p The current state of international trade leads one to consider once more the role of the present stage in the evolution of the capitalist world market. A retrospective appraisal also casts light on the future destiny of the entire external economic sphere, whose development will eventually reveal whether current changes represent anomalies or else fundamental shifts leading to some new long-term tendencies.

p While forecasting world trade has always been a difficult task, it is especially complex today, when conditions are so contradictory. Moreover, it would appear that the conditions needed to provide comprehensive answers have not yet emerged, since time will be needed to accumulate and interpret data concerning new developments that have most probably not yet run their course.

p But forecasting also calls for an approach to the systematization and analysis of empirical data that differs from the one employed in the present study. The latter was concerned with identifying problems rather than considering details. Let us therefore limit ourselves to a few general thoughts concerning the probable course of future developments in order to avoid a one-sided appraisal of the present. This only refers to a search for approaches to the major and debatable issues that arise within the framework of this study and to which thought may already be given today. In our opinion this includes, first, the general prospects of the world capitalist economy and the international division of labour; secondly, the terms on which raw material resources will be supplied; and finally, probable tendencies in world prices (neglecting, of course, those aspects of international 235 trade whose possible further prospects have already been considered in the corresponding sections of the present study).

p The first set of questions, which is inherently the most difficult one, paradoxically appears to be the simplest in the present case. For indeed, what could be more difficult, it would seem, than a forecast of the overall economic situation that calls for examining a very large number of contradictory factors. In the words of an authoritative group of Western specialists on forecasting under Wassily Leontief, the American economist and a Nobel Prize Winner, "the future can rarely be predicted with precision; and the future of such a complex phenomenon as the world economy is particularly difficult to anticipate or even to visualize".  [235•1  The numerous errors that have marked this difficult field of studies speak for themselves. But if one avoids the illusory problem of identifying precise parameters in long-term economic development, then in the present context the major concern relates not to the precise course of capitalist reproduction but to the general principles that govern its impact on the external economic sphere.

p There may, of course, be different views concerning the prospects of capitalist economy, and one may disagree concerning whether the relatively favourable conditions of the 1950s and 1960s will be re-established or whether the crisis of the 1970s will prove to be the forerunner of more frequent and deeper disruptions, as seems more probable to us. The general decline in the output of a number of developed capitalist countries at the turn of the 1980s appears to support such a view. But in any case it appears necessary to recognize both the irreversibility of economic, scientific and technical development and its uneven course under capitalism as the events of the last decade have shown.

p The events of the mid-1970s have dealt a major blow to the conception that had begun to emerge in bourgeois science that the revolution in science and technology and an increasing statemonopolistic intervention into the economy make it possible to avoid the cyclical overproduction crises that are inherent in 236 capitalism. Today the earlier words of Gottfried Haberler, a prominent American economist, appear unjustifiably optimistic: "I do not say that the business cycle is dead. I do say that deep and long depressions are a thing of the past.”  [236•1 

p Without seeking to forecast all the possible adventures that the world capitalist economy may continue to experience, nor the exact timing and extent of future crises, one must recognize the determining significance of the general economic situation in governing the development of external trade. If the growing importance of the international division of labour resulting from the revolution in science and technology is accepted as a point of departure, then one should expect that world trade will continue to grow at the very least at the same rate as capitalist economy, and probably more rapidly, as in the past. Just how high these rates may be at individual stages, or whether they may even be negative at times of economic difficulties, is not so important in the present context. What is important, in our opinion, is that in all situations |the world market will reflect the growing importance of the international division of labour. This is indicated by the tendency for export quota to increase, as was noted earlier, and by existing forecasts of its further growth.  [236•2 

p There is no need to try to guess when and in what way these processes will take place nor the forms and dimensions that they may assume. One can only assume that in the foreseeable future, and especially during the next few years, the development of international trade will be impeded not so much by problems of raw materials supply and ecological problems as by the ability of capitalism to secure for some time to come the rates of growth that are needed to maintain its continued existence as a world system. But this is another problem, whose solution is ultimately predetermined by the historical limitations of that social 237 formation. In the words of the Report of the CPSU’s Central Committee to the 25th Congress, "it is farthest from the Communists’ minds to predict an ’automatic collapse’ of capitalism. It still has considerable reserves. Yet the developments of recent years forcefully confirm that capitalism is a society without a future.”  [237•1 

p This same set of problems also involves establishing the prospects for the further development of inflation, which at first sight appears to exert such a major influence on the level of world prices and on value measures of international trade. Without considering this subject in detail let us note that for reasons that are still not entirely clear inflation is increasingly escaping the control of current instruments of state-monopolistic economic regulation. It is not unexpected that bourgeois specialists should be so concerned with "this combination of inflation and economic recession ... a new phenomenon, the explanation of which presents an intellectual challenge to economists".  [237•2  They also recognize that they are currently seeking to solve the problems of so-called world inflation without having understood the nature of ordinary inflation.  [237•3 

p The main point, however, concerns not the lack of knowledge concerning the overall set of causes underlying inflation but its destructive influence on the course of capitalist reproduction. No matter how one interprets the mechanisms underlying inflation, the aggravation of internal contradictions related to capitalist reproduction is fully evident. Since one does not currently see any ways in which inflation could be checked, it is probable that it will be even more marked in the world capitalist economy in the future.

p Yet it is unlikely that the irreversible inflationary processes, to which we should become accustomed, will influence international trade as much as it intensifies all the economic and social 238 contradictions of capitalism. Past experience has shown that inflation leads primarily to changes in the level of world prices and occasionally produces dramatic increases in the nominal value of trade, but that it affects much less both price proportions and the real volume of trade.

p The probable influence of capitalism’s monetary system on the development of international trade may be viewed in a similar way. It is now clearly evident that this system’s chronic disorganization and crisis, which has become especially pronounced in recent years, is a significant factor in destabilizing the world market, for "a sound trading order cannot exist in times of monetary disarray".  [238•1 

p But one must also recognize that ultimately international currencies play the role of an auxiliary mediating element in international economic relations, and that the latter, including foreign trade, are governed primarily by more general processes relating to economic development and the international division of labour. In this connection, it is characteristic that between 1971 and 1973—when the collapse of the Bretton-Woods system became fully apparent, the dollar was devaluated for the first time since the Second World War (on two occasions) and the proposition that rates of exchange should be stable was abandoned— that it was precisely at this time that world capitalist trade in physical terms (not to mention value terms) attained its highest rate of development for the entire postwar period, reflecting substantial increases in gross product and a further deepening of the international division of labour.

p It may of course happen that from time to time leading capitalist states will turn to painful compromises in order to somehow attenuate undesirable monetary problems and that they will seek to adapt the system of international settlements to a new balance of forces within the world capitalist economy. But whatever the fate of such measures may be, it is unlikely that they will either greatly encourage or impede a course of events in overall international trade that follows from fundamental economic factors.

This does not imply that the prospects of international trade may be viewed independently of monetary problems. On the contrary, even in the event that the most urgent interimperialist contradictions within the monetary sphere may be managed, the uneven course of economic development that characterizes capitalism and the resulting fluctuations in the relative importance of individual currencies will continue to influence the situation of individual states within international trade as well as markets for individual products.