213

Imperialist contradictions continued to develop sometimes obviously, sometimes not so obviously, throughout the postwar period; their area of operation has broadened and the struggle between imperialist countries has become more acute. While during the early postwar years these contradictions tended to be somewhat submerged, the new stage in the general crisis of capitalism which began in the late 1950s has shown their deepening and exacerbation.

214

The changes in the balance of power both between individual countries within the capitalist system and in the world arena as a whole, especially between the two systems, define the specific nature of inter-imperialist contradictions today. The first point is illustrated by the following table on the share of imperialist countries in the capitalist economy in the last 25 years (the figures are percentages):  [214•* 

USA ........... 55.8 48.9 40.9 40.3 Common Market countries ....... Federal Germany ... .... 13.0 4.2 18.9 9.0 20.4 9.7 19.0 8.6 France .............. 4.5 4.8 4.7 5.2 Italy ........ 2.2 2.9 3.7 3.3 Britain 11.9 9.7 7.1 6.0 Japan ........ 1.3 3.5 9.4 9.3

The share of individual countries in the overall exports of the capitalist world (in percentages) has also sharply changed in the same period:  [214•** 

1947 1957 1970 1971 USA ............... 33.0 20.8 15.5 14.2 Federal Germany .... 0 5 9 1 12.5 12 7 France .............. 4.1 5.4 6.5 6.6 Britain ......... 10 0 9 3 7 1 7 3 Italy 1 4 2 6 4 8 4 9 Japan ......... 0 4 2 9 7 0 7 8 215

The change in the balance of power within the capitalist world is reflected also in the data on gold reserves of the central banks, chancellories and government currency agencies (end of the year, in million dollars):"  [215•* 

1948 1957 1970 1971 USA ........... 24,399 22,857 11,072 11,081 Common Market countries . Federal Germany .... Franca 28^^1^^ 548 2,541 581 13,656 3,980 3,532 15,131 4,426 3,825 Italy 96 452 2 887 3 131 Britain ..... 1 611 1 555 1,349 842 Japan 3 23 532 738 1948 1957 1970 1971 ’1951.

p Without going into the details or studying the interim fluctuations, the general trend is clear: the US share is diminishing in the world capitalist system while that of other advanced capitalist countries, except Britain, is on the increase. This trend is an objective basis for the growing conflicts and competitive struggle among the major capitalist countries.

p The dialectics of the relations among the capitalist countries has been such that the United States, in helping to rehabilitate and fortify the positions of capitalism in Western Europe and, partially, in Japan, has encouraged the resurrection and growth of its imperialist rivals. New centres, especially the European Economic Community, have taken their place alongside American imperialism, the principal centre of the capitalist economy and politics and the stronghold of world reaction.

p Relying on their growing economic strength, the West European states (together and individually), as well as 216 Japan, are conducting an intensive battle against their American allies and competitors and also among themselves both on their national markets and on markets of other countries. Inter-imperialist contradictions of that type primarily affect the activity of economic groups like the EEC, EFTA; they result in international monetary crises, and so on. The very fierce competitive battle between monopolies of various countries inevitably appears in the political relations between imperialist countries.

p The strengthened economic status of Western Europe and Japan enables them to act both against the widespread expansion of American capital and against certain aspects of military-political dependence on the United States, which was forced upon them in the immediate postwar years under the pretext of common defence against the “threat of communist aggression”. Imperialist unity which was so assiduously cultivated after the war is being seriously undermined nowadays when individual capitalist countries are acquiring the possibility of pursuing a more independent foreign policy.

p The early 1960s were especially conspicuous for growing inter-imperialist strife. In a comment on President de Gaulle’s refusal to admit Britain to the Common Market, the London Times said in February 1963: “His Europe turns its back on America, and for the time being excludes Britain. This is clean contrary to everything for which the West had been painfully working for nearly 20 years.”  [216•* 

p This situation gave birth to acute concern also in the United States; as was apparent in the press and various bourgeois writings. The well-known American historian Hans Morgenthau published the book The Crisis of Western Alliance in 1965 in which he admitted that attempts to reestablish the former situation was bringing American policy in Europe into a blind alley. Walter Lippmann described America’s falling prestige as the absolute ruler in the world of capitalism in the following words: “Our relations with Europe have changed so radically in the past few months 217 that the European policies which were worked out in the postwar period are out of date. The policies have become so irrelevant in the actual situation that our influence on developments has become negligible.”  [217•* 

p It was at that time that the United States attitude to Western Europe, and particularly the Common Market, began to change. While Washington had previously looked on it largely as a means of strengthening capitalist unity and its own influence in Europe, now the mounting economic power and independence of the Six began to sow the seeds of anxiety. At the beginning of 1963 the then French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou described Washington’s position as follows: as the Common Market gathered momentum, the time came when the US Administration began to fear that the European Economic Community would become too well organised, too effective and would become a barrier difficult to overcome.

p American imperialism is attempting to make up for the weakening, somewhat, of its purely economic positions by widely utilising the still prevailing military and political levers based on absolute military superiority of the United States over other imperialist states.

p Alongside these attempts, American capitalism has a major trump up its sleeve in the fight against West European capital. This is its superiority in rate and scale of scientific and technological progress. The well-known ideologist of American foreign policy Zbigniew Brzezinski has painted a rather conceited and inflated picture of the prospects that lie ahead of the United States and Western Europe in this field. He says that while Western Europe remains in the industrial age, the United States is swiftly becoming a technotronic society which is far outstripping its West European allies economically and this is engendering what he calls a “psychological and cultural" gap between Western Europe and the United States.

p The prospects of the growing "technological gap" between the United States and Western Europe, as well as the broad expansion of American capital, is causing concern in 218 Western Europe. Indicative of this was the far-reaching response to the publication of The American Challenge by the French politician Servan-Schreiber in late 1967. Of late the Western press has been greatly concerned about the problem of the “brain drain" from Western Europe to the United States. An increasing number of scientists and highly qualified technicians have emigrated to America in search of better material rewards.

p So the economic rivalry, the competitive struggle, “the ineradicable strife in economic interests”, to which Lenin drew attention, are inevitably reflected in the mounting political discord within the capitalist system, and especially within the aggressive military-political blocs created by the United States immediately after the war.

p The main causes, however, of the present sharpening of political conflicts lie in the sphere of the world correlation of forces, in the sphere of struggle between the two systems. Postwar events have convincingly shown, in the final count, the futility of military aggressive forms of struggle against socialism and the revolutionary processes. Neither the arms race nor the association of imperialist states in aggressive NATO, nor the cold war as a whole, could halt the growth of progressive forces or stop the change in the world balance of power in favour of socialism, which has been increasingly evident since the late 1950s. That is one side of the medal. On the other side is the peace-loving foreign policy actively pursued by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, which has deprived the aggressive ideologists and imperialist politicians of any grounds or credibility for their myth of “Red imperialism" or a Soviet “threat” to Western Europe.

p The evident trend in Western Europe to closer ties with socialist states is causing a stir in American ruling circles, frightened of a further weakening of their leading position within the capitalist world. In this connection, a call made by Senator Frank Church to the American Administration is indicative; in studying these trends, Senator Church urged the United States to “lead its allies in their reach eastward across the Elbe. .. . But whether or not we choose to lead them, they will press on, believing, as more Europeans do 219 every day, that in Europe, at least, the cold war is over.”  [219•*  At the same time, the aggressive actions of the United States in various parts of the world, and especially the war in Vietnam, fraught with the danger of a, further escalation and transition to world war, with the almost automatic involvement in it of all NATO members, and political and economic interests encouraged America’s Atlantic partners to seek a more independent policy. America’s NATO allies and partners in other blocs are obviously apprehensive in relation to attempts to involve them in aggressive actions in various parts of the world, actions that are alien to the interests of the working people and also of the ruling classes in these countries. It is significant that in the mid– 1960s the United States was unable, although using all the means of pressure at its disposal, to involve its major allies directly in the war in Vietnam, as it had in the Korean war in 1950.

p The US attempts to settle disputed issues in non-European areas by military means have, therefore, not brought in their wake unity of the world imperialist forces. American imperialism’s major allies have limited themselves at best to symbolic support and have not demurred from using American preoccupation with military intervention in Asia for strengthening their own positions in other regions at the expense of the United States.

p Such is the common ground for the worsening of interimperialist contradictions over recent years. Under the assault of these contradictions, the system of economic and political blocs organised by Washington in the early postwar years has shown deep cracks. The most important of these in significance and implications is the growing conflict within NATO. The French exit from NATO’s military organisation, the mounting strife between the United States and other NATO members, the growing trend in Western Europe to end military and political dependence on the United States, and the improvement of Federal Germany’s relations with the socialist states have all set serious problems to the NATO leaders.

220

p One of the favourite themes for political and scholarly discussion on both sides of the Atlantic has been the “crisis of confidence”, “confusion” and even “revolution inside NATO”.

p The NATO crisis is ultimately a result of the development and worsening of economic and political contradictions among its members at a time when the forces of peace and socialism are gaining ground, and the peaceful policy of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries designed to end the cold war is gaining in popularity.

p The contradictions and differences of opinion among individual imperialist countries are more and more affecting the sphere of economic relations with the world socialist system. The bourgeoisie is afraid to relinquish economic and political gains associated with expanded relations with socialist states. These contradictions had existed previously. In the field of trade, many countries of Western Europe and Japan frequently had flouted the discriminatory restrictions imposed by the United States, and in the volume of trade with socialist states had far outstripped the United States. These contradictions are becoming still more acute as international tension in Europe lessens. Even in America voices are frequently being heard in favour of closer economic ties with socialist states. The New York Times, in April 1966, advocated more trade between West and East: “At a minimum, American businessmen should be given the same facilities to do business with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that their competitors in Western Europe and Japan enjoy.”  [220•*  In the seventies the USA entered the path of extending its economic ties with the USSR.

p In the overall context of present-day inter-imperialist contradictions, recent French foreign policy, associated with the name of General de Gaulle, is extremely symptomatic, especially in such acts as France’s leaving NATO’s military organisation, the rapprochement with the Soviet Union and some other socialist countries, the stand it has taken, as distinct from most imperialist countries, on the Arab-Israeli 221 conflict, and the overt criticism of American policy. All this can hardly be explained, as some American and even French authors are inclined to do, by the personal views and qualities of de Gaulle, or his “breaking of faith".

p All these acts have reflected the objectively prevailing contradictions between France and the United States and, in a certain sense, between Western Europe and the United States in the existing international balance of power. France, in the person of de Gaulle, recognised these contradictions before most other capitalist countries and saw the changes that had taken place in the overall world situation, and embodied them in its foreign policy. The anti-American accent in French policy had in some sense a general West European significance. This is what the influential British Sunday newspaper The Observer had to say in this respect: “...The fact is that the roots of the French attitude lie deeper than personality of General de Gaulle. They are to be found both in French history and in the more recently changed world situation. It would be a great mistake... to believe that either the French attitude or the new pattern of power in Europe and the world would be essentially changed by the disappearance of General de Gaulle, though the style and methods of his successors might be different.”  [221•*  It is certainly true that de Gaulle’s retirement and his death in November 1970 did not cause a change in French foreign policy.

p Relations with the young national states of Asia and Africa that arose after the war on the ruins of former colonial empires remain an important sphere of inter– imperialist contradictions, although they differ in a certain way from the contradictions of the immediate postwar period.

p In connection with the noticeable postwar trend towards collective colonialism and concerted efforts of the major imperialist powers in the fight against national liberation movements, each power pursued its own aims and sometimes came into open conflict with the others. This is especially typical of the policy of the United States, which 222 endeavoured to use its “aid” to the old metropolitan countries in order to weaken their position in Asia and Africa and strengthen its own position. One recalls American policy during the Anglo-French-Israeli aggression against Egypt in 1956, the special position of France in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967, the differences in the positions of the imperialist states on the events in Nigeria, and so on. It is noteworthy that while previously the United States often represented itself as being anti-colonialist, in an effort to outdo Britain and France, today the ruling circles of France and other powers try to dissociate themselves from the colonialist policy of the United States.

p The capitalist world is going through a phase of development of contradictions among imperialist states leading to mounting rivalry and struggle both within the bounds of existing blocs and between them. Meanwhile, the contradictions between the United States, on the one hand, and the capitalist countries of Western Europe, on the other, are the most important contradictions within the capitalist world as far as political consequences are concerned. Although relations within Western Europe contain a whole complex of economic and political contradictions, the West European countries have certain common interests (the objective requirements of the productive forces during the scientific and technological revolution, a certain community of interests in the fight against American competition and a general interest in escaping involvement in an exhausting and destructive war for the sake of the interests of their transatlantic partner). They are associated with the United States by artificially fanned military and political interests which cannot serve as a sufficiently firm basis for far-reaching cooperation in all, especially non-military, spheres of international relations.

p The growing importance of Japanese-American contradictions (and the prospect of Japanese-West European contradictions), is connected with Japan’s rapid economic development and its emergence to second place, after the United States, in the capitalist world in volume of industrial output and other indices. Japanese imperialism is more and more vigorously taking part in the fight for markets and 223 profits. American-Japanese rivalry is complicated by the peculiar political unequal position of Japan in relations with the United States and, at the same time, a certain interest among Japanese ruling circles for retaining the close military and political alliance with the United States. Nonetheless, this does not remove any prospect of an aggravation of Japanese-American contradictions.

p Other inter-imperialist contradictions of a local character include the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus— a conflict which has not so far been resolved by the fact that both countries are NATO members or by their general dependence on the United States, and the Anglo-Spanish conflict over Gibraltar.

p Thus, despite all the changes of the past decades, despite the quite far-reaching and, to a certain extent, irreversible processes of economic integration, despite the community of basic class interests and the complicated system of interdependence of the imperialist states, the inter-imperialist contradictions have proved to be ineradicable, and one even notices a tendency for them to grow worse. “The basic contradiction of the contemporary world, that between socialism and imperialism,” the CPSU Programme states, “does not eliminate the deep contradictions rending the capitalist world.”  [223•* 

p While imperialist unity in its various manifestations complicates the actions of progressive revolutionary forces, makes the conditions for their activity more difficult and has an adverse effect on the overall balance of power between the two systems, the inter-imperialist contradictions are sapping the strength of imperialism and facilitating the struggle of progressive forces and the development of the world revolutionary process.

p This circumstance is increasingly being recognised by ideologists and politicians in imperialist countries. The insistent appeals for “an Atlantic community" and “Western unity”, the innumerable recipes for creating a “mature partnership" between the United States and Western Europe have once again become of late a necessary attribute and 224 even leitmotif of speeches by political leaders of imperialism today and a theme which is being increasingly taken up by bourgeois ideologists. All these appeals, however, are unable to remove inter-imperialist contradictions—the inevitable offspring of the capitalist system. It is an objective category independent of the will and desires of the monopoly bourgeoisie and its leaders.

p The Central Committee’s Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU had this to say: “The contradictions between the imperialist states have not been eliminated either by the processes of integration or the imperialists’ class concern for pooling their efforts in fighting against the socialist world. By the early 1970s, the main centres of imperialist rivalry have become clearly visible: these are the USA— Western Europe (above all, the six Common Market countries)—Japan. The economic and political competitive struggle between them has been growing ever more acute.”  [224•* 

p Inter-imperialist contradictions are an objective reserve, an indirect ally of socialism and of all contemporary revolutionary forces, to which Lenin frequently drew attention. It is the task of these forces to use to a maximum this existing reserve in their own interests. It is true that with the strengthening of the internal economic, political and military forces of socialism, the significance of inter-imperialist contradictions as a reserve for socialist foreign policy diminishes, but they continue today to maintain their importance in the battle against imperialism. Their comprehensive utilisation remains one of the urgent tasks of socialist foreign policy.

p The CPSU and fraternal parties are guided by the Leninist requirement to study in specific terms the character and depth of the real relations within the imperialist camp, to be able to separate the main, long-term contradictions from the secondary, temporary contradictions. Lenin’s idea fully retains its relevance today: “We must take political advantage of the differences among our opponents, but only of major differences that are due to profound economic 225 causes. If we try to exploit minor and fortuitous differences, we shall be behaving like petty politicians and cheap diplomats. There is nothing of value to be gained bv that.”  [225•* 

The interests of peace and socialism are served by making a careful analysis of the situation and by taking account and sensibly using the objectively existing contradictions among imperialist powers. At the same time, one must not forget the “unifying” trends within the imperialist camp, the changed limits today not only of alliance and co– operation, but also of the contradictions and struggle among imperialist states, and the mounting importance of economic and ideological factors in inter-imperialist relations.