6. THE LAST PHASE OF EUROPEAN CAPITALISM The German working class, caught in the chains of its counter-revolutionary organisations and blinded by the phraseology of the petty-bourgeois way of thinking, has once again rescued the bourgeoisie of its country in situations where its existence was at stake ; it has brought it to safety on its strong shoulders, out of the dangers of the World War and the November Revolution. Then the bourgeoisie installed itself in the saddle again, to ride more boldly and brutally than ever over the bodies and heads of its rescuers. Although laden with unheard-of wealth, which it looted meanwhile, it is still gripped by anxiety and terror : it has looked death in the face and stood close to the abyss of its destruction. Thus the German bourgeoisie in 1924 is no longer the one it was in 1914. For even German capitalism has become another. It has left the national phase of its development and has entered the international phase. This change and progression is connected with the outcome of the World War. If the World War originated in the drive to expansion of all the capitalist states and had the aim of placing the whole world under the dictatorship of one of these capitalist states or combination of states, so the result of the World War was, for the power of German capital, the miscarrying of this plan and the painful price of renouncing for the future its independent existence and letting itself be incorporated into the association of interests of the conquering combine. The forces of German capital are represented in the first place by heavy industry. Germany is rich in coal but lacking in ore. On this account, the daily morning and evening prayer of the Stinnes and their like was already, decades ago : Dear God, give us a victorious war with France so that we can gain possession of the rich ore deposits of Briey and Longuy. As, on the other side, the French capitalists implore their Lord God, in view of the scarcity of coal in their country, for the rich coal treasures of the Ruhr region. Ore and coal, then, also acted in the determining role in the World War, especially in the struggle between France and Germany --- after world domination had showed itself to both as an illusion. The treaty of Versailles brought the French capitalists the Saar region ; but they remained discontented, for they claim the Ruhr region as before. The mining industry, massively strengthened in the Comité de Forges [21] , asserts that it cannot fulfil its economic task without the Ruhr, especially as many of its plants and factories in Northern France had been destroyed by the German warfare and rendered useless for years to come. Since 1918 it has pressed the French government into the military invasion of the Ruhr and finally achieved its occupation. German heavy industry was desperate. Indeed their slogan also ran : Ore and coal belong together. But they wanted the fulfilling of the slogan in their favour. Now that it was happening in favour of the Comité de Forges, they summoned the German government, the German nation, the whole seething spirit of the German people to resistance. It was useless ; German heavy industry had to surrender to French capital through treaties, for coal will gravitate to iron, and the greater right is with the stronger. But still another economic power stands in the wings of the world political theatre : petroleum. The victory of the Entente in the World War was in the last analysis a victory of the superior war technology of America. For the first time oil triumphed over coal for the heating of the submarines and ships, of the aircraft, motors, tanks, etc., was accomplished with oil and by a technology which had undergone especially high development in America and opposite which the German technology was backward. After the ending of the World War, the most pressing imperative for America, if it did not want to lose again the hegemony won over world economic domains, was to bring the oil production of the world into its hands in order to thus monopolise the guarantees of its ascendancy. The richest oil field lie in Asia Minor (Mossul) and belong to the zone of the English protectorate ; the way to them leads over Europe. American oil capital began very quickly to secure this path for itself. It financed large-scale French industry, took over banks, bought up newspapers, and won influence in the government. Starting from France it pressed on -- by courtesy of the gesture of the French statesman or the bayonet of the French military -- towards Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, as far as Turkey. The war between Greece and Turkey, the revolution in Bulgaria, the Lausanne talks, the Balkan incidents, the military convention between France and the little Entente, etc., are more or less connected to the perpetual striving of American oil capital to procure itself a large base of operations for the confrontation which must follow sooner or later -- in the interest of world monopoly over oil -- with the competitors, England and Russia. Just as the oil trust has been at work for decades in Mexico to obtain dominion over the Mexican oil fields through a chain of political shocks, putsches, revolts and revolutions, so it also leaves no stone unturned in Europe in order to take possession of the approaches to the oil districts of Asia Minor, against every competitor and every opposition. Germany represented the only gap in the path. As the endeavours to detach South Germany from North Germany and bring it under French overlordship did not lead to the goal -- in spite of the enormous sums made ready for the financing of the Bavarian fascist movement and anti-state conspiracy -- and because the interests of New York clashed here with the interests of Rome, oil capital applied other tactics. Supported by the depreciation of money consequent on inflation and certain stock-exchange manoeuvres, it bought up one economic combine after another and thus gradually brought the entire power of German capital under its control. When the Stinnes combine, for which the proffered quota of shared profits was not high enough, offered resistance and opposed its conversion into the mere appendage of an international community of exploitative interests, force was resorted to. The military occupation of the Ruhr meant the fulfilment of long-cherished wishes of oil capital just as much as it was a deed after the heart of the French mining industrialists. Meanwhile the German capitalist class has recognised that it too was able to benefit considerably from its dependence on Entente and world capital. Certainly it was pledged by treaties to high payments which would severely curtail its rate of profit, but in return the German proletariat was handed over to it, completely defenceless, for unrestrained exploitation. It enjoys the advantages of tax concessions under the favour of a plutocratic fiscal legislature ; has thrown away all the burdens and fetters which, however insignificant they might be, had been put into practice in recent years to lessen social conflict in the interest of the proletariat ; above all it is again in full possession of the reactionary power, as in its best times under the Wilhelmite regime. It has secured its position with the 10-hour day, starvation wages, the gold standard swindle, martial law, and military dictatorship. Germany has become a colony of the Entente. The German workers are the enslaved natives. The German entrepreneurs represent the privileged caste of slave-owners, who take so great a part in the extorted and ill-gotten gains which they have to pay over to foreign high finance that a sumptuous life-style is possible for them. As the economic, so also the political power has gone over completely into the hands of big capital. The "shop stewards" and delegates of the leading industry sit in the government, manage high public office or hold in their hands the strings on which the current party and government puppets hang. When in November 1923 [22] the establishing of a Directory was planned, Herr Minoux, the right hand of Stinnes, was considered quite generally and as a matter of course (as already mentioned) as the coming man. Whether in the end Minoux or Stresemann or Schlacht, a representative of big capital, of the industrial and banking world, will always stand at the head and have the reins of government in his hands. The parliament is barred from co-determination by Enabling Acts or is faced with accomplished facts ; its only remaining value is as a decorative exhibition which is necessary to the appearance of a republic. The preponderance of all the big decisions lies not with it, not with the government, but with the banks and employers' combines, the state economic council, the small circle of influential pillars of the economy. It becomes increasingly obvious in society as a whole that as the economic factor stands in the foreground, the political moves more and more into the second line. This phenomenon can perhaps be designated as an Americanisation of politics, because it first arose in the country of the greatest lords of capital and is typical of the way in which the trust magnates and bank potentates are accustomed to making their politics. The undisguised domination of the money-bag, veiled with no romance, excused by no ethic, sanctioned by no diplomacy, justified by no parliamentary phrase -- the whole direct, brutal power-politics of the economic dictators, the Stinnes-isation of politics -- that is the characteristic sign of the last phase into which German capitalism of the post-war period has been hurled, the phase of inter-nationality. Footnotes [21] French employers combine. [22] After the abortive KPD putsch in Saxony and Thuringia in October 1923. |