Aspects of Economic Reconstruction in West and East

Abstract

THIS paper is an attempt to compare the main reconstruction issues before modern industrialized Western society and the predominantly agrarian areas of the Middle East. A considerable amount of generalization is inevitable, but so long as this is recognized, it will do no harm. The Middle East has become part of the international society of nations, but it still bears the marks of a regime and civilization of its own with many national, political and cultural features in common. Whereas the political integration of Middle Eastern countries within the framework of modern international relations has recently been almost completely realized, their economic life still functions at a very different level and on a different pattern. For this reason, economic reconstruction has a different meaning in the Western world and in the Middle East. The outbreak of the Second World War afforded a temporary solution of the central social and economic problem of Western society, namely, periodical mass unemployment. The fear that this solution may be only temporary has made the demand for a fundamentally new economic and social policy, for a planned reconstruction of society, the central issue in postwar thinking and planning. The emotional reactions produced among the nations by the war have provided a' particularly powerful impetus to hopes that a new order may be achieved, and that the anticipated difficulties may be surmounted. Hence the ideas behind the programmes of reconstruction in the countries of the West derive from their economic and social conditions, where the entire sense of realities is overshadowed by the threatening and paralysing phenomenon of individual insecurity; the arguments and demands embodied in the programmes clearly reflect this origin. The real aim of reconstruction is thus the restoration of individual security through the limitation and control of those hybrid forces which have led Western society to its highest achievements of civilization and technical skill but which, when unchecked, can also bring it to the verge of the abyss. II