The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-02-21
Questions and Answers on
Unemployment

BeloaU aUe give the first of q short series y
of "Questions and Answers on the ,oorld
crisis, unemployment and the tasks of the
revolutionary trade u,,ions, issued BY the Red
International of Labor Unions.-Editor).
Question /. What is the meaning of the pre-
sent economic crisis and what is its scale?-
During the postwar period the leading CAPT
talist country was the U.SA. While capital
ism in England and on the European continent
was showing signs of decay and decline, in
America the industry and the productive forces
were, relatively speaking, developing rapidly.
Between 1922 and the autumn of 1929 we saw,
what can only be qualified as an incredible
increase of production in this country, an in
creasing trade, growth of the load turnover
and an extension of the export trade, etc.
Especially rapid was the development of the
engineering and machine manufacturing in
dustry, the production of automobiles, as we'll
as the chemical and electrical industries. This
prompted the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois
economists to assert that there were no signs
of crisis in the U.S.A., that the capitalist
system had been organized so well in the
U.S.A. that all crisis or stoppages in produc-
ton could be avoided, and that organized capt.
talism in the U.S.A. guaranteed the contnu-
ance of prosperity forever.
But during October and November, 1929, a
big stock market crash occurred in the u. S. A.
The price of stock and other bonds, inflated to
incredible degree by the continual demand,
suddenly began to fall rapidly running hun
dreds of thousands of small shareholders, es-
pecially members of the medium and petty
bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy who had
invested their savings. According to the esti-
mates of one bourgeois economist, during the
first week of the crash, the small shareholders
lost between 60 and rs billion dollars.
Marx wrote that the characteristic feature
of an economic crisis is that it always begins
with crisis on the money market. This is
what we saw in the U. S. A. Several weeks
before the stock market crash it was evident
that industry was suffering from over produc-
tion and slump. In fact, the crisis on the
stock market was only the natural result of
the disproportion between the stock prices in
flated by speculation and the slump in the
industry.
On the other hand the stock market crash
and the ruin that it brought in it's train for
entire sections of the bourgeoisie simply deep
ened the slump still further. And the crisis
spread to the industry.
During the last two months communications
are being published in the newspapers almost
every day on the further curtailment of pro-
duction in the chief branches of industry, on
workers being discharged, entire enterprises
being closed down, etc. All this points to one
thing: the economic crisis in the U. S. A. is
deepening.
But can the U. S. A. outlive crisis which
would leave the other countries unaffected?
Of course not. World industry and economic
relations so interlocked at the present time
that any economic upheaval even in the most
distant and least important of the countries
has direct influence on trade and industry
elsewhere
What then can we say about the u. S. A.,
this leading capitalist country? Leaving aside
the concrete facts for moment, even from
the theoretical point of view we could say
quite definitely that any economic crisis in the
U. S. A. must affect economic life in other
parts of the world.
And this theoretical conclusion has been full.
ly borne out by the developments. Information
received from Germany, Austria, Poland, Eng
land, Sweden and elsewhere shows clearly that
they have felt the repercussion of the crisis
in the U. S. A. and that these countries too
are entering phase of economic depression.
Thus we see that the crisis has spread far
beyond the boundaries of the U. S. A., that a
world economic crisis has set in which is hav-
ing profound effect on the economic life Of
the whole capitalist world.