Economic perspectives¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter argues that the post-Second World War period must be understood not as a continuation of capitalist crisis and stagnation, but as the beginning of a new cyclical upswing, a position taken in direct polemic against the resolution of the International Pre-Conference and the minority of the British party. The author grounds the analysis in the Marxist theory of the general crisis of capitalism, which began with the First World War and ushered in an epoch of capitalist decay. In this epoch, the productive forces no longer grow with the same rhythm as before 1914; short booms are followed by long slumps, and production oscillates around a fixed level rather than ascending to new heights. However, the author insists that this does not mean capitalism is incapable of any recovery whatsoever.
The core argument is that the present crisis is not a classic crisis of capitalist overproduction, but a crisis of underproduction caused by war destruction and the concentration of productive forces for military purposes. This distinction is crucial. Because the crisis is one of shortage—of capital goods, consumer goods, and agricultural produce—the preconditions for a boom are present. The destruction of war has performed the same function as the deliberate destruction of wealth during a slump: it has cleared the ground for a restoration of the rate of profit. The author cites Trotsky to support the view that a cyclical upswing is inevitable, even within the general framework of decay, and that such an upswing will only prepare the way for an even greater subsequent slump.
The chapter mounts a sharp polemic against two positions. First, it attacks the Stalinist theory, revived during the 1929-33 crisis, that this was the last crisis of capitalism from which it would never recover. This is denounced as un-Marxian. Second, it takes issue with comrades in the American SWP and the British minority who argued that economic recovery in Western Europe was impossible unless the proletariat had first been decisively defeated, and that American loans would not be forthcoming without such a defeat. The author points to the fact that loans had already been given and that recovery was visibly underway in France, Holland, Belgium, and Britain. The argument that a boom requires a prior political defeat of the working class is rejected as a conflation of political and economic processes. The author insists that capitalism, even in its death agony, recovers after a slump if the proletariat is paralysed by its own organisations, as it has been by social democracy and Stalinism.
The chapter draws heavily on the experience of the interwar period. It notes that after the First World War, despite the existence of large revolutionary parties, capitalism restored production. After the Second World War, with the revolutionary parties even weaker, the conditions for recovery are more favourable. The author warns that the Fourth International will discredit itself if it refuses to recognise the inevitable recovery and instead predicts permanent stagnation. The task of Marxists is not to deny the upswing but to explain its temporary character, to prepare the working class for the new slump that will follow, and to ensure that when the contradictions of the recovery are exposed—the paradox of poverty and plenty, idle factories alongside starving populations—the programme of the Fourth International can provide leadership.