debts of over $100 billion, rising at $100 billion per year, and an annual trade deficit of $120 billion, the USA - the world's biggest capitalist state — last year became the world's biggest debtor. This fact illustrates one of the central features of the period since the long postwar boom ended in the early 1970s.
The history of capitalism since World War I was dominated by the ascendancy of US imperialism, most advanced in the world: After World War Il, this ascendancy made the USA the leader of the capitalist Accompanying this was: 40 years of unparalleled prosperity, growth and political stability for the main Western countries. record also testifies to the effect of that stability: in only one imperialist country has a government fallen amid a revolutionary working class upsurge since 1947. That country, Portugal, has since been stabilised.
But in 1971, when the USA was forced to abandon the convertibility of the dollar into gold, on which postwar financial stability had rested, a new period of instability opened up. On one hand, the long postwar boom was coming to end and mass unemployment returned. But dollar's problems in the early. signalled something else. The last 15 years have been dominated by some of the effects of the relative decline of •LIC Puctorsici the 1970s $161.5 billion completely covered its trade losses.
Instability