Well the key point here is that the break in the colonizing relation is what would cause the very bad years, and the point that the English working class had material interests in aligning with global imperialist capital and that their relative comfort was created via this extractive relationship with the world. Cut the colonizers off and they will eventually implode and the true class conflict will come to a head. Marx was barely starting to investigate in this direction when he passed, and Lenin continued his work to its logical end