The Communist States and Western Integration

1963 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 649-662
Author(s):  
Marshall D. Shulman

In discussing the process of integration in western Europe, communist writings invariably put the word in quotation marks, and often preface it with “so-called,” to drive home the central point that, while technological progress does create a tendency toward international economic activity, the capitalist system is inherently incapable of an effective response to this necessity. What is involved is not so much the broad, undefined movement toward an Atlantic Community, which Soviet strategists tend to discount, as the specific and practical development of the European Common Market. With or without quotation marks, the movement toward European integration has become a major factor in the evolution of Soviet ideology and policy. Despite its ups and downs, the Common Market has resulted in profound modifications in Soviet ideas concerning contemporary capitalism and the present configuration of power; it has led to a radical revision of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistant (COMECON)—the Soviet counterpart organization for eastern Europe; and it has greatly complicated Moscow's leadership of the world communist movement. Over the long run, if the non-communist nations are able to sustain a movement toward growth and integration, this development gives promise of leading to fundamental transformations in Soviet policies and in the Soviet system itself.

Author(s):  
Fernando Guirao

Chapter 5 deals with the negotiations between the EEC and Spain from September 1967 to June 1970. Madrid, the weaker party, achieved its requests: first, that Spain’s main export commodities were not discriminated, particularly due to the Common Agricultural Policy; second, that once Spanish industry could export, Spain would have generous access to the Common Market; third, that there should be no reciprocal requirement that Spain open its domestic market to the Six; and finally, that there would be no political conditionality attached. The 1970 Agreement guaranteed lucrative trade preferences for the Spanish economy on the Common Market and also implicitly committed the Six to maintain political stability in Spain. Spaniards persuaded the Six that economic development would make the Spanish political regime evolve towards governance comparable to the rest of Western Europe.


Worldview ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
Lionel Gelber

When the United States fostered the recovery and underwrote the security of Western Europe she had more than sentiment to impel her. That salient zone is a pivotal sector of the world balance, and while she may station fewer of her own troops upon its soil, she can entertain no total disengagement from it. But there is another West European item, the future of the Common Market, which calls for a fresh American scrutiny. The West will be better off if Western Europe acquires more of an ability to stand on its own feet. Gaullism, however, revealed a less modest goal, one that was not confined to France and did not vanish with the departure of General de Gaulle. On the contrary, it may have gained new leverage from his downfall.


1971 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Tarschys

The Soviet doctrine on the legal implications of neutrality is liberal with regard to the non-aligned nations in the third world but rigid with regard to the neutral states in Western Europe. On the one hand, Soviet jurists defend the right of neutral countries to pursue a highly active foreign policy. On the other, they contend that neither membership nor association with the Common Market is compatible with Swedish, Austrian, or Swiss neutrality. This inherent tension in the Soviet theory of neutrality is not resolved at the level of abstract definitions of neutrality and neutralism where the liberal interpretation tends to prevail.


2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 609-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Brenner ◽  
Christopher Isett

In the great divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz (2000) proposes a radical revision of our understanding of the pattern of economic evolution in the eastern and western ends of Eurasia over the course of the early modern and modern periods, roughly late Ming and Qing. A recent restatement of the standard or traditional view can be found in the macro-economic historian Angus Maddison's account of world economic development in the very long run,The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective(2001), which sums up his argument inChinese Economic Performance in the Long Run(1998). According to Maddison, “Western Europe overtook China … in per capita performance in the fourteenth century. Thereafter China [was] … more or less stagnant in per capita terms until the second half of the twentieth century” (2001, 44). In contrast, Pomeranz insists that if the comparative focus is placed, as only makes sense, not on Europe or China as a whole—both of which contained the most disparate regions at vastly different levels of economic development—but on the most advanced, or core, areas within each, it can be seen that, by as late as 1800, there was little to choose between them, in terms of the character of the economy, the nature of growth, or its results (2000, 7–8).


2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 182-190
Author(s):  
Susan Rose-Ackerman

Capitalism and law go together in Geoffrey M. Hodgson's comprehensive analysis of the intellectual history and practical development of the capitalist system in Western Europe and North America. Given the breadth and depth of Professor Hodgson's reading in political economy and his reflections on its implications for the present and future of global capitalism, his book deserves to be widely read. Labeling his approach legal institutionalism, he argues that a legal system that supports capitalism and the market is necessary but not sufficient to sustain a fair and efficient economic system. The state makes efficient markets possible, but it must also deal with the inevitable tensions and the fundamental asymmetry between labor and capital. Tensions arise because labor cannot be used as collateral for the loans that are needed for large-scale capitalist enterprise. Hodgson has not developed the political implications of his conclusions in any detail, but his work ought to inspire research that explores the implications of his arguments for ongoing projects of nation building. (JEL D72, K10, O43, P14, P16)


Author(s):  
Konstantina Zanou

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800–1850: Stammering the Nation investigates the long process of transition from a world of empires to a world of nation-states by narrating the biographies of a group of people who were born within empires but came of age surrounded by the emerging vocabulary of nationalism, much of which they themselves created. It is the story of a generation of intellectuals and political thinkers from the Ionian Islands who experienced the collapse of the Republic of Venice and the dissolution of the common cultural and political space of the Adriatic, and who contributed to the creation of Italian and Greek nationalisms. By uncovering this forgotten intellectual universe, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean retrieves a world characterized by multiple cultural, intellectual, and political affiliations that have since been buried by the conventional narrative of the formation of nation-states. The book rethinks the origins of Italian and Greek nationalisms and states, highlighting the intellectual connection between the Italian peninsula, Greece, and Russia, and re-establishing the lost link between the changing geopolitical contexts of western Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans in the Age of Revolutions. It re-inscribes important intellectuals and political figures, considered ‘national fathers’ of Italy and Greece (such as Ugo Foscolo, Dionysios Solomos, Ioannis Kapodistrias, and Niccolò Tommaseo), into their regional and multicultural context, and shows how nations emerged from an intermingling, rather than a clash, of ideas concerning empire and liberalism, Enlightenment and religion, revolution and conservatism, and East and West.


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