The Gilded Reaction

An exact understanding of the new ’Hoover Plan’ is made easier by recalling the most recent international events that found their provisional and unexpected conclusion in the American proposal.

Last May French imperialism was able to register a success with the referral of the Anschlüss threat to the Hague Tribunal and the preliminary declaration that whatever the legal solution, politically the French opposition would remain unchanged. We noted at the time that the essential significance of this Anschlüss lay in the attempt to shape the map of imperialist influences in Europe according to the disposition of economic forces in Central Europe and the Balkans, to shape this map, i.e., the unification of the German industrial basin with the Danubian agricultural basin.

This was the practical response to the German Anschlüss project that French imperialism had managed to avoid. At the same time, Paris became the active centre of all financial initiatives intended for intervention in the Balkans with loans to all the Danube states, all the more possible because the smooth functioning of the enormous German tributes allowed France to rival the USA in the gold base it had been able to accumulate.

In the meantime, the French plan was developing with an attempt to conglomerate Russia itself to which ’the plan of economic non-aggression’ was promised in exchange for Russian recognition of the East German border.

Ultimately, we were witnessing the unfolding of the two basic tendencies of the imperialist struggle in Europe. On the one hand Germany aiming to rebuild the influence it expected from the development of its economic forces, and on the other hand being hindered and defeated by French imperialism which [had] gained control of the most important sectors in Europe. The German failure posed the darkest prospects for that imperialism. That state of chaos and panic which characterises the eve of great class struggles became visible. Massive outflows of capital abroad to such an extent that the Reichsbank’s gold reserve had reached its legal maximum, and even the guarantee of servicing the treasury’s current commitments was lacking.

This was the time when Brüning, on the eve of his departure for the Chequers, published the hunger decrees that gave the go-ahead for the new offensive against wages, deciding to reduce civil servants’ salaries by 4 to 8 per cent, lower unemployment benefits by a further 5 per cent and raise duties and indirect taxes.

A more serious challenge was difficult to conceive for the German workers, and it is well known that the Social Democratic Party, after the opposition’s customary phrases, even renounced the convening of the Reichstag, demanded with a questionable sense of expediency by the communist group, which should have made the attention of the masses focus not on parliamentary disputes, but on the struggles of the masses based on the economic agitation to be carried out towards the goal of defence against fascism and for the communist revolution.

In the meantime, the attitude of French capitalism was as follows: ’let Germany prove to the world that it knows how to face the national-socialist and communist danger on its own, and then it will be possible to speak of a moratorium in the operation of the Young plan’.

Such bitter tension between French and German imperialism, such a serious economic situation in Germany, must have been reminiscent of the situation in 1923 and the occupation of the Ruhr. And it is certain that had the situation of the communist vanguard been different, well other would have been the consequences of the situation that currently revolves around the expedient of the Hoover Plan.

In the midst of the worst crisis known to capitalism in all countries, workers’ unrest was not lacking. Everywhere, in France as in Germany, in England as in Spain, compact groups of proletarians have taken to the streets to destroy the bosses’ plan to massively reduce wages. But everywhere, in all countries, social democracy remained the master of the field and where (the Ruhr strike, the miners’ strike in France) it was not possible for it to agree to its plan of enslavement of the masses, it succeeded in isolating the workers in the struggle in such conditions that, after a few days, there was a discreet and disorderly surrender, while centrism found there the subject of its criminal demagogic exercises.

A situation of such high possibilities for proletarian struggles was to know a situation of such serious disbandment of the communist vanguard, from which centrism had taken away its specific function as the motor centre of the great class struggles.

In 1923 the golden reaction came after the defeat of the revolution in Germany. Now the new Hoover plan came before the serious conditions of the German economy gave rise to the great class struggles that were easily foreseeable, especially in Germany. It is futile to seek a justification for the American proposal by taking into account above all the elements of American imperialism, considered as a unit in itself. Its state budget closes with a two billion deficit, while economic conditions in all countries give no hint of a possible upturn in business capable of diminishing the hyperbolic seven million unemployed.

In this situation, the six billion shortfall in revenue represented by the servicing of war debts ’suspended for a year’ will require new fiscal measures that cannot be presented as a temporary sacrifice. Nor can Hoover’s proposal be understood as solely aimed at defending American capital invested in Germany, which is valued at DM 12 billion in the long term and DM 6 billion in the short term.

Although this is evidently one of the elements that determined Hoover’s proposal, it is not the essential one since it was not impossible either to withdraw the invested capital or to liquidate those companies where it was mobilised and where it is certain that the eventual loss would have been less than that caused by the moratorium.

It is in another field that the cause must be sought. And in the same field were to be found the great difficulties within which the German economy is moving. Namely in the danger of social upheaval, of a communist revolution in Germany that would signal a new precipitation of events worldwide towards the proletarian-communist solution to all the problems caused by the deadly crisis of capitalism, which, after the temporary readjustment of 1923/29, had had its starting point precisely in the supposed Eldorado of capitalism, in the USA.

Therein lies the bottom of the Hoover proposal. It is the most brutal reaction that can still cloak itself in the gold of generosity. It is the desperate rescue from those who feel threatened by an equal end to that which torments the sick. It is a new expedient that proves how vigilant inter-imperialist solidarity is and that occurs when Brüning’s ’starvation decrees’ had already been taken, and which realise the highest exploitation of German workers. Needless to say, even after the American moratorium, the decrees remain in full force.

The Hoover expedient does not change the framework of the deadly crisis of capitalism. Intended to parry the immediate danger of a communist revolution in Germany, it could only have repercussions on the front of the inter-imperialist quarrels from which the other outcome of the situations, namely war, could arise. To this end, an analysis of the proposal’s concrete repercussions in the economic field is necessary, and this is what we will do in a future issue.