272

p The production of minerals still remains the main source of materials for the leading manufacturing industries and power supply. The stimulating effect of these industries on mining is beyond doubt. The physical volume of the extraction of minerals rose fourfold in the present capitalist world between 1938 and 1978 (oil and gas tenfold). Analysis of the postwar economic development of both the industrial countries and the Third World allows us to conclude that a further rise in the role of minerals in the non-socialist world’s output of primary products is inevitable.  [272•2 

273

How is the mining industry distributed between the two groups of countries? It is very pertinent to clarify this point because of the steady rise in the liberated countries’ struggle for equality in international economic relations and against the diktat of international monopoly capital. Quite important shifts have become noticeable in this respect in recent decades (see Table 32).

Table 32 Tlic World Capitalist Extraction Industries (in 1975 prices) Developed countries Developing countries Industry 1938 195:i 1 !)<>:! 11173 MlSl 11)38 1953 1903 1973 1981 Percentage share of Ihe grou/> in the extraction industries All brandies 70 67 53 41 45 | 30 33 47 59 55 Oil & gas 62 49 30 21 28 | 38 51 70 79 72 Weight of oil £ gas in the extraction industries of each group of countries (percentages) Oil and gas 22 32 33 42 52 | 44 67 80 92 90 Other typos of minerals 78 68 67 58 48 I 56 33 20 8 10 Source: calculated from: UN Handbook of World Development Statistics, 1979 (United Nations, New York, 1980); UN Statistical Yearbook and Monthly Bulletin of Statistics for the appropriate years.

p The figures in the table indicate a considerable increase in the imbalance in the development of mining in the main groups of countries. On the eve of World War II the bulk of 274 the production of minerals was still concentrated in the industrialised capitalist countries, mainly in North America and Western Europe, which produced more than fourfifths of the total. In other words, their manufacturing and power industries were then based primarily on raw materials produced in the industrial centres of capitalism.

p During World War II, however, and in postwar years, a tendency had already begun to assert itself toward an enhanced role for the primary product periphery. Subsequently this trend noticeably intensified in 1953-73, which led to the proportion of the developing countries rising from 33 per cent to 59 in the decades considered. An ever bigger part of their raw materials was directed, of course, to meeting these countries’ own needs, but the lion’s share was earmarked for export to developed capitalist countries.

p There are grounds for considering that, even allowing for the relative decline in the weight of mining in total world production, and a certain decline in recent years in the weight of developing countries in mining, especially of energy materials, the industrial centres of capitalism will increasingly experience an acute need to get various minerals from them. It must be remembered, moreover, that many of the easily accessible deposits in the developed countries are exhausted while there are significant, economically more efficient deposits in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Allowing for that the share of developing countries in the world capitalist extraction industries will continue to rise.

p This process was displayed particularly clearly in the oil and gas industries in the first postwar decades; at the beginning of the 80s around one-half of all the output of the extraction industries of developed capitalist countries, in value terms (in 1975 prices), and more than nine-tenths of that of developing countries, was coming from them. Whereas more than three-fifths of the oil and gas extracted in the 30s was produced in developed countries, mainly in the United States, only a little more than a quarter was produced by them in the 70s and early 80s.

p With the break-up of the colonial system and the struggle of the oil-producing countries everywhere against expatriate monopoly capital domination of their economies, this course of events foreordained aggravation of the energy problem in the world capitalist economy.

275

p The industrial centres’ declining opportunities to supply themselves with minerals from their own resources are an important objective factor furthering an extension of economic ties between them and the primary producers, but the monopolies’ drive to utilise the advantages of the international divisions of labour in their own narrow interests is leading with the same objective inevitability to a further aggravation of the industrial centres’ problems of mineral supplies. The repeated outbreaks of the energy crisis in the 70s essentially reflected the crisis of the whole historically established raw material structure of the international capitalist division of labour based on a colonial foundation.

p Other evidence of the steady growth of deep structural contradictions since the war is the long-term development trends in agriculture. We shall examine these trends from the angle of the changes in the dynamics and ratio of the volume of production in developed and developing countries (see Table 33). Agricultural production rose much more slowly in recent decades than the other basic industries. Its annual rates were under 2.5 per cent in 1950-78, and
•
Table 33 Agricultural Production in Capitalist and Developing Countries Index Percentage Weight share of farm (percentage) production In the GDP All 1960-61 100 100 10 1970-71 165 100 7.5 1980-81 205 100 6 Developed capitalist countries 1960-61 100 56 6.5 1970-71 150 53 5 1980-81 180 49 4 Developing countries 1900 100 44 31 1970 180 47 22 1980-81 250 51 17 Sources: calculated from UN Statistical Yearbool:, FAO Production Yrurbooft, FAO Monthly Bulletin ot Statistics for the appropriate years. 276
•
much lower than in mining,’not to mention manufacturing, and only a little higher than the average growth of population. As a result the proportion of^ farm production in the aggregate social product of the non-socialist world fell by more than two-fifths (roughly from 36 to 20 per cent in developing countries and from 7 to 4 per cent in capitalist countries).

p This trend by no means signified that the capitalist world’s need for farm produce was falling. On the contrary, the crisis phenomena in this sphere have been becoming more and more acute in recent decades, the food shortage in the overwhelming majority of developing countries is growing, and the inequality in the distribution of agricultural resources among the individual countries and groups of countries is getting worse. According to capitalist sociologists and economists hundreds of millions of people do not get the necessary minimum of food and live on the verge of starvation. Around 800 million people exist in such conditions in developing countries. In only seven countries of the non- socialist world do exports of food exceed imports. Studies made by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in the 70s showed that the international food situation remained extremely difficult and uncertain, especially in developing countries, where the caloric intake of food was a third lower than in capitalist countries.  [276•1 

p The distinctly slow growth of the agrarian sphere compared with other sectors of capitalist material production is a process that is not simply inherent in the postwar period. Lenin remarked that the lag of agriculture behind industry was ’one of the most profound causes of disproportion between the various branches of the economy, of crises and_ soaring prices’.  [276•2  The field of operation of this historical tendency is now being further intensified and broadened. A comprehensive analysis of its consequences and of its features in various countries is extremely important for a proper estimate of the prime causes of the acute aggravation of the capitalist world’s raw material and food problems and of the 277 spasmodic fluctuations of market prices for food and agricultural raw materials.

p The development of the contradictions analysed in the foregoing sections has inexorably led to an aggravation of the ‘traditional’ and newly arising crisis situations in the agrarian sector of the world capitalism. In that connection the following phenomena deserve attention. At the beginning of this century Lenin, characterising the level of capitalism’s productive forces in agriculture, noted that ’capitalism in agriculture is at a stage more akin to the manufactory stage than to the stage of large-scale machine industry’.  [277•1  In recent decades there have been big changes in the farming of developed countries (which has been decisevely transferred onto the basis of machine industry), that have opened up fundamentally new opportunities for raising the productivity of farm labour.

p Under the domination of monopoly capital, however, this has not led to any real change in modern capitalism’s per capita volume of farm production. According to the UN statistics the general growth rates of farm production were lower in the industrial centres in the postwar period than in the developing world as a whole (about 3 per cent). Consequently the physical output of farm produce more than doubled in the latter, where there are still considerable survivals of pre-capitalist relations of production in many regions, while it rose by three-quarters in the main centres of capitalism.

p It is extremely difficult to determine the proportion of farm output that is raw material for manufacturing industries. Some estimate that around a fifth consisted of nonfood produce, the bulk of it processed, in the 70s, but one cannot conclude from this that the role of agriculture as a supplier of industrial raw materials has declined. A feature of the primary commodity sphere is that more and more of its output is processed in the food and beverages industries. In recent decades these industries have grown roughly four times faster in the developed countries than their agriculture’s production of primary foodstuffs, and three times faster in developing countries.

p Analysis of all these changes calls for clarification of the place of this commodity group in the modern international 278 division of labour (the structure of which has undergone very substantial shifts). See Fig. 19 on p. 280.

p The international trade in primary products has not expanded as rapidly as trade in manufactures. As a result there has been a marked reduction of its proportion in the total exports of the non-socialist world (see Table 34). But that does not mean that the tendency toward internationalisation of social production is not seriously affecting the primary product sectors of capitalism. Furthermore, it has been having a growing influence on the course of their development, especially in recent years. The approximate estimates of UN statistics enable us to get a general idea of the ratio of the dynamics of the growth of production and of foreign trade in primary commodities. When we examine them as a single group, international trade in them rose 50 per cent faster (in constant prices), in the years covered by the graphs, than their production. In other words, effective demand for them on the world market expanded much faster than on the home markets of countries taken separately. Is that a specific feature of recent years alone?

p For all the conditional nature and lack of comparability of the international statistics, we can still conclude that the growth of foreign trade in primary commodities was faster in the earlier decades of this century (with the exception of part of the interwar period, especially the years of the 1929-33 cyclic crisis and following depression). Its physical volume in 1936-38 was a bit more than double the 1900 level, while production increased by 77 per cent.  [278•1  In contrast to recent decades, moreover, a tendency toward a marked quickening of the growth rates of trade in primary commodities compared with international exchange of manufactures was typical of the past.  [278•2  After World War II this trend was no longer manifested.

p The consequences of the war were most heavily reflected in the international trade in primary products. Its restoration was much slower and more difficult than that of trade
•
279 Table 34 Role of Primary Commodities in World Capitalist Exports Volume of exports ($ billions) Percent ase share In the total volume of exports Percentage share In exports of primary commodities In 1970 prices, f.o.b. Primary commodities (less fuel) 1938 29 50 88 1948 24 38 83 1958 37 34.5 79 1968 59 25 74 1979 110 24.5 76 Fuels 1938 4 7 12 1948 5 8 17 1958 10 9 21 1968 21 9 26 1979 34 7.5 24 In current prices, f.o.b. Primary commodities (less fuel) 1938 9 44 84.5 1948 24.5 46 83.1 1958 33.5 35 75.5 1968 54 26 72 .5 1979 250 17 47 Fuels 1938 1.5 8 15.5 1948 5 9 17 1958 11 11.5 24.5 1968 20.5 10 27.5 1979 287 20 53 Sources: calculated from UN Statistical Yearbook 1976, p 55; idem., 1979 ISO, p 5J; UN Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, 1981, 7: XLIV-XLVI.
•
in manufactures. The physical volume of foreign trade in them reached the 1938 level only in 1953, while international trade in manufactures was by then already more than double that level. Many capitalist countries had been forced in war conditions to adopt a course of maximum self-supply of raw materials, inter alia by the creation of artificial substitutes. This line was more or less maintained for several years after.

280

The powerful postwar upsurge of the national liberation movement in the primary commodity producing periphery of the capitalist world and the cold war unleashed by aggressive circles of the imperialist powers furthered this course of events. Consequently, right up to the early (JOs, as Fig. 19 shows, a greater part of raw material production than before the war was designed for home consumption. Later, however, because of the objective needs of capitalist countries’ economics, the growth rates of the primary product trade accelerated and noticeably exceeded the dynamics of production.  [280•1  A tendency began to prevail on the world capitalist market, compared with the national markets, toward a faster expansion of trade in primary products.

Fig. 19 Dynamics of the physical volume of production of farm produce and raw materials and the world capitalist economy’s trade in them * 900- 800- 700- 600- 500. 400. —PRODUCTION —EXPORT OF FUt-LS —EXPORTS OF FARM PRODUCE AND RAW MATERIALS (MINUS FUF.LSI 300- 250- 200- 150- io eo 19F8 1:174 1977 1980 *In 1970 prices Sources: UN Statistical Yearbook and Monthly Bulletin of Statistics for the relevant years.

p Fuels have a special place in this process. The steady growth of the industrial centres’ need for energy resources, and their 281 reorieutation of their fuel balance from coal to oil and gas raised their interest in supplies of fossil fuels from abroad. The development of big new oilfields in the Near East and certain other areas of the developing world, the low cost of getting the oil, and the huge profits of the monopolies from investment in their oil industries, in turn created favourable conditions for a rapid development of international’trade in fuels. The expanding demand of the chemical industry for fuels also stimulated this process.

p In contrast to other commodities the physical volume of the international trade in fuel was already above the prewar level at the end of the 40s, and by the mid-70s was 8.5 times higher (in current prices 190 times higher). As a result the role of fuels in international trade increased significantly in the postwar years (see Table 34).  [281•1 

The huge growth of the proportion of fuels’in current prices in the 70s is an important consequence of the oil- producing countries’ anti-imperialist struggle to establish effective control over their own natural wealth. But oil and gas were no exception in this respect. World food prices and non-food prices rose by four-fifths and two-thirds respectively in 1973-80  [281•2 . This rapid growth of prices was not, however, stable. The prices of many raw materials, especially those exported by developing countries, fell somewhat under the impact of the crisis of the mid-70s and preceding ones. During the subsequent cyclic upswing prices again rose markedly. Such steep fluctuations of prices for primary commodities had not been known hitherto in the postwar history of this market.