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General Crisis of Capitalism

p The victory of the 1917 October Socialist Revolution in Russia struck the capitalist system a blow from which it would never fully recover. The general crisis of capitalism set in; an inevitable down-grade trend involved capitalist ideology as well as the economic and political system. The main feature of the general crisis is the breaking up of the world into two opposing social systems. Capitalism ceased being dominant throughout the world after the October Revolution in Russia: a new, socialist system now developed side by side with the capitalist system. The two systems are in conflict, and it is this conflict, this confrontation between them that is the main content of the epoch of capitalism’s general crisis.

p Another feature of this crisis is the disintegration of the imperialist colonial system. The October Revolution impelled a powerful upsurge of the national liberation movement in the colonies and dependencies. The peoples of tsarist Russia, who had broken the bonds of national slavery and oppression and had struck out for themselves to develop their country, set an inspiring example for the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies in their struggle against foreign imperialist domination. These peoples had had enough of the old life and were fully resolved to fight on until they achieved independence.

Other features peculiar to the general crisis of capitalism are: aggravation of contradictions among the imperialist powers in connection with markets, sources of raw materials, and spheres of influence; rivalry for leadership in the capitalist world; unprecedented growth of the struggle between the working class and the capitalists; and a growing revolutionary movement in the capitalist countries. Imperialism reduces millions and millions to a state of hunger and poverty, deprives them of their legal rights, makes 43 them bear the burden of economic crises and suffer the countless calamities of the wars of which it is the cause. That is why the struggle of the working people has been marked from year to year by growing organisation and determination.

The Two Systems:
Co-existence and Confrontation

p Having split the world into two systems, the October Revolution now carried the basic contradiction of our time—the contradiction between moribund capitalism and nascent socialism—into the sphere of international relations. Developing the teaching of a world-wide socialist revolution as a more or less lengthy process, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, showed the inevitability of a temporary co-existence of countries with different social systems. This co-existence postulates a rejection of war as a means of resolving controversial international issues, and their settlement through negotiation; complete equality of rights for nations; noninterference in the internal affairs of nations; and the development of co-operation among states on the basis of mutual advantage. As the two systems compete with one another, the advantages of socialism, as compared with the waning capitalist system, will become abundantly clear. This competition, or struggle, will inevitably end in the victory of socialism.

p The principle of peaceful co-existence is applicable solely to the relations among states with different social systems: it is entirely inapplicable to the class antagonisms within the imperialist states or to the relations between the oppressors and the oppressed, that is, between the imperialist colonialists and the victims of colonial oppression. That explains why the Soviet state has repeatedly declared that it has given and will continue to give support to any liberation struggle and all manner of aid to the countries or peoples fighting to end imperialist oppression.

p Imperialism is aggressive by its very nature. It refused to put up with the appearance of the Soviet Republic, and the fight against it became, indeed, ever since October 1917, one of the high priority aims of international reaction in the sphere of international politics. Soviet power, points out very rightly F. Th. Schumann, the prominent American historian, lost no time, upon coming to power, in offering peace to the West, but the West’s reaction was war, a real hot war with great loss of life and vast destruction.

By defeating the forces of intervention and the whiteguard armies the peoples of Soviet Russia compelled the imperialist powers to adopt a policy of co-existence with the Soviet Union. 44 The ruling circles of the most capitalist states were compelled to establish diplomatic relations and look to the development of certain commercial and political contacts with the USSR. Nevertheless, the international reactionary forces had not the slightest intention of dropping their plans for weakening and destroying the Soviet state, nor did they abandon their efforts to achieve an economic boycott and diplomatic isolation of the USSR, nor give up forming all kinds of anti-Soviet blocs and alliances whose supreme object was a military expedition against the USSR. The imperialist powers were particularly persistent in their efforts to push Germany into a conflict with the Soviet state, and to that end helped her reconstruct her military-economic potential.

The General Crisis
of Capitalism: First Phase

p The first phase of the general crisis of capitalism was ushered in as the result of the imperialist world war of 1914-18 and the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. This first phase, which lasted to the beginning of the Second World War, may be broken down into three distinct periods, as follows:

p First period, 1917-1923. This was a revolutionary period that rocked the very foundation of capitalism. In power and scope this revolutionary upsurge in the countries of Western Europe and Asia exceeded any of the mass movements of the proletariat in the past and did much to undermine the base of bourgeois domination in a number of capitalist countries, even if the bourgeoisie did succeed in defeating the proletariat, for reasons that we shall examine elsewhere.

p In the sphere of international relations the most important event of this period was the enactment of the Versailles-Washington system of treaties which consolidated the victory of the Entente powers and the United States in the First World War and legalised the redivision of the world. But this system of treaties had been worked out without the participation of the USSR and was aimed, moreover, precisely against it; and that was one of its gravest defects. This system was not fit to serve as a sound foundation for the post-war development of international relations, and, what is worse, contained within itself the dangerous germ of further international conflicts, planted there by the resolution of many territorial and other problems in line with imperialist policies.

p Second period, 1924-1929. This was a period that was marked by a partial stabilisation of capitalism. Its salient features were a temporary ebb of the revolutionary movement and a certain strengthening of the economic and political systems in the 45 capitalist countries. In the sphere of international relations this period was marked by the latent development of contradictions within the Versailles-Washington system of treaties, contributing to the erosion of its foundations. Most of the capitalist countries accorded diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union, faced as they were with its incessantly growing power, though the extreme reactionary circles of the Western powers had not renounced their attempts to weaken the Soviet Union and to organise an anti-Soviet bloc.

p Third period, 1929-1939. This decade witnessed a setback for the partial stabilisation of capitalism that had been achieved in the second period, and the preparation of a new world war and its outbreak. The unprecedented world economic crisis that crashed in 1929 and lasted until 1933 strained the contradictions within the imperialist system to a breaking point. The decade also witnessed a considerable upswing of the revolutionary movement in the capitalist countries, as well as in the colonies and dependencies.

During this period the Versailles-Washington treaty system broke down under the pressure of the contradictions from within and the blows of a bloc of the currently most aggressive powers, namely, nazi Germany, militarist Japan and fascist Italy. The ruling circles of Great Britain, France and the United States, anxious to ward off a possible attack by Germany and her allies against themselves and channel it eastward against the Soviet Union, followed a policy of appeasement in regard to the fascist aggressors. It was precisely this policy that led to a war without parallel in history, which brought untold calamities upon the peoples of the world and took a toll of tens of millions of human lives.

First World War:
Central Powers Defeated

p In August 1918, the armies of the Entente powers, using great numbers of tanks and artillery, unleashed a general offensive on the Western Front. The strong fortifications which had been erected by the Germans were powerless to halt the onslaught, and the German army was rolled back. The common people of Germany and Austro-Hungary, worn out and exhausted by four years of war, were openly indignant over their governments’ policy of carrying on a hopeless war.

p Under the hammering of the Allied armies the military and political coalition of the Central Powers began to crumble. Bulgaria was the first to surrender, on September 29, and Turkey 46 pulled out of the war on October 30. An Allied break-through forced the Austro-Hungarian Government to appeal to the warring powers to start peace talks. The multinational Austrian empire began to disintegrate, giving birth to new independent states, namely, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Austria and Hungary. In Germany herself a revolutionary outbreak was gathering. While the German troops were still in occupation of extensive territories, German imperialism stood on the brink of military disaster. The German people had had enough of war, and early in November 1918, a revolution broke out, toppling the Hohenzollern dynasty, which had ruled first Prussia and then all of Germany for over two hundred years. Germany became a republic.

p On November 11, 1918, in the forest of Compiegne, near Pans, in the railway coach of Marshal Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allied armed forces, an armistice was signed between Germany and the Allied powers; and the First World War was over.

The governments of the Western powers, visibly alarmed at the revolution in Germany, abandoned any notion of completely disarming the German army and did not insist on marching their armies into Berlin. By agreement with the Allies Germany maintained her troops in the Baltic lands and took an active part in crushing the revolution in that area. In a show of undisguised hostility towards the Soviet state, Ebert’s social-democratic government refused to resume diplomatic relations with it, ruptured through the fault of the German side in the beginning of November 1918.

Peace Conference Meets in Paris

p The peace conference convened to work out the terms of a peace treaty with Germany and the other defeated states met at Versailles on January 18, 1919. Significantly, meetings were held in the selfsame Hall of Mirrors where the German empire had been proclaimed forty-eight years ago. Twenty-seven Allied or associated states that had taken part in the war were represented. Neither Germany nor her allies were admitted to the conference, whose meetings were later transferred to Paris. Nor was Soviet Russia, though it was a matter of common knowledge that the Russian armies had made a very substantial contribution to the war effort. The imperialist participants in the conference were guided by a common desire to overthrow as soon as possible the Soviet Government in Russia, "strangle Bolshevism in its cradle”, and preclude any repetition of the "Russian experiment" elsewhere.

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p While nearly thirty states took part in the conference, actually the representatives of the three leading imperialist powers took charge of its proceedings. These were: President Wilson of the USA, Prime Minister Lloyd George of Great Britain, and Prime Minister Clemenceau of France. Serious differences arose from the very outset among the great powers regarding the basic issues on their agenda, the problem of Germany, above all.

p Speaking at the opening session, President Poincare of France made it quite plain that France would insist on the partitioning of Germany in order to prevent any renewal of German aggression. The French imperialists meant to weaken their German competitor as much as possible economically, politically and militarily. They insisted, specifically, on the cession of Germany’s western regions which would form a so-called Republic of the Rhine, and certain other areas, and the annexation by France of the coal-rich Saar basin. Moreover, France wanted Germany to pay the maximum in reparations for loss and damage caused by her aggression.

p Both Wilson and Lloyd George, however, rejected the French attempts at dismembering Germany and utterly sapping her strength. The reasons for this attitude were an open secret: Great Britain and the United States were interested in keeping Germany sufficiently strong to offset French influence in Europe and, which was still more important, in using her as a weapon against the Soviet Republic, of which international imperialism stood in such terror.

p Officially, the conference agenda did not list the "Russian problem”, that is to say, the problem of how to combat the proletarian revolution in Russia. Nevertheless, it was just this problem that became the pivot of the proceedings as soon as the conference got to work. The imperialist powers vied with one another in the hatred they felt towards the world’s first workers’ and peasants’ state, planning armed intervention in Soviet Russia, providing generous military, material and technical aid to the whiteguard generals, and making meanwhile every effort to strangle the revolutionary movement elsewhere in Europe. No agreement, however, was reached by the imperialists in Paris on joint military action against Soviet Russia. Differences of opinion among the capitalist countries and doubts entertained by the ruling circles of some of them regarding the probable success of any attempts to impose their will on the revolutionary people of Russia at the point of the bayonet were doubtlessly partly responsible for this failure. But another factor was the opposition of the masses in the West to any plans of armed intervention in Soviet Russia. Lloyd George, for one, frankly voiced apprehension that the war the Allies were planning against the 48 Bolsheviks might produce unrest in the ranks of organised labour on an unpredictable scale.

Deliberations on the future of the German colonies and the territories belonging to the Ottoman empire produced a sharp conflict among the participants, notably among the great powers. Great Britain, hopeful of taking over the major part of these possessions, developed the greatest activity in this sphere. But neither were the other predatory imperialist powers inclined to relinquish the share in the booty which they considered themselves entitled to get. In the end, the question was settled mainly in favour of Great Britain, France and Japan and to the detriment of the United States.

League of Nations Covenant Worked Out

p An important item on the agenda of the Paris conference was the question of the League of Nations, which was to be the world’s first international organisation designed to guarantee the nations of the world peace and security. Projects of such an organisation had been worked out in many countries while the war was still on, and the USA, Great Britain and other members of the Entente had been particularly active in this respect. And for good reason: the peoples of the world, plunged into the inferno of a bloody and destructive war that was taking a toll of millions of lives, resolutely called upon their governments to create a world order that would preclude any possibility of another such calamity in the future. On November 8, 1917, the Soviet Government proclaimed from the rostrum of a Congress of Soviets the history-making Decree on Peace, which represented a new, democratic programme of international relations, a programme which rejected wars of aggression, proclaimed the idea of peace with neither territorial annexations nor indemnities, and called upon all nations to build their relations on the principles of friendship and mutual co-operation. The Soviet proposals met with a downright opposition from the imperialist powers, but the ideas of a stable peace and international security had by then taken a hold on the minds of men the world over. To counteract the Soviet Decree on Peace, the Western powers intensified their efforts to work out a scheme for the League of Nations. Yet each imperialist government—whether British, French or American— while given to a lot of talk about the necessity of maintaining "universal peace" and guaranteeing the security of "all nations”, strove to force upon its partners a project that would primarily serve its own interests and be instrumental in strengthening its own influence.

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The United States, which more than any other country in the world had grown stronger and richer as a result of the First World War, openly aspired to a leading role in the matter of establishing the post-war pattern of international relations. These aspirations would be furthered, in President Wilson’s opinion, by the draft covenant of the League of Nations which he had submitted to the Paris conference and which he proposed to incorporate in the peace treaty with Germany. However, his plans for setting up an international organisation under the aegis of the United States ran into the opposition of Great Britain and France. Although not rejecting the idea of a League of Nations openly (and having in fact submitted to the conference their own proposals on the subject), the British and French representatives did what they could to hinder the drafting of the covenant, suggested endless addenda and amendments, argued against incorporating the covenant in the text of the peace treaty, and so on. At the same time Great Britain and France could not reach agreement between themselves on certain important provisions of the covenant. A joint Anglo-American draft, agreed upon in unofficial talks, was finally adopted as a basis for the League of Nations covenant to be worked out.

Peace Treaty of Versailles

p By the terms of the treaty signed on June 28, 1919, at Versailles, Germany was to return to France the region of AlsaceLorraine, which she had occupied in 1871. While the ownership of the Saar coal-mines was transferred to France, the district itself was to be governed by the League of Nations for a period of fifteen years, upon the expiration of which a plebiscite was to decide its future. Belgium was to get Eupen and Malmedy, and Denmark—Northern Schleswig.

p Germany was to recognise the independence of Poland and to return to her some of the occupied areas (such as Poznan and certain districts of Silesia and Pomerania). Other Polish lands, however, were retained by Germany, which could only aggravate the German-Polish contradictions. Gdansk (Danzig) was made a free city to be governed by the League of Nations. Germany was to recognise the independence of Czechoslovakia, to which it was to cede the region of Hulchin. A special provision of the Treaty of Versailles prohibited the accession of Austria to Germany. Altogether Germany lost one-eighth of her pre-war territory and one-twelfth of her population.

p Germany was further deprived of all her colonies. Great Britain and France shared both Togo and the Cameroons. The 50 German possessions in Southwest and East Africa went to Great Britain, Belgium, the Union of South Africa and Portugal. In the Pacific area, Japan took over the Marshall, Mariana and Caroline Islands, and the district of Kiaochow and the German concessions in the Chinese province of Shantung. Other German colonies in the Pacific Ocean were taken over by Australia and New Zealand.

p Germany was to pay reparations to the Allies to the amount of 132,000 million gold marks, the sum being set later, in 1921.

p The military provisions of the treaty set limits on Germany’s armed forces. Conscription was to be abolished and the numerical strength of the Reichswehr, a volunteer army, was not to exceed 100,000. Germany was prohibited from possessing submarines,, heavy artillery or an air force.

p Incorporated in the peace treaty was the covenant of the League of Nations. The covenant proclaimed lofty and noble aims, such as: a guarantee of peace and international security; the development of friendly relations among states; the peaceful settlement of international conflicts; the use of sanctions against states guilty of aggression; etc. The subsequent activities of the League bore witness, however, to the fact that the leading imperialist powers—the very ones that had created the League— never really intended it to be an effective instrument for strengthening peace or developing international co-operation. As. a matter of fact for a few years after its creation the League was an important centre of the military and diplomatic war waged by the Western imperialist powers against the world’s first socialist state. In later years the League of Nations, kowtowing before the Anglo-French ruling circles who called the tune in that organisation, stood out against accepting the co-operation of the Soviet Union.

p Moreover, the League soiled its reputation by supporting the shameful system of colonialism. Apprehensive of causing worldwide indignation, Great Britain, France, Japan and the other imperialist powers did not dare to openly annex the colonial possessions of which they had deprived Germany and Turkey. Arguing that the peoples of these territories were as yet incapable of governing themselves the British and the French resorted to the League of Nations mandate system to govern these former German and Turkish possessions, taking the function of " mandatory powers" upon themselves. The mandate system was nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to perpetuate colonialism in a slightly refurbished form.

p Lenin called the Treaty of Versailles a predatory instrument. It had nothing to do with the fine words said by the diplomatists of the Entente powers about a "fair peace”; it was the dictate 51 of the winner to the loser, like that of the German imperialists to Soviet Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918. The Treaty of Versailles placed Germany in an inequitable position, provoking deep resentment among the German people, which later put a trump card into the hands of the German nazis in their struggle against the bourgeois-democratic regime in Germany.

p In 1919-20 peace treaties were concluded with Germany’s former allies, namely, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey. Hepeating basically the Versailles pattern, they legalised the territorial adjustments following the disintegration of the AustroHungarian and Ottoman empires and the formation of new states. Like the Treaty of Versailles, the treaties with Germany’s erstwhile allies constituted a gross violation of the vital interests of the nations directly concerned. Far from promoting a normalising of international relations in Central and Southeastern Europe, they continued to be for years a dangerous source of tension in these relations.

p A new redivision of the world was also to be completed in the Far East. A nine-power conference was convened to that end on the initiative of the United States, comprising the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and China. It opened in Washington, in November 1921. The United States, relying on its increased economic and financial might, sought to consolidate its dominance in the Pacific area and the Far East. Another US objective was a revision of certain decisions of the Paris conference which it considered contrary to its interests (as, for instance, the decision to recognise Japan’s “rights” to the Shantung peninsula).

p The decisions made in Washington (the nine-power treaty on policies in regard to China, the five-power treaty on the restriction of naval armaments, and some others) favoured, above all, the interests of the United States and served to weaken the position of Japan. While the Washington treaties did contain certain concessions to China, which the imperialist powers had been compelled to make in view of the growing national liberation struggle of the Chinese people, they nevertheless ran counter to the vital interests of the latter and were therefore incapable of promoting lasting peace in the Far East.

p Following the example of the Versailles “appeasers”, the sponsors of the Washington conference saw to it that the Soviet Government was not admitted, though the conference took up issues which directly affected the interests of the Soviet state.

p The system of international relations established by the peace treaties with Germany and her allies in Europe and by the Washington treaties on Far Eastern issues was profoundly reactionary and imperialistic: glib and flowery phrases about "common 52 Stale frontiers in 1914 ——Stale frontiers as on July 24 1923 (at conclusion of Treaty ol Lausanne) At STKIA Stales which emerged as a result of Ihe disintegration ol Austria Hungary by Germany under Treaty ol Versatile ol June 28 1919 by Ausltia underTrealy of Sainl Germ* of September 10 1919 by Bulgaria under Treaty of Neuilly "I by Hungary under Treaty ol Tnanon of June 4 1920 Rijeka Freec.t.es (Ftum.) Pechenga (Pelsamo) region ceded by Russia to Finland under Treaty of October 14 1920 Corzon Line Fronhers between Sov.el Russia and Poland as laid down by (he Riga Trealy ol March 18 1921 Bessarabia seized by Rumania in January 1918 W.lno district seized by Poland from Lithuania in October 1920 Figures indicate Schleswig districts ol Eupen and Malmedy Burgenland Transcarpalh.an Ukraine Bukov.na (stria Europe under Treaties of 1919-23 53 interests”, “peace” and "international co-operation”, which abounded in the body of the Versailles and other similar treaties, served as a smoke-screen to conceal the thoroughly selfish, imperialist interests of the predatory powers that came out victorious in the clash with their rivals.

p As a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles the contradictions between the victors and the vanquished were to continue for years to come. Yet Germany and the other defeated countries were not the only marks aimed at by the Versailles system. That system was also aimed at the Soviet state. The Western powers hoped to be able in due course of time to prod Germany into an armed conflict with the USSR and also have her strangle the revolutionary movement in Europe. With this in mind, they refrained from destroying militarism and the armaments industry in defeated Germany, and winked at her systematic infraction of the military provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and her surreptitious rearming. This made it easier to prepare for a war of revenge which had begun to haunt the dreams of the German militarists the day following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

p A cordon sanitaire was established all the length of the Soviet frontier. It was made up of minor countries with reactionary regimes, subservient to the influence of the Western powers. The Anglo-Franco-American reactionaries meant these countries to constitute a "barrier against communism" and a springboard for an attack on Soviet Russia.

p One in their hatred of the world’s first socialist state, the victor powers were yet unable to see eye to eye on quite a number of international issues. Great Britain and France were continuously vying for supremacy in Europe, and French plans for sapping further Germany’s strength and subjecting her to French domination were running into strong opposition on the part of the British. The United States, who failed in its efforts to prevent Great Britain from strengthening her positions in the Middle East, France in Europe and Japan in the Pacific, refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the covenant of the League of Nations. Sharp differences cropped up between Italy, which felt that she had been cheated of her share of the “plunder”, and the other leading Entente powers.

The authors of the Versailles system kept saying that it would end wars for all time. As a matter of fact, however, it was precisely at Versailles that further wars for a redivision of the World were made inevitable.

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