Economic Nationalism and World Cooperation

FOR several months now, we have been witnessing one of the most dramatic-some would say most pathetic-spectacles in recent world history. After many preliminary negotiations, careful preparation of the agenda, and world-wide discussion of the exigencies of the situation, delegates from sixty-six nations assembled in the city of London to promote world recovery have not only been unable to make progress towards the end which they set themselves but have seemingly been drifting further apart in opposite directions. Those who have a vested interest or an acquired taste in sowing the seeds of international disharmony have been jubilant -and rightly so. Few international gatherings in the last decade and a half-which have not been models of international amityhave presented such a picture of strain and of working at crosspurposes. These facts are leading a growing number of people to the conclusion that the World Economic and Monetary Conference at London proves once again the impossibility of world cooperation and marks the end of efforts to obtain it. We are being exhorted by these newly converted nationalists to abandon all hope of following the path of international understandings and to accept cheerfully the alternative of each nation pursuing its own course in its own way, regardless of the rest of the world. Men and women who but a few years ago were proud of their international outlook are now confessing the presumed error of their judgment and asking us to follow them to the other extreme of economic nationalism and national self-sufficiency. But are these conclusions justified? Despite the growing literature on the need and value of national self-sufficiency, as opposed to world cooperation, the statement of this dilemma seems to be entirely false. The question before mankind today is not national self-sufficiency or world unity. To state the problem in the terms of such an alternative is to misread the facts of world economy and to misinterpret the currents of world history. The prob

Development economics · Economic nationalism · Economic system · Economics · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Globalization, Economics, and Policies · Law