THE DIVISION OF THE WORLD AMONG CAPITALIST COMBINES
Monopolist capitalist combines, cartels, syndicates and trusts divide among themselves, first of all, the home market, seize more or less complete possession of the industry of a country. But under capitalism the home market is inevitably bound up with the foreign market. Capitalism long ago created a world market. As the export of capital increased, and as the foreign and colonial connections and "spheres of influence" of the big monopolist combines expanded in all ways, things "naturally" gravitated towards an international agreement among these combines, and towards the formation of international cartels.
This is a new stage of world concentration of capital and production, incomparably higher than the preceding stages. Let us see how this supermonopoly develops.
The electrical industry is the most typical of the latest technical achievements, most typical of capitalism at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
This industry has developed in the two most advanced of the new imperialist countries, the United States and Germany. In Germany, the crisis of 1900 gave a particularly strong impetus to its concentration. During the crisis, the banks, which by this time had become fairly well merged with industry, enormously accelerated and intensified the ruin of relatively small firms and their absorption by the large ones. "The banks," writes Jeidels, "in refusing a helping hand to the very companies which are in greatest need of capital bring on first a frenzied boom and then the hopeless failure of the companies which have not been attached to them closely enough."[*]
As a result, after 1900, concentration in Germany progressed with giant strides. Up to 1900 there had been eight or seven "groups" in the electrical industry. Each consisted of several companies (altogether there were 28) and each was backed by from 2 to 11 banks. Between 1908 and 1912 all these groups were merged into two, or one. The diagram below shows the process:
Prior Felten & Lah- Union Siemens Schuckert Berg- Kummer
to Guillaume meyer A.E.G. & Halske & Co. Mann
1900 ------\/------ | ------\/------- | |
Felten & Lab- A.E.G. Siemens & Halske- Berg- Failed
meyer (Gen. Schuckert mann in 1900
El. Co.)
----------\/--------- ----------\/---------
A.E.G. Siemens & Halske-
By (General Electric Co.) Schuckert
1912 ---------------------\/---------------------
(In close "cooperation" since 1908)
The famous A.E.G. (General Electric Company) which grew up in this way, controls 175 to 200 companies (through the "holding" system), and a total capital of approximately 1,500,000,000 marks. Of direct agencies abroad alone, it has thirty-four, of which twelve are joint-stock companies, in more than ten countries. As early as 1904 the amount of capital invested abroad by the German electrical industry was estimated at 233,000,000 marks. Of this sum, 62,000,000 were invested in Russia. Needless to say, the A.E.G. is a huge "combine" -- its manufacturing companies alone number no less than sixteen -- producing the most diverse articles, from cables and insulators to motor cars and flying machines.
But concentration in Europe was also a component part of the process of concentration in America, which developed in the following way:
General Electric Company -------------------/\--------------------United States: Thomson-Houston Edison Co. establishes in Europe Co. establishes a the French Edison Co. which firm in Europe transfers its patents to the Ger- man firm Germany: Union Electric Co. General Electric Co. (A.E.G.) -------------------\/-------------------- General Electric Co. (A. E. G.)
Thus, two electrical "Great Powers" were formed: "there are no other electric companies in the world completely independent of them," wrote Heinig in his article "The Path of the Electric Trust." An idea, although far from complete, of the turnover and the size of the enterprises of the two "trusts" can be obtained from the following figures:
Turnover No. of Net profits (Mill. marks) employees (Mill. marks)America: General Electric Co. (G.E.C.) 1907: 252 28,000 35.4 1910: 298 32,000 45.6 Germany: General Elec-tric Co. (A. E. G.) . . . 1907: 216 30,700 14.5 1911: 362 60,800 21.7
Well, in 1907, the German and American trusts concluded an agreement by which they divided the world between themselves. Competition between them ceased. The American General Electric Company (G.E.C.) "got" the United States and Canada. The German General Electric Company (A.E.G.) "got" Germany, Austria, Russia, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey and the Balkans. Special agreements, naturally secret, were concluded regarding the penetration of "daughter companies" into new branches of industry, into "new" countries formally not yet allotted. The two trusts were to exchange inventions and experiments.[*]
The difficulty of competing against this trust, which is practically world-wide, controls a capital of several billion, and has its "branches," agencies, representatives, connections, etc., in every corner of the world, is self-evident. But the division of the world between two powerful trusts does not preclude redivision if the relation of forces changes as a result of uneven development. war bankruptcy, etc.
An instructive example of attempts at such a redivision, of the struggle for redivision, is provided by the oil industry.
"The world, oil market," wrote Jeidels in 1905, "is even today still divided between two great financial groups --
Rockefeller's American Standard Oil Co., and Rothschild and Nobel, the controlling interests of the Russian oil helds in Baku. The two groups are closely connected. But for several years five enemies have been threatening their monopoly":[*] 1) The exhaustion of the American oil fields; 2) the competition of the firm of Mantashev of Baku; 3) the Austrian oil fields; 4) the Rumanian oil helds; 5) the overseas oil fields, particularly in the Dutch colonies (the extremely rich firms, Samuel, and Shell, also connected with British capital). The three last groups are connected with the big German banks, headed by the huge Deutsche Bank. These banks independently and systematically developed the oil industry in Rumania, for example, in order to have a foothold of their "own." In 1907, the foreign capital invested in the Rumanian oil industry was estimated at 185,000,000 francs, of which 74,000,000 was German capital.[**]
A struggle began for the "division of the world," as, in fact, it is called in economic literature. On one side, the Rockefeller "oil trust," wishing to capture everything, formed a "daughter company" right in Holland, and bought up oil fields in the Dutch Indies, in order to strike at its principal enemy, the Anglo-Dutch Shell trust. On the other side, the Deutsche Bank and the other German banks aimed at "retaining" Rumania "for themselves" and at uniting it with Russia against Rockefeller. The latter possessed far more capital and an excellent system of oil transportation and distribution. The struggle had to end, and did end in 1907, with the utter defeat of the Deutsche Bank, which was confronted with the alternative: either to liquidate its "oil interests" and lose millions, or submit. It chose to submit, and concluded a very disadvantageous agreement with the "oil trust." The Deutsche Bank agreed "not to attempt anything which might injure American interests." Provision was made, however, for the annulment of the agreement in the event of Germany establishing a state oil monopoly.
Then the "comedy of oil" began. One of the German finance kings, von Gwinner, a director of the Deutsche Bank, through his private secretary, Stauss, launched a campaign for a state oil monopoly. The gigantic machine of the huge German bank and all its wide "connections" were set in motion. The press bubbled over with "patriotic" indignation against the "yoke" of the American trust, and, on March 15, 1911, the Reichstag by an almost unanimous vote, adopted a motion asking the government to introduce a bill for the establishment of an oil monopoly. The government seized upon this "popular" idea, and the game of the Deutsche Bank, which hoped to cheat its American partner and improve its business by a state monopoly, appeared to have been won. The German oil magnates already saw visions of enormous profits, which would not be less than those of the Russian sugar refiners. . . . But, firstly, the big German banks quarrelled among themselves over the division of the spoils. The Disconto-Gesellschaft exposed the covetous aims of the Deutsche Bank; secondly, the government took fright at the prospect of a struggle with Rockefeller, for it was very doubtful whether Germany could be sure of obtaining oil from other sources (the Rumanian output was small); thirdly, just at that time the 1913 credits of a billion marks were voted for Germany's war preparations. The oil monopoly project was postponed. The Rockefeller "oil trust" came out of the struggle, for the time being, victorious.
The Berlin review, Die Bank, wrote in this connection that Germany could fight the oil trust only by establishing an electricity monopoly and by converting water power into cheap electricity. "But," the author added, "the electricity monopoly will come when the producers need it, that is to say, when the next great crash in the electrical industry will be standing at the door, and when the gigantic, expensive electric stations which are now being put up at great cost everywhere by private electrical 'concerns,' which are already obtaining partial monopolies from towns, from states, etc., can no longer work at a profit. Water power will then have to be used. But it will be impossible to convert it into cheap electricity at state expense; it will also have to be handed over to a 'private monopoly controlled by the state,' because private industry has already concluded a number of contracts and has stipulated for heavy compensation. . . . So it was with the nitrate monopoly, so it is with the oil monopoly; so it will be with the electric power monopoly. It is time our state socialists, who allow themselves to be blinded by a beautiful principle, understood, at last, that in Germany the monopolies have never pursued the aim, nor have they had the result, of benefiting the consumer, or even of handing over to the state part of the promoter's profits; they have served only to facilitate at the expense of the state, the recovery of private industries which were on the verge of bankruptcy."*
Such are the valuable admissions which the German bourgeois economists are forced to make. We see plainly here how private and state monopolies are interwoven in the age of finance capital; how both are but separate links in the imperialist struggle between the big monopolists for the division of the world.
In mercantile shipping, the tremendous development of concentration has ended also in the division of the world. In Germany two powerful companies have come to the front: the Hamburg-Amerika and the Norddeutscher Lloyd, each having a capital of 200,000,000 marks (in stocks and bonds) and possessing shipping tonnage to the value of 185 to 189 million marks. On the other side, in America, on January 1, 1903, the so-called Morgan trust, the International Mercantile Marine Co., was formed which united nine American and British steamship companies, and which possessed a capital of 120,000,000 dollars (480,000,000 marks). As early as 1903, the German giants and this American-British trust concluded an agreement to divide the world in connection with the division of profits. The German companies undertook not to compete in the Anglo-American traffic. Which ports were to be "allotted" to each was precisely stipulated; a joint committee of control was set up, etc. This agreement was concluded for twenty years, with the prudent provision for its annulment in the event of war.[*]
Extremely instructive also is the story of the formation of the International Rail Cartel; The first attempt of the British, Belgian and German rail manufacturers to form such a cartel was made as early as 1884, during a severe industrial depression. The manufacturers agreed not to compete with one another in the home markets of the countries involved, and they divided the foreign markets in the following quotas: Great Britain 66 per cent; Germany 27 per cent; Belgium 7 per cent. India was reserved entirely for Great Britain. Joint war was declared against a British firm which remained outside the cartel, the cost of which was met by a percentage levy on all sales. But in 1886 the cartel collapsed when two British firms retired from it. It is characteristic that agreement could not be achieved during subsequent boom periods.
At the beginning of 1904; the German steel syndicate was formed. In November 1904, the International Rail Cartel was revived, with the following quotas: England 53.5 per cent; Germany 28.8, per cent; Belgium 17.67 per cent. France came in later and received 4.8 per cent, 5.8 per cent and 6.4 per cent in the first, second and third years respectively, over and above the 100 per cent limit, i.e., out of a total of 104.8 per cent, etc. In 1905, the United States Steel Corporation entered the cartel; then Austria and Spain. "At the present time," wrote Vogelstein in 1910, "the division of the world is completed, and the big consumers, primarily the state railways -- since the world has been parcelled out without consideration for their interests -- can now dwell like the poet in the heaven of Jupiter."[*] .
We will mention also the International Zinc Syndicate which was established in 1909 and which precisle apportioned output among five groups of factories: German, Belgian, French, Spanish and British; and also the International Dynamite Trust, which, Liefmann says, is "quite a modern, close alliance of all the German explosives manufacturers who, with the French and American dynamite manufacturers, organized in a similar manner, have divided the whole world among themselves, so to speak."**
Liefmann calculated that in 1897 there were altogether about forty international cartels in which Germany had a share, while in 1910 there were about a hundred.
Certain bourgeois writers (whom K. Kautsky, who has completely abandoned the Marxist position he held, for example, in 1909, has now joined) have expressed the opinion that international cartels, being one of he most striking expressions of the internationalization of capital, give the hope of peace among nations under capitalism. Theoretically, this opinion is absolutely absurd, while in practice it is sophistry and a dishonest defence of the worst opportunism. International cartels show to what point capitalist monopolies have developed, and the object of the struggle between the various capitalist combines. This last circumstance is the most important; it alone shows us the historico-economic meaning of what is taking place; for the forms of the struggle may and do constantly change in accordance with varying, relatively particular and temporary causes, but the substance of the struggle, its class content, positively cannot change while classes exist. Naturally, it is in the interests of, for example, the German bourgeoisie, to whose side Kautsky has in effect gone over in his theoretical arguments (we will deal with this later), to obscure the substance of the present economic struggle (the division of the world) and to emphasize now this and now another form of the struggle. Kautsky makes the same mistake. Of course, we have in mind not only the German bourgeoisie, but the bourgeoisie all over the world. The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital," "in proportion to strength," because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism. But strength varies with the degree of economic and political development. In order to understand what is taking place, it is necessary to know what questions are settled by the changes in strength. The question as to whether these changes are "purely" economic or non-economic (e.g., military) is a secondary one, which cannot in the least affect the fundamental views on the latest epoch of capitalism. To substitute the question of the form of the struggle and agreements (today peaceful, tomorrow warlike, the next day warlike again) for the question of the substance of the struggle and agreements between capitalist combines is to sink to the role of a sophist.
The epoch of the latest stage of capitalism shows us that certain relations between capitalist combines grow up, base on the economic division of the world; while parallel and in connection with it, certain relations grow up between political combines, between states, on the basis of the territorial division of the world, of the struggle for colonies, of the "struggle for economic territory."
THE DIVISION OF THE WORLD AMONG THE GREAT POWERS
THE DIVISION OF THE WORLD AMONG THE GREAT POWERS
.jpg)
