On the Political Economy of Western Europe

Abstract

The last decade or so has been a period of unprecedented economic growth for most countries of Western Europe as well as for Japan. This has been much commented upon, and many good reasons have been advanced to account for it. What has been insufficiently stressed, it seems to the present writer, is the strong element of political economy in this development: the impact of the defeat of fascism and of the "challenge of Communism"; the upsurge of working-class and democratic militancy in the immediate postwar era and the responses elicited by its continuing pressure, re-enforced as they were by the revolutionary transformations in Eastern Europe and also in Eastern Asia.

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