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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 56, 23 December 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
“FORTUNATELY, I think”, thinks General Electric’s Owen D. Young, “it will be easy to persuade our people that it is their duty to consume luxuries in order to provide an import balance so that our cotton and our copper may be exported. Such a personal sacrifice for the public economic welfare can be safely predicted”.
Mr. Young made this warm spiel for a cold winter evening in the New York Times last Sunday. As luxuries he classes: Coffee, tea, fruit, wines, tobacco, etc. Considering all sides of the question very carefully, we cannot help reaching the conclusion that the G.E.’s man is not too unduly optimistic, we know at least half a dozen unemployed ourselves that would readily make the sacrifice. Of course, in line with the worthy gentleman’s “division of consumption” theory of economy, and corresponding to current codes of fair competition, the American unemployed might ask, in return for the conviction that it is their duty to consume luxuries – the concession that it be their privilege to consume also some necessities: Such as bread, butter, pork chops and potatoes, for instance.
But until the necessary arrangements tor this sort of a square business deal are concluded, we must unfortunately content ourselves with the luxury of Mr. Young’s ingenious philosophy. We could not quite make the sacrifice of consuming it whole. Yet we will nibble at it.
The gist of the idea is that the old conception of world economy being based on an international division of labor has gone haywire. Modern technique, communication, transportation have made it possible for every country to build up its own manufactures, its own industry. And, as a matter of fact, Mr. Young rightly finds, most countries are quite content that this should be so. This is called the new trend to nationalism.
Of course England needs India’s cotton and France the Saar’s iron ore and Germany the potassium of Alsace-Lorraine. But that lies in the realm of a division of consumption rather than of labor. And in this same realm of the division of consumption, our nation is the most advantageous. Its labor is to consume the luxuries and to furnish for the consumption of the others, our cotton arid our copper. Out of pure goodness of heart we will also offer for consumption to the budding national industries our motors and generators and dynamos.
So much for the general outline of the future. The whole plan is based on an augury that Mr. Young has plucked from his own intellectual Olympus that we have been wrong in thinking that a compressed world – compressed by the material rapprochement offered by wireless and radio and aviation – breaks down national barriers. It raises them instead. An ordinary mortal might be inclined to ask, how? That is because he is not acquainted four-dimensional approach of Mr. Young, however.
Still, if our oracle leaves us in doubt as to how – we can be made quite clear as to why it should be so. American business stands to gain all around by the new nationalisms. While fostering cultural exchanges with the other countries, American big business, in addition to the philosophic satisfaction of nurturing all the new nationalisms, can, as a sort of a by-product find a market for its capital export. And if the different nationalisms come to a clash of arms in their consumption of cotton, potassium or iron ore, that is just too bad. But Uncle Sam will always be there to pull the chestnuts out of the fire and the big boys of Wall Street will be expecting the American masses to lend a hand – it will all be for the sake of doing their duty to consume more luxuries.
Finally, as an illustration that it is possible for a nation uninitiated in the old order of industrial nations to build up a national economy all its own without dependence on the rest of the world, Mr. Young offers us the example of Russia. If, by some mystic or messianic formula socialism can be built in one country, why can’t capitalism. Another big victory for Stalin’s diplomacy ...
In the meantime, since the “readjustment in this field (the new division of consumptive power) may not be abrupt”, Owen Young consoles us, “Russia ... will provide a cushion, temporarily at least, for diminishing trade in manufactured necessities” ...
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