Second: To open up foreign markets for that part of the surplus which the workers are not permitted to consume and the capitalists do not consume personally or invest profitably;
Third: To defend the foreign markets for this part of the surplus.
Professor. T. N. Carver (Department of Political Economy, Harvard University) states the case perfectly:[[21]]
“While competition is absent, commerce is indeed a bond of peace and good will between those who sell in return. But the moment that two nations embark extensively in the same line of industry, that moment commerce becomes a sword, dividing and setting at enmity those who are rivals for the same markets.... The prosperity of one is the other’s destruction. Such nations stand to each other as two Indian tribes where there is but game enough for one.”
Thus commerce develops into militarism.
A protective tariff wall is evidence and confession of the existence of embarrassing national surpluses of products.
The capitalist employer does not wish the wage-earners to get such things into their minds.
“Don’t say a word,” caution the capitalists,—“the workers can’t see the point at all. Ha, ha,—all they want is a job. How meek they are. How lamblike.... Just suppose they should wake up.... Here! you flunkies, you bribed lecturers, orators and editors, keep busy. Keep right on talking to the working people. Tell the working class to be satisfied and humble and contented; preach to them that it will be all right in the ‘sweet bye and bye.’ Oh, ha, ha, ha—all right for the workers ‘in the end.’ Don’t tell them which end. Tell the workers that ‘something will turn up, sometime—sure.’ Tell them to be ‘patient and hopeful,’ to ‘hope for a home over there.’ (See Chapter Eleven.)
“It is a ‘cinch.’
“If the workers go on strike to get a small thin slice of the surplus—why, we CAPITALISTS have the militia, we capitalists have police, we capitalists have the cossacks, we capitalists have the mounted State guards, we capitalists have the regular troops and marines, and we capitalists also have the injunction courts and jails and ‘bull-pens,’—we capitalists have all this armed, bribed outfit to help us starve the workers back to their jobs.