The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-08-22


products as the typical export, does
not require spheres Of influence, colo
MES, the Intervention Of states and
armies, etc, but merely quantity pro-
duction, cheapness and good salesman
ship. To sell red flannel underwear
to equatorial savages, it is not neces-
sary to own the country, to bride it's
government, to subsidize revolution
or to pry colony loose from its
mother country by war. A German
firm can sell red flannel underwear to
naked savages in Madagascar French
colony if it sends missionaries to con-
vince them of the iniquity of going
naked, sends cheaper, brighter-colored
underwear and good patient statesmen
willing to learn the language and the
peculiarities of the natives. AS long
as free competition continues and
Eight" or consumption industries such
as textiles continue to be the basic
ones, there is no great need of colo
MES, spheres of influence, etc.
Colonies" says the imperialistical-
ly-minded Disraen in 1852, "are just
millstones around our necks.' From
1910 to 1860 and even later bourgeois
politicians of the liberal school were
in the saddle and opposed any colo
NAL aggressiveness on the part of
England itself, the characteristic col
onizing country.
But the last quarter of the nine
teenth century is characterized by the
change from light" to heavy" basic
industries-that is to say, from tex
tiles to metallurgy. Also monopoly
begins and finally the export Of capital
itself.
The export of metal products i'm
plies the export of capital. 1t also
implies colonies, spheres of influence,
control of the governments of back
ward nations, subsidized revolutions
and colonial wars.
A typical form of exported metal
product" is railway. A railway can
not be sold to an equatorial savage by
a salesman and a missionary. 1t can
only be sold" to a backward country
thru political influence or control Of
that country's government. A railroad,
to begin with, runs at a financial loss
on the basis of its net returns, above
all in country backward Industrial
ly. To make it profitable, the govern
ment Of the backward country must
"a grant a concession Of the right of
way (2) an exclusive monopoly to
that right of way, eliminating parallel
lines as a possibility; and 60 subsi-
die the venture with land or money
grants or grants of natural resources.
Finally, it is superfuous to point out
that the exporting of the metal prod
uct" called a railway implies the ex-
port (investment) of capital as WELL
Thus begins the scramble for con-
cessions and spheres of influence, for
colonies and protectorates, for gov
ernments friendly to foreigners and
governments friendly exclusively to
American or British or German or
French capital, and all the other
sources Of imperialist wars and on
slaughts of imperialist nations on
backward ones and on each other.
This, the warlike period of capital
ism, is the imperialist period, and be-
gins with the beginning Of monopoly
capitalism, and export of capital. In
other words, the warIike period of cap
italism, in the feminist sense, begins
when Gomez says the peaceful period
Of capitalism begins. Any one who
fails to take into account this funda-
mental difference between the textiles
and metallurgy, between the export of
underwear and The export of metals
and dollars, cannot grasp the first es-
sentials of Imperialism and the impe-
rialist epoch.
Moreover, it is contamination with
bourgeois pacifist Hague conference"
illusions on the one hand, and with
the psychology instilled by imperialist
anologists ON the other. tn baliev,a that