Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/6

 population of the countries which succeeded in retaining their former position, and they all became economically dependent upon America and were in a dependent position in a military way all through the war, for the war took possession of the entire world. It allowed no country to remain really neutral. And we finally have no more that two hundred and fifty millions of population of countries in which, of course, only those at the top, the capitalists, have benefited by the division of the world. All this makes up nearly one and three quarters billion, the entire population of the earth.

I would like to remind you of this picture of the world, of the basic contradictions of capitalism, of imperialism which led to the revolution, the basic contradictions in the labour movement which brought. us to the most cruel struggle with the Second International referred to by the Chairman—all this is connected with the division of the population of the world.

Of course it is only as a basic outline that these figures illustrate the economic picture of the world, and, comrades, it is natural that due to such division of the population of the entire world, the exploitation of financial capital, of capitalistic monopolies has increased many times. Not only colonial defeated countries are reduced to the position of dependents, but within each victorious country more acute contradictions have developed—all capitalistic contradictions have become accentuated. Here are a few examples.

Take the national debts. We know that from 1914 to 1920 they have increased in the most important European states no less than seven fold. I shall cite one more economic source which is now becoming particularly important. It is Keynes, the British diplomat, the author of the book: „The Economic Consequences of the Peace“ who by the instructions of his government participated in the Versailles Peace Negotations, who observed them directly from a purely bourgeois view-point, who studied the matter in detail step by step, who, as an economist, participated in the conferences. He arrived at conclusions which are stronger, clearer, more instructive than any conclusion of a Communist, a revolutionist, for the conclusions are made by an avowed bourgeois, by a merciless antagonist of Bolshevism, which, being an English petty bourgeois, he pictures to himself in a distorted, ferocious, beastly form. Keynes arrived at the