|
II. Banks and their New Role
The principal and primary function of banks is to serve as
middlemen in the making of payments. In so doing they
transform inactive money capital into active, that is, into
capital yielding a profit; they collect all kinds of money
revenues and place them at the disposal of the capitalist
class.
As banking develops and becomes concentrated in a small
number of establishments, the banks grow from modest middlemen
into powerful monopolies having at their command almost the
whole of the money capital of all the capitalists and small
businessmen and also the larger part of the means of
production and sources of raw materials in any one country and
in a number of countries. This transformation of numerous
modest middlemen into a handful of monopolists is one of the
fundamental processes in the growth of capitalism into
capitalist imperialism; for this reason we must first of all
examine the concentration of banking.
In 1907-08, the combined deposits of the German
joint-stock banks, each having a capital of more than a
million marks, amounted to 7,000 million marks; in 1912-13,
these deposits already amounted to 9,800 million marks, an
increase of 40 per cent in five years; and of the 2,800
million increase, 2,750 million was divided among 57 banks,
each having a capital of more than 10 million marks. The
distribution of the deposits between big and small banks was
as follows:[1]
|
PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL DEPOSITS |
|
|
In 9 big Berlin
banks |
In the other 48
banks with a capital
of more than 10
million marks |
In 115 banks
with a capital
of 1-10
million marks |
In small banks
(with a capital
of less than a
million marks) |
|
1907-08..... |
47 |
32.5 |
16.5 |
4 |
|
1912-13...... |
49 |
36 |
12 |
3 |
The small banks are being squeezed out by the big banks,
of which only nine concentrate in their hands almost half the
total deposits. But we have left out of account many important
details, for instance, the transformation of numerous small
banks into actual branches of the big banks, etc. Of this I
shall speak later on.
At the end of 1913, Schulze-Gaevernitz estimated the
deposits in the nine big Berlin banks at 5,100 million marks,
out of a total of about 10,000 million marks. Taking into
account not only the deposits, but the total bank capital,
this author wrote: “At the end of 1909, the nine big Berlin
banks, together with their affiliated banks,
controlled 11,300 million marks, that is, about 83 per cent of
the total German bank capital. The Deutsche Bank, which
together with its affiliated banks controls nearly 3,000
million marks, represents, parallel to the Prussian State
Railway Administration, the biggest and also the most
decentralised accumulation of capital in the Old World.”[2]
I have emphasised the reference to the “affiliated” banks
because it is one of the most important distinguishing
features of modern capitalist concentration. The big
enterprises, and the banks in particular, not only completely
absorb the small ones, but also “annex” them, subordinate them,
bring them into their “own” group or “concern” (to use the
technical term) by acquiring “holdings” in their capital, by
purchasing or exchanging shares, by a system of credits, etc.,
etc. Professor Liefmann has written a voluminous “work” of
about 500 pages describing modern “holding
and finance
companies”,[3]
unfortunately adding very dubious “theoretical” reflections to
what is frequently undigested raw material. To what results
this “holding” system leads in respect of concentration is
best illustrated in the book written on the big German banks
by Riesser, himself a banker. But before examining his data,
let us quote a concrete example of the “holding” system.
The Deutsche Bank “group” is one of the biggest, if not
the biggest, of the big banking groups. In order to trace the
main threads which connect all the banks in this group, a
distinction must be made between holdings of the first and
second and third degree, or what amounts to the same thing,
between dependence (of the lesser banks on the Deutsche Bank)
in the first, second and third degree. We then obtain the
following picture[4]
:
|
The Deutsche Bank
has holdings: |
Direct or 1st
degree de-
pendence |
2nd degree
depen-
dence |
3rd degree
depen-
dence |
|
Permanently |
in 17 other
banks |
9 of the 17
have holdings in
34 other banks |
4 of the 9 have
holdings in 7
other banks |
|
For an indefinite
period.... |
in 5 other
banks |
— |
— |
|
Occasionally.... |
in 8 other
banks |
5 of the 8 have
holdings in 14
other banks
|
2 of the 5 have
holdings in 2
other banks |
|
Totals...... |
in 30 other
banks |
14 of the 30 have
holdings in 48
other banks
|
6 of the 14
have holdings
in 9 other
banks |
Included in the eight banks “occasionally” dependent on
the Deutsche Bank in the “first degree”, are three foreign
banks: one Austrian (the Wiener Bankverein) and two Russian (the
Siberian Commercial Bank and the Russian Bank for Foreign
Trade). Altogether, the Deutsche Bank group
comprises,
directly and indirectly, partially and totally, 87 banks; and
the total capital—its own and that of others which it
controls—is estimated at between two and three thousand
million marks.
It is obvious that a bank which stands at the head of
such. a group, and which enters into agreement with half a
dozen other banks only slightly smaller than itself for the
purpose of conducting exceptionally big and profitable
financial operations like floating state loans, has already
outgrown the part of “middleman” and has become an association
of a handful of monopolists.
The rapidity with which the concentration of banking
proceeded in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century is
shown by the following data which we quote in an abbreviated
form from Riesser:
|
SIX BIG BERLIN BANKS |
|
Year |
Branches
in Germany |
Deposit
banks
and exchange
offices |
Constant
holdings in German joint-
stock banks |
Total
establishments |
|
1895... |
16 |
14 |
1 |
42 |
|
1900... |
21 |
40 |
8 |
80 |
|
1911... |
104 |
276 |
63 |
450 |
We see the rapid expansion of a close network of channels
which cover the whole country, centralising all capital and
all revenues, transforming thousands and thousands of
scattered economic enterprises into a single national
capitalist, and then into a world capitalist economy. The
“decentralisation” that SchuIze-Gaevernitz, as an exponent of
present-day bourgeois political economy, speaks of in the
passage previously quoted, really means the subordination to a
single centre of an increasing number of formerly relatively
“independent”, or rather, strictly local economic units. In
reality it is centralisation, the enhancement of the
role, importance and power of monopolist giants.
In the older capitalist countries this “banking network”
is still more close. In Great Britain and Ireland, in 1910,
there were in all 7,151 branches of banks. Four big banks had
more than 400 branches each (from 447 to 689); four had more
than 200 branches each, and eleven more than 100 each.
In France, three very big banks, Crédit Lyonnais,
the Comptoir National and the Société Générale extended their
operations and their network of branches in the following
manner.[5]
|
Number
of branches and offices |
Capital
(000,000 francs) |
|
Year |
In the
prov-
inces |
In
Paris |
Total |
Own
Capital |
Deposits
used
as capital |
|
1870 |
47 |
17 |
64 |
200 |
427 |
|
1890 |
192 |
66 |
258 |
265 |
1,245 |
|
1909 |
1,033 |
196 |
1,229 |
887 |
4,363 |
In order to show the “connections” of a big modern bank,
Riesser gives the following figures of the number of letters
dispatched and received by the Disconto-Gesellschaft, one of
the biggest banks in Germany and in the world (its capital in
1914 amounted to 300 million marks):
|
Year |
Letters
received |
Letters
dispatched |
|
1852... |
6,135 |
6,292 |
|
1870... |
85,800 |
87,513 |
|
1900... |
533,102 |
626,043 |
The number of accounts of the big Paris bank, the Crédit
Lyonnais, increased from 28,535 in 1875 to 633,539 in 1912.[6]
These simple figures show perhaps better than lengthy
disquisitions how the concentration of capital and the growth
of bank turnover are radically changing the significance of
the banks. Scattered capitalists are transformed into a single
collective capitalist. When carrying the current accounts of a
few capitalists, a bank, as it were, transacts a purely
technical and exclusively auxiliary operation. When, however,
this operation grows to enormous dimensions we find that a
handful of monopolists subordinate to their will all the
operations, both commercial and industrial, of the whole of
capitalist society; for they are enabled-by means of their
banking connections, their current accounts and other
financial operations—first, to
ascertain
exactly the financial position of the various capitalists,
then to control them, to influence them by
restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering credits,
and finally to entirely determine their fate,
determine their income, deprive them of capital, or permit
them to increase their capital rapidly and to enormous
dimensions, etc.
We have just mentioned the 300 million marks capital of
the Disconto-Gesellschaft of Berlin. This increase of the
capital of the bank was one of the incidents in the struggle
for hegemony between two of the biggest Berlin banks-the
Deutsche Bank and the Disconto. In 1870, the first was still a
novice and had a capital of only 15 million marks, while the
second had a capital of 30 million marks. In 1908, the first
had a capital of 200 million, while the second had 170 million.
In 1914, the first increased its capital to 250 million and
the second, by merging with another first-class big bank, the
Schaaffhausenscher Bankverein, increased its capital to 300
million. And, of course, this struggle for hegemony went hand
in hand with the more and more frequent conclusion of
“agreements” of an increasingly durable character between the
two banks. The following are the conclusions that this
development forces upon banking specialists who regard
economic questions from a standpoint which does not in the
least exceed the bounds of the most moderate and cautious
bourgeois reformism.
Commenting on the increase of the capital of the Disconto
Gesellschaft to 300 million marks, the German review, Die
Bank, wrote: “Other banks will follow this same path and
in time the three hundred men, who today govern Germany
economically, will gradually be reduced to fifty, twenty-five
or still fewer. It cannot be expected that this latest move
towards concentration will be confined to banking. The close
relations that exist between individual banks naturally lead
to the bringing together of the industrial syndicates which
these banks favour.... One fine morning we shall wake up in
surprise to see nothing but trusts before our eyes, and to
find ourselves faced with the necessity of substituting state
monopolies for private monopolies. However, we have nothing to
reproach ourselves with, except that we have
allowed things to
follow their own course, slightly accelerated by the
manipulation of stocks.”[7]
This is an example of the impotence of bourgeois
journalism which differs from bourgeois science only in that
the latter is less sincere and strives to obscure the essence
of the matter, to hide the forest behind the trees. To be
“surprised” at the results of concentration, to “reproach” the
government of capitalist Germany, or capitalist “society” (“ourselves”),
to fear that the introduction of stocks and shares might
“accelerate” concentration in the same way as the German
“cartel” specialist Tschierschky fears the American trusts and
“prefers” the German cartels on the grounds that they “may not,
like the trusts, excessively accelerate technical and economic
progress”[8]
—is not all this a sign of impotence?
But facts remain facts. There are no trusts in Germany;
there are “only” cartels—but Germany is governed by
not more than three hundred magnates of capital, and the
number of these is constantly diminishing. At all events,
banks greatly intensify and accelerate the process of
concentration of capital and the formation of monopolies in
all capitalist countries, notwithstanding all the differences
in their banking laws.
The banking system “possesses, indeed, the form of
universal book-keeping and distribution of means of production
on a social scale, but solely the form”, wrote Marx in
Capital half a century ago
(Russ. trans., Vol. III,
part II, p. 144[24]).
The figures we have quoted on the growth of bank capital, on
the increase in the number of the branches and offices of the
biggest banks, the increase in the number of their accounts,
etc., present a concrete picture of this “universal
book-keeping” of the whole capitalist class; and not
only of the capitalists, for the banks collect, even though
temporarily, all kinds of money revenues—of small businessmen,
office clerks, and of a tiny upper stratum of the working
class. “Universal distribution of means of production”—that,
from the formal aspect, is what grows out of the modern banks,
which, numbering some three to six of the biggest
in France, and six
to eight in Germany, control millions and millions. In
substance, however, the distribution of means of
production is not at all “universal”, but private, i.e., it
conforms to the interests of big capital, and primarily, of
huge, monopoly capital, which operates under conditions in
which the masses live in want, in which the whole development
of agriculture hopelessly lags behind the development of
industry, while within industry itself the “heavy industries”
exact tribute from all other branches of industry.
In the matter of socialising capitalist economy the
savings-banks and post-offices are beginning to compete with
the banks; they are more “decentralised”, i.e., their
influence extends to a greater number of localities, to more
remote places, to wider sections of the population. Here is
the data collected by an American commission on the
comparative growth of deposits in banks and savings-banks[9]
:
|
DEPOSITS (000,000,000 marks) |
|
Year |
Britain |
France |
Germany |
|
|
Banks |
Savings-
banks |
Banks |
Savings-
banks |
Banks |
Credit
Societies |
Savings-
banks |
|
1880... |
8.4 |
1.6 |
? |
0.9 |
0.5 |
0.4 |
2.6 |
|
1888... |
12.4 |
2.0 |
1.5 |
2.1 |
1.1 |
0.4 |
4.5 |
|
1908... |
23.2 |
4.2 |
3.7 |
4.2 |
7.1 |
2.2 |
13.9 |
As they pay interest at the rate of 4 per cent and 4 1/4
per cent on deposits, the savings-banks must seek “profitable”
investments for their capital, they must deal in bills,
mortgages, etc.The boundaries between the banks and the
savings-banks “become more and more obliterated”. The Chambers
of Commerce of Bochum and Erfurt, for example, demand that
savings-banks be “prohibited” from engaging in “purely”
banking business,such as discounting bills; they demand the
limitation of the “banking” operations of the post-office.[10]
The banking magnates seem to be afraid that state monopoly
will steal upon them. from an unexpected quarter. It goes
without saying, however, that this fear is
no more than an
expression of the rivalry, so to speak, between two department
managers in the same office; for, on the one hand, the
millions entrusted to the savings-banks are in the final
analysis actually controlled by these very same bank
capital magnates, while, on the other hand, state monopoly in
capitalist society is merely a means of increasing and
guaranteeing the income of millionaires in some branch of
industry who are on the verge of bankruptcy.
The change from the old type of capitalism, in which free
competition predominated, to the new capitalism, in which
monopoly reigns, is expressed, among other things, by a
decline in the importance of the Stock Exchange. The review,
Die Bank, writes: “The Stock Exchange has long ceased
to be the indispensable medium of circulation that it formerly
was when the banks were not yet able to place the bulk of new
issues with their clients.”[11]
“’Every
bank is a Stock Exchange’, and the bigger the bank, and the
more successful the concentration of banking, the truer does
this modern aphorism ring.”[12]
“While formerly, in the seventies, the Stock Exchange, flushed
with the exuberance of youth” (a “subtle” allusion to the
Stock Exchange crash of 1873, the
company promotion scandals,[25]
etc.), “opened the era of the industrialisation of Germany,
nowadays the banks and industry are able to ‘manage it alone’.
The domination of our big banks over the Stock Exchange ... is
nothing else than the expression of the completely organised
German industrial state. If the domain of the automatically
functioning economic laws is thus restricted, and if the
domain of conscious regulation by the banks is considerably
enlarged, the national economic responsibility of a few
guiding heads is immensely increased,” so writes the German
Professor Schulze-Gaevernitz,[13]
an apologist of German imperialism, who is regarded as an
authority by the imperialists of all countries, and who tries
to gloss over the “mere detail” that the “conscious regulation”
of economic life by the banks consists in the fleecing of the
public by a handful of “completely organised” monopolists.
The task of a
bourgeois professor is not to lay bare the entire mechanism,
or to expose all the machinations of the bank monopolists, but
rather to present them in a favourable light.
In the same way, Riesser, a still more authoritative
economist and himself a banker, makes shift with meaningless
phrases in order to explain away undeniable facts: “... the
Stock Exchange is steadily losing the feature which is
absolutely essential for national economy as a whole and for
the circulation of securities in particular—that of being not
only a most exact measuring-rod, but also an almost automatic
regulator of the economic movements which converge on it.”[14]
In other words, the old capitalism, the capitalism of free
competition with its indispensable regulator, the Stock
Exchange, is passing away. A new capitalism has come to take
its place, bearing obvious features of something transient, a
mixture of free competition and monopoly. The question
naturally arises: into what is this new capitalism “developing”?
But the bourgeois scholars are afraid to raise this question.
“Thirty
years ago, businessmen, freely competing against one another,
performed nine-tenths of the work connected with their
business other than manual labour. At the present time,
ninetenths of this ‘brain work’ is performed by employees.
Banking is in the forefront of this evolution.”[15]
This admission by Schulze-Gaevernitz brings us once again to
the question: into what is this new capitalism, capitalism in
its imperialist stage, developing?
Among the few banks which remain at the head of all
capitalist economy as a result of the process of concentration,
there is naturally to be observed an increasingly marked
tendency towards monopolist agreements, towards a bank
trust. In America, not nine, but two very big
banks, those of the multimillionaires Rockefeller and Morgan,
control a capital of eleven thousand million marks.[16]
In Germany the absorption of the Schaaffhausenscher Bankverein
by
the
Disconto-Gesellschaft to which I referred above, was commented
on in the following terms by the Frankfurter Zeitung,[26]
an organ of Stock Exchange interests:
“The
concentration movement of the banks is narrowing the circle of
establishments from which it is possible to obtain credits,
and is consequently increasing the dependence of big industry
upon a small number of banking groups. In view of the close
connection between industry and the financial world, the
freedom of movement of industrial companies which need banking
capital is restricted. For this reason, big industry is
watching the growing trustification of the banks with mixed
feelings. Indeed, we have repeatedly seen the beginnings of
certain agreements between the individual big banking concerns,
which aim at restricting competition.”[17]
Again and again, the final word in the development of
banking is monopoly.
As regards the close connection between the banks and
industry, it is precisely in this sphere that the new role of
the banks is, perhaps, most strikingly felt. When a bank
discounts a bill for a firm, opens a current account for it,
etc., these operations, taken separately, do not in the least
diminish its independence, and the bank plays no other part
than that of a modest middleman. But when such operations are
multiplied and become an established practice, when the bank
“collects” in its own hands enormous amounts of capital, when
the running of a current account for a given firm enables the
bank—and this is what happens—to obtain fuller and more
detailed information about the economic position of its client,
the result is that the industrial capitalist becomes more
completely dependent on the bank.
At the same time a personal link-up, so to speak, is
established between the banks and the biggest industrial and
commercial enterprises, the merging of one with another
through the acquisition of shares, through the appointment of
bank directors to the Supervisory Boards (or Boards of
Directors) of industrial and commercial enterprises, and vice
versa. The German economist, Jeidels, has compiled most
detailed data on this form of concentration of capital
and of enterprises.
Six of the biggest Berlin banks were represented by their
directors in 344 industrial companies; and by their board
members in 407 others, making a total of 751 companies. In 289
of these companies they either had two of their
representatives on each of the respective Supervisory Boards,
or held the posts of chairmen. We find these industrial and
commercial companies in the most diverse branches of industry:
insurance, transport, restaurants, theatres, art industry,
etc. On the other hand, on the Supervisory Boards of these six
banks (in 1910) were fifty-one of the biggest industrialists,
including the director of Krupp, of the powerful “Hapag”
(Hamburg-Amerika Line), etc., etc. From 1895 to 1910, each of
these six banks participated in the share and bond issues of
many hundreds of industrial companies (the number ranging from
281 to 419).[18]
The “personal link-up” between the banks and industry is
supplemented by the “personal link-up” between both of them
and the government. “Seats on Supervisory Boards,” writes
Jeidels, “are freely offered to persons of title, also to
ex-civil servants, who are able to do a great deal to
facilitate (!!) relations with the authorities.” . . .
“Usually, on the Supervisory Board of a big bank, there is a
member of parliament or a Berlin city councillor.”
The building and development, so to speak, of the big
capitalist monopolies is therefore going on full steam ahead
in all “natural” and “supernatural” ways. A sort of division
of labour is being systematically developed amongst the
several hundred kings of finance who reign over modern
capitalist society:
“Simultaneously
with this widening of the sphere of activity of certain big
industrialists (joining the boards of banks, etc.) and with
the assignment of provincial bank managers to definite
industrial regions, there is a growth of specialisation among
the directors of the big banks. Generally speaking, this
specialisation is only conceivable when banking is conducted
on a large scale, and particularly when it has widespread
connections with industry. This division of labour proceeds
along two lines: on the one hand, relations with industry as a
whole are entrusted to one director,
as his special
function; on the other, each director assumes the supervision
of several separate enterprises, or of a group of enterprises
in the same branch of industry or having similar interests....
(Capitalism has already reached the stage of organised
supervision of individual enterprises.) One specialises in
German industry, sometimes even in West German industry alone
(the West is the most industrialised part of Germany), others
specialise in relations with foreign states and foreign
industry, in information on the characters of industrialists
and others, in Stock Exchange questions, etc. Besides, each
bank director is often assigned a special locality or a
special branch of industry; one works chiefly on Supervisory
Boards of electric companies, another, on chemical, brewing,
or beet sugar plants, a third, in a few isolated industrial
enterprises, but at the same time works on the Supervisory
Boards of insurance companies.... In short, there can be no
doubt that the growth in the dimensions and diversity of the
big banks’ operations is accompanied by an increase in the
division of labour among their directors with the object (and
result) of, so to speak, lifting them somewhat out of pure
banking and making them better experts, better judges of the
general problems of industry and the special problems of each
branch of industry, thus making them more capable of acting
within the respective bank’s industrial sphere of influence.
This system is supplemented by the banks’ endeavours to elect
to their Supervisory Boards men who are experts in industrial
affairs, such as industrialists, former officials, especially
those formerly in the railway service or in mining,” etc.[19]
We find the same system only in a slightly different form
in French banking. For instance, one of the three biggest
French banks, the Crédit Lyonnais, has organised a financial
research service (service des études financières),
which permanently employs over fifty engineers, statisticians,
economists, lawyers, etc. This costs from six to seven hundred
thousand francs annually. The service is in turn divided into
eight departments: one specialises in collecting information
on industrial establishments, another studies
general statistics,
a third, railway and steamship companies, a fourth, securities,
a fifth, financial reports, etc.[20]
The result is, on the one hand, the ever-growing merger,
or, as N. I. Bukharin aptly calls it, coalescence, of bank and
industrial capital and, on the other hand, the growth of the
banks into institutions of a truly “universal character”. On
this question I find it necessary to quote the exact terms
used by Jeidels, who has best studied the subject:
“An
examination of the sum total of industrial relationships
reveals the universal character of the financial
establishments working on behalf of industry. Unlike other
kinds of banks, and contrary to the demand sometimes expressed
in the literature that banks should specialise in one kind of
business or in one branch of industry in order to prevent the
ground from slipping from under their feet—the big banks are
striving to make their connections with industrial enterprises
as varied as possible in respect of the locality or branches
of industry and are striving to eliminate the unevenness in
the distribution of capital among localities and branches of
industry resulting from the historical development of
individual enterprises.” “One tendency is to make the
connections with industry general; another tendency is to make
them durable and close. In the six big banks both these
tendencies are realised, not in full, but to a considerable
extent and to an equal degree.”
Quite often industrial and commercial circles complain of
the “terrorism” of the banks. And it is not surprising that
such complaints are heard, for the big banks “command”, as
will be seen from the following example. On November 19, 1901,
one of the big, so-called Berlin “D” banks (the names of the
four biggest banks begin with the letter D) wrote to the Board
of Directors of the German Central Northwest Cement Syndicate
in the following terms: “As we learn from the notice you
published in a certain newspaper of the 18th inst., we must
reckon with the possibility that the next general meeting of
your syndicate, to be held on the 30th of this month, may
decide on measures which are likely
to effect changes
in your enterprise which are unacceptable to us. We deeply
regret that, for these reasons, we are obliged henceforth to
withdraw the credit which had hitherto been allowed you....
But if the said next general meeting does not decide upon
measures which are unacceptable to us, and if we receive
suitable guarantees on this matter for the future, we shall be
quite willing to open negotiations with you on the grant of a
new credit.”[21]
As a matter of fact, this is small capital’s old complaint
about being oppressed by big capital, but in this case it was
a whole syndicate that fell into the category of “small”
capital! The old struggle between small and big capital is
being resumed at a new and immeasurably higher stage of
development. It stands to reason that the big banks’
enterprises, worth many millions, can accelerate technical
progress with means that cannot possibly be compared with
those of the past. The banks, for example, set up special
technical research societies, and, of course, only “friendly”
industrial enterprises benefit from their work. To this
category belong the Electric Railway Research Association, the
Central Bureau of Scientific and Technical Research, etc.
The directors of the big banks themselves cannot fail to
see that new conditions of national economy are being created;
but they are powerless in the face of these phenomena.
“Anyone
who has watched, in recent years,” writes Jeidels, “the
changes of incumbents of directorships and seats on the
Supervisory Boards of the big banks, cannot fail to have
noticed that power is gradually passing into the hands of men
who consider the active intervention of the big banks in the
general development of industry to be necessary and of
increasing importance. Between these new men and the old bank
directors, disagreements on this subject of a business and
often of a personal nature are growing. The issue is whether
or not the banks, as credit institutions, will suffer from
this intervention in industry, whether they are sacrificing
tried principles and an assured profit to engage in a field of
activity which has nothing in common
with their role as
middlemen in providing credit, and which is leading the banks
into a field where they are more than ever before exposed to
the blind forces of trade fluctuations. This is the opinion of
many of the older bank directors, while most of the young men
consider active intervention in industry to be a necessity as
great as that which gave rise, simultaneously with big modern
industry, to the big banks and modern industrial banking. The
two parties are agreed only on one point: that there are
neither firm principles nor a concrete aim in the new
activities of the big banks.”[22]
The old capitalism has had its day. The new capitalism
represents a transition towards something. It is hopeless, of
course, to seek for “firm principles and a concrete aim” for
the purpose of “reconciling” monopoly with free competition.
The admission of the practical men has quite a different ring
from the official praises of the charms of “organised”
capitalism sung by its apologists, Schulze-Gaevernitz,
Liefmann and similar “theoreticians”.
At precisely what period were the “new activities” of the
big banks finally established? Jeidels gives us a fairly exact
answer to this important question:
“The
connections between the banks and industrial enterprises, with
their new content, their new forms and their new organs,
namely, the big banks which are organised on both a
centralised and a decentralised basis, were scarcely a
characteristic economic phenomenon before the nineties; in one
sense, indeed, this initial date may be advanced to the year
1897, when the important mergers took place and when, for the
first time, the new form of decentralised organisation was
introduced to suit the industrial policy of the banks. This
starting-point could perhaps be placed at an even later date,
for it was the crisis of 1900 that enormously accelerated and
intensified the process of concentration of industry and of
banking, consolidated that process, for the first time
transformed the connection with industry into the actual
monopoly of the big banks, and made this connection much
closer and more active.”[23]
Thus, the twentieth century marks the turning-point from
the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital
in general to the domination of finance capital.
Notes
[1]
Alfred Lansburgh, “Fünf Jahre deutsches Bankwesen” in
Die Bank, 1913, No. 8. —Lenin
[2]
Schulze-Gaevernitz, “Die deutsche Kreditbank” in “Grundriss
der Sozialökonomik”, Tübingen, 1915, 137. —Lenin
[3]
R. Liefmann, Beteilgungs- und
Finanzierungsgesellschaften. Eine Studie über den modernen
Kapitalismus und das Effektenwesen, I., Jena, 1909, 212.
—Lenin
[4]
Alfred Lansburgh, “Das Beteilgungssystem im deutschen
Bankwesen”, in Die Bank, 1910, 500. —Lenin
[5]
Eugen Kaufmann, Das französische Bankwesen,
Tübingen, 1911, 356 and 362 —Lenin
[6]
Jean Lescure, L’épargne en France, Paris, 1914,
p. 52. —Lenin
[7]
A. Lansburgh, “Die Bank mit den 300 Millionen” in Die
Bank, 1914, p. 426 —Lenin
[8]
S. Tschierschky, op. cit., 128. —Lenin
[9]
Statistics of the National Monetary Commission,
quoted in Die Bank, 1910, S. 1200. —Lenin
[10]
Die Bank, 1913, S 811. —Lenin
[11]
Die Bank, 1914, S 316. —Lenin
[12]
Dr. Oscar Stillich, Geld- und Bankwesen, Berlin,
1907, S. 169. —Lenin
[13]
Schulze-Gaevernitz, “Die deutsche Kreditbank” in
Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, Tübingen, 1915, S. 101 —Lenin
[14]
Riesser, op. cit., 4th ed., S 629. —Lenin
[15]
Schulze-Gaevernitz, “Die deutsche Kreditbank” in
Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, Tübingen, 1915, S. 151 —Lenin
[16]
Die Bank, 1912, S. 435. —Lenin
[17]
Quoted by Schulze-Gaevernitz, op. cit., S 155 —Lenin
[18]
Jeidels, op. cit.; Riesser, op. cit. —Lenin
[19]
Jeidels, op. cit., S 156-57 —Lenin
[20]
An article by Eug. Kaufmann on French banks in Die
Bank, 1909, 2, S 851 et. seq. —Lenin
[21]
Dr. Oscar Stillich, Geld- und Bankwesen, Berlin,
1907, S. 147. —Lenin
[22]
Jeidels, op. cit., S 183-84 —Lenin
[23]
ibid, S. 181. —Lenin
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