instrument of oppression, of monopolists, and endless wars. They
accelerate the enrichment of the favored, and they augment the misery
and the enthrallment of the poor.
This is why those economists who continue to consider economic forces
alone, without analyzing the limits within which their action is
circumscribed nowadays — without taking into account the ideology of the
State, or the forces that each State necessarily places at the service
of the rich, in order to favor their enrichment at the expense of the
poor — this is why such economists remain completely outside the
realities of the economic and social world.
[1] At the time of the Egyptian “war,” in 1882, H.M. Hyndman published
in the Nineteenth Century an excellent article telling in full of this
piece of robbery.
[2] These lines were written and published in the Temps Nouveaux in the
Summer of 1912. The striking revelations of Liebknecht, concerning the
ways in which rumors of coming wars are spread in the Press by the
owners of armament factories, and national hatred fostered in order to
increase the orders for war material, have come since to illustrate on a
grand scale this dominant feature of the present-day industry.
[3] A few figures will make these economic shocks the more apparent.
Between 1900 and 1904 the exports of British produce from the United
Kingdom were normal and fluctuated round about ÂŁ300,000,000. In 1904
there was a rumor of a great war; the United States quickened her
production, and English exports rose in three years from ÂŁ300,000,000 to
ÂŁ426,000,000. But the war, so longed for, was not forthcoming, and there
was a sudden decline of orders; the crisis we mentioned broke out in the
United States, and exports of English produce fell to ÂŁ327,000,000. In
1910, however, the anticipation of a great European war was about to be
realized, and in 1910 and 1911 English exports rose to an absolutely
unforeseen height which they had never approached before. Yet nobody
could explain the fact. In 1911 the exports reached ÂŁ454,000,000, and
over ÂŁ487,000,000 in 1912. Coal, steel, lead, fast vessels, cruisers,
cartridges, cloth, linen, foot-gear, leather, preserved foods, —
everything was in demand and was exported in huge quantities. Fortunes
were heaped up visibly. Men were about to massacre one another; what
good luck!