Organ of Alliance Marxist-Leninist (North America)
                                Volume 1, Issue 4; April-May 2003 $1.00

"A L L I A N C E ! " A Revolutionary Communist Monthly
    Bush and the USA capitalist class, that he represents is in trouble. They needed a war – but this particular war is especially good for them. After all any war drives a production boom with it. But this war in particular is needed as the USA is in a classical capitalist ‘tight spot’. What do we mean?

     1) Utilisation of industry is down, while capacity (or potential) increases

    The graph below shows a very worrying situation. It shows that USA production capacity has been steadily rising, between the years 1970 to 2003. In other words the capability of industrial production is much higher than it has ever been before. This is not too surprising. After all, as machinery gets better, and as new techniques allow faster production, this is meant to happen. But now if it is asked “how much of this increase in productive capacity is able to be used?”  – the answer is “much less, and getting worse”.


    The graph is from the Federal Reserve Statistical Release for April 15th 2003, and can be found at this web-site:    ). Here it can be seen, that at period of recession (marked by the grey vertical stripes) that there is a dip in the utilisation and production. However the dip in production is outstripping that of utilisation. In other words the capitalists are shutting off their factory production.
    Graph 2 shows the same phenomenon as a precentage - currently less than 75% of the full potential of production in the USA is being used.


    But the situation is even trickier for USA capitalists. Because while the overall capacity for production is going up, this is largely restricted to “other business”; and not to “production of “finished and semi-finished processing”. Finally this collapse of utilization especially hits hard at the high-technology industries. This latter is especially worrying for the capitalists, since it is into this sector that they have increasingly “placed” a lot of their eggs in the last 15 years. But the collapse of the Silicon Valley trades - once more revealing a lack of competitiveness. See 2 graphs below:


    This lack of competitiveness, can be seen by the extent of the trade deficit of the USA, which is worrying the capitalists. Even from the years 1960 to 1984, this was quite dramatic. What the trade deficit means is that the USA has to import more than it exports. Fundamentally, this has occurred because its’ own manufacturing base, no longer provides for its population. It certainly used to. In fact it was so large that it enabled exports to an extent that ensured the rise of the USA to the ranks of imperialism.  This fairly dramatic change can be seen in the share of imports into US markets between 1960 and 1984:
[From Davis, Mike Prisoners of the American Dream; Politics & Economy in the History of the US Working Class; London 1999; p. 238]

    If the American industrialists are not supplying even their home market, but foreign imperialists are doing it – this tells us a lot. It also explains the current concerns about the volume of the trade deficit. Many bourgeois economic commentators point out that, after all these goods need to be paid for. Their alarms about the deficit are rising. For example,  The fuller economic background has been discussed in more detail in a recent issue of our theoretical journal (Find at: Alliance52). But even in the synopsis above, it can be seen that the USA imperialists are cornered. They have lost productive competitiveness, they have competitors nipping at their heels. One solution is to deprive their competitors of resources – a key one being oil. A world shortage of new supplies of oil, and a  dropping rate of production of finished product oil, is already manifest:

 continued on page five.

    In a report,  Dick Cheny, drew up the USA response in a report called the National Energy Plan - released in 2001:      Therefore the USA and the UK imperialists have decided to capture the oil reserves in order to deny their main competitors – France, Germany, Russia, and China.
    Hence the new tussle between the USA and its competitors over whether or not to shut off the prior UN sanctions. Now the anti-war factions, have insisted that the USA must obtain UN approval in order to get the oil flowing from Iraq. Of course, if the oil flows without the UN approval of the conditions of any sale of oil, the USA will control the entire reserves.
 
    Conclusion:
 
    This immoral, and illegal war was all about imperialist expansion, and it was largely driven by the parlous economic condition of USA imperialism. Until in both the USA and UK – and in the competitor imperialist and neo-imperialist countries like France, Germany, China and Russia – there exist Marxist-Leninist parties to lead the workers to socialist revolution, these war conditions will escalate.
            End.