secondly, the monopolist position of a few rich countries, in which the accumulation of capital reaches gigantic proportions. An enormous "excess of capital" becomes accumulated in the advanced countries.
Now there is no doubt that, if capitalism could develop agriculture, which to-day has been everywhere left far behind by industry, if it could raise the standard of living of the masses, who are everywhere still poverty-stricken and badly fed in spite of a dizzy advance in technical knowledge, there could be no talk of an excess of capital. And the petty bourgeois critics of capitalism advance this argument on every occasion. But in that case capitalism would not be capitalism, for the inequalities of development and the wretched condition of the masses are the indispensable conditions, the very roots of this method of production. While capitalism remains itself, the excess of capital is not put aside to raise the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decrease of profits for the capitalists: but it is used to increase those profits by the export of capital abroad, to the backward countries. There the profits are generally higher, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively small; wages are low, raw materials are cheap. The possibility of the export of capital is created by the entry of numerous backward countries into international capitalist life: the most important railway lines are either built or being built there: the elementary conditions for industrial development are in existence, etc.
