Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/31

 periodical crisis will accentuate the downward course of capitalism and intensify the revolutionary situation to an unusual degree.

Capitalism will undergo periods of fluctuation until the day of its destruction. Only the seizure of power by the proletariat and the socialist revolution can save mankind from the complete catastrophe which is now inevitable in the conditions of present-day capitalism.

'''Capitalism is to-day in a period of deterioration. The collapse of capitalism is now inevitable.'''

'''III. The International Political Situation.'''

The international political situation also reflects the rapid decay of capitalism.

The Reparations problem is still unsolved. While conference after conference of the Entente Powers takes place, the economic destruction of Germany proceeds apace, and threatens the existence of capitalism in the whole of Central Europe. The catastrophic deterioration of the economic situation in Germany will either force the Entente to renounce their reparations claims—which would accentuate the political and economic crisis in France—or it will lead to the creation of a French-German industrial alliance on the Continent. The latter would damage the economic life of England, and its standing in the world market, and would bring England and the Continent into conflict.

In the Near East the Entente policies are completely bankrupt. The Sevres Treaty has been torn to pieces by Turkish bayonets. The war between Greece and Turkey and its consequences have plainly shown how unstable is the present political situation. The spectre of a new imperialistic war is looming ahead. After imperialistic France, actuated by its rivalry with England, had trampled under-foot the joint work of the Entente in the Near East, it once more returned to its place of common antagonism of the capitalist nations to the peoples of the East. The action of capitalist France has clearly shown to the peoples of the Near East that they can successfully carry on their struggle against their oppressors only by the side of Soviet Russia and with the support of the revolutionary world proletariat.

In the case of the Far East, the victorious Entente Powers endeavoured to revise the Versailles Treaty at the Washington Conference. They were only able, however, to gain a respite by the reduction, in next year's construction, of one particular class of armaments, namely, warships. But they came to no real solution of the problem. The struggle between America and Japan goes on, and adds fuel to the flames of civil war in China. The Pacific is menaced by the calamity of war.

The experiences of the movements for national liberation in India, Egypt, Ireland and Turkey, show that the colonial and semi-colonial countries are hotbeds of a growing revolu-