137

p The decisive part of (lie economic potential of capitalism is still, in spite of the very considerable changes in the distribution of its productive forces after World War [I, concentrated in two principal regions-Western Europe and North America. This is due to the whole preceding course of their historical development, especially in the monopoly stage. At the beginning of the 1080s more than 70 per cent of the aggregate product of world capitalism was created in these regions, or nearly seven-eighths of the gross production of its industrial centres. The task of studying the
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F i g. 8 Weight of North America and Western Europe in capitalist countries’ tola! production of GDP (in percentages) [tide; 3W 1950 1960 12 I CAPITAL I:;T| COUNTRIES! 1965 1970 1975 1981’ * Index of capitalist countries’ growth of GDP (1950=10(1) " Ksliniated .Sources: |!N Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, Statistical Yearbook. and Monthly Bulletin of Statistics for the relevant years.
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changing balance of power between the West European and North American regions therefore figures largely in any comprehensive investigation of the process of the postwar shifts in the ratio of the productive forces of these centres. 138 An approximate idea of the postwar dynamics and role of North America and Western Europe in the total GDP of all capitalist countries can be got from Fig. 8.

p As a result of World War II there was an abrupt redistribution of forces between the principal countries of monopoly capitalism and their opposing groupings of that time, but the total share of the production of North America and Western Europe within the shrunken boundaries of the imperialist system after the war not only was not reduced but even rose a little. At the turn of the 40s and 50s around 94 per cent of the goods and services of all the countries of this system were produced in them.

p The postwar disorganisation in the economies of the overwhelming majority of West European countries and Japan favoured establishment of the domination of the United States in the capitalist world, production capacities being concentrated in it that considerably exceeded those of all the other capitalist countries taken together. Major sectors of the economy of Canada, where around 6 per cent of the GDP of the North American region was created in 1950, were moreover under full American control.

p The economic expansion of U.S. monopolies had acquired a broad scale in other developed capitalist countries as well, since the latter’s monopoly groupings were at best only in a condition to claim the position of junior partners of their American rivals. U.S. military and political superiority in the non-socialist world was then unchallenged. Priority of the dollar had also been established in the international monetary system. It would seem, at first glance, that there was no force that could oppose the gigantic growth (as a result of the war) of the expansionist strivings of the American monopolies.  [138•1 

p And still the attempts to consolidate hegemony of one country’s monopoly capital in the imperialist system further, or to maintain it for a long time, proved flimsy. The 139 objective processes governed by operation of the law of the unevenness of capitalist countries’ economic and political development, were characterised by new shifts in the distribution of the productive forces within modern capitalism.

p Although the GDP doubled in North America in the 50s arid 60s its proportion in the world aggregate fell by around 5 per cent. The volume of production in Western Europe rose by 160 per cent in the same period and by nearly 360 per cent in the other capitalist countries, mainly because of Japan. Consequently, as is seen from Fig. 8, there was a corresponding growth of the proportion of these two last groups, and the gap between the GDP of North America and Western Europe was patently reduced.

p The operation of this trend during the cyclic development of modern capitalism, it is true, like the processes in general considered here, has not been displayed evenly or stably. After the world crisis of 1974-75, for instance, the gap between North America and Western Europe widened a little, but at the turn of the 70s and 80s, because of a substantial fall in GDP growth rates in the USA and Canada, it again narrowed. Since the late 60s Western Europe’s share in the total production of capitalism’s industrial centres has in turn begun to show a tendency to fall (because of the speeding up of the economic growth rates of other developed capitalist countries).

p This has all led to the total weight of North America and Western Europe in the total GDP of all capitalist countries beginning gradually to decrease in the past 15 or 20 years, for all the considerable fluctuations in their development rates. By the beginning of the 80s it was 8 per cent lower than at the beginning of the 50s, and 5 to 6 per cent lower than the 60s. It is unlikely that one need consider this line of development a temporary one.  [139•1 

p In the capitalist countries not located in the West European and North American centres, the principal production capacities are concentrated in Japan.  [139•2  It is the rapid postwar 140 development of the Japanese economy that has governed the substantial growth of the role of this group of countries in the world capitalist economy. At the end of the period reviewed their share in the aggregate production of goods and services of capitalism’s industrial centres was more than 14 per cent, as against roughly 8.5 per cent at the very beginning of the 60s, and 6.5 per cent at the turn of the 40s and 50s. It is not fortuitous that the monopoly circles of the USA and Western Europe are increasingly alarmed by the possibility that the Japanese ’centre of force’ will take the lead in the world capitalist economy by the end of this century.  [140•1 

p The second area of significance among these ’other countries’ is Oceania, which includes Australia and New Zealand. But they lag markedly behind Japan and the other leading capitalist countries in both the scale and the rates of their development of production. At the end of the period under review their production was only a fifth of Japan’s, while their GDP had been more than half that of Japan’s at the beginning of the 50s. Oceania, and in particular Australia, has great, still unutilised potential resources, which allows us to assume a rise in the development rates and role of this region in the coming period. We must also remember, moreover, that the countries of Oceania are being more and more distinctly drawn into the orbit of economic influence of the Japanese ’centre of force’.

p The rivalry of the monopolies in the struggle to divide and re-divide spheres of political domination and economic influence can only be studied in motion. At the same time it would be wrong to reduce this struggle simply to an analysis of imperialist contradictions within the limits of separate countries or even regions. The whole system of capitalism is becoming its field. As Lenin wrote:

Monopolist capitalist associations, cartels, syndicates and trusts first divided the home market among themselves and obtained more or less complete possession of the industry of their own country. But under capitalism the home market is inevitably bound up with the foreign market—As the export of capital 141 increased, and as the foreign and colonial connection;, and ’spheres of influence’ of the big monopolist associations expanded in all ways, things ‘naturally’ gravitated towards an international agreement among these associations, and towards the formation of international cartels.  [141•1 

In those conditions a need arose for a comprehensive analysis of the process as a whole.

p A new level of the international concentration of capital and production has been reached in recent decades, incomparably higher than at the beginning of the century. But whatever the degree, forms, and methods of concentration, Lenin’s methodology of studying shifts in the structure and distribution of production among the principal imperialist powers remains of first-rate value for estimating the important development trends of the system of international capitalist division of labour and inter-imperialist contradictions. These shifts stem from processes developing within the national economies and characterising the position of each country in the world economy to a decisive extent.

p The tendencies noted above toward growth of production in the industrially developed regions have in fact been determined in the postwar period, as throughout the preceding history of monopoly capitalism, by a handful of powers, whose composition has essentially remained unchanged, limited to the Bix Six (the USA, Japan, and the four West European powers, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and Italy).

p Although there have been changes in the balance of power of the Six that have been of considerable importance in their long-term world economic consequences, more than four-fifths of the GDP of all capitalist countries was produced in them at the end of the 70s, a fact that explains one of the deep-lying causes of the maintenance of their dominant position in the decision of the world economic and political problems of modern capitalism. The tendency noted in postwar years toward a gradual reduction of the weight of the ‘great’ powers in the aggregate production of capitalist countries has primarily been associated with the very substantial fall in the postwar share of the USA.

p The objective conditions were thus brought about for an 142 inevitahle gradual growth of instahility and inner contradictions in imperialism’s system of world economic ties that arose soon after the war under the aegis of the United States.

The quite slow economic growth of Great Britain, the country that was the USA’s closest junior partner in the building of this system, in turn helped weaken and undermine it. The share of Great Britain, once the mightiest power in the capitalist world, in the aggregate GDP of today’s industrial centres of imperialism has fallen by nearly 40 per cent. At the same time there has been a relative consolidation of the positions of the other members of the Six (West Germany, France, Italy, and especially Japan), though with substantial differences (see Table 12).

Table 12 Weight of the Leading Countries in the Aggregate GDP of Capitalist. Countries (in percentages) Country 1960 1965 1970 1975 1081 USA 43. 4 42 .2 38. 8 37. 6 36 .6 Great Britain 6. 5 5 .8 5. 1 5. 0 4 .3 France 7. 4 7 .6 8. 0 8. 4 8 .3 West Germany 11. 1 11 .0 10. 8 10. 3 10 .3 Italy 4. 4 4 .3 4. 5 4. 3 4 .4 Japan 6. 6 8 .1 11. 3 12. 4 13 .8 Canada 3. 1 3 .1 3. 2 3. 0 3 .5 Total of above countries The rest 82.1 17.0 81.7 18.3 81.6 18.4 81.3 18.7 Sources: UN Ktntistirnl Yearbook 1978 (United Nations, Now York, 1979); UN Handbook ol World Development Stctistics (United Nations, New York, 1970); OECD. Economic Outlook, 1982, 0.

p As a result the distribution of the production capabilities of the main capitalist powers had acquired qualitatively new features at the beginning of the 80s, different from both the prewar and the first postwar years. The powers that were defeated in World War II, whose economies suffered a smaller burden of militarisation immediately afterward because of certain circumstances, strengthened 143 their position in the capitalist world economy at the expense of the powers (chiefly the USA and Great Britain) that headed the imperialist camp after the war ;md were striving to take on responsibility for its fate. The sinking of Great Britain from second place among the Six to next-to-last, and the rise of Japan from last to second place, as regards GDP, are very indicative. West Germany perceptibly strengthened its influence, and only France, of the West European victor-powers, managed to consolidate its position a bit as regards its weight in the aggregate production of the principal capitalist countries.

p A very peculiar situation built up during their uneven economic development in the 70s and early 80s because of the extraordinary deepening of the whole set of world capitalism’s contradictions. Its peculiarity consisted primarily in the process’ having taken place, as we showed above, on the background of a general and relatively protracted slowing down of the economic growth rates of all capitalist countries, which showed particularly clearly after the 1974-75 economic crisis.

p It has therefore been a matter, of late, of the maximum prevention of a further crisis decline in rates of production, in the course of the bitter rivalry of the imperialist monopolies and powers on their home and the world markets, rather than of raising them. In that connection the shifts in the ratios of the industrial potentials of the leading industrial powers considered above show only the relative changes in their positions compared with other powers. The continuing rise in Japan’s share of the gross product of the Big Seven, for instance, is essentially due to the fact that its rates of general economic development, although down 60 per cent in the 70s on the previous decade, all the same remained markedly higher than those of its main rivals. In the last analysis the changing balance of forces in the main centres of modern capitalism has been primarily determined by their rates of industrial development, which fell very much more in the period covered by Table 13 than the growth rates of their GDP.

p The shifts in the distribution of the productive forces noted above cannot, however, diminish the fact that the United States is still the leader among the capitalist powers because of its predominant economic might. Its share in the aggregate product of the Six, it is true, has shrunk, but more 144 goods and services were still produced in that country at the end of our study period than in all its principal imperialist rivals. The United States had a GDP four times that of Japan at the beginning of the 80s and almost double that of the four West European countries taken together (see Fig. 9). Some of the GDP of the other capitalist countries (apparently at least 6 or 7 per cent on the average), it must be noted, moreover, was created then either under the direct control of American transnational corporations, or with their direct involvement.

p The economic superiority of the USA, which grew by leaps and bounds during the two world wars, is rooted in the pro-monopoly period of capitalism. Our figures, based on the work of the British economist Angus Maddison and UN statistics, permit us to say that the GDP of the USA
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Table 13 Annual Growth Rates of the GUP and Industrial Production of the Leading Capitalist Countries (in percentages) Country GDP Industrial production (including l 19fiO-l!l7(> 1970-11)81 19(i()-1970 1970-11181 USA 3.8 2.8 3.6 3.0 Great liritain 2.4 1.5 2.4 0.3 France; 5.7 3.4 7.0 2.4 West (iermanv 4.7 2.5 5.1 1.9 Italy 5.3 2.8 (5.3 2.9 Japan Canada 10.7 5.4 5.2 3.5 10.9 6.2 4.4 3.3 Total 2.9 5.2 Sources: Calculated from UN Handbook oi World Development Statistics 197!)’, UN Ktntixticnl Yearbook 1979/80;WN Monthly Bulletin u1 N/«/i;;(ics, 1(182:5; The OECII Economic. Outlook, 1982,0.
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was already double that of Great Britain at the beginning of the 1970s, though it was still a little less than that of West European countries.  [144•1 

145

p The loading position of the USA was markedly strengthened in the monopoly stage. In 1913 the USA produced almost as much output as Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy taken together. In the early interwar period (1920) (according to the Soviet economists Bolotin and Kudrov) the volume of U.S. production was around half the GDP of the industrial centres of capitalism (within their contemporaneous frontiers), was about equal to the total GDP of all the countries of Western Europe, and was 25 per cent greater than that of the four main ones.

p From the end of the 20s the U.S.’s role in the world economy began to decline noticeably, and it felt the weight of the economic crisis of 1929-33 more than the other capitalist powers. On the eve of World War II the U.S. share in the aggregate production of capitalism’s industrial centres had fallen to 41.7 per cent, but was still 230 per cent that of Great Britain (12.5 per cent), 340 per cent that of West Germany (9.(5 per cent), 380 per cent that of France (8.7 per cent), and six times as great as Japan’s (7.0 per cent).  [145•1 

p Generally speaking, long-term analysis of the constant fluctuations in the relation of the main powers’ production capacities suggests that the position of the USA in the GDP of imperialism’s centres was substantially weakened at the beginning of the 80s compared with the levels reached after the two world wars. Furthermore, their weight seldom fell so low during the whole preceding history of monopoly capitalism, yet, being still much superior to their main rivals in economic power, area, natural resources, and population, they still retain a leading position in the world economy.

It would obviously be insufficient to explain the changes mentioned just by transit factors stemming from the specific conditions of the development of production in these countries, taken separately, for one year or another. Changes like these on the long-term plane are ultimately determined by the deep-seated patterns of monopoly capitalism brought out by Lenin at the beginning of this century, patterns that include tendencies to a levelling of the development of its business centres.

146 147

p This trend, which reveals an important feature of the intensification of the uneven development ol Ihe capitalist powers, like other objective patterns at the stage of imperialism was not and could not he stable. On the one hand, its effect has been repeatedly disrupted and broken by the military and political, and cyclic, upheavals of the world capitalist economy. On the other hand, it has been intensiiied and stimulated by the internationalization of capital, which in turn has promoted a concentration and specialisation of production on an international scale, mainly in periods of relatively peaceful development.

p The processes leading to this levelling have been very distinctly manifested during the mounting impact of the scientific and technical revolution on the productive forces at a time when world socialism has significantly limited monopoly capital’s possibilities of unleashing global destructive wars and resolving inter-imperialist contradictions by force of arms. Graphic evidence of that is provided by comparative indicators of the total GDP per capita in the countries where the main economic potential of modern capitalism is concentrated (see Fig. 10).

p It will be clear from the facts cited that the unevenness leading to gradual closing of the gap between the development levels of advanced capitalist countries is being converted into an integral world economic problem of monopoly capitalism. With time, as these levels converged, it has been becoming more and more pressingly important, in fact, for the many phenomena determining both the current and the long-term development trends of capitalism’s whole system, of international relations to be investigated. This tendency makes it possible, as well, to determine more exactly certain long-term consequences of the various groupings’ continuous competition, and the chances, limits, and prospects of their temporary alliances and blocks in the postwar capitalist world.

p It has begun to appear probable that some of the main imperialist countries will succeed in approaching the USA in such important economic indicators as GDP per capita even before the end of this century, and in individual cases overtaking them. At the beginning of the 50s such a prospect still seemed unrealisablo in practice, especially for the powers that had been weakened by the war and had fallen into economic and financial dependence on American capital, at
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148 Fig. 10 Ratio of GDP per capita in developed capitalist countries (USA=100 per cent) ioo-| 30-j eo- 70- 60- 50- 40- 30- 20- 10- 3REAT BRITAIN 1960-19E1 * Estimated Sources: UN Siaiisiica! yearbook and Monthly Bulletin oj Statistics, and OECD Main Economic Indicators periods. Calculated in comparable 1975 prices. for the relevant 149
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least in any foreseeable time. In 1950 France lagged behind the USA in per capita production by more than (i() per cent, West Germany by almost two-thirds, Italy by more than 80 per cent, and Japan by almost 90 per cent. In Great Britain, which then occupied second place only to the USA, production per capita was 55 per cent of that of the United States.  [149•1 

p It must be remembered, when analysing the world economic consequences of the shifts brought out in Fig. 10, that the U.S. growth rates of per capita GDP were higher in our study period than in the interwar years, arid higher on the whole than in the first half of the century. At the end of the 70s they were almost 80 per cent higher than in 1950 (in 1970 prices), but the dynamics of their growth was clearly slower than in the USA’s main imperialist rivals, Great Britain excepted.

p Consequently there was a marked redistribution of forces within this group of countries, and at the same time a certain convergence of levelsof development. The Japanese economy, for instance, which still lagged around 45 per cent behind Great Britain in this respect had surpassed the level of the latter by 50 per cent two decades later. Italy, which had been in bottom place in the Big Seven, had come very close to Great Britain, although, like Britain and Japan, it had not reached the average European level of per capita GDP at the end of the period analysed. At the same time France and even more West Germany were considerably above this level, the latter proving to he even a little above the USA at the beginning of the 80s.

p These facts by no means exhaust analysis of the extreme contradictions and trends spontaneously operating in the present capitalist world toward intensification of the uneven economic development of separate regions and countries, but they do make it possible to discern the general contours of a very intricate process, namely, the shifts in the’secloral structure of the distribution of their production, and so to bring out several characteristic features of this mounting 150 unevenness. If we estimate these shifts in the light of the indicators of the dynamics of the main industries that contribute to the aggregate product of all the developed capitalist countries, and primarily of North America and Western Europe, then calculations based on UN statistics make it possible to draw the following conclusions, highly important for our further investigation.

p The sphere of material production in North America (industry, agriculture, building) developed as a whole more slowly (with a very broad range of long-term and annual fluctuations of growth rates in the industries of each country taken separately) than in the countries of Western Europe. There had been even a more considerable slowing of North America’s growth rates compared with the capitalist countries of other geographical areas, in which Japan’s unusually rapid economic progress played a paramount role in the first postwar decades. We estimate that the volume of production in this sphere increased on the whole by 160 per cent in the first group during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, by 240 per cent in the second group, and by more than 500 per cent in the last. The gap between these regions, moreover, was not evenly closing in the various industries. It was closing mainly by industry and building. In agriculture, in which production developed at low rates almost everywhere after the war, North America was a little behind Western Europe, and later fell obviously behind the other capitalist countries.

p As regards the sectoral dynamics of the sphere of circulation and services in the main regions, large-scale changes also developed, which can be attributed initially to several resultant indicators. The total volume of the product of the sectors of non-material production trebled in Western Europe over the same period, increased by 180 per cent in North America and nearly eightfold in the other countries where it had been historically at a relatively low level. Here, too, the levelling was accompanied with an intensifying of the unevenness of development.

p The most important shifts in the structure of the gross product in the three groups of countries considered arc summarised in Table 14. Because of their high degree of statistical generalisation these figures cannot claim to be absolutely accurate. Still, in our view, they reflect the long-term processes actually taking place after the war with sufficient reliability. They can also be used as an approach to 151 forecasting these processes, as they indicate the most probable trends in the movement of the interconnected tendencies both toward a heightening of unevenness and to a levelling up of the sectoral structure of capitalist countries’ GDP.

p It follows from Table 14 that there was a clear convergence of development levels between North America and Western Europe in the sectors of material production, and above all in industry, in the postwar years. It must also be recalled that as regards total volume of industrial output (in fixed 1970 prices) the West European region came noticeably closer to the North American, although the gap between them remained "quite considerable in per capita terms, being around 40 per cent in contrast to the nearly two-thirds of the early 50s.

p The lag of the other capitalist countries, which noticeably approached the West European level in industrial production
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Table 14 Industrial Structure of the Distribution of Production in Capitalist Countries (in percentages)* North America Western Europe Others + + + Sector CO Ci [^ OS CO Oi O 02 01 00 01 CD Oi r^ OS Oil Ci 0 0 0 O O o O o o CO 3O CD 00 ;o I— 00 Oi Oi 31 Oi 01 01 Oi Oi S3 Industry 43 39 37 47 46 43 10 15 20 Agriculture 35 32 30 51 50 50 .14 18 20 Building & construc- tion 40 33 31 49 51 47 11 16 21 Transport & commu- nications 43 42 40 48 44 42 9 14 18 Trade & commerce 54 49 47 35 36 35 11 15 18 Others (services) 51 48 43 38 37 38 11 15 19 * Total production in each sector tor all groups of countries tor the appropriate years—10(1 <- Estimated .Sources: rounded figures from UN Ilandbnoh of World Development Statistics 7.97.9, Stiitislicnl Yt’iirlmal: imn/fin, and Monthly Bulletin ol Statistic* for 1082.
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per capita, was substantially reduced at the same time, whereas they had been at less than half that level in the early 50s, but the difference between North America and the 152 industrial countries of other geographical areas will in all probahility he reduced in the immediate future, though it will remain quite deep for some countries.

p The growth rates of the economic capability of Western Europe and other capitalist countries are inseparable from the development of construction in them. This has been the second industry (afler agriculture) in which Western Europe has exceeded North America in absolute terms since the war, though it still lags behind in per capita terms. At the same time the other capitalist countries have come fully up to the European level; whereas the contribution of building to the GDP in them used to be traditionally in last place, now substantially exceeds agriculture. At the end of the 70s the ratio of building and agriculture in the aggregate social product of all main groups of capitalist countries is estimated at 1.3:1 in favour of the former.

p The international political consequences of the structural shifts that have taken place in the distribution of farm production in the capitalist centres are no less important than the economic ones. They are not as impressive and marked, it is true, as in industry and building, largely because of the historical features of the way the uneven distribution of the productive forces came about in this industry.

p The West European area, which long surpassed the North American in the absolute scale of farm production (except during the world wars), has steadily fallen behind the USA and Canada in per capita production, especially of food. During the first postwar years this gap began to be rapidly closed, and in the 60s, when farming was transferred onto a basis of machine industry, West European per capita production was already around 60 percent of the North American level. The subsequent convergence was not, however, clearly expressed, since the production of certain food and fodder crops accelerated in the USA and Canada and was more and more oriented on the expanding demand of the foreign market. In some years the tendency to close the gap iii general disappeared, and was reversed.

p The close dependence of agrarian production on natural conditions, plus the continuous fluctuation of market conditions, makes it difficult to distinguish stable trends and growth prospects in separate regions and countries over comparatively short periods. Still, the regional lines of the longterm development of agriculture noted above permit us to 153 assume that the tendency to level up will most likely continue given the potentially increasing shortage of certain types of agricultural raw material and food in the present-day capitalist world economy, above all in its former colonial periphery. (These points will be considered in more detail in Chapters Eight and Nine.)

p The decline in the importance of agrarian production in the economies of most developed capitalist countries, it must be emphasised, will probably reach a certain limit, which may be characterised by the weight of agriculture in the GDP of the United States. A similar conclusion follows from Table 15, which shows, in particular, the place of farming in the GDP of capitalist countries.

p In addition to the immense peculiarities of the economic structures and proportions of each capitalist country there is certain more or less distinct, regular synchrony in most of them which, objectively reflecting processes developing
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Table 15 Relative Weight of Industries in the GUP of Selected Capitalist Countries (in percentages) Agriculture Industry (including building) Transport, communications, services Country West Ger- many G 3 53 48 41 49 Great Brit- ain 4 > M 43 36 53 62 France 10 5 38 37 52 58 Italy 13 7 41 42 46 51 Sweden 7 4 40 33 53 63 The Nether- lands 1) 4 46 34 45 62 USA 4 3 38 34 58 63 Canada 6 4 34 31 60 65 Japan 13 r> 45 40 42 55 Australia 12 5 37 32 51 63 Xuurce: World Bank. World Ucvclopmunt Hepurt, 1980, [i I 1 u. 154
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within the productive forces, is summarised in the quantitative estimates referred to above in the sectoral distribution of production capacities between North America, Western Europe, and the other geographical areas. It is very necessary to clarify this type of synchronism when wo are studying macro-economic systems.

p Everywhere there is, for example, a steady decline in the proportion of agriculture in the sphere of material production. In the period under review it fell from 14 to 8 per cent in North America, from 20 to 10 per cent in Western Europe, and from 30 or 31 per cent to 11 per cent in the other areas. At the same time there was a gradual raising of the corresponding proportion of industry almost everywhere in the main centres of capitalism, mainly through the leading heavy industries.

p Among the objective processes operating synchronously in the sphere of non-material production the long-term trend toward a raising of the role of services has become of paramount importance since the war. The trend has developed unevenly in the different countries and at various stages, which has promoted the redistribution of the productive forces in the ‘services’ of the main economic centres already referred to. North America has maintained its leading position in this sector to a greater extent than in others. At the end of the 70s, for instance, around 56 to 57 per cent of the whole output of the services sphere of the developed capitalist countries was still produced in the North America, and it was, moreover, the most dynamic sphere of the postwar economies of the USA and Canada.

p The superiority of the North American area in per capita production of services was even more marked. At the end of the period under review North America exceeded the average West European level by 160 per cent and was more than three times the level of the other capitalist countries. In this sphere, as in the other main sectors of the GDP, a tendency is discernible in turn toward a levelling up, which is clearly displayed in the consolidation of its importance in the economy of modern capitalism, per capita regional and national indicators included. But even allowing for a very probable gradual intensification of this trend, the existing considerable gap in levels of development will remain a feature of the economies of capitalist countries for the last twenty years of the century.

155

p A certain smoothing out of previously formed substantial differentiation of the role and place of trade and commerce in extended reproduction has also been characteristic of the postwar development of these economies. It has come about, as a rule, through a decline in the proportion of trade in their GDP, where it was traditionally high, and through a rise where it was comparatively low. In spite of the gradual convergence of the per capita indicators in this sector, however, more than half of the added value created in the trade and commerce of the developed capitalist countries taken together came at the end of 70s from the North American region, and the per capita gap, moreover, remained particularly wide.  [155•1  Analysis of the postwar trends allows us to conclude that the weight of trade and commerce may hardly change essentially on an average. For most countries, apparently, it will remain between one-sixth*and one-seventh of the GDP.

p The regional dynamics of transport and communications in the industrial centres had much in common with that of the growth of trade and services. Given the increasing unevennessof growth in the various countries and in these sectors under the scientific and technical revolution, a levelling tendency forced its way through, which led to a gradual closing of the gap between them in both absolute terms and per capita indices of production. At the end of the period reviewed, however, nearly as much was produced in value terms in the North American region as in all the developed countries of the other regions.

p The tendencies to ‘self-movement’ of the main sectors of production in world capitalism’s centres considered in this section bring out, in their aggregate, several very important shifts in its postwar structure. In essence they are various forms of the manifestation of broader processes reflecting both the course of the unevenness of capitalism’s economic development and the objective needs of the further growth and intcrnationalisation of society’s productive forces. Concrete analysis of these trends undoubtedly remains topical for a description of the underlying processes taking place within this mode of production in our time.

p These needs have largely determined the regional and sectoral shifts in the postwar production of the developing 156 countries in the ever deepening crisis of world capitalism’s former colonial relations. In the stage of imperialism, as we know, the sphere of operation of the law of uneven economic and political development hegan to embrace not only its centres hut also their agrarian appendages drawn by the colonial powers and foreign capital into the maelstrom of international economic relations. In October 1917 Lenin insistently stressed:

As if all peoples were equally drawn into this one world economy! As ii’ there existed no relationship of bondage between llie uncivilised and the ‘civilised’ peoples precisely on the basis of ’all peoples’ being drawn ’into one world economy’.  [156•1 

This postulate of his has acquired special significance and topicality with the break-up of imperialism’s colonial system. But a wide range of matters arises here, stemming from the specilic features of the manifestation of the law of uneven development in the former colonial periphery, matters that call for special, comprehensive analysis.