Tremors and Stabilization: The World-System in 1928-1929 (Part 1)

Tremors and Stabilization: The World-System in 1928-1929 (Part 1)​

In the final two years of the 1920s, disturbances roiled the international system, presaging its breakdown and transformation in the Second Revolutionary Era. Though stabilization was achieved in each case - with a greater or lesser degree of concessions granted to insurgent elements - the manner in which these latent contradictions were resolved frequently suppressed rather than alleviated their root causes. The decisions taken in these two years explain both the comparative stability of the 1930s and their ultimate fragility.

We will consider six distinct cases: in the capitalist bloc, the American presidential election of 1928, the British Parliamentary elections of 1929, and the quadrilateral negotiations of late 1929; amongst the socialists, the military purges, unrest, and transfer of power in the Worker’s and Soldier’s Republic of France, the internationalist revolt at the 3rd IntRevMar Congress, and the protest, strike, and recall movement that returned the Revolutionary Worker’s Front to power in 1929.

American Presidential Election of 1928 ​

Like the past presidential elections of 1924 and 1920, the 1928 contest was thought by most of the press to be a foregone conclusion; after all, nothing indicated that the archconservative, southern-dominated Democratic Party was prepared to nominate a nationally viable candidate at their own convention, and iIt was unclear if the upstart People’s and All-American Parties were going to nominate presidential candidates, much less ones who would conduct serious national campaigns with a chance of securing electoral votes.

The Republican Party Convention met first, in late May. Rumours proliferated that Hoover’s allies in the party had moved it up to stymie gathering opposition. To understand something of its character, we need to take a brief excursion into the past three years of interregnum era American politics, and the emergence of a “nationalist” caucus in the GOP.

Who were the nationalists? On the ground, in the streets, amongst the party’s rank-and-file, they were overwhelmingly middle-class anticommunists, politicized during the First Revolutionary Era’s extraordinary civic mobilization and then left restless and dissatisfied by the more sedate, tempered policies of the Hoover administration, which sought to create a measure of social peace. Others were veterans of the Eastern Seas War or active-duty members of America’s expanding military. These groups all found it easy to blame nefarious internal forces, along with wily British diplomats, for the slow pace of American economic recovery.

At the elite level, their composition was somewhat more diverse. Heavy industry, large export manufacturers, and conservative newspaper barons tended to be some of the top contributors to the nationalist cause. They were strengthened by the extraordinary attraction of an emerging, nationalist ideology for a new class of American conservative intellectuals, who rejected both the staid “normality” of Hoover and the anti-intellectual, populist demagoguery of the All-American Party.

The philosophical and intellectual heft given to the party faction by a crystallizing foreign policy clique is important to understanding its appeal within the broader party. In 1924, just before the end of the First Revolutionary Era, a group informally led by the German emigre scholar Karl Haushofer created the Journal of American Foreign Policy as a competitor to the more internationalist-minded Foreign Affairs. Unlike most German emigre journals, all articles had to be published in English and the use of German loanwords was limited to a secret ratio of no more than three per page. At first, early contributors were confined mostly to the members of the Haushofer clique, such as Carl Schmitt and Friedrich Berber, but as the magazine grew in popularity, it attracted many American-born writers, including Ellen Semple, Morton Fullerton, and, most importantly, Isaiah Bowman and Archibald Carry Coolidge, who both had extensive connections to officials in the State Department. This eventually brought a spate of funding for the magazine, which over 1926 and 1927 took on a more popular and populist cast.

Schmitt, Haushofer, and Bowman became the magazine’s most frequent contributors during these years. The Journal taught Americans the deadly, “German” art of “geopolitics”, Imperial Germany’s “secret weapon” in the Great War. It was “geopolitics”, the journal’s authors argued, which had enabled the Central Powers to nearly achieve victory even while arrayed against the overwhelming material superiority of the Entente. Old-world knowledge of weltpolitik would provide a corrective to the muddle-headed, idealistic liberalism of the Americans.

What was the content of this new knowledge? Despite its claim of freshness, the views expounded in the Journal of American Foreign Policy intentionally echoed both the civic patriotism of Roosevelt and existing, social-darwinist discourses of geopolitics found in the likes of Alfred Mahan. We can identify seven distinct propositions which were advanced consistently by the journal over its first half-decade of existence:

1. Geopolitics is a realm in which sovereign political communities struggle over space, both maritime and telluric. The economic battle for market-places is merely an extension of the political struggle for space. Nations which fail to engage in the struggle for space will eventually wither and die.
2. The German-Russian bloc constitutes an existential threat to the people of the Rimland - the English, the Americans, and the Japanese. This is not only, or even primarily because of its control over the Eurasian heartland. The German-Russian socialist bloc is not a normal adversary: b ecause it aims to export communist internationalism to every corner of the earth, it is not bound by the same rules of struggle as other sovereign political communities. The communist bloc aims not so much for territory as for the internal transformation of the political identities of its adversaries. Communism represents a “false universalism”, a secularized “political theology” which does not respect the historical rules of territorial-spatial political communities. Its claim to be an emergent “world-order” sets it in opposition to every other people on the earth. It also excludes it from the normal laws of war.
3. America is the sole “world power” outside of the communist bloc which is both a maritime and a land power. It is therefore the only nation which realistically can lead opposition to the socialist bloc. America, with its compact control over the North American continent, is of a different character than the British Empire, whose colonies are strewn all over the world, creating a geographically context-less world-empire, not bound together by common laws or norms.
4. American diplomats have shamefully surrendered control of the world’s key maritime chokepoints to Britain, and also offered it overly advantageous loans. This is a mistake. Though Britain is an ally in the fight against communism, it must be made clear to them that they are to serve as a strictly junior partner. As an empire in perpetual decline, Britain cannot be entrusted with control over the strategically vital eastern colonies.
5. The building of an American Space of Law (og German: Großraum) will involve the extension of the Monroe Doctrine to America’s “natural borders”: Eastern China, the Strait of Malacca, the Persian Gulf, and Western Europe all fall within the rightful territory of an American “World-Space”, since they constitute the outermost reaches of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
6. The indispensable means of securing an American World-Space is the building up of a “World-Fleet”. America is the sole power with sufficient industrial capacity to create a world-fleet. Such an endeavor will involve a threefold expansion of America’s navy, so that it can confront and defeat any combination of adversaries. The mere threat of such a fleet will force Britain to bend to American will and ensure that IntRevMar is sequestered in its Eurasian Heartland.
7. The building-up and maintenance of an American world-space will require a new class of virtuous, warrior-aristocrats who will subjugate the demands of market-rationality to the political exigencies of the fight against international communism. Taken to their extreme, market-logics are destructive of manly, civic virtue. A new project of American imperialism and “space-delineation” will instill the necessary character traits in a new, public-minded elite.

In 1927, both Haushofer and Schmitt received glowing profiles in major American magazines such as Harper’s and Life. A “Geopolitics” craze swept over the nation. The most popular proposal was the most concrete: the building up of the so-called “world-fleet”. In a number of towns, “world-fleet” chapters were formed, with the intention of collecting funds to begin its construction. By the time of the Republican convention, it had sunk deep into the consciousness of Republican delegates. Hoover, of course, could not publicly oppose these patriotic activities, but he was committed to maintaining the levels of naval parity set out in the agreements between Britain and America. Britain could not afford an arms race, and to his advisors, forcing one upon it seemed an act of manifest foolishness.

It was Hamilton Fish, a young, anticommunist Congressman from New York who took up the task of advocating for the world-fleet. A committee he formed in the house concluded that it was, indeed, practicable for such a programme to be carried out. The amounts of steel and other heavy metals would even start to make up for lost European markets, though the cost to the state would necessitate sharp tax hikes.

At the 1928 Republican Convention, Hoover’s weakness and timidity was loudly assailed by Fish. What was intended to be a coronation ended up a bloodbath as Hoover was also attacked by the Internationalist wing of the party, who wished to make their own perspective heard. Finally, the rump of progressives who had still remained with the party joined in, sensing Hoover’s vulnerability. Hoover was forced to publicly push back against the building of a world-fleet; he denounced the “irresponsible cost” it would impose on tax-payers and the “mad, teutonic belligerency” it represented. Hoover defended his foreign - and domestic - policy record in detail. It was hardly typical for a sitting President to engage in this kind of activity at a convention. But these were, the assembled delegates admitted, hardly typical times. Hoover’s speech-making appeared to conciliate at least some of them.

Even so, Hoover was unable to achieve a majority of votes on the first ballot. This was a tremendous blow to his prestige. He contemplated stepping aside for a compromise candidate, but his advisers believed he could still win the nomination - and that neither the democrats nor the other two parties which had recently emerged had a chance of winning a national election (regardless, the subtext went, of the Republican candidate). The nationalist opposition was split between several candidates, though a little under half had gone to Hamilton Fish. Hoover’s team decided to bypass the demagogic upstart, whom they possessed a healthy, aristocratic disdain for; instead, they made deals with several minor candidates, hanging Fish out to try. He would not forget this.

Two weeks later, the Democratic Convention met, as well as the first national convention of the All-American Party. The Democrats, still controlled by archconservative southerners horrified by the party’s recent capture by Bryanism, were at last persuaded to nominate a somewhat more moderate candidate to attempt to win back some of the border states. Cordell Hull of Tennessee, an important player in the Senate, won the nomination.

Hamilton Fish became the star speaker at the All-American Party Convention, announcing that he was giving up on the Republican Party and acknowledging that he was, as the rest of the attendees, a “true All-American”. He would be nominated as the Vice-President on the ticket, with Senator Ole Hanson at its top. His presence would give the ticket vital star-power.

The first multi-party election since 1912, the election saw vigorous campaigning from both Wheeler and Hanson, who took turns attacking the President’s record from left and right. Hoover and Hull, the traditional candidates of the two major parties, failed to make a comparable mark on the public, though ultimately the split of the anti-hoover vote in the north between the Democrats, People’s Party, and All-American Party ensured that he would have a solid electoral college victory.

1928 Presidential Election Results

​

Candidate	Party	Votes	Vote %	EV
Hoover	Republican	15,313,175	38.2	388
Hull	Democratic	8,458,324	21.1	109
Wheeler	People’s	7,175,545	17.9	27
Hanson	All-American	8,338,063	20.8	7

The drop-off in Hoover’s total vote was nonetheless substantial; he lost a little over ten million voters, mostly to the new parties. Several candidates from the People’s and All-American Parties defeated Republican Senators, though they held onto their absolute majority of the chamber. It was clear that the era of Republican dominance of national politics was unlikely to last in perpetuity, but few knew what would replace it.

British Parliamentary Election of 1929 ​

Over 1928, a veritable red panic swept across the political leadership of the British Empire. Haldane’s political strategy was predicated on the notion that loosening restrictions on trade unions, speech, and assembly would domesticate the English working class. To some extent, this appeared to have worked: the most ultra-left fractions of the Labour Party were marginalized by the new leadership, though they were not expelled wholesale from the party or its unions. Alarmingly, however, Shaw and the radicalized clique around him - largely former Fabian socialists, as well as some members of the Independent Labour Party - appeared sincere in their promises of socialization. Despite their disavowal of IntRevMar, their economic platform clearly took inspiration from Otto Wels and George Ledebour’s writings in the Soviet Union. Even more worrying was their foreign policy intentions: while few spoke of disbanding the empire entirely, Labour’s various factions agreed on the premise that the imperium must be transformed from the “Unequal Rule of the Few” to a “Community of British Nations”.

Several factors contributed to Labour’s re-emergence on the national political scene. Firstly, there were the already-mentioned Haldane reforms, which loosened the most draconian restrictions on labour unions and left-wing organizing. The success of the socialist experiment in Germany and Russia - represented by the extraordinarily speedy recovery of these societies from total war - also re-energized the English working classes. The capture of the Party apparatus by Shaw and the Labour “centre” likely avoided a party split. Most important, however, was the strike action of 1926, which re-politicized a despondent working class and brought the labour movement a crucial national victory. The prestige the general strike brought to the trade unions spurred on a rapid expansion of membership, which rose from a little under 4 million to over 7 million by the end of 1928.

The British ruling classes feared that a split of the anti-labour vote between the liberals and conservatives would lead to a Labour majority in the next parliament. It was unclear that either of the bourgeois parties was in a particularly solid position: while Haldane’s reforms had been broadly popular amongst his Liberal supporters and even many reformist Tories, it was well-known at this point that the new electorate would likely be far less favorable to the liberals, whose support was concentrated amongst the upper classes. The conservatives, meanwhile, had reason to think that the inclusion of lower-class, rural southerners might help their electoral prospects, but they had struggled mightily to formulate a coherent response to Haldane’s reforms. Austen Chamberlain, the hardline party leader, had proposed an imperial tariff scheme and military expansion only to be relentlessly hounded by the liberals on the practicability of both of these measures.

A mammoth, unyielding press campaign begun against Labour in 1928 aimed to tie them to IntRevMar and Britain’s foreign adversaries. But this did not halt the ongoing expansion of the unions, and brought neither the Tories nor the Liberals much comfort. Something more had to be done. Two options presented themselves. Firstly, an electoral fusion, similar to the one practiced in the Great War between the pro-war liberals and conservatives. Secondly, a transition to a proportional representation system, which would require Labour to win an absolute majority of votes to form a one-party government. Neither option was particularly appealing to the party leadership, but, with both the Liberals and Conservatives believing they had a genuine chance of at least beating each other, they chose to implement the proportional representation measure. A fusion ticket would anyways reek of desperation, and proportional representation had the advantage of having a history of support in the Labour Party, as well as being a longstanding priority for the left-wing of the Liberals.

The Electoral Representation Act, passed in 1928, shifted the allocation of seats in Parliament to a purely proportional basis. A fairly high threshold of 10% was required to receive representation, to avoid the potential for, as one liberal put it, “electoral chaos”. A rather arcane system would attempt to ensure that the parliamentarians elected still largely hailed from areas in which their party performed strongest. For his part, Shaw welcomed this move to a more “democratic form of representation”, but did wonder “At its rather miraculous timing”.

The worries of the Liberals and Tories were vindicated on election night: the Electoral Representation Act likely prevented Labour, which won a plurality of the vote, from forming a majority government. Haldane was relieved; not only was his party now in a natural position to form a coalition government, but Chamberlain and his hardliners were now likely to lose control of the conservatives, easing this process considerably. The Liberals had held on in a far larger electorate; later, post-election analysis would show that amongst those who voted in 1924, Haldane beat Chamberlain by a 12-point margin. For now, the proletarian flood had been contained.

1929 British Parliamentary Election Results ​

Party	Party Leader	Vote Total	Vote %	Vote % Change	MP’s	Change
Labour	Shaw	8,971,406	39.4	20.2	263	+180
Liberal	Haldane	7,104,261	31.2	-16.3	208	-186
Conservative	Chamberlain	6,626,089	29.1	-2.1	194	+8

The Tokyo Conference ​

Japan was the great enigma and wild-card of the Interregnum Era. While a total defeat in the Eastern Seas War may have rendered it a compliant client state of its American adversary, the tenacious defense of Japan’s island empire ensured that it retained not just its independence, but also much of its colonial sphere in China. Yet Japan was in a rather peculiar position. Lacking the vast resources of Russia, the industrial might of America, or the world-wide Empire of Britain, it could not be described as one of the era’s four “world-powers”. Neither, however, could it be assimilated to the small, weak states of Turkey and Syria, which were unable to project power far beyond their borders. Japan was the last remaining classical great power; and it was also a neutral one.

Japanese neutrality was vouchsafed by Yukio Ozaki’s repeal of anti-socialist laws, the return of northern Sakhalin to the Soviet Union, and the generally anti-militaristic, internationalist posture of his progressive government. Some Japanese naval thinkers mooted the notion of a second Anglo-Japanese alliance, but Britain’s betrayal in the Eastern Seas War and its continuing protectionism made this less palatable.

For the Americans, Japan presented a “strategic dilemma”. So long as it held onto Chinese-claimed Manchuria, the prospect of renewed Sino-Japanese conflict could not be dismissed. Any war between China and Japan, however, would likely annihilate their capacity to serve as eastern counterweights to the expanding armies of the Soviet Union, creating a power void in the area that would require enormous American investment to make up. It followed that America had an interest in negotiating a lasting peace between the two Asian powers, thereby focusing their joint attention to the north.

In 1929, with Hoover and Haldane both returned to office, the Americans finally received an opportunity to achieve a stabilization of the international situation through diplomacy. The Chinese, British, and Japanese agreed to a series of quadrilateral talks in Tokyo, to, in the words of the original diplomatic note, “settle outstanding disputes, ensure the continuation of peaceable relations, and create favorable conditions for the further development of trade and commerce in the Asia-Pacific.” The American delegation would come armed with a maximalist plan that envisioned the demilitarization of Chinese-Japanese border areas, a time-table for Manchuria’s annexation by the Republic of China, and the creation of a military alliance and free trade zone between China, Japan, and the United States.

Even the most ambitious American diplomats recognized that this plan was more a wish-list than a realistic prospect; for the other nations also had their own diplomatic interests. We will survey these now.

Of the other three participants in the diplomatic summit, China’s aims aligned most closely with America’s. President Liao wished to see Manchuria returned to China; though he realized this was unlikely to happen outright, the Chinese delegation would be pleased with seeing the territory return to its status before the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, when it was a zone of influence for Japan but formally a part of the Republic of China. Under pressure from anti-imperialists at home, Liao would dutifully urge the British to return the concessions in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Given Britain’s recent efforts at colonial reform, this appeared quite plausible. Finally, Liao hoped to avoid unduly alienating either Britain or Japan with maximalist demands; doing so would only increase the country’s dependence upon America, which had become a sore spot for the KMT-left.

Prime Minister Ozaki knew that Japan’s decisions would likely determine the fate of the conference. He had achieved great freedom of maneuver through adroitly marginalizing Japan’s traditionally powerful army, but the navy still constituted an important pressure group, not to mention the growing trade union and industry lobbies. Ozaki would pursue a “commercialist” policy, offering concessions to China on the Manchurian issue in return for greater access to the rest of their markets. This would also ensure that the conference would get off the ground, and that Japan would be seen as a generally reasonable actor.

The other key goal of the Japanese delegation was to reduce American influence in the region; any commercialist policy would need to hamstring America from using its considerable hard power to win favorable trading terms, as it had already done in China. The simplest means of accomplishing this would be to curry favor with Britain and China, which both had an interest in restraining American actions in the region. However, any overly obsequious displays would likely create trouble at home with nationalist segments of public opinion.

On the surface of matters, Britain appeared to have little invested in the results of the Conference. So long as relations with the Americans were generally friendly, it had no reason to fear for its eastern colonies. Japan appeared to have turned its back on its old, militaristic ways. And although the leadership in China occasionally made some noise about their “rightful claims” to the concessions, they also appeared committed to resolving territorial disputes through negotiation. Regardless, with the sale of many of Britain’s investments in the Chinese markets, the concessions had become a much less important part of the British Empire.

These appearances were deceiving. Britain, still struggling to balance its budget and pay back its debt, could not afford to make enemies in the east. It was fortunate that both Japan and China had embarked upon a pacific course, and Britain’s posture at the conference was dictated by the need to ensure the continuation of this state of affairs. The other vital interest of the English was in keeping the Chinese, Americans, and Japanese from signing any tripartite military alliance that would, by virtue of the immense forces this would gather up, weaken Britain’s position in any future negotiations. The most expeditious means of accomplishing both of these tasks was the same: befriending Japan and China without surrendering Britain’s vital interests. John Simon, the British Foreign Minister, came to the conference ready to make concessions to achieve these ends.

The diplomatic delegations of the four powers met in Tokyo through the months of August and September. The unusual length of the conference is attributable in part to the extraordinarily broad scope of the matters under consideration: economic, political, and military matters were all deliberated upon jointly. Neither Wilson nor Haldane attended the conference, entrusting negotiations to subordinates; there was uncertainty about whether the much-publicized proceedings would end in success, and staying in the metropole was a way to shield oneself from political risk.

As the conference began, it quickly became clear that the maximalist plans of American Secretary of State Isaiah Bowman were a non-starter. Though both China and Japan expressed interest in the creation of a customs zone, they also made clear that a tripartite military alliance was a prospect best considered in the distant future. Much to his relief, John Simon found that he did not have to expend any of his own political capital to quash an American-dominated tripartite alliance.

The conference naturally proceeded to the matter of Sino-Japanese relations. Manchuria had already begun a transition to civilian rule, and Liao requested that the Kuomintang be given representation on the new provincial councils. Japanese Foreign Minister Kijuro Shidehara proved amenable to completely turning over the “civilian affairs” of Manchuria to the Kuomintang, so long as the Chinese recognized Japan’s special economic interests in the region and committed to lowering tariffs on key Japanese consumer exports. The strategically vital Liaodong peninsula should also, Ozaki asserted, remain under Japanese control.

Though the Chinese refused to renounce their claims on Liaodong, they did agree to acknowledge the special Japanese interest in Manchuria as a whole. On this basis, a five year timetable was drawn up to transfer civilian control of Manchuria to the Chinese, though limits on the number of Chinese troops that were to be permitted into the area rendered Chinese sovereignty somewhat questionable. This was nonetheless considered a diplomatic triumph, and it particularly buoyed the spirits of the Chinese and Japanese delegations, who believed that perhaps a 3rd Sino-Japanese war was less inevitable than it often appeared. Ozaki, however, cleverly resisted an attempt to follow up these negotiations with a non-aggression pact, insisting that the Soviet Union’s vital interests in the area would render any such agreement concluded without its input an implicit act of belligerency.

Talks now turned to the lucrative and expanding Chinese market. Since the end of the 2nd Sino-Japanese war, a tariff and trade regime favoring the Americans had been steadily emplaced. In return for the planned transfer of civilian rule in Manchuria, the Chinese had already agreed, with the reluctant consent of the American delegation, to water this down somewhat. Shidehara now pressed for a three-nation “free trade zone”, skillfully appropriating the terms of the Americans. This was originally intended, however, as a sweetener to induce a military alliance, not a stand-alone deal. The Chinese were also skeptical. It was at this point that John Simon suggested that, in return for the cession of the Shanghai concession and a number of other minor British concessions, that it too be allowed to enter this new arrangement. Simon later confessed that he nearly muttered the phrase “refounded Open Door policy”, but realized this would have been inadvisable at just the last moment.

It was, naturally, at this point that American Secretary of State Isaiah Bowman brought the hammer down, demanding that Chinese sovereignty be respected. The message was clear. Liao, whatever his own thoughts about the matter, could not openly defy the Americans on this matter, and so he agreed that Chinese sovereignty must be prioritized, and that the current trade regime was, indeed, the will of the Chinese people. Privately, Liao and Simon reached their own agreement concerning the concessions. Shanghai would remain an “International” city, but the international concession would be formally ceded to the Republic of China, becoming an autonomous subdivision of it. Hong Kong would remain British for now, but a ten year time-table would be established for the handover of other, comparatively minor British cessions, such as those in Tianjin, Xiamen, and Zhenjiang. Weihaiwei, with its crucial naval base, would remain an exception. Simon was amenable to further talks on the status of Hong Kong to “revise and shorten the terms” of the original 99-year British lease. Tibet, which had become an informal British protectorate, would remain so for the time being, though Britain promised that its presence there would last only so long as the Soviet Union posed a threat to security inside India.

These were the agreements and decisions reached publicly, which were announced at the end of September. They were predictably hailed as a great diplomatic triumph; though they did not fundamentally re-order diplomatic relations in Asia, or definitely settle Japan’s place in the emerging capitalist world-system, they did lower tensions and help stabilize the crucial Asia-Pacific region. As in the other cases we have examined, they revised rather than transformed the deeper, structural relations which constituted the quadrilateral world-order.

Finally, we would be remiss not to mention one final agreement, concluded upon in secrecy, and only reaching public consciousness after a considerable length of time. While at the conference, Britain’s John Simon and Japan’s Kijuoro Shidehara met privately on three occasions, using “break days” to hash out a cryptic concord in several rather seedy Tokyo establishments: in light of their shared interest in cutting edge military and aviation assets, Britain and Japan would begin a technology sharing programme. By pooling at least some of their shared knowledge, they would hopefully keep pace with the Americans, Soviets, and Germans. Needless to say, neither the British nor Japanese publics would approve of such a deal, but both diplomats were certain it was in the national interest.