that is, competition and anarchy. is shaken by a serious crisis.
Disintegration of the internafional monetary system For three and a half years we have been witnessing the slow death agony of the international monetary system founded at Bretton Woods under the banner of supremacy of the dollar. This system sought to escape from the dilemma that has confronted the capItalist economy since the beginning of its historic crisis of decline marked by the first world war: either maintenance of the gold standard with more and more catastrophic crises of overproduction; or abandonment of the gold standard and a retreat toward economie nationalism, protectionism, and inconvertible currencies, which signifles not less disastrous consequences for capitalist international trade.
The solution consisted of hasing capitalist currencies both on gold and on the dollar, of maintaining stable rates of exchange, and of installing flexible rules, tolerating in reality a permanent inflation, above all when a crisis of overproduction ipended, in order to avoid a new 1929.
So long as the inflation remained moderate, and the dollar lost its purchasing power at a slower rate than of the other important Imperialist pun cra the system funeHoned to the satisfaction of all the Imperialists.
Already at that time. it is true, the arrangement aignifled more and more ruinous indebtednesa for the semicolonial countries, the big losers at Bretton Wood. But that the "great" should explolt the "small" is the most natural of all things in the capitallat world.
No Imperialist complained about the deficit in the U.S, balance of payments in the fattles -and with reason! Without this deficit, the system invented at Bretton Woods would not have been able to function. The capitalist expansion would have died for lack of dollars and gold, that in, of means of International payment Things began to turn sour not because of inflation of the dollar - that had been going on uninterruptedly for thirty years. Things began to turn sour when the decline in buying power of the dollar became greater than that of other currencies, when the rest of the world's bolding: In dollars expanded out of all proportion to the rapidly diminishing stock of gold beld by the U.S.
From then on It was clear that devaluation of the dollar would occur sooner or later, The Internationa] bourgeoisle - including a good part of big business in the IT. S., whether through the multinational companies directly or through go-betweene -began to ready themselves for this contingency, In plain language, this is called speculating on devaluation of the dollar. And in a market economy, when many capitalists ready them selves for a contingency, they precipiconditions,
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