The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-05-10

from in the practical tasks then
facing the movement, this condition
had profoundly changed in 1929.
To what extent had Bukharin al
ready crystallized this theory in
1915? The question can be an
swered in few quotations which
already sharply expressed its lead
ing thoughts.
at is profound error to think,
as the bourgeois economists do, that
the elimination of free competition
and its replacement by capitalist
monopolies would do away with in
dustrial crises. Such economists
+ forget one 'trifle,' namely, that the
economic activities of a national
economy are now conducted with a
view toward world economy" page
53.)
Here is a more or less clear dec
laration of "the primacy of outer
contradictions; of the theory that
except for the zone" fact of inter-
national contradictions crises would
actually be eliminated by the growth
of monopoly; that the timer con-
tradictions" are being replaced by
the "outer contradictions"
"The entire process, taken on a
social scale, tends to turn the en-
tire national economy into a single
combined enterprise with an organ
ization connection between all the
branches of production" page
TO-
'"Thus various spheres of the con-
centration and organization process
stimulate each other, creating very
strong tendency toward transform
ing the entire national economy
into one gigantic combined enter
prise under the tutelage of the fl
nancial kings and the capitalist
state, an enterprise which monop-
Olizes the national market and forms
the prerequisite for organized pro-
duction on a higher non-capitalist
level" pages 73-74.) (Bukharin's
emphasis.)
In this conception of the centre
national economy" transformed into
lone gigantic combined enterprise"
as "the prerequisite" for the pass
ing of production on to a higher
non-capitalist level" there are all
the essentials Of the theory of cor
ganized capitalism"
| Imperialism As An Historic
Category.
A chapter of Bukharin's book
which has special current interest
for the American movement is Chap
ter TX, dealing with imperialism as
an historic category. Here Bulk
HARM effectively destroys the vul-
gar theories of imperialism as rep
resenting a Struggle of races" or
as "the policy of conquest in gen
eral." The special current interest
of this chapter lies in it's clear ap-
plication to the case of Scott Near
ing, whose relations with the COM
munist Party were severed as a re-
suit of his inability to understand
that modern imperialism, the last
stage of capitalism, cannot be eX-
planned by co-relating it to the pre-
vious imperialisms of history, under
one general category of conquest
in general
"From this point of view," says
Bukharin, "one can speak with equal
right of Alexander, the Macedoni
ans and the Spanish conquerors' i'm
perialism, of the imperialism of
Carthage and Ivan III, of ancient
Rome and modern America, of Ma
poleon and Hindenburg. Simple as
the theory may be, it is absolutely
untrue. 1t is untrue because it lex
plains everything, i. e., it explains
absolutely nothing" page 1922
Nothing whatever can be gained
by an analysis of forms of imperial
ism. Not the form, but the moving
class forces, and the system of econ
omic relationships giving rise to
these classes, are the features of
modern imperialism which Marx
and Lenin taught us to seize upon,
and by so doing to understand i'm