The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-08-22
A Reply to WOIte'S UnCritica| "Critique"
By Manuel Gomez

pears anywhere in my article. What
did say was: THE climax of the
struggle to Obtain superprofts is thus
far different from the period of
peaceful development which char
acterized its earlier stages" A peace
full period in the struggle to obtain
super-profits is something quite differ
emit from peaceful period of impe-
rialism,' as the reader will see fur
Their on. But where Wolfe has played
me most foul is in the important mat
ter of dates; by taking two state
ments Of mine out of their context
and placing them in unnatural asso-
citation, he arrives at the following
monstrous distortion:
"The peaceful period Of capital
ism In the United States, Gomez
dates from 1894 to the world war.
This, he adds, is an international
phenomenon"
A ND this, when | expressly stated
= that early period of storm and
stress of European capitalism culmin-
ated around 1871, adding that this de-
yelopment in the United States came
later and in a necessarily modified
form" Farther along in the same
paragraph | remarked that "the so
called peaceful period of capitalism"
(Which everywhere followed the per-
iod of storm and stress was an in
ternational phenomenon" 0qaa
To anyone reading the paragraph
without deliberate perverseness of in
tent, the meaning is quite clear. No
one who has seen any of my articles
on imperialism-Wo least of all
could honestly believe that date the
so-called peaceful period" of world
capitalism from 1894 to the world
war.
But l must admit that l cannot
agree with Comrade Wolfe's dates.
by the peaceful PERIOD" he says,
''is meant that period roughly includ-
ed in the second and third quarters
of the 18th century when the first
wars for capitalist national unity were
generally at an end fthes secalled
national wars) :"
IL tAAC oCCOnQ anu Vi
the 18th century occurred the revolu-
tionary uprisings of 1S3O-31, 1S4S-5O,
1853 and 1871, and that wars of 1854
So, 1859, 1864, 1866 and 1870. The
period between 184S and 1871 brot in
to being modern Italy, Hungary, and
Germany. incidentally, the years
1887 marked the peak of the activ-
ity OF the International Workingmen's
Association (the First internationally,
which could hardly be said to reflect
a peaceful epoch of capitalism.
THE second and third quarters of
= the 18th century-the middle years
of the century, that is-are revolu-
tionary and not peaceful They are
so characterized by Comrade Bulk
HARM, who points out that new per
iod did not set in until later. In his
report on the Question for a Pro
gram for the Communist information
al, delivered at the fourth congress
of the C. l. November IS, 1929, he
says:
FOLLOWING h revolutionary
L SpOSH ot tnC miuoie OF last century,
an entirely different historic epoch
in the development Of the capitalist
system set in. II was the epoch
Of the gigantic growth Of capitalism.
This growth was chiefly based upon
the colonial policy of the bour-
| geolsie and the stupendous develop
ment OF continental industry which
was chiefly stimulated by the ex-
ploltation Of the colonial peoples.
This created a certain community of
interests between the continental
bourgeoisie and the continental pro-
letarlat which was the basis for a
great psychological and theological
tendency manifestIne itself within
the working class and, ergo, within
the socialist parties"
Comrade zinoviev, in his great work
on "The War and the Criais of So
cialism," declares that "the year 1871
marks the close of the national uara