Table Of ContentWORLD ECONOMY AND ITS MAIN
DEVELOPMENT TENDENCIES
WORLD ECONOMY
AND ITS
MAIN DEVELOPMENT
TENDENCIES
PROF. JOZSEF NYILAS
D. SC. (ECON.)
1982
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Nyilas, Jozsef.
World economy and its main development
tendencies.
Translation of: A vihiggazdasag es fejliidesenek
fobb tendenciai. 2nd rev. and en\. ed.
Includes bibliographical references.
I. Economic history-1945- 2. Economic
development. I. Title.
HC59. N99213 330.9'04 82-3567
AACR2
ISBN 978-94-017-3504-9 ISBN 978-94-017-3502-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-3502-5
This book is the English version of the author's A vilagga=da.wig h .I~ilrJde.\-enek /iihh /ent/enciai.
Kozgazdasagi es Jogi Konyvkiado, Budapest
2nd, revised and enlarged edition.
Translated by Istvan Veges
English translation edited by Imre Gombos
Copyright (f) Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1982
Originally published by Martinus NijhoffPublishers in 1982.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1982
All rights reserved. No part (~tthis publication may be reproduced. stored in a retrieval s.rstem.
or transmitted in anyform or by any means. mechanical. photocopying. recording. or otherwise.
without the prior written permission of the publisher. Springer-Science+Business Media, B. V.
CONTENTS
Foreword 9
PART ONE
MAJOR FACTORS OF THE WORLD ECONOMY 13
I. The concept of the world economy 15
II. Types and determining factors of the international division of
labour 28
III. World economic relations 40
I. Development tendencies and fields of international economic
relations 42
2. Fields and development of international scientific-technical
relations 54
IV. Development of world economic relations. Major conclusions 59
I. Characteristics of world economic relations 59
2. The stages of development 61
3. The role of world economic relations in economic development 65
V. Production relations and the principal laws of the world economy 70
l. The main features of international production relations 70
2. Types of international production relations 71
A. Basic types 72
B. Transitory conglomerates 72
3. The main laws of the world economy 75
5
VI. World economic research and social practice 84
1. Expansion of world economic research in the socialist countries 84
2. Utilization of world economic research in social practice 87
A. World economic research and education 88
B. World economic research and the ideological-political
struggle 92
C. World economic research in economic practice 94
PART TWO
MAIN DEVELOPMENT TENDENCIES OF THE WORLD
ECONOMY
AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR 99
Introduction 101
I. Socio-political factors in the development of the world economy 103
I. Changes in the motive forces of technical progress in the
developed capitalist countries 104
2. The two centres of science and technology and world power 117
3. Worldwide consequences of accelerated technical progress 125
4. Radical changes in world economic and world political power
relations 131
II. The revolutionary transformation of the productive forces and its
consequences 139
I. The beginnings and major achievements of the STR 140
A. STR as a turning-point in socio-economic development 141
B. The main factors of the STR 143
2. The main requirements of the utilization of the STR
achievements 147
A. The necessity of comprehensive prospective planning 148
B. The necessity of a prospective division of production among
countries 151
C. Conclusions drawn from the recent development of
production 154
III. Adjustment to the new requirements of the world economy ·157
I. The need for adjustment 157
2. Major factors of adjustment in the developed capitalist
countries 159
6
A. The role of the capitalist state 161
B. Accelerated centralization of capital and production 165
C. The specific p,?sition of small developed capitalist countries
in the adjustment 168
D. Accelerated internationalization of production 171
E. Major economic and social consequences of a4justment 173
3. New requirements of the world economy and the developing
countries 17 9
A. Unfavourable internal conditions 180
B. Insufficiency and the double-faced character of capitalist aid 183
C. STR and the foreign trade of developing countries 186
D. Conditions of accelerating economic development 188
4. New requirements of the world economy and their assertion in
the development of the CMEA countries 190
A. Main characteristics of the develQpment of the CMEA
countries 191
B. Problems of intensive-type economic development in the
STR period 196
C. Changes in the methods of economic management and their
determining factors 199
5. Principal problems of the realization of socialist economic
integration 209
A. The novel character of the tasks relating to integration 'f.lO
B. Questions of priorities in the integration process 219
C. Inter-firm co-operation with developed capitalist countries 230
D. International significance of socialist economic integration 232
IV. Scientific and technical co-operation as an important domain of
adjustment to the new requirements of the world economy 235
1. Major forces working in the world economy in the past three
decades 235
2. Possibilities of economic and scientific-technical co-operation
at different levels of development of the productive forces 240
A. Increasing difference between nations in economic and
scientific-technical levels 240
B. General conditions and possibilities of co-operation 245
3. Basic principles of the international flow of scientific-technical
knowledge 248
7
A. Characteristics of international trade in intellectual products 249
B. Factors of optimizing technological transfer and domes-
tic research 255
C. Possibilities of minimizing the risks of R&D 259
D. Rapid scientific-technical progress-a new aim of the
economic policy 262
4. Optimization of the development and integration in CMEA
R&D capacities 265
A. The concept of R&D capacity 266
B. The criteria of the optimum development of R&D
capacities 267
C. Economic results of integrating R&D capacities 269
8
FOREWORD
A great many socio-economic events of the utmost importance have taken place in
rapid succession in the historically short period of hardly more than three decades.
After the Second World War the pace of socio-economic progress has experienced
an unprecedented acceleration. This is nothing new in itself. Social formations and
the corresponding productive forces prior w socialism had also followed each other
at a rapidly increasing rate.
Acceleration can also be witnessed in the accumulation of human knowledge, in
the fielc;ls of science and technology. Parallel with the development of the productive
forces, the growth of population has been exponential. More than one and a half
thousand years were needed for the world population to double since the beginning
of our era, whereas it takes now less than 40 years.
The emergence of capitalism, the appearance of mechanized mass production
brought about a radical change in the general progress of human civilization. It
opened up the machine age. The classics of Marxism highly appreciated the new
power and labour machines and the resulting growth in production, and stated that
the productive forces created under capitalism had far surpassed those brought
about by all earlier societies taken together. This is true even though the technology
of that time looked upon in hindsight had produced hardly more than primitive
steam engines and simple labour machines which have by now become, for the most
part, relics of technical history. Already Marx and Engels prophetically foresaw the
social consequences of mechanized mass production and drew a true picture of how
the bourgeoisie had transformed the world according to its own interests with the
help of the new technology.
But a really new technology, real mechanized mass production was to gain
ground and fully to develop only afterwards.
"Traditional" mechanized civilization surrounding us today is largely based on
the scientific and technical achievements originating in the second half of the past
century. The discovery of the processes of metallurgy and the chemicals industry
around the middle of the past century and later the production and utilization of the
internal combustion engine, electrical energy, the telephone, the production of non
ferrous metals were outstanding inventions of the period. The assembly line, which
represents a major step forward in production methods and technology, has
appeared only after the turn of our century.
But the highly important changes in the growth of the productive forces, of
technology in the past century could prevail only for a short time. Scientific and
technical revolution (STR) beginning at the turn of the century, and unfolding after
the Second World War resulted in epochal changes in production in less than a
quarter of a century. A number of new industries sprang up: the atomic, aircraft
9
and rocket industries, eletronics, heavy and light chemicals industries, to mention
just the most important ones. Their share in the overall production of the highly
developed countries has increased extremely rapidly. It is no longer an exaggeration
to say that, for the present and even more for the future, those scientific and
technical achievements and productive branches are the most significant which
have evolved during the past 35 years.
Changes of far-reaching importance and of an equally accelerating rate have also
taken place in production relations. A world-wide market came into existence
already under classical capitalism, and capitalism in the form of monopoly
capitalism became a system extending over the whole world economy by the turn of
the century.
But world capitalist economy embracing the whole world proved to be short
lived. In 1917, Soviet power was established, and with the Soviet Union coming into
being one-sixth of the world broke away from the system of world capitalist
economy. The existence of the Soviet Union brought about not only new
production relations implying the negation of all relations based on exploitation
thus of capitalist production relations, too-but also such new economic and social
principles and a practice both within the country and in international relations
which were to provide attractive examples and new vistas for peoples in their
struggle to get rid of capitalist domination.
After the Second World War, a world socialist system, together with a world
socialist economy, came into being. Within this system, laws deriving from the
essence of socialist society began to work. A peculiar, exploitation-free type of
international production relations, international economic links provided the basis
for co-operation between socialist countries.
The co-existence of the world socialist and capitalist systems, and the
competition and struggle between them have greatly accelerated the socio
economic processes of the world. Socialism has become an increasingly decisive
factor of world development. Power relations between socialism and capitalism
have changed more and more in favour of socialism. This fact has played an
important role in the collapse of the colonial system and has made the imperialist
powers realize the necessity of peaceful co-existence. Thus in the 19 60s, economic,
scientific and technical competition between the two systems came more and more
to the fore.
The development of the productive forces .and society as outlined above has
extremely accelerated the internationalization process of production and has
expanded the international division of labour. The economic intertwining and
reliance on each other of certain peoples have assumed in the past two decades such
dimensions that world economic relations have become not only essential in the life
of many countries-as they were before-, but a determining factor of their
economic development as a whole. Therefore, the effects of the world economic
processes cannot be evaded, dependence, whether mutual or one-sided, compels all
countries to take into account the requirements of the world economy both in their
domestic and foreign economic policies.
Alongside the large-scale expansion in terms of both quantity and depth of the
international division of labour, the new productive forces called forth by the
scientific and technical revolution have given rise to forms and methods new in
quality in world economic relations, which in turn required substantial changes in
the legal-organizational forms of capitalist production relations. This manifests
itself most conspicuously in the appearance of international state monopoly
capitalism.
10
