The producers news. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, 1931-04-03
Friday. April 3. 1881
THE WORST IS YET TO COME

prophet of evil and a harbinger of woe because
it has pointed out with more or less consistency
since it was founded that the present economic
system upon which society rests is based on the
interests of the ruling classes and does not and
cannot function in the interests of the exploited
producing classes.
While business was good and the exploited
were given an opportunity to slave at the ma
chimes and out of their sweat and toll able to
earn enough to buy the necessities of life plus a
saving margin for the "rainy day" there was
general state of disgrntement. While the hu-
man animal has sufficient to provide him with
creature comforts he may crouch and grunlble but
he will not rebel.
The farmers were getting enough for their pro-
ducts to enable them to get radios on the Install
ment plan. Many of them able to buy
pensive cars. AS in the industrial areas where
have the so-called "aristocracy of labor" the big
farmer did not have much to complain about even
the great majority, like their industrial brothers
in the cities, lived on a narrow margin.
Now it has come to pass that agriculture and
industry are both suffering from blows on the So
lar plexus from which they again will recOv-
completely under capitalism. The capitalist
system is staggering under the weight of its own
contradictions. The development of machinery
under the competitive systematic life of trade,
by the way-has as its concomitant an Over-pro-
duction of commodities which cannot be sold
either in the domestic foreign markets because
those who have produced these commodities did
not receive the full social value of the product of
their labor. Read 'Value, Price and Profit" by
Karl Marx and you will not have to depend on po-
htical bunco-steerers for your economic education
Among the many causes contributing to the de-
cline of capitalism is the revolutionary chaos
existing in China and India today and in the fact
that the Soviet Union is suffering from a semi
financial and commercial boycott at the hands of
the imperialist powers. The financers fear to in
vest their money in India and China because of
the instability of government in those two coun-
tries and the standard of living there is so low
that despite the tremendous population of China
and India the per capita consumption is at an APP
pallingly low level. The population of India and
China is around 72O millions.
The international financiers will not make loans
TO the Soviet Union because they don't want to see
the Soviet power grow. The consumptive capacity
of the 14O million Russians is low not because they
are robbed at the point of production but because
the productive capacity if their agricultural and
Industrial economy is a long way from being on a
level with that of the industrialized capitalist
countries. Despite the success of the Five Year
Plan it will take many years before Soviet econo-
my reaches the present level of capitalist economy
Thus we have the purchasing power of more
than one half the population of the world as a
mole hill is to a mountain compared with the pro-
o6uctive capacity of the machinery of production.
Commodities piled up and no place to sell them.
Millions of bushels of grain in warehouses and
granaries and market for them. Millions of
jobless and their dependents without bread. Mill
ions of agriculturaists without sufficient clothing
and other necessities. What systeml
The capitalist system is up against stone wall
Trade embargoes and proposed customs union;
are the order of the day. Soviet goods moi
the only products suffering from embargoes. Can
ada has laid down a practical embargo agains
Americn anthracite There will be more embar
goes. The Grundy tariff law really amounts Il
an embargo against the Importation of foreig1
goods. Trade wars are the precursors of militar!
and naval wars. The world war was chiefly tn
result of trade rivalry between England and Ger
many.
The capitalists are in pocket and they are, lit
orally going to fight their way out Scott Nearin
wrote in the Producers News some time ago tina
wars pay, pacifist and liberal twadde to the cor
trary. They pay the ruling classes. The late wa
gave US a new crop of millionaires. There al
more millionaires today in Germany than thel
were before the war. The same holds true of a
countries, whether defeated victorious. But
all countries the masses are impoverished tt
PEOPLE always pay the bills either in
peace. They paying both now with vel
sgeance.
Whittier goest we? To the devil unless
something about it. A world is mminer
The frequency of peace conferences is indicative
that Naval and military reduction pacts folio
another so closely they step on each others hee
But military and naval appropriations increas
And every imperialist country in the world
boarding gold.
The next war will not solve the economic pre-
lens of capitalism Even should the system 81
]ive a war, even if thirty millions of men we
disposed of the battlefields, if all the CO
maOdities stored up were consumed and the fact
Ses set humming again, the problem would not
solved The war would result in a tenfold
crease in the productive power of machinery P
hapse the strongest imperalist power would m;
age to survive for time, but it is nconceiva
that it could exist except in the role of vultu
Many of militarist politicians hope that out
a world war there win come a facist dictators
the Mussolini model There is no certainty t