220
PARTISAN REVJEJI'
15): "Yugoslavia must concentrate almost exclusively on increas–
ing her agricultural production at the expense of any industrial
development." And in the more advanced European nations Ger–
many has conquered, where there is little room for capital export
anyway, there have been many indications that in the "New Euro–
pean Order" Germany will try to create if she wins the war, the
rest of Europe will be de-industrialized (j.e., there will be an
'export of capital'
to-not
from-Germany!) as much as possible
to permit the concentration of the more advanced types of industry
within the borders of Germany. This is the long-term perspective.
In the next few years-again if German wins-her economic
relations with the conquered nations of Europe will have a different
-but also a non-market-basis: the systematic stripping of the
rest of Europe of the food, gold, raw materials and other property
urgently needed by Germany for the continuance of her war effort.
This is what Marx called 'primitive accumulation'-acquiring
property not by exchange but by force. But was not this also prac–
ticed by the Allies on Germany after the last war? Not in the
terms that Germany is now practising it.
It
is significant that (
1)
Germany never paid most of the reparations bill, and (2) most of
what she did pay was paid with money borrowed from American
bankers. That is, the Allies did not have the political control to
force
payment (the Ruhr occupation was a fiasco), and the con–
quered nation was actually able to borrow from one of the victors
the means to pay the indemnity. In a word, the whole transaction
took place not in the sphere of armed force but within the frame–
work of peacetime capitalist market relations. This time, how–
ever, the victorious armies are in physical occupation of the con–
quered nations. And this time it is not a question of "indemnities"
or "reparations"-conceptions of an
exchange
economy, so much
gold and coal and ships being paid for so much destruction of
enemy property, after which the payer is free from all obligation–
but of a
permanent
adjustment of the political and economic struc–
tures of the occupied nations to fit the needs of the victor. And
this time Germany, if she emerges victorious, is in a position not
only to strip the defeated nations far more thoroughly than the
Allies (not being in armed control of Germany) could do in
1918,
but also to reorganize the entire continent into an economic hinter–
land of Germany- as against the Balkanized
status quo
attempted
by the Allies at Versailles.
