State and Economics in the Middle East by Alfred Bonne

Author:Alfred Bonne [Bonne, Alfred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415175838
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1998-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

THE PROBLEM OF CAPITALISM IN ORIENTAL COUNTRIES

All those who believe in the universality of socio-economic laws will be prepared to apply the scheme in question also to the later industrial developments in Oriental countries and to defend this line of argument despite certain divergences due to special conditions of time and place. They will, therefore, be prepared both to admit as regards the past a causal connection between the social changes and the technical processes analogous to that noted in European countries, and in respect of the future to cast a prognosis based on Western experiences.

This attempt at analogy, however, is confronted quite unmistakably with another reality. The divergences between the development of the two spheres of culture are not due to temporal causes alone. The phenomenon of free industrial capitalism is confined to the Occident, i.e. to Europe and North America, to a sphere of culture which, owing to a series of specific features more than accidental in character, is marked out as unique in social history. The temporal rift here becomes the expression of a basically different cultural evolution. At a period when the phenomenon of modern capitalism was moulding the face of society in the West, we find in Oriental countries widespread stagnation and the absence of all signs of even an approximately parallel or similar development. If the present appears to be making up for much that we recognise as characteristic of modern capitalism, this must not lead us, because of similar external symptoms, to expect further development on completely corresponding lines. Industrial capitalism came into existence and was developed in Europe, where it assumed such mighty proportions, under entirely different conditions. Neither in respect of its promoters nor of the origin of the capital with which it was financed, nor of the attitude of the State, is any comparison between industrial capitalism in European countries and the industrialisation of Oriental lands possible.

Capitalism in the West owes its existence, inter alia, to the influence of a class of citizens endowed with specific virtues as organisers and entrepreneurs, a class which did not exist in the East. The rational-scientific technique which formed the starting-point for the profusion of industrial discoveries in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, remained unknown to Oriental civilisations.

The formation of capital in the West, quite apart from differerences in the degree of its intensity, benefited production to a far greater extent; furthermore, the industrial pioneers used the new capital to expand production still further, although clearly aware of the risks involved. On the other hand, fortunes deriving from production in Oriental countries weak in capital backing were spent as a rule on personal consumption, often in the form of foreign luxury products.

The population conditions in the densely inhabited European countries proved a great stimulus to industrial mass-production, whereas in the Orient the sparsely settled districts with their population of extremely low purchasing power and markets often swamped with European products, offered but slight scope for local industry. For this reason the industrial capital

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