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Notes on the Strength of American Capitalism
By Erik Bert

I.

A REVIEW of certain of the main features of the development of American finance-capital 1 during the past several years shows in some detail the several forms which the inherent contradictions of capitalism have assumed in that period. An analysis of these forms demonstrates just how foul is the basis on which American capitalism has developed. It reveals the depths of petty-bourgeois intellectualizing to which those have sunk whose comprehension of the present state of the American capitalism is comprised under the slogan "the strength of American capitalism."

The facts of the past few years' development of American finance-capital can be included under the following three heads: (1.) the unprecedented extent of parasitic growths in the credit system, (2.) the means by which the capitalist economy in the United States found it possible to disposed of the goods that its factories turned out, and (3.) the international repercussions of both the foregoing. These facts as a whole show not only the contradictions in which American capitalism finds itself but also the strained efforts that have been made to solve the contradictions. These efforts have, however, served to accentuate the more the contradictions they were aimed to resolve.

II

The stock exchange crash brought to a close (chronologically) a period of speculative frenzy whose beginning can be dated back roughly to 1923. For the purpose of our analysis we shall pass over the earlier years and commence with the situation as it existed in the summer of 1927. The danger existed at that time that

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1. The growth of monopoly and is relation to finance-capital during the post-war development of American imperialism is one of the important features of the development of American finance-capital, the discussion of which has been omitted in the present article. It has been reserved for later analysis. Insofar as it has consisted in security speculation, etc., it can be considered to be included in that part of the present discussion. Its basic significance is given by Marx in a paragraph which we reproduce in a footnote to page 324.

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