Editorial: The Coming Struggle for Trade. (1940)

Editorial from the February 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody expects a capitalist diplomat or politician to be strictly truthful, any more than that virtue is expected of the manufacturer boosting the sale of his goods with advertising puffs.

Probably, therefore, a considerable proportion of the population, in warring and neutral nations alike, are inclined to be sceptical about promises of a better world after the war; but that scepticism, where it exists, is too often directed only to the untrustworthiness of the men, and not to the utter bankruptcy of the case on which their promises rest. People are still disposed to believe that if the leaders of the nations were better men, “men of goodwill” is the frequent- description, the world of private ownership, profit-making, and competition, could be made to work well in a slightly modified framework of international organisation.

Consider the recent statements of some of the world’s leading figures. Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, speaking at Leeds on January 20th, first showed how worthless are Hitler’s pledges, and then—though he did not use the phrase “balance of power”—set the war in historical perspective with the following : —

“I think it. is certainly true that the instinct of our people has always throughout their history driven them, to resist attempts by any one nation to make itself master of Europe. They have always seen in any such attempt a threat both to their own existence and to the general cause of liberty in Europe. 

Therefore, I say without hesitation that if the British people have been right, as they have been before, in resisting domination by any one Power in Europe, they are doubly so right to-day.” — (DailyTelegraph, January 22nd, 1940.)

Lord Halifax believes, of course, that war for such an object is worth while. He would, he said, “sooner be dead than alive in a world under the heel of Nazi dominance”; but what a prospect for humanity! The kind of situation which calls for war against some Continental would-be master of Europe happened with the Dutch, with the Spaniards, with “that man Napoleon,” with Kaiser Wilhelm, and now once more with the new rulers of Germany. Apart from a few arid phrases, neither Halifax nor any other of the Allied spokesmen has anything to offer which shows how the situation will be prevented from recurring in another ten or twenty years.

Then there is Signor Gayda, spokesman of the allegedly young, virile, Fascist Italy— “neither Capitalist nor Socialist.” In an article in the Sunday Dispatch (January 21st) we find this mouthpiece of Mussolini putting forward an explanation of the war even more superficial and hopeless than the version of Lord Halifax. Gayda—who puts his hand on his heart and pleads for a better, juster Europe—also has a balance of power theory, but a substantially different one. He sees in a “healthy balance of power” the only “real guarantee of peace”; but far from agreeing with Lord Halifax, that Germany upset the healthy balance, he maintains that France and Britain are the disturbing element.

They were, he says, already too powerful before 1914, and the Versailles Treaty “increased instead of diminished the disparity of resources between European nations.” So he sees the present war not as a German challenge to European equilibrium, but as being an inevitable consequence of Versailles. Italy, he says, “is against all systems which give obvious or hidden supremacy to one nation or nations.” She wants, however, to possess “free and fertile space for expansion of the Italian population” and “freedom of life and movement for the Italian nation.” “Movement,” of course, covers the annexation of Abyssinia and Albania, and already Italy, having become “the greatest Balkan Power of Europe,” is threatening war against Russia should the rulers of that country decide that they have rights of expansion in the Balkans after finishing with Finland.

So Signor Gayda, too, has new wars for the world when the present one is over—or before.

From Gayda to his neighbour the Pope is but a short step, even in the realm of political ideas, for the Pope, too, has expressed his views on rebuilding Europe, and the Vatican gave authoritative statements to Mr. Ward Price (Daily Mail, January 22nd). The Pope, in his Christmas speech to the College of Cardinals, denned the requisites of a just and honourable peace as follows :

“1. The right of all nations, great and small, to independence ;

2. The reparation of infringements of this right ;

3. Disarmament, material and spiritual ;

4. Guarantees for the respect of conventions ;

5. Just revision of treaties.”

Here again we see thought moving within the confines of the prison called capitalism, and placing the entire emphasis on good intentions between nations and a recarving of the territories of Europe.

From these men, whose ideas are typical of those of the capitalist statesmen of every country, it is refreshing to go to the matter-of-fact view of the capitalist world held by a Times correspondent who wrote on the subject “Export or Die—(Times, January 17th, 1940). Without wasting time on fine sentiments, he gets down to the proper business of a capitalist gentleman, that of capturing trade. He says that now the Allied fleets are keeping German goods out of South America, this business “will not fall into the lap of British exporters. With every possible encouragement from the U.S. Government, United States firms are keenly competing for the trade.” That is the keynote of his whole warning, the warning that with Germany disposed of, the world scramble for markets will be fiercer than ever.

Brazil, he says, is developing her export industries and supplying textiles, footwear, weighing machines arid cutlery to her South American neighbours. Argentina’s exports of textiles were half as much again in 1938 as in 1937. Chile is trying to sell to U.S.A. goods formerly obtained from Europe.

“Other competition has to be faced in many markets, notably from the factory industries which have been developed in the Empire. Many of them were started in the last war, and have grown in number and variety ever since. . . If oversea imports of finished goods are interrupted further expansion will doubtless take place to the permanent detriment of the export trade of the United Kingdom. Intensification of Italian and Japanese competition, particularly in textiles, is expected.”

His warning is that “if Great Britain is to reap the harvest, or indeed to retain her commercial position, it is essential for the manufacturers, merchants, and Government to unite in a great export effort.”

Here is recognition of one aspect of the brutal truth about the world to-day, democratic or totalitarian, inside the Empire as well as outside. Capitalism is based on private ownership of the means of production and distribution, and on cutthroat competition to sell the goods and realise the profit. The war will make the competition of the industrial nations more intense than ever, and not all the schemes and hopes of the statesmen will turn that savage scramble into a better Europe.