Joseph Stalin boasted just before he died that Communism had deprived the capitalist nations of 800 million potential customers—the have-nots in his Soviet empire. The capitalist powers would fall out over the remaining market, he predicted, and this would lead Britain, France, Germany and Japan to "break out of American bondage . . . on a path of independent development."
Stalin, like Marx before him, overlooked the fact that healthy capitalism creates its own expanding market by 1) raising the living standards of its people; 2) opening new frontiers, such as Africa. Yet in Europe, and Asia last week, there were some, not all of them Reds, who thought that Stalin's prophecy might be on the way to coming true. Only economic issues, said Britain's new Ambassador to the U.S., Sir Roger Makins, can ever drive a wedge between America and Britain.
Western Europe, and Japan too, are hag-ridden with fears that their hard-won recovery might be crushed between the Iron Curtain and a U.S. tariff wall. Since V-J day, Western Europe, encouraged by the U.S., has increased its productive capacity well above prewar; at the same time, its traditional markets, notably in Russia and China, have all but disappeared. In 1953, Dutchmen, French and Germans sell Eastern Europe barely one-half, and buy only a quarter, of what they did in 1938. Japan's trade with the Chinese mainland, which accounted for 21% of all Japanese foreign trade in 1938, has shrunk to less than one-twelfth of 1% of her overseas trade.
Since Stalin's death, his successors have teased the free world with promises of lucrative trade with the "Great Eastern Market." U.S. policy is to discourage trade with the Communists, particularly with the Red Chinese, but so far the U.S. has shown insufficient willingness to provide an alternate "Great Western Market" for the surplus manufactures which Europe must sell to live. All over could be heard the complaint: the strategic desirability of cordoning off Communism is colliding with economic necessity.
BRITAIN, whose daily bread depends on worldwide trade, was mightily disturbed at the prospect of receding markets in both Asia and America. Ex-Labor Minister Harold Wilson went bustling off to Moscow in search of timber supplies for Britain's housing drive; Bevanite Sydney Silverman stayed at home and told the House of Commons that "nothing can be more ridiculous than [our] straining every nerve . . . to export goods to the one market [the U.S.] in all the world that does not need them . . . whereas all over the world there are [Communist] markets waiting . . ." Even Rab Butler, the commonsensical Tory Chancellor who has done much to put Britain back on its feet, worried that a Republican Congress might undo 20 years of reduced Democratic tariffs. "We have shown we are ready to make sacrifices," said Butler, referring to his "trade, not aid" policy. "The other side of the Atlantic [must] make up its side [of the bargain]."
That was precisely what Britain was not doing in its trade with Red China, which shot up ten times in the first three months of this year. Total British trade with the Chinese mainland is less than one-third of what it was in 1938, yet an average of one ship a day still clears Hong Kong for Communist ports.