The United States emerged from the First World War as the first among imperialist powers. Scott Nearing on the meaning of that transformation and the cost of all empires.

‘Manifest Destiny’ by Scott Nearing from Workers World (Kansas City). Vol. 1 No. 10. June 6, 1919.

The United States emerges from the Great War in a position of unprecedented economic power. In 1913 America was still a borrowing nation. In 1919 she is the creditor of the world.

The property of other nations is heavily mortgaged by war debts. The debt of Great Britain equals 44.4 per cent of her total wealth. The debt of Italy is 50.4 per cent; the debt of France 54.6 per cent: the debt of Germany 50 per cent; and that of Austria-Hungary 96 per cent of the total national wealth. The entire present national debt of the United States is only 9.6 per cent of her total wealth.

The United States, has loaned the Allies a total of nine and a quarter billions. She holds a mortgage on almost ten per cent of their net wealth. The net wealth of Great Britain (wealth minus debt) is 50 billions: of France 30 billions; of Italy 12 billions, of Japan 27 billions. The net wealth of the United States is 225 billions. The United States has been forced to bond less than 10 per cent of her total wealth. Her net wealth is greater nearly 100 per cent greater than the combined net wealth of her principal allies.

The value of exports over imports (the trade balance) for the calendar year 1918 amounted to over three billions of dollars in favor of the United States. The indications are that for 1919 there will be a trade balance almost as heavy.

Before the war, billions of American Securities were owned in Europe. Of these Securities two and a half billions have been brought back to the United States.

There is in the United States over three billions in gold money. Compare this amount with the 400 million stock of gold in the Bank of England, and the one billion, one-hundred million stock of gold in the Bank of France. The United States has vastly more than her share of the world’s gold supply.

The United States is the greatest manufacturing nation on earth. She produces, through high industrial efficiency, a huge annual surplus of wealth, which must seek investment somewhere. Prior to the war, the foreign investments of Great Britain, Germany and France totaled nearly forty billion dollars. The foreign investments of the United States were a mere nothing compared with this amount.

Now the tables are turned. German foreign investments are wiped out. Her surplus is gone. Great Britain and France will be busy restoring the economic life at home. The United States today is prepared to invest more money in foreign enterprises than any nation in the world. From this time forward, she will be in a position of unquestioned superiority as a lending nation. The United States is on the verge of a period of financial imperialism that will eclipse anything that modern society has known. Resources, efficiency, investable surplus, freedom from heavy debt, equipment with adequate man-power–in all of these directions, the United States far out-distances her nearest competitor.

Competition for trade and for investment opportunities will be very bitter during the next few years. It is little wonder that France and Great Britain are seeking protection in a Triple Alliance with the huge reservoirs of American credit. Will this Triple Alliance hold when these reservoirs, filled to overflowing, threatens to submerge the capitalism in less favored lands?

Manifest destiny is calling the United States to take her position as the greatest financial imperialist nation on earth. Her economic future possesses all of the allurements that vast wealth and unchallengeable power can command. In a few–in a very few years–there will be, not a “Big Five;” not a “Big Three” but a “Big One,” and that one will be the United States.

The bankers already have recognized this fact. They have accepted it in the person of Thomas W. Lamont, member of the firm of J.P. Morgan & Co., financial advisor to the American peace delegation in Paris; and leader of the group of international bankers that is to be responsible for the Chinese loans.

The economic supremacy of the United States is not a theory. It is a fact. Manifest destiny is directing the Ship of State. Isolation has been abandoned. The theory that American diplomacy could not be expected to back American investments has been forgotten. Administrative officials and financiers agree on the principle and on the practice. The United States is to be the money-lender of the world!

Thus far, it is the bankers who have spoken. These plans are bankers’ plans. The people are still to be heard from.

What do the American people think of imperialism? Are they content to pay the price? Are they willing to support a huge navy; equip and maintain a large standing army; bind themselves in alliances with foreign powers; engage in petty quarrels; participate in devastating wars; give their fathers, husbands and sons for cannon fodder: labor, sweat, produce the immense surplus of wealth that will be needed to supply the demand for American capital? Are they satisfied–the masses of the people–to live narrow lives in narrow houses, while the owners of wealth and the holders of power wallow in luxury? Are the American people ready to pay this price?

Others have been willing to pay. The Roman workers paid. So did the workers of France. The British workers have been paying for more than a century. Now the turn of the American workers has come.

To the people of America, as to the people of every other empire, Fate has presented this question. “The Question of all time.” (Written by E.E Miller.)

“Beside the road of time the gaunt Sphinx lay
Half buried in the dust of cities dead.
A mighty nation came with ringing tread;
The monster rose; the traveler stood at bay
And heard the riddle; “What is there to say
When idlers feast and tollers lack for bread?”
No answer came; a struggling gasp instead

“Told that the Sphinx had clutched another prey.
Empire on empire fell, the question still
Unanswered, and today our young land hears
It asked. She hears; her lips half apart with will
To speak; yet she is silent and appears
To halt in sudden doubt ‘twixt two replies.”

Manifest destiny is calling to America–the manifest destiny of imperialism and world dominion that called to Carthage, Rome, Spain, Germany, Russia and England. The rulers of American economic life–the bankers, manufacturers, merchants, traders all of the profiteers are answering the summons eagerly; gleefully. For them it means riches, unimagined and boundless power. But the workers who must carry this imperial program upon their backs,–what is their answer to this manifest, imperial destiny?

The Workers World, published weekly in Kansas City, Missouri during much of 1919 was a mix of regional and national working class news, international socialist events, and the growing fights within the Socialist Party. It was one of many left-wing Socialist Party journals inspired by the Russian Revolution to emerge. Edited alternatively by future Communist Party leaders James P Cannon and Earl Browder, The Workers World ceased publication in November, 1919 as writers and readers moved on to build the Communist movement and its early parties.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workersworld/WW10.pdf