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Nuts, Raspberries and Applesause

How fares America under the blue eagle? What does the N.R.A. stand for? In the face of a host of conflicting reports, in this far-off place it's been hard to pierce through the columns of cable and editorial fog to put together a coherent picture. Inflation, codes, regulations, strikes—NRA, CWA, CCC—what does this alphabet soup mean? And—most important—has it helped America to recover? Well, by now it may help us to know the popular American answer to the question: What does NRA stand for? It's "Nuts, raspberries and applesauce."

Broadly and most generally speaking, we can distinguish three main factors or tendencies which brought on the crash. In Roosevelt's New Deal there can also be found three essential characteristics. And it's by no stretch of fact that we can link the two pairs up, so that we see Roosevelt's policies accentuating the very tendencies of capitalism which resulted in the crash. Far from being a true step toward planned production, toward socialism, the New Deal is capitalism using the same old cards.

Firstly, and most spectacularly, NRA has meant inflation. As soon as the brakes on the credit engines went off, last April, away she went—the dollar soared. When it came to earth it had been depreciated by 40 per cent, of its gold content. Production shot up for a while—from its lowest level of the slump, and so did prices. They've stayed up—after a year of NRA the American price-level has risen by 18.5 per cent. So that the masses of the people are even less able to buy goods than they were before. The NRA has failed to restore purchasing-power. Instead it. has intensified the reckless expansion of credit—a primary cause of the crisis.

Secondly, the tendency toward monopoly, to the concentration of capital, to trustification, to the elimination of competition, and thus of the smaller businessmen, has been increased. America under NRA represents State Capitalism, with Big Business, In the form of the trusts, dominating the scene. All anti-trust legislation has been swept away by the N.R.A. Only on these conditions was the New Deal acceptable to the American capitalists.

Under the NRA there has been a great stimulus towards the further mechanisation of industry. This is the third factor potent in causing the capitalist crash—the displacement of men by machines. Under the NRA there is every inducement for industry to improve its technique. But far from the re-employment of some of the 15 million jobless Americans which Roosevelt said NRA would see, the displacement process has become more acute. The figures are startling. Taking the 1923-25 levels of employment and production as 100, by last March, the worst period of the slump, production had shrunk to 56 and employment to 57. Then the dollar was unleashed. Production soared. By June, production was up to 92. But employment only went back to 65. (Production subsequently dropped sharply). Stuart Chase has computed that if, under the NRA, production regains its 1023-25 volume, during the whole of 1934, some 9 to 12 million Americans would be left permanently unemployed.

Thus with the breach between prices and purchasing-power widened, with the home market hopelessly crippled, with a huge army of unemployed, American Capitalists find most avenues for the disposal of their products closed. They are forced to depreciate their currency in the hope of gaining markets abroad. But other nations are also playing at this game. Every move each makes for its national recovery is a direct blow to the interests of other countries (Roosevelt broke up the World Economic Conference in order to push his own monetary programme). The imperialist fight for markets can pass at any moment into armed warfare. The NRA makes full provision for war. It specifies a terrific heightening of armament expenditure, establishment of semi-military camps for the unemployed, and a reorganisation of the internal defence of the U.S.S. As John Strachen says: "An inexorable destiny is making the rulers of America take step after step on along the road which leads to the next war."

—Pilate.