Scientific and Technical Co-Operation as an Important Domain of adjustment to the New Requirements of the World Economy

Abstract

In the preceding chapters of Part II we surveyed the most important changes that have taken place in the world economy and world market since the Second World War, as well as their motive forces and consequences. In summing them up we can state that the principal characteristic of the world economic processes of the period after the Second World War is an extremely close coalescence of the political and economic aspects and a large-scale increase in the weight of the former in world economic relations as compared with any previous periods of some length. Since the end of the Second World War, changes of immense importance have taken place, as we have seen, in the world economy and world politics. The development of productive forces has greatly accelerated and assumed a revolutionary character in most fields. As a result of such factors as the emergence of the world socialist system, the collapse of colonialism, the upswing of the international working-class movement, and a substantial shift in the balance of power among the developed capitalist countries, radical changes have occurred in world economic and world political power relations. There are indications that the consequences of these changes began to manifest themselves in their entirety in the 1970s. With the unfolding of the STR, the socialization and internationalization of production also experienced a rapid progress.