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334 THE COMMUNIST

American capitalism to get rid of the mass of consumers' goods turned out. 
Without installment selling, made possible by the great supply of credit available to American finance capital through its "exceptional" position, American capitalism must have crashed several years since. As it was, "prosperity: lasted to the present winter with but minor disturbances It is at present not possible to distinguish the degree to which installment selling during the past few years has concentrated the contradictions inherent in capitalism not the degree to which it is aggravating the present depression. Installment selling attempted to overcome the growing disparity between the domestic market and the productive forces of American capitalism. It only served to delay, to dam up that growing disparity-- to the present. Installments selling cannot increase the purchasing power of the masses permanently-- it served only to anticipate future consumers power. It cannot anticipate permanently or even farther into the future this consumers' power. Such a development would imply the production of goods for use. That is basically a contradiction of the capitalist economy where goods are produced for surplus value that the working class has put into them of which it is exploited
4. American imperialism has found it necessary to an ever grater degree to find abroad the markets for the goods which that domestic market cannot consume. The media of such capital transfer are the foreign securities sold in the American market. As the boom in the stock exchanges progressed the sale of foreign securities in the United States became ever more difficult. Our favorable balance of trade  had to be paid in gold. The participation of European capitalists in the fruits of high rates in the call market and the security speculation here added to the drain of liquid capital from Europe.
This drain stimulated the hectic frenzy in the stock markets of American capitalism and drove foreign economic conditions one peg lower than the chronic state of depression which characterized their "exceptional" position. American "prosperity" came dangerously close to wrecking the currency stability that the capitalist class had built up with strains in Europe in the early post-war years.
The present crisis mocks in horrible language those who would blabber of organized capitalism or of the "strength of American capitalism." The whole structure of American capitalism has shown itself to have been built on the same contradictions on which world capitalism rests. The "exceptional" position of American capitalism has accentuated these contradictions through the hothouse growth of stimulants possible to the capitalist class of the