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330    The Communist

through installment selling. It did increase present purchasing power. It did nevertheless aggravate the basic contradiction of capitalism. 

VIII.

In the functioning of the international exchange mechanism during the past several years can be seen the insoluble contradictions in which world capitalism finds itself in the third period and, particularly, the inextricable manner in which American capitalism is bound up with world capitalism. The bourgeoisie hoped, that once the stabilization of the European currencies had been accomplished world capitalism could function "normally." The facts of the functioning of the international exchange mechanism during the past few years lead inevitably to the conclusion that in the third period there is no "normal" functioning of the exchange mechanism, that there can be no "normalcy" in this functioning. Any semblance of "normalcy" can only be a cloak for an undercurrent of contradictory forces which must break forth into an even greater distortion of this "normalcy."
The shifting of the economic center of the world to the United States has as one of its chief aspects the vast amount of commodities which American capitalism has been forced to export during the past decade. The ability of American capitalism to accomplish this was on the one hand a prime cause for out "prosperity" and on the other of predominant importance in maintaining the chronic state of industrial and commercial depression in Europe. This was accompanied in the domain of finance capital by floatation of a vast volume of foreign securities in the American securities markets. 
The speculation in the stock market in the years 1927-29 brought with it a great increase in the volume of stock issues as compared with bond issues since the ownership of stocks would permit the American bourgeoisie to participate in the "future profits" whereas the ownership bonds would give him only a constant income. Bonds offered only a fixed participation in the surplus value of which the American working class was being exploited whereas stocks would permit a pro rata participation in all the surplus value the capitalist class thought it could press out of the working class in the Coolidge-Hoover era of "prosperity" in the "future."
There was no "prosperity" anywhere in the world akin to ours. The primary form of foreign loans is bonds. The American capitalist class didn't want bonds—not even American bonds—in the stock market boom. And the rest of the world didn't have any "prosperity" that the American capitalist class would want to participate in through the purchase of foreign stocks.