The Crisis of the Dictatorships - Nicos Poulantzas

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and above all, closes people’s eyes to those internal conjunctures which are precisely what enabled ‘outside intervention’ and the ‘hand of the foreigner’ to be effective. No one can doubt today that there have been and continue to be such interventions. But except in the extreme case of open and direct intervention on a massive scale (Santo Domingo, Vietnam, etc.), this cannot generally play a decisive role in the dependent countries concerned – particularly in such European countries as Portugal, Greece and Spain – without being articulated, within these countries, to the internal balance of forces.

       II

       The Dictatorships, the United States and Europe

      Before coming to the internal causes of the decomposition (Spain) and fall (Portugal, Greece) of these regimes, we must first examine the world conjuncture of imperialism as it concretely affects these countries.

      To start with the economic level. I have already noted that the Portuguese, Spanish and Greek regimes systematically promoted the investment of foreign imperialist capital. This capital is invested in the countries concerned both to directly exploit the popular masses there, and to use these countries as a staging-post in the exploitation of other countries. In Portugal in particular, not only did the dictatorship directly promote the pillage of its African colonies by foreign capital, but the part of this capital invested in Portugal itself was also largely oriented toward the colonies. Greece was also used by foreign capital as a base for the conquest of African markets, and for re-export of capital to African countries under the ‘neutral’ Greek label.

      Let us pause for a moment on the policies of promoting foreign investment that were pursued by these countries. We can certainly note that similar policies were also pursued by the governments of several other European countries (Germany, Great Britain, etc.) vis-à-vis American capital. In the cases we are dealing with here, however, this took particular forms. The facilities granted (tax exemptions, almost unlimited opportunity of repatriating profits, capital grants, monopoly privileges, leonine contracts with national firms), the absence of any real control, and so on, are without any parallel in the other European countries. This is particularly striking in Greece, where the situation can be compared with the policy of the governments that preceded the military junta, such as that of Karamanlis (conservative), which also promoted the penetration of foreign capital. As regards the facilities granted to foreign capital for an unbridled pillage of the country, the junta’s policy towards foreign capital was qualitatively different from that of the previous governments. (This was particularly the case with foreign capital in Greek shipping.)

      It should be understood, of course, that the facilities in question are not just those explicitly granted. It is easy to see how foreign capital can also profit from the internal situation in a country and the repression that weighs upon the working class and the popular masses (abolition of the right to strike, the ban on working-class organization, etc.).

      These points are sufficiently well-known not to need particular emphasis here. But what is important to stress, as it directly locates these countries at the very heart of present inter-imperialist contradictions, is the gradual increase in the economic relations tying these nations to the European Common Market, as opposed to those tying them to the United States.

      This is particularly apparent at the level of foreign capital investment.

      In Portugal, for instance, capital from the EEC countries is massively dominant, in particular capital from West Germany and the United Kingdom. In 1971 the respective shares of new foreign investment, in millions of escudos, were: United States 391.6; West Germany 237.1; United Kingdom 156.2; France 72.6. In 1972, United States 300.3; West Germany 589.0; United Kingdom 298.6; France 74.7. In 1973, United States 238.9; West Germany 815.4; United Kingdom 552.3; France 109.6.

      In Spain, the percentage of American capital in the total volume of foreign investment followed an upward curve from 1961 to around 1965, rising from 27.8 per cent to 48.3 per cent of the total, but it has since progressively fallen, to a level of 29.2 per cent in 1970.

      In Greece, although American investment remains massively predominant, there has also been a spectacular increase in investment from the EEC, particularly from France, which now holds second place.

      The same situation is to be seen in the field of foreign trade: trade with the Common Market as a proportion of total foreign trade has increased spectacularly in the cases of Portugal and Greece, and somewhat less strikingly in the case of Spain, in relation to trade with the United States.

      This all leads to a most important question. Did the present contradictions between the United States and the European Common Market play a role in the decline and fall of the dictatorships, and if so, what exactly? What in particular has been the role of the special relationships that these countries have had with the Common Market, a relationship that in the case of Greece was already institutionalized, but officially frozen during the colonels’ regime, while a similarly institutionalized relationship was also sought systematically by Portugal under Caetano and is still sought by the present Spanish government?

      To situate the role played here by the inter-imperialist contradictions between the United States and Europe, we must first establish their general significance at the present time. The development and extension of the Common Market, combined with the dollar crisis, led several writers to foresee the inevitable demise of American hegemony, with Europe coming to form an effective ‘counter-imperialism’ to the United States. We may note in passing that these are often the same writers who indulged in the myth of ‘ultra-imperialism’ during the long period in which inter-imperialist contradictions seemed relatively quiescent – the myth of an uncontested hegemony and domination by the United States over the entire imperialist world, which it had allegedly succeeded in pacifying under its own aegis.

      Both these notions are equally false. If American hegemony is now in retreat, in relation to certain quite exceptional characteristics that it assumed when the European economies had suffered partial destruction as a result of the Second World War, it is still the case that the extension and development of the Common Market has gone together with a prodigious growth in direct American investment, more and more involving sectors of directly productive capital (manufacturing industries) in the EEC countries. The privileged location of American foreign investment is no longer the Third World, but precisely the European Common Market: the case of West Germany, now the dominant economy within the Common Market, is highly significant here, to say nothing of Great Britain. This actually creates a new form of dependence of the European countries on the United States, and a quite particular form, as it cannot be identified with that affecting the dominated countries in their relationship with the imperialist metropolises as a whole, being in no way analogous to this. It can only be understood in terms of an internationalization of capital and of capitalist relations, not in terms of competing ‘national economies’. The confirmation of this new dependence can be found in the way that the Common Market has successively capitulated to the United States, on many questions, in the present crisis period, and particularly the way that its members have operated and capitulated individually in the face of American demands (over monetary policy, energy, etc.). One effect of this new dependence is the absence of any real unification of capital at the present time between the various European countries. Relations between them have in fact an external centre, passing by way of the relationship that each of these countries maintains individually with the United States. This factor is important to bear in mind with regard to the EEC’s attitude to the dictatorships.

      Secondly, however, there is a real reactivation and intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions, correlative with the present crisis of capitalism, between the United States and the European Common Market, and one that is in no way incompatible with what has just been

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