“The Universal Exhibition which was to be held in London in 1851 seemed to Engels to be infinitely more significant than all the diplomatic and party congresses on the Continent. It displayed side by side all the productive forces of modern industry. It was an exhibition of the material produced in the midst of the decaying capitalist system, but destined for the construction of a new social order. The ‘bourgeoisie’ was building its Pantheon when its glory was already on the wane. A new phase of the trade cycle had begun in 1850: if it followed the same course as that of 1843-1847, a crisis would arise in 1852. The discovery of the Californian gold mines meant more than a mere increase in gold production; it was also a stimulus to world capital to seek new channels. Most of the Californian gold flowed to New York. Through the growing interest in transatlantic shipping, and the cutting of the Panama Canal, New York was becoming the centre of speculation and therefore the centre of the next big slump. Even if many companies were ruined, there would still remain the shipping lines which connected Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China, and America, and which went round the world in a little as four months. Engels published these speculations in the ‘Revue’.Although he thought it probable that America would win the economic hegemony of the civilised world, he still believed that England was “the demiurge of the ‘bourgeois’ cosmos”. Even the economic crisis which produced revolutions on the Continent would (he thought) always have their causes in England” (pag 122-123) [Gustav Mayer, ‘Friedrich Engels. A Biography’, London, 1936]
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- Articolo pubblicato:26 Gennaio 2018