Part VII: Economic Nationalism and Economic Stabilization
Chapter XXI: Introduction
BEFORE the Great War, and even for some time after it, protectionism was preponderantly what the term suggests: a policy aiming at the protection of certain groups of producers against foreign competition on the home market. The reasons put forward to defend this policy against the plausible argument of the free trade doctrine were various, but the plain end was invariably the same, the defence of producers’ profitability against adverse influences coming from abroad.
Chapter XXII: Problems and Avenues of Research
TO acknowledge the importance of the subject is one thing and to tackle it scientifically another. The first task, as always, is to bring order into the problems involved and to arrange them according to their relative importance. It seems appropriate to indicate, as follows, some of the most important problems and the direction in which the solution may be found:
Part VIII: International Economic Disintegration and Changes in National Economic Structures
Chapter XXIII: Introduction
THE foregoing chapters of this study have led step by step from the narrower and more direct aspects of economic nationalism to its wider contexts. In this manner, the changes in the texture of world economy brought about by national economic policies reveal themselves as conditioned by factors which are much more comprehensive than those which formerly determined the commercial policy of the different nations.
Chapter XXIV: Ways of Research
IT is easy to reach agreement on the paramount importance of the general changes in national economic structures for all manifestations of international economic disintegration. It may even be said that such statements suffer precisely from being all too obvious, or even trivial, to be either worthy or capable of further fruitful analysis in connexion with the subject of this enquiry.
Part IX: The Future of World Economy and the Rational Scheme of International Division of Labour
Chapter XXV
THIS is another part which must be kept small; its very modest purpose is merely to convey an adequate idea of what is meant by the title and of the possible procedure to be followed in solving the problem.
Part X: International Economic Disintegration as a Problem of the Social and Political Structure
Chapter XXVI
HOW far the present enquiry is to be extended depends on the other question of how far it is deemed necessary and fruitful, now or later, to follow up the process of international economic disintegration to its more remote but none the less important causes. No problem in any sphere of science can, of course, be traced to its ultimate causes, even to conceive of which is beyond human understanding; what science can do is to go on widening the range of our comprehension of causality.
