This is Chapter XI form Antony Suttons Boog about the strong connectiuon between Wall Street bankers and the Russian Revolution.
Here you can see the whole book by Antony Sutton and click on every Chapter and you can read it in the right lay-out.
Below is only chapter 11:
In the blue marked text you can read what the Bankers said during the hearing in the Congress hearing by the Senate Overmann Committee on the question 'Why did you Bankers support ( and create?) the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia ?
Chapter XI
THE ALLIANCE OF BANKERS AND REVOLUTION
The name Rockefeller does not connote a revolutionary, and
my life
situation has fostered a careful and cautious attitude that
verges on
conservatism. I am not given to errant causes...
John D. Rockefeller III, The Second American Revolution (New
York: Harper
& Row. 1973)
THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED: A SYNOPSIS
Evidence already published by George Katkov, Stefan Possony,
and Michael Futrell has
established that the return to Russia of Lenin and his party
of exiled Bolsheviks, followed a few
weeks later by a party of Mensheviks, was financed and
organized by the German
government.1 The necessary funds were transferred in part
through the Nya Banken in
Stockholm, owned by Olof Aschberg, and the dual German
objectives were: (a) removal of
Russia from the war, and (b) control of the postwar Russian
market.2
We have now gone beyond this evidence to establish a
continuing working relationship
between Bolshevik banker Olof Aschberg and the
Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust Company
in New York before, during, and after the Russian
Revolution. In tsarist times Aschberg was
the Morgan agent in Russia and negotiator for Russian loans
in the United States; during 1917
Aschberg was financial intermediary for the revolutionaries;
and after the revolution Aschberg
became head of Ruskombank, the first Soviet international
bank, while Max May, a vice
president of the Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust, became
director and chief of the Ruskombank
foreign department. We have presented documentary evidence
of a continuing working
relationship between the Guaranty Trust Company and the
Bolsheviks. The directors of
Guaranty Trust in 1917 are listed in Appendix 1.
Moreover, there is evidence of transfers of funds from Wall
Street bankers to international
revolutionary activities. For example, there is the
statement (substantiated by a cablegram) by
William Boyce Thompson — a director of the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York, a large
stockholder in the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Bank, and a
financial associate of the
Guggenheims and the Morgans — that he (Thompson) contributed
$1 million to the Bolshevik
Revolution for propaganda purposes. Another example is John
Reed, the American member of
the Third International executive committee who was financed
and supported by Eugene
Boissevain, a private New York banker, and who was employed
by Harry Payne Whitney's
Metropolitan magazine. Whitney was at that time a director
of Guaranty Trust. We also
established that Ludwig Martens, the first Soviet
"ambassador" to the United States, was
(according to British Intelligence chief Sir Basil Thompson)
backed by funds from Guaranty
Trust Company. In tracing Trotsky's funding in the U.S. we
arrived at German sources, yet to
be identified, in New York. And though we do not know the
precise German sources of
Trotsky's funds, we do know that Von Pavenstedt, the chief German
espionage paymaster in
the U.S., was also senior partner of Amsinck & Co.
Amsinck was owned by the ever-present
American International Corporation — also controlled by the
J.P. Morgan firm.
Further, Wall Street firms including Guaranty Trust were
involved with Carranza's and Villa's
wartime revolutionary activities in Mexico. We also
identified documentary evidence
concerning. a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912
Sun Yat-sen revolution in China, a
revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists as
the precursor of Mao's revolution
in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney negotiating
with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this
syndicate, was a director of three Westinghouse subsidiaries,
and we have found that Charles
R. Crane of Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the
Russian Revolution.
Quite apart from finance, we identified other, and possibly
more significant, evidence of Wall
Street involvement in the Bolshevik cause. The American Red
Cross Mission to Russia was a
private venture of William B. Thompson, who publicly
proffered partisan support to the
Bolsheviks. British War Cabinet papers now available record
that British policy was diverted
towards the Lenin-Trotsky regime by the personal
intervention of Thompson with Lloyd
George in December 1917. We have reproduced statements by
director Thompson and deputy
chairman William Lawrence Saunders, both of the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York,
strongly favoring the Bolshevists. John Reed not only was
financed from Wall Street, but had
consistent support for his activities, even to the extent of
intervention with the State
Department from William Franklin Sands, executive secretary
of American International
Corporation. In the sedition case of Robert Minor there are
strong indications and some
circumstantial evidence that Colonel Edward House intervened
to have Minor released. The
significance of the Minor case is that William B. Thompson's
program for Bolshevik revolution
in Germany was the very program Minor was implementing when
arrested in Germany.
Some international agents, for example Alexander Gumberg,
worked for Wall Street and the
Bolsheviks. In 1917 Gumberg was the representative of a U.S.
firm in Petrograd, worked for
Thompson's American Red Cross Mission, became chief
Bolshevik agent in Scandinavia until
he was deported from Norway, then became confidential
assistant to Reeve Schley of Chase
Bank in New York and later to Floyd Odium of Atlas
Corporation.
This activity in behalf of the Bolsheviks originated in
large part from a single address: 120
Broadway, New York City. The evidence for this observation
is outlined but no conclusive
reason is given for the unusual concentration of activity at
a single address, except to state that
it appears to be the foreign counterpart of Carroll
Quigley's claim that J.P. Morgan infiltrated
the domestic left. Morgan also infiltrated the international
left.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was at 120 Broadway.
The vehicle for this proBolshevik
activity was American International Corporation — at 120
Broadway. AIC views on
the Bolshevik regime were requested by Secretary of State
Robert Lansing only a few weeks
after the revolution began, and Sands, executive secretary
of AIC, could barely restrain his
enthusiasm for the Bolshevik cause. Ludwig Martens, the
Soviet's first ambassador, had been
vice president of Weinberg & Posner, which was also
located at 120-Broadway. Guaranty
Trust Company was next door at 140 Broadway but Guaranty
Securities Co. was at 120
Broadway. In 1917 Hunt, Hill & Betts was at 120
Broadway, and Charles B. Hill of this firm
was the negotiator in the Sun Yat-sen dealings. John MacGregor
Grant Co., which was
financed by Olof Aschberg in Sweden and Guaranty Trust in
the United States, and which was
on the Military Intelligence black list, was at 120
Broadway. The Guggenheims and the
executive heart of General Electric (also interested in
American International) were at 120
Broadway. We find it therefore hardly surprising that the
Bankers Club was also at 120
Broadway, on the top floor (the thirty-fourth).
It is significant that support for the Bolsheviks did not
cease with consolidation of the
revolution; therefore, this support cannot be wholly
explained in terms of the war with
Germany. The American-Russian syndicate formed in 1918 to
obtain concessions in Russia
was backed by the White, Guggenheim, and Sinclair interests.
Directors of companies
controlled by these three financiers included Thomas W.
Lamont (Guaranty Trust), William
Boyce Thompson (Federal Reserve Bank), and John Reed's
employer Harry Payne Whitney
(Guaranty Trust). This strongly suggests that the syndicate
was formed to cash in on earlier
support for the Bolshevik cause in the revolutionary period.
And then we found that Guaranty
Trust financially backed the Soviet Bureau in New York in
1919.
The first really concrete signal that previous political and
financial support was paying off
came in 1923 when the Soviets formed their first
international bank, Ruskombank. Morgan
associate Olof Aschberg became nominal head of this Soviet
bank; Max May, a vice president
of Guaranty Trust, became a director of Ruskom-bank, and the
Ruskombank promptly
appointed Guaranty Trust Company its U.S. agent.
THE EXPLANATION FOR THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE
What motive explains this coalition of capitalists and
Bolsheviks?
Russia was then — and is today — the largest untapped market
in the world. Moreover, Russia,
then and now, constituted the greatest potential competitive
threat to American industrial and
financial supremacy. (A glance at a world map is sufficient
to spotlight the geographical
difference between the vast land mass of Russia and the
smaller United States.) Wall Street
must have cold shivers when it visualizes Russia as a second
super American industrial giant.
But why allow Russia to become a competitor and a challenge
to U.S. supremacy? In the late
nineteenth century, Morgan/Rockefeller, and Guggenheim had
demonstrated their monopolistic
proclivities. In Railroads and Regulation 1877-1916 Gabriel
Kolko has demonstrated how the
railroad owners, not the farmers, wanted state control of
railroads in order to preserve their
monopoly and abolish competition. So the simplest
explanation of our evidence is that a
syndicate of Wall Street financiers enlarged their monopoly
ambitions and broadened horizons
on a global scale. The gigantic Russian market was to be
converted into a captive market and a
technical colony to be exploited by a few high-powered
American financiers and the
corporations under their control. What the Interstate
Commerce Commission and the Federal
Trade Commission under the thumb of American industry could
achieve for that industry at
home, a planned socialist government could achieve for it
abroad — given suitable support and
inducements from Wall Street and Washington, D.C.
Finally, lest this explanation seem too radical, remember
that it was Trotsky who appointed
tsarist generals to consolidate the Red Army; that it was
Trotsky who appealed for American
officers to control revolutionary Russia and intervene in
behalf of the Soviets; that it was
Trotsky who squashed first the libertarian element in the
Russian Revolution and then the
workers and peasants; and that recorded history totally
ignores the 700,000-man Green Army
composed of ex-Bolsheviks, angered at betrayal of the
revolution, who fought the Whites and
the Reds. In other words, we are suggesting that the
Bolshevik Revolution was an alliance of
statists: statist revolutionaries and statist financiers
aligned against the genuine revolutionary
libertarian elements in Russia.3
'The question now in the readers' minds must be, were these
bankers also secret Bolsheviks?
No, of course not. The financiers were without ideology. It
would be a gross misinterpretation
to assume that assistance for the Bolshevists was
ideologically motivated, in any narrow sense.
The financiers were power-motivated and therefore assisted
any political vehicle that would
give them an entree to power: Trotsky, Lenin, the tsar,
Kolchak, Denikin — all received aid,
more or less. All, that is, but those who wanted a truly
free individualist society.
Neither was aid restricted to statist Bolsheviks and statist
counter-Bolsheviks. John P. Diggins,
in Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America,4 has noted
in regard to Thomas Lamont of
Guaranty Trust that
Of all American business leaders, the one who most
vigorously patronized the cause of
Fascism was Thomas W. Lamont. Head of the powerful J.P.
Morgan banking network, Lamont
served as something of a business consultant for the
government of Fascist Italy.
Lamont secured a $100 million loan for Mussolini in 1926 at
a particularly crucial time for the
Italian dictator. We might remember too that the director of
Guaranty Trust was the father of
Corliss Lamont, a domestic Communist. This evenhanded
approach to the twin totalitarian
systems, communism and fascism, was not confined to the
Lamont family. For example, Otto
Kahn, director of American International Corporation and of
Kuhn, Leob & Co., felt sure that
"American capital invested in Italy will find safety,
encouragement, opportunity and reward."5
This is the same Otto Kahn who lectured the socialist League
of Industrial Democracy in 1924
that its objectives were his objectives.6 They differed only
— according to Otto Kahn — over the
means of achieving these objectives.
Ivy Lee, Rockefeller's public relations man, made similar
pronouncements, and was
responsible for selling the Soviet regime to the gullible
American public in the late 1920s. We
also have observed that Basil Miles, in charge of the
Russian desk at the State Department and
a former associate of William Franklin Sands, was decidedly
helpful to the businessmen
promoting Bolshevik causes; but in 1923 the same Miles
authored a profascist article, "Italy's
Black Shirts and Business."7 "Success of the
Fascists is an expression of Italy's youth," wrote
Miles while glorifying the fascist movement and applauding
its esteem for American business.
THE MARBURG PLAN
The Marburg Plan, financed by Andrew Carnegie's ample
heritage, was produced in the early
years of the twentieth century. It suggests premeditation
for this kind of superficial
schizophrenia, which in fact masks an integrated program of
power acquisition: "What then if
Carnegie and his unlimited wealth, the international
financiers and the Socialists could be
organized in a movement to compel the formation of a league
to enforce peace."8
The governments of the world, according to the Marburg Plan,
were to be socialized while the
ultimate power would remain in the hands of the
international financiers "to control its councils and enforce peace [and so] provide a specific for all the
political ills of mankind."9
This idea was knit with other elements with similar
objectives. Lord Milner in England
provides the transatlantic example of banking interests
recognizing the virtues and possibilities
of Marxism. Milner was a banker, influential in British
wartime policy, and pro-Marxist.10 In
New York the socialist "X" club was founded in
1903. It counted among its members not only
the Communist Lincoln Steffens, the socialist William
English Walling, and the Communist
banker Morris Hillquit, but also John Dewey, James T.
Shotwell, Charles Edward Russell, and
Rufus Weeks (vice president of New York Life Insurance
Company). The annual meeting of
the Economic Club in the Astor Hotel, New York, witnessed
socialist speakers. In 1908, when
A. Barton Hepburn, president of Chase National Bank, was
president of the Economic Club,
the main speaker was the aforementioned Morris Hillquit, who
"had abundant opportunity to
preach socialism to a gathering which represented wealth and
financial interests."11
From these unlikely seeds grew the modern internationalist
movement, which included not
only the financiers Carnegie, Paul Warburg, Otto Kahn,
Bernard Baruch, and Herbert Hoover,
but also the Carnegie Foundation and its progeny
International Conciliation. The trustees of
Carnegie were, as we have seen, prominent on the board of
American International
Corporation. In 1910 Carnegie donated $10 million to found
the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, and among those on the board of
trustees were Elihu Root (Root Mission
to Russia, 1917), Cleveland H. Dodge (a financial backer of
President Wilson), George W.
Perkins (Morgan partner), G. J. Balch (AIC and Amsinck), R.
F. Herrick (AIC), H. W. Pritchett
(AIC), and other Wall Street luminaries. Woodrow Wilson came
under the powerful influence
of — and indeed was financially indebted to — this group of
internationalists. As Jennings C.
Wise has written, "Historians must never forget that
Woodrow Wilson... made it possible for
Leon Trotsky to enter Russia with an American
passport."12
But Leon Trotsky also declared himself an internationalist.
We have remarked with some
interest his high-level internationalist connections, or at
least friends, in Canada. Trotsky then
was not pro-Russian, or pro-Allied, or pro-German, as many
have tried to make him out to be.
Trotsky was for world revolution, for world dictatorship; he
was, in one word, an
internationalist.13 Bolshevists and bankers have then this
significant common ground —
internationalism. Revolution and international finance are
not at all inconsistent if the result of
revolution is to establish more centralized authority.
International finance prefers to deal with
central governments. The last thing the banking community
wants is laissez-faire economy and
decentralized power because these would disperse power.
This, therefore, is an explanation that fits the evidence.
This handful of bankers and promoters
was not Bolshevik, or Communist, or socialist, or Democrat,
or even American. Above all else
these men wanted markets, preferably captive international
markets — and a monopoly of the
captive world market as the ultimate goal. They wanted
markets that could be exploited
monopolistically without fear of competition from Russians,
Germans, or anyone else —
including American businessmen outside the charmed circle.
This closed group was apolitical
and amoral. In 1917, it had a single-minded objective — a
captive market in Russia, all
presented under, and intellectually protected by, the
shelter of a league to enforce the peace.
Wall Street did indeed achieve its goal. American firms
controlled by this syndicate were later
to go on and build the Soviet Union, and today are well on
their way to bringing the Soviet
military-industrial complex into the age of the computer.
Today the objective is still alive and well. John D.
Rockefeller expounds it in his book The
Second American Revolution — which sports a five-pointed
star on the title page.14 The book
contains a naked plea for humanism, that is, a plea that our
first priority is to work for others. In
other words, a plea for collectivism. Humanism is
collectivism. It is notable that the
Rockefellers, who have promoted this humanistic idea for a
century, have not turned their
OWN property over to others.. Presumably it is implicit in
their recommendation that we all
work for the Rockefellers. Rockefeller's book promotes
collectivism under the guises of
"cautious conservatism" and "the public
good." It is in effect a plea for the continuation of the
earlier Morgan-Rockefeller support of collectivist
enterprises and mass subversion of
individual rights.
In brief, the public good has been, and is today, used as a
device and an excuse for selfaggrandizement
by an elitist circle that pleads for world peace and human
decency. But so long
as the reader looks at world history in terms of an
inexorable Marxian conflict between
capitalism and communism, the objectives of such an alliance
between international finance
and international revolution remain elusive. So will the
ludicrousness of promotion of the
public good by plunderers. If these alliances still elude
the reader, then he should ponder the
obvious fact that these same international interests and
promoters are always willing to
determine what other people should do, but are signally
unwilling to be first in line to give up
their own wealth and power. Their mouths are open, their
pockets are closed.
This technique, used by the monopolists to gouge society,
was set forth in the early twentieth
century by Frederick C. Howe in The Confessions of a
Monopolist.15 First, says Howe, politics
is a necessary part of business. To control industries it is
necessary to control Congress and the
regulators and thus make society go to work for you, the
monopolist. So, according to Howe,
the two principles of a successful monopolist are, "First,
let Society work for you; and second,
make a business of politics."16 These, wrote Howe, are
the basic "rules of big business."
Is there any evidence that this magnificently sweeping
objective was also known to Congress
and the academic world? Certainly the possibility was known
and known publicly. For
example, witness the testimony of Albert Rhys Williams, an
astute commentator on the
revolution, before the Senate Overman Committee:
. . . it is probably true that under the soviet government
industrial life will perhaps be much
slower in development than under the usual capitalistic
system. But why should a great
industrial country like America desire the creation and
consequent competition of another great
industrial rival? Are not the interests of America in this
regard in line with the slow tempo of
development which soviet Russia projects for herself?
Senator Wolcott: Then your argument is that it would be to
the interest of America to have
Russia repressed?
MR. WILLIAMS: Not repressed ....
SENATOR WOLCOTT: You say. Why should America desire Russia
to become an industrial
competitor with her?
MR. WILLIAMS: This is speaking from a capitalistic
standpoint. The whole interest of
America is not, I think, to have another great industrial
rival, like Germany, England, France,
and Italy, thrown on the market in competition. I think
another government over there besides
the Soviet government would perhaps increase the tempo or
rate of development of Russia, and
we would have another rival. Of course, this is arguing from
a capitalistic standpoint.
SENATOR WOLCOTT: So you are presenting an argument here
which you think might
appeal to the American people, your point being this, that
if we recognize the Soviet
government of Russia as it is constituted we will be
recognizing a government that can not
compete with us in industry for a great many years?
MR. WILLIAMS: That is a fact.
SENATOR WOLCOTT: That is an argument that under the Soviet
government Russia is in no
position, for a great many years at least, to approach
America industrially?
MR. WILLIAMS: Absolutely.17
And in that forthright statement by Albert Rhys Williams is
the basic clue to the revisionist
interpretation of Russian history over the past half
century.
Wall Street, or rather the Morgan-Rockefeller complex
represented at 120 Broadway and 14
Wall Street, had something very close to Williams' argument
in mind. Wall Street went to bat
in Washington for the Bolsheviks. It succeeded. The Soviet
totalitarian regime survived. In the
1930s foreign firms, mostly of the Morgan-Rockefeller group,
built the five-year plans. They
have continued to build Russia, economically and
militarily.18 On the other hand, Wall Street
presumably did not foresee the Korean War and the Vietnam
War — in which 100,000
Americans and countless allies lost their lives to Soviet
armaments built with this same
imported U.S. technology. What seemed a farsighted, and
undoubtedly profitable, policy for a
Wall Street syndicate, became a nightmare for millions
outside the elitist power circle and the
ruling class.
Footnotes:
1Michael Futrell, Northern Underground (London: Faber and
Faber, 1963);
Stefan Possony, Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary (London:
George Allen
& Unwin, 1966); and George Katkov, "German Foreign
Office Documents on
Financial Support to the Bolsheviks in 1917,"
International Affairs 32 (Royal
Institute of International Affairs, 1956).
2Ibid., especially Katkov.
3See also Voline (V.M. Eichenbaum), Nineteen-Seventeen: The
Russian
Revolution Betrayed (New York: Libertarian Book Club, n.d.).
4Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Prss, 1972.
5Ibid., p. 149.
6See p. 49.
7Nation's Business, February 1923, pp. 22-23.
8Jennings C. Wise, Woodrow Wilson: Disciple of Revolution
(New York:
Paisley Press, 1938), p.45
9Ibid., p.46
10See p. 89.
11Morris Hillquit, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life (New York:
Macmillan,
1934), p. 81.
12Wise, op. cit., p. 647
13Leon Trotsky, The Bolsheviki and World Peace (New York:
Boni &
Liveright, 1918).
14In May 1973 Chase Manhattan Bank (chairman, David
Rockefeller) opened
it Moscow office at 1 Karl Marx Square, Moscow. The New York
office is at
1 Chase Manhattan Plaza.
15Chicago: Public Publishin, n.d.
16Ibid.
17U.S., Senate, Bolshevik Propaganda, hearings before a
subcommittee of the
Committee on the Judiciary, 65th Cong., pp. 679-80. See also
herein p. 107 for
the role of Williams in Radek's Press Bureau.
18See Antony C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet
Economic
Development, 3 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution,
1968, 1971, 1973);
see also National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union
(New York:
Arlington House, 1973)I
Chapter XI
THE ALLIANCE OF BANKERS AND REVOLUTION
The name Rockefeller does not connote a revolutionary, and
my life
situation has fostered a careful and cautious attitude that
verges on
conservatism. I am not given to errant causes...
John D. Rockefeller III, The Second American Revolution (New
York: Harper
& Row. 1973)
THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED: A SYNOPSIS
Evidence already published by George Katkov, Stefan Possony,
and Michael Futrell has
established that the return to Russia of Lenin and his party
of exiled Bolsheviks, followed a few
weeks later by a party of Mensheviks, was financed and
organized by the German
government.1 The necessary funds were transferred in part
through the Nya Banken in
Stockholm, owned by Olof Aschberg, and the dual German
objectives were: (a) removal of
Russia from the war, and (b) control of the postwar Russian
market.2
We have now gone beyond this evidence to establish a
continuing working relationship
between Bolshevik banker Olof Aschberg and the
Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust Company
in New York before, during, and after the Russian
Revolution. In tsarist times Aschberg was
the Morgan agent in Russia and negotiator for Russian loans
in the United States; during 1917
Aschberg was financial intermediary for the revolutionaries;
and after the revolution Aschberg
became head of Ruskombank, the first Soviet international
bank, while Max May, a vice
president of the Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust, became
director and chief of the Ruskombank
foreign department. We have presented documentary evidence
of a continuing working
relationship between the Guaranty Trust Company and the
Bolsheviks. The directors of
Guaranty Trust in 1917 are listed in Appendix 1.
Moreover, there is evidence of transfers of funds from Wall
Street bankers to international
revolutionary activities. For example, there is the
statement (substantiated by a cablegram) by
William Boyce Thompson — a director of the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York, a large
stockholder in the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Bank, and a
financial associate of the
Guggenheims and the Morgans — that he (Thompson) contributed
$1 million to the Bolshevik
Revolution for propaganda purposes. Another example is John
Reed, the American member of
the Third International executive committee who was financed
and supported by Eugene
Boissevain, a private New York banker, and who was employed
by Harry Payne Whitney's
Metropolitan magazine. Whitney was at that time a director
of Guaranty Trust. We also
established that Ludwig Martens, the first Soviet
"ambassador" to the United States, was
(according to British Intelligence chief Sir Basil Thompson)
backed by funds from Guaranty
Trust Company. In tracing Trotsky's funding in the U.S. we
arrived at German sources, yet to
be identified, in New York. And though we do not know the
precise German sources of
Trotsky's funds, we do know that Von Pavenstedt, the chief German
espionage paymaster in
the U.S., was also senior partner of Amsinck & Co.
Amsinck was owned by the ever-present
American International Corporation — also controlled by the
J.P. Morgan firm.
Further, Wall Street firms including Guaranty Trust were
involved with Carranza's and Villa's
wartime revolutionary activities in Mexico. We also
identified documentary evidence
concerning. a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912
Sun Yat-sen revolution in China, a
revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists as
the precursor of Mao's revolution
in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney negotiating
with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this
syndicate, was a director of three Westinghouse subsidiaries,
and we have found that Charles
R. Crane of Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the
Russian Revolution.
Quite apart from finance, we identified other, and possibly
more significant, evidence of Wall
Street involvement in the Bolshevik cause. The American Red
Cross Mission to Russia was a
private venture of William B. Thompson, who publicly
proffered partisan support to the
Bolsheviks. British War Cabinet papers now available record
that British policy was diverted
towards the Lenin-Trotsky regime by the personal
intervention of Thompson with Lloyd
George in December 1917. We have reproduced statements by
director Thompson and deputy
chairman William Lawrence Saunders, both of the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York,
strongly favoring the Bolshevists. John Reed not only was
financed from Wall Street, but had
consistent support for his activities, even to the extent of
intervention with the State
Department from William Franklin Sands, executive secretary
of American International
Corporation. In the sedition case of Robert Minor there are
strong indications and some
circumstantial evidence that Colonel Edward House intervened
to have Minor released. The
significance of the Minor case is that William B. Thompson's
program for Bolshevik revolution
in Germany was the very program Minor was implementing when
arrested in Germany.
Some international agents, for example Alexander Gumberg,
worked for Wall Street and the
Bolsheviks. In 1917 Gumberg was the representative of a U.S.
firm in Petrograd, worked for
Thompson's American Red Cross Mission, became chief
Bolshevik agent in Scandinavia until
he was deported from Norway, then became confidential
assistant to Reeve Schley of Chase
Bank in New York and later to Floyd Odium of Atlas
Corporation.
This activity in behalf of the Bolsheviks originated in
large part from a single address: 120
Broadway, New York City. The evidence for this observation
is outlined but no conclusive
reason is given for the unusual concentration of activity at
a single address, except to state that
it appears to be the foreign counterpart of Carroll
Quigley's claim that J.P. Morgan infiltrated
the domestic left. Morgan also infiltrated the international
left.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was at 120 Broadway.
The vehicle for this proBolshevik
activity was American International Corporation — at 120
Broadway. AIC views on
the Bolshevik regime were requested by Secretary of State
Robert Lansing only a few weeks
after the revolution began, and Sands, executive secretary
of AIC, could barely restrain his
enthusiasm for the Bolshevik cause. Ludwig Martens, the
Soviet's first ambassador, had been
vice president of Weinberg & Posner, which was also
located at 120-Broadway. Guaranty
Trust Company was next door at 140 Broadway but Guaranty
Securities Co. was at 120
Broadway. In 1917 Hunt, Hill & Betts was at 120
Broadway, and Charles B. Hill of this firm
was the negotiator in the Sun Yat-sen dealings. John MacGregor
Grant Co., which was
financed by Olof Aschberg in Sweden and Guaranty Trust in
the United States, and which was
on the Military Intelligence black list, was at 120
Broadway. The Guggenheims and the
executive heart of General Electric (also interested in
American International) were at 120
Broadway. We find it therefore hardly surprising that the
Bankers Club was also at 120
Broadway, on the top floor (the thirty-fourth).
It is significant that support for the Bolsheviks did not
cease with consolidation of the
revolution; therefore, this support cannot be wholly
explained in terms of the war with
Germany. The American-Russian syndicate formed in 1918 to
obtain concessions in Russia
was backed by the White, Guggenheim, and Sinclair interests.
Directors of companies
controlled by these three financiers included Thomas W.
Lamont (Guaranty Trust), William
Boyce Thompson (Federal Reserve Bank), and John Reed's
employer Harry Payne Whitney
(Guaranty Trust). This strongly suggests that the syndicate
was formed to cash in on earlier
support for the Bolshevik cause in the revolutionary period.
And then we found that Guaranty
Trust financially backed the Soviet Bureau in New York in
1919.
The first really concrete signal that previous political and
financial support was paying off
came in 1923 when the Soviets formed their first
international bank, Ruskombank. Morgan
associate Olof Aschberg became nominal head of this Soviet
bank; Max May, a vice president
of Guaranty Trust, became a director of Ruskom-bank, and the
Ruskombank promptly
appointed Guaranty Trust Company its U.S. agent.
THE EXPLANATION FOR THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE
What motive explains this coalition of capitalists and
Bolsheviks?
Russia was then — and is today — the largest untapped market
in the world. Moreover, Russia,
then and now, constituted the greatest potential competitive
threat to American industrial and
financial supremacy. (A glance at a world map is sufficient
to spotlight the geographical
difference between the vast land mass of Russia and the
smaller United States.) Wall Street
must have cold shivers when it visualizes Russia as a second
super American industrial giant.
But why allow Russia to become a competitor and a challenge
to U.S. supremacy? In the late
nineteenth century, Morgan/Rockefeller, and Guggenheim had
demonstrated their monopolistic
proclivities. In Railroads and Regulation 1877-1916 Gabriel
Kolko has demonstrated how the
railroad owners, not the farmers, wanted state control of
railroads in order to preserve their
monopoly and abolish competition. So the simplest
explanation of our evidence is that a
syndicate of Wall Street financiers enlarged their monopoly
ambitions and broadened horizons
on a global scale. The gigantic Russian market was to be
converted into a captive market and a
technical colony to be exploited by a few high-powered
American financiers and the
corporations under their control. What the Interstate
Commerce Commission and the Federal
Trade Commission under the thumb of American industry could
achieve for that industry at
home, a planned socialist government could achieve for it
abroad — given suitable support and
inducements from Wall Street and Washington, D.C.
Finally, lest this explanation seem too radical, remember
that it was Trotsky who appointed
tsarist generals to consolidate the Red Army; that it was
Trotsky who appealed for American
officers to control revolutionary Russia and intervene in
behalf of the Soviets; that it was
Trotsky who squashed first the libertarian element in the
Russian Revolution and then the
workers and peasants; and that recorded history totally
ignores the 700,000-man Green Army
composed of ex-Bolsheviks, angered at betrayal of the
revolution, who fought the Whites and
the Reds. In other words, we are suggesting that the
Bolshevik Revolution was an alliance of
statists: statist revolutionaries and statist financiers
aligned against the genuine revolutionary
libertarian elements in Russia.3
'The question now in the readers' minds must be, were these
bankers also secret Bolsheviks?
No, of course not. The financiers were without ideology. It
would be a gross misinterpretation
to assume that assistance for the Bolshevists was
ideologically motivated, in any narrow sense.
The financiers were power-motivated and therefore assisted
any political vehicle that would
give them an entree to power: Trotsky, Lenin, the tsar,
Kolchak, Denikin — all received aid,
more or less. All, that is, but those who wanted a truly
free individualist society.
Neither was aid restricted to statist Bolsheviks and statist
counter-Bolsheviks. John P. Diggins,
in Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America,4 has noted
in regard to Thomas Lamont of
Guaranty Trust that
Of all American business leaders, the one who most
vigorously patronized the cause of
Fascism was Thomas W. Lamont. Head of the powerful J.P.
Morgan banking network, Lamont
served as something of a business consultant for the
government of Fascist Italy.
Lamont secured a $100 million loan for Mussolini in 1926 at
a particularly crucial time for the
Italian dictator. We might remember too that the director of
Guaranty Trust was the father of
Corliss Lamont, a domestic Communist. This evenhanded
approach to the twin totalitarian
systems, communism and fascism, was not confined to the
Lamont family. For example, Otto
Kahn, director of American International Corporation and of
Kuhn, Leob & Co., felt sure that
"American capital invested in Italy will find safety,
encouragement, opportunity and reward."5
This is the same Otto Kahn who lectured the socialist League
of Industrial Democracy in 1924
that its objectives were his objectives.6 They differed only
— according to Otto Kahn — over the
means of achieving these objectives.
Ivy Lee, Rockefeller's public relations man, made similar
pronouncements, and was
responsible for selling the Soviet regime to the gullible
American public in the late 1920s. We
also have observed that Basil Miles, in charge of the
Russian desk at the State Department and
a former associate of William Franklin Sands, was decidedly
helpful to the businessmen
promoting Bolshevik causes; but in 1923 the same Miles
authored a profascist article, "Italy's
Black Shirts and Business."7 "Success of the
Fascists is an expression of Italy's youth," wrote
Miles while glorifying the fascist movement and applauding
its esteem for American business.
THE MARBURG PLAN
The Marburg Plan, financed by Andrew Carnegie's ample
heritage, was produced in the early
years of the twentieth century. It suggests premeditation
for this kind of superficial
schizophrenia, which in fact masks an integrated program of
power acquisition: "What then if
Carnegie and his unlimited wealth, the international
financiers and the Socialists could be
organized in a movement to compel the formation of a league
to enforce peace."8
The governments of the world, according to the Marburg Plan,
were to be socialized while the
ultimate power would remain in the hands of the
international financiers "to control its councils
and enforce peace [and so] provide a specific for all the
political ills of mankind."9
This idea was knit with other elements with similar
objectives. Lord Milner in England
provides the transatlantic example of banking interests
recognizing the virtues and possibilities
of Marxism. Milner was a banker, influential in British
wartime policy, and pro-Marxist.10 In
New York the socialist "X" club was founded in
1903. It counted among its members not only
the Communist Lincoln Steffens, the socialist William
English Walling, and the Communist
banker Morris Hillquit, but also John Dewey, James T.
Shotwell, Charles Edward Russell, and
Rufus Weeks (vice president of New York Life Insurance
Company). The annual meeting of
the Economic Club in the Astor Hotel, New York, witnessed
socialist speakers. In 1908, when
A. Barton Hepburn, president of Chase National Bank, was
president of the Economic Club,
the main speaker was the aforementioned Morris Hillquit, who
"had abundant opportunity to
preach socialism to a gathering which represented wealth and
financial interests."11
From these unlikely seeds grew the modern internationalist
movement, which included not
only the financiers Carnegie, Paul Warburg, Otto Kahn,
Bernard Baruch, and Herbert Hoover,
but also the Carnegie Foundation and its progeny
International Conciliation. The trustees of
Carnegie were, as we have seen, prominent on the board of
American International
Corporation. In 1910 Carnegie donated $10 million to found
the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, and among those on the board of
trustees were Elihu Root (Root Mission
to Russia, 1917), Cleveland H. Dodge (a financial backer of
President Wilson), George W.
Perkins (Morgan partner), G. J. Balch (AIC and Amsinck), R.
F. Herrick (AIC), H. W. Pritchett
(AIC), and other Wall Street luminaries. Woodrow Wilson came
under the powerful influence
of — and indeed was financially indebted to — this group of
internationalists. As Jennings C.
Wise has written, "Historians must never forget that
Woodrow Wilson... made it possible for
Leon Trotsky to enter Russia with an American
passport."12
But Leon Trotsky also declared himself an internationalist.
We have remarked with some
interest his high-level internationalist connections, or at
least friends, in Canada. Trotsky then
was not pro-Russian, or pro-Allied, or pro-German, as many
have tried to make him out to be.
Trotsky was for world revolution, for world dictatorship; he
was, in one word, an
internationalist.13 Bolshevists and bankers have then this
significant common ground —
internationalism. Revolution and international finance are
not at all inconsistent if the result of
revolution is to establish more centralized authority.
International finance prefers to deal with
central governments. The last thing the banking community
wants is laissez-faire economy and
decentralized power because these would disperse power.
This, therefore, is an explanation that fits the evidence.
This handful of bankers and promoters
was not Bolshevik, or Communist, or socialist, or Democrat,
or even American. Above all else
these men wanted markets, preferably captive international
markets — and a monopoly of the
captive world market as the ultimate goal. They wanted
markets that could be exploited
monopolistically without fear of competition from Russians,
Germans, or anyone else —
including American businessmen outside the charmed circle.
This closed group was apolitical
and amoral. In 1917, it had a single-minded objective — a
captive market in Russia, all
presented under, and intellectually protected by, the
shelter of a league to enforce the peace.
Wall Street did indeed achieve its goal. American firms
controlled by this syndicate were later
to go on and build the Soviet Union, and today are well on
their way to bringing the Soviet
military-industrial complex into the age of the computer.
Today the objective is still alive and well. John D.
Rockefeller expounds it in his book The
Second American Revolution — which sports a five-pointed
star on the title page.14 The book
contains a naked plea for humanism, that is, a plea that our
first priority is to work for others. In
other words, a plea for collectivism. Humanism is
collectivism. It is notable that the
Rockefellers, who have promoted this humanistic idea for a
century, have not turned their
OWN property over to others.. Presumably it is implicit in
their recommendation that we all
work for the Rockefellers. Rockefeller's book promotes
collectivism under the guises of
"cautious conservatism" and "the public
good." It is in effect a plea for the continuation of the
earlier Morgan-Rockefeller support of collectivist
enterprises and mass subversion of
individual rights.
In brief, the public good has been, and is today, used as a
device and an excuse for selfaggrandizement
by an elitist circle that pleads for world peace and human
decency. But so long
as the reader looks at world history in terms of an
inexorable Marxian conflict between
capitalism and communism, the objectives of such an alliance
between international finance
and international revolution remain elusive. So will the
ludicrousness of promotion of the
public good by plunderers. If these alliances still elude
the reader, then he should ponder the
obvious fact that these same international interests and
promoters are always willing to
determine what other people should do, but are signally
unwilling to be first in line to give up
their own wealth and power. Their mouths are open, their
pockets are closed.
This technique, used by the monopolists to gouge society,
was set forth in the early twentieth
century by Frederick C. Howe in The Confessions of a
Monopolist.15 First, says Howe, politics
is a necessary part of business. To control industries it is
necessary to control Congress and the
regulators and thus make society go to work for you, the
monopolist. So, according to Howe,
the two principles of a successful monopolist are, "First,
let Society work for you; and second,
make a business of politics."16 These, wrote Howe, are
the basic "rules of big business."
Is there any evidence that this magnificently sweeping
objective was also known to Congress
and the academic world? Certainly the possibility was known
and known publicly. For
example, witness the testimony of Albert Rhys Williams, an
astute commentator on the
revolution, before the Senate Overman Committee:
. . . it is probably true that under the soviet government
industrial life will perhaps be much
slower in development than under the usual capitalistic
system. But why should a great
industrial country like America desire the creation and
consequent competition of another great
industrial rival? Are not the interests of America in this
regard in line with the slow tempo of
development which soviet Russia projects for herself?
Senator Wolcott: Then your argument is that it would be to
the interest of America to have
Russia repressed?
MR. WILLIAMS: Not repressed ....
SENATOR WOLCOTT: You say. Why should America desire Russia
to become an industrial
competitor with her?
MR. WILLIAMS: This is speaking from a capitalistic
standpoint. The whole interest of
America is not, I think, to have another great industrial
rival, like Germany, England, France,
and Italy, thrown on the market in competition. I think
another government over there besides
the Soviet government would perhaps increase the tempo or
rate of development of Russia, and
we would have another rival. Of course, this is arguing from
a capitalistic standpoint.
SENATOR WOLCOTT: So you are presenting an argument here
which you think might
appeal to the American people, your point being this, that
if we recognize the Soviet
government of Russia as it is constituted we will be
recognizing a government that can not
compete with us in industry for a great many years?
MR. WILLIAMS: That is a fact.
SENATOR WOLCOTT: That is an argument that under the Soviet
government Russia is in no
position, for a great many years at least, to approach
America industrially?
MR. WILLIAMS: Absolutely.17
And in that forthright statement by Albert Rhys Williams is
the basic clue to the revisionist
interpretation of Russian history over the past half
century.
Wall Street, or rather the Morgan-Rockefeller complex
represented at 120 Broadway and 14
Wall Street, had something very close to Williams' argument
in mind. Wall Street went to bat
in Washington for the Bolsheviks. It succeeded. The Soviet
totalitarian regime survived. In the
1930s foreign firms, mostly of the Morgan-Rockefeller group,
built the five-year plans. They
have continued to build Russia, economically and
militarily.18 On the other hand, Wall Street
presumably did not foresee the Korean War and the Vietnam
War — in which 100,000
Americans and countless allies lost their lives to Soviet
armaments built with this same
imported U.S. technology. What seemed a farsighted, and
undoubtedly profitable, policy for a
Wall Street syndicate, became a nightmare for millions
outside the elitist power circle and the
ruling class.
Footnotes:
1Michael Futrell, Northern Underground (London: Faber and
Faber, 1963);
Stefan Possony, Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary (London:
George Allen
& Unwin, 1966); and George Katkov, "German Foreign
Office Documents on
Financial Support to the Bolsheviks in 1917,"
International Affairs 32 (Royal
Institute of International Affairs, 1956).
2Ibid., especially Katkov.
3See also Voline (V.M. Eichenbaum), Nineteen-Seventeen: The
Russian
Revolution Betrayed (New York: Libertarian Book Club, n.d.).
4Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Prss, 1972.
5Ibid., p. 149.
6See p. 49.
7Nation's Business, February 1923, pp. 22-23.
8Jennings C. Wise, Woodrow Wilson: Disciple of Revolution
(New York:
Paisley Press, 1938), p.45
9Ibid., p.46
10See p. 89.
11Morris Hillquit, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life (New York:
Macmillan,
1934), p. 81.
12Wise, op. cit., p. 647
13Leon Trotsky, The Bolsheviki and World Peace (New York:
Boni &
Liveright, 1918).
14In May 1973 Chase Manhattan Bank (chairman, David
Rockefeller) opened
it Moscow office at 1 Karl Marx Square, Moscow. The New York
office is at
1 Chase Manhattan Plaza.
15Chicago: Public Publishin, n.d.
16Ibid.
17U.S., Senate, Bolshevik Propaganda, hearings before a
subcommittee of the
Committee on the Judiciary, 65th Cong., pp. 679-80. See also
herein p. 107 for
the role of Williams in Radek's Press Bureau.
18See Antony C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet
Economic
Development, 3 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution,
1968, 1971, 1973);
see also National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union
(New York:
Arlington House, 1973).
