What the U.S. gained in World War I
2014James P. Cannon 2014-02Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 9 →
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SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2014 9 James P. Cannon was the principal founder of the Trotskyist movement in the United States. Below is an excerpt from his pamphlet “America’s Road to Socialism,” based on lectures he gave in 1953. A quest of its own continent was just about completed long about the turn of the century, America’s con and there was no place else to go. Father Neptune drew a line at the water’s edge of the Pacific and said, “You can’t go any farther here.” The free land was gone, and all the new territories were pretty well settled up.
The problem of new markets for the ever-increasing surpluses, piled up by the ever-increasing productivity of American labor, was becoming Problem No. 1.
In 1907 there was a crisis. And again in 1914 there was mounting unemployment. It was then that the European capitalist nations, America’s perennial Santa Claus, once again came to the rescue of American economy.
They involved themselves in a destructive war over markets, colonies, spheres of influence and fields of in vestment, and America warmed its hands by the fire.
Remaining benevolently neutral on the side of the Al lies for the first three years of the war, America found in the war itself the richest market it could ever have dreamed of.
While the normal peace-time economy of the West ern Allies was dislocated by the war, American factories worked overtime to supply their deficiencies. America was still a debtor nation when the war started, but the huge purchases which France and England were com pelled to make in America soon canceled out all indebt edness. America emerged as a creditor nation, even be fore the war was over.
At the same time, while the Western Allies and Ger many were busy in their life-and-death battle, America obligingly edged them out of the South American mar ket. This provided another outlet for the endless supply of goods rolling from the assembly lines in all kinds of factories from one end of the United States to another.
So great were the demands of the war in Europe, for goods and materials, that America was obliged to ex pand its productive plant, and thereby its productive capacities to supply them.
When America, after a hugely profitable delay of three years, finally entered the war in order to protect her loans to the Allied powers, she only had to tip the scales a bit to finish off the Kaiser’s army. ...
The First World War brought America to the position of leading power in the capitalist world, having no fur ther need of any more capital investments from Europe, or any more of Europe’s manpower. Since then, America has been concerned only with the problem of propping up Europe with loans, sufficient to enable it to ward off collapse and the danger of revolution, without allowing it to enter the world market again as a real competitor.
Capitalist America, the beneficiary in its youth of the aid of capitalist Europe, became in the period of its ma turity the ungrateful nemisis of this same Europe. n ... World War I (continued from page 12: “The War to End All Wars turns 100”) military bases across the continent to bolster its ability to exploit the mineral and oil riches. But Europe and China are also interested in the vast wealth, making Africa a staging ground for a new round of imperial competition. The United States backs one repressive regime after another (Saudi Arabia, a medieval monarchy with vast oil reserves, being a shining example) to advance its own imperialist ends.
Recent and continuing revelations by Edward Snowden point to just how low the United States will sink to gain an upper hand over its com petitors. Inter-imperialist squabbles are every where. Japan and China (and the U.S.) are en gaged in territorial disputes over islands. A Eu ropean financial crisis brought on by capitalist speculation threatens to tear Europe apart. The U.S. continues to flex its military muscle from Syria to Yemen to North Korea, needlessly pro voking the citizens who would have no interest in hostilities.
Capitalist expansion will continue to inflame these underlying tensions until the people of the world unite to fight the only war worth fighting, the class war, and for the only goal worth fighting for—socialism. n