p As the world capitalist economy developed, its primary commodity sphere was inevitably more and more internationalised. The industrial centres’ need for imports and exports of primary products grew. In the imperialist stage, certain elements of ‘planning’ in their functioning developed in this connection along with a steady expansion of the anarchy and spontaneity of capitalism’s development. Lenin, noting that the free competition of individual capitalists, isolating and producing for sale on an unknown market, had become a thing of the past at this stage, wrote:

p Concentration has reached the point at which it is possible to make an approximate estimate of all sources of raw materials ... [of a country and even... of several countries, or of the whole world. Not only are such estimates made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolist associations. An approximate estimate of the capacity of markets is also made, and the associations ‘divide’ them up amongst themselves by agreement.  [268•1 

p This proposition of Lenin’s retains all its theoretical significance and topicality in today’s stage of the general crisis of capitalism. It needs amendment now, of course, because finance capital has been more and more clearly losing its former monopoly positions in the world economy and world politics in recent decades. Even with a certain growth of the ‘planning’ noted, it is becoming more and more difficult for the imperialist alliances to boss the show and share out the raw material resources of developing countries uncontrolled.

p The shifts in the postwar structure of manufacturing studied above have had a decisive effect on other branches of material production and with capitalist countries’ increasing dependence on foreign commodity markets, have acquired certain specific features that are in turn the result of broad-scale, very contradictory processes in the basic industries of both capitalist and developing countries. These features also predetermined many of the modern trends in the development of agriculture and mining, viz., the industries that produce primary commodities that are, for the most part, later processed by industry.  [269•1 

p When the dynamics of social reproduction is analysed, all types of primary product, including food and fuel, are usually lumped together in a single group, which makes it possible to compare the basic trends of their movement with other aggregate indicators of the growth of society’s productive powers. The UN statistics enable us to make this comparison for the whole postwar capitalist economy, and it indicates above all that the growth of the commodity sphere as a whole has been relatively slow (see Table 31).

p The non-socialist world’s real production of primary commodities had increased by roughly 150 per cent at the beginning of the 80s compared with prewar. Although growth was higher on an average than before the war, it was extremely uneven and spasmodic. In the 50s and early 60s, for example, and in the 70s, its rates were substantially below the mean growth of population. For the whole period covered by Table 31 the annual growth of production of primary commo-
•
270 Table 31 Dynamics of Hie Growth 01 Output of Primary Commodities and Manufactures* 1958 1070 (1().-J8=100) (M)58 = M 1081 (1970-100) Index numbers Primary commodities 145 145 Manufacturing 240 210 120 140 Annual Growth Rates (in percentages) Primary commodities 2.5 Manufacturing (i.O 3.1 6.3 1.7 3.2 * Rounded figures Source: calculated from UN Statistical Yearbook and NU Monthly Bulletin of Statistics for the appropriate years.
•
dities was a little less than half the rate, on the whole, of manufacturing. As a result there was a substantial weakening of the role of primary products in the total GDP of the world capitalist economy. Where on the eve of the war its share had been only a little lower in comparative prices than that of manufacturing, the proportion of the latter was more than 200 per cent higher at the beginning of the 80s.

p These generalised results indicate cardinal changes in the structure of material production over a historically short period; and of course call for further refinement and analysis, especially since the steady deepening of crisis processes in recent years is more and more graphically demonstrating the bankruptcy of state-monopoly capitalism’s attempts to deal with the very acute economic and social issues stemming from these processes (including its world economic relations with developing countries). This course of events confirms the legitimacy and justice of the fight that is growing in most liberated countries to build their own industrial base and to oppose the neocolonialists’ drive to maintain the primary commodity orientation of their economies.

p The production of primary commodities will be developed further in the old colonial periphery in the future, and there 271 will doubtless be a tendency for it to expand in absolute terms. The growth rate will most likely, as before, slightly exceed population growth in the foreseeable future and at the same time naturally lag behind the dynamics of manufacturing. This tendency reflects the natural process in the development of the productive forces of a relative reduction of the role of primary commodities in material production. Engels, developing Marx’s statements on the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, drew attention to the fact that ’the portion of value deriving from raw and auxiliary materials must decrease with the increased productivity of labour’.  [271•1 

p Every one per cent increase in the production of primary commodities in the world economy in the postwar period was related to a more than two per cent growth of the output of manufacturing. In our view that ratio, which characterises an objectively operating tendency, allows us to suppose that manufactures may surpass primary commodities by at least 4:1 by the end of the 80s (in value terms in constant prices). That supposition is also reinforced by the steady growth of output of artificial substitutes for natural raw materials.

p At the same time analysis of the long-term trends of world economic development indicates that demand for raw materials, resources of which are far from limitless, is steadily increasing, so that the inter-imperialist struggle to grab and re-distribute their sources is intensifying, a consequence of which was, essentially, the unprecedented aggravation of the primary commodity problems in the postwar period. These contradictions had ultimately been resolved throughout the preceding history of imperialism at the expense of the peoples of economically backward and weak countries. Now, however, when the overwhelming majority of the countries of the old colonial world have achieved genuine national independence and have taken the road of active struggle for economic independence, monopoly capital can no longer resolve these problems in the way it used to. In its struggle to divide and re-divide spheres of profitable application of capital it is also forced to allow for the existence of the Soviet Union and a powerful socialist community that has 272 become a reliable buckler protecting all the peoples of the world, including the peoples of liberated primary commodity producing countries, against imperialism’s aggressive intentions.

p Fidel Castro, First Secretary of tho Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, addressing the 25th Congress of the CPSU, had good grounds for declaring:

p Had it not been for the Soviet Union, in conditions of a shortage of raw material resources and of an energy crisis the capitalist powers would have unhesitatingly launched a partition of the world. Had it not been for the Soviet Union, it would have been impossible even to conceive of the measure of independence now enjoyed by small states, the successful struggle of the peoples for the return of their natural riches under their control, or the fact that their voice now resounds impressively in the concert of nations.  [272•1 

It is not possible, from the available statistics, to accurately determine the weight in the total volume of production of that part of^the output of primary commodities thais industrially processed for the capitalist economy as a wholeIt can only be estimated for separate groups of the commodities produced by the mining industry and by agriculture.