International Economic Disintegration

CHAPTER XIII THE EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURAL NATIONALISM

IN studying now the effects of agricultural nationalism as they have already become visible or as they are likely to be made manifest in the future, we are taking up another task of almost discouraging dimensions. So it is again all the more necessary to reduce the overwhelming material to a summary of the most important points, always keeping in mind the ultimate subject of the whole enquiry.

That the agricultural nationalism of our time has in a number of ways been one of the most important contributory factors in the disintegration of world economy, is one of the ideas behind this part of the book, and especially Chapter IX, which gives a general account of post-war development in this field. Now that the time has come to be more specific, it may be convenient to divide the effects of agricultural nationalism into two broad groups, (1) those affecting the agriculture of the country practising agricultural nationalism itself, and (2) those touching the non-agricultural sections of its national economy or the world at large.

Beginning with the effects of agricultural nationalism on agriculture itself, we may legitimately ask how far the immediate aims of this policy have been reached. That agricultural nationalism with all its formidable machinery should at least reach the strictly sectional aim of bettering or stabilizing the economic situation of the agriculturalists, as measured by prices, net returns, burden of indebtedness, the purchasing power of the farming population and its standard of living, is, indeed, the minimum which the most modest critic must demand and failing which the whole worth of the policy becomes problematical from the outset, even from the narrowest point of view. It cannot be denied that in some, if not in all, countries agricultural nationalism has, broadly speaking, achieved this minimum—even though only after painful experiments and a complex multiplication of measures.

Even this statement, however, needs some serious qualifications. To begin with, agricultural protection driven beyond modest limits has, like all policies of valorization, the well-known tendency to defeat its own purpose by bringing about over-production and thus an aggravation of the calamity. This, in turn, makes it necessary to drive agricultural nationalism further into a system of severe and planned control of production, which tends to become all-embracing.1 In this way it may be possible to cope with the problem of over-production, but only at the cost of increasing collectivism, which is bound to lead to all sorts of friction and to make the farmer resent regimentation, which means that the immaterial aspects of his well-being are touched at a most sensitive point. Consequently, it is probable that the obedience of the farmers will sooner or later wane, especially when regimentation is no longer compensated by better prices. There are to-day already unmistakable signs of growing disobedience among the farmers even in Germany, so that the experiences of the Great War may be repeated.2 In this connexion, it may be seriously doubted whether agricultural nationalism, in aiming at greater stabilization in agriculture, will not bring about new instabilities in a number of ways, especially since, as the percentage of a country’s food supply produced at home grows, the possibilities of its stabilizing the national market by regulating imports will diminish, until, in the event of its becoming totally independent of imports, the national harvest with all its incalculable insecurities becomes the decisive factor. Consequently, where a country before depended on world economy with its manageable and largely controlled vicissitudes, it now has to rely on the less manageable but even greater vicissitudes of its own weather conditions, so that some great nations are being thrown back into the primitive state in which the whole population is nervously preoccupied with the question of harvest prospects.3 Viewed under these and other possible aspects, the vaunted stabilizing effect of agricultural nationalism becomes an important problem, which deserves a fuller and special analysis.

Another serious problem is presented by the difficulties arising out of the fact that protectionist measures affect the different branches of agriculture in a different and often quite contradictory manner, so that, under a system of agricultural nationalism, one farmer’s meat may become another’s poison. The contrast is especially remarkable between cereal production and animal husbandry based on imported fodder. Thus the net effect of agricultural nationalism will be more often than not to impair, at least relatively, the position of peasant agriculture (live-stock farming) producing the high-grade foodstuffs.4 To give to this branch of agriculture a compensating protection is a formidable task, which involves the policy of agricultural nationalism and even the whole national economy in the gravest complications, especially in view of the fact that the high elasticity of demand for the high-grade foodstuffs limits the possibilities of a useful price-raising policy in this field.

While all this refers to the European import countries, it has to be borne in mind that agricultural policies in the agricultural export countries were faced with quite different problems, so that they have to be judged from a different point of view. Their objective was to find a solution of the problem of restoring the profitability of agriculture despite a large exportable surplus of production. That is why agricultural relief in those countries took the form of a more or less successful policy of restricting the acreage under cultivation and of governmental subsidies. Linked with this policy were measures which aimed at changing agricultural methods, so as the better to conserve the soil, and at transferring the farmers to the less exhausted areas. A very interesting result of this policy is the marked trend toward diversified farming (‘‘better farm organization”), with its implication of crop rotation and live-stock farming, which can be observed. Agricultural policies overseas, therefore, largely contribute to the tendency toward “peasantization” of colonial farming, to which attention has already been drawn. In general, it seems that agricultural policies overseas, after a painful process of trial and error, have reached their immediate aims more unequivocally than those of agricultural nationalism in the European import countries, though the means used may be very questionable.

A further scrutiny of agricultural nationalism in the principal European import countries, which takes in those broader effects that go beyond the betterment of the economic status of agriculture itself, helps to enlarge our horizon. It has to be remembered that agricultural nationalism has, or should have, other and wider aims than the mere increasing of the profitability of farming itself, and it is just these wider aims that justify the policy in the eyes of the non-agricultural parts of the population. Viewed in this light, however, the effects of agricultural nationalism are largely such as to make its case much more doubtful than when presented from the point of view of those other aims, which are bluntly sectional. If, for example, the advertised aim of agricultural nationalism is not only to help agriculture in general to a larger share of the national income, but also to develop it in such a way as to make it a populous industry based on peasant farming, and thus to fulfil the ideal of the pro-rural philosophy, we are certainly entitled to ask what has become of this ideal under the rule of such agricultural nationalism. To some extent, the answer to this question has been anticipated by our stating that there is much in modern agricultural nationalism which tends to discriminate against the peasant type of farming, by putting the development of high-grade food production, which is the most suitable form for smaller-scale farming, at a disadvantage. This is borne out by the fact that, to say the least of it, there is no noticeable, far less spectacular, development of peasant farming (in contrast to large-estate agriculture) in the leading European countries practising agricultural nationalism. It would even be easy to give facts to prove that quite the contrary is the case in more than one important country.5 On the same level is the further remarkable fact that in a country like Germany, where this policy is being executed with the utmost vigour, the number of persons gainfully employed in agriculture has decreased during the recent years at an alarming rate,6 so that the problem of the flight from the country has become more burning than ever. This is surely a rather poor result for a policy which was launched under the slogan of “re-agrarianization.”

A development like that going on in Germany is partly to be explained by the irresolvable conflict between a policy which tries to develop the human and social side of agriculture and one which aims at combining a policy of maximizing agricultural production, for the sake of food autarky, with that of maximum production and maximum autarky for the entire national economy. If this conflict is ended by giving preference to the latter aim, it is almost inevitable that agriculture will develop in a direction which precludes the possibility of attaining the former. Spurred on by the general shortage of labour and the necessity of enhancing production at all costs, and alongside of the economically unsound increase of staple production, agriculture will become more and more mechanized and industrialized, and the peasant farmer will have to suffer accordingly. If that is so, then we are again entitled to ask how far the practical results of agricultural nationalism correspond to these tremendous efforts.

In this respect, it has to be recognized at once that in those European import countries which already have an intensive agriculture, any policy which aims at a conspicuous increase of agricultural production can only do so within rather narrow limits, and these become progressively more evident the further the policy is pursued. This again may be well illustrated by the highly important example of Germany, where the limits of national self-provisionment in foodstuffs have become so notorious during the last few years that the impossibility of attaining food autarky has had to be openly recognized. Since the supply of untilled land in Germany is practically exhausted, and reclamation of sub-marginal soils, besides doing perhaps more harm than good, of negligible importance, the increased cultivation of one product takes place at the expense of others, unless returns can be increased by better and more intensive methods, despite the law of diminishing returns. The scope for such an increase, however, is strictly limited in a country like Germany.

In order to see this more clearly, one has to bear in mind the stubborn fact that German live-stock farming cannot go on without a large amount of regularly imported fodder of cereal or other origin, so that what has been attained in the way of national self-provisionment in animal products is, to this extent, only apparent and not real. If these imports are appreciably curtailed, German live-stock has to be reduced accordingly. This, however, has even wider consequences than a corresponding reduction in the homegrown supply of animal products, for the decrease in live-stock entails a corresponding decrease in the quantity of manure which, in its turn, is bound to impair the yield of the arable land. The efforts made so far to escape this vicious circle by growing oleaginous fodder plants and the development of ensilage have not been successful on the whole. The curtailment of the imports of fodder into Germany during recent years has indeed had the effect of the live-stock being slaughtered on a large scale, of reducing the domestic supplies of animal products, of increasing her imports of some animal products and of a slow deterioration of the long-run productivity of German agriculture. Such a policy of augmenting national agricultural production at all costs, and without due regard to the limits imposed by the law of diminishing returns, is, moreover, apt to interfere in the end with the immediate aim of bettering the economic position of agriculture, since it will entail a gradual rise in the average cost of production in agriculture, which it would be either impossible or intolerable to compensate by corresponding increases in selling prices. From a certain point onward, therefore, this policy will turn against the immediate aim with which it started; the profit margin for agriculture in general will grow smaller again, agricultural indebtedness will show a new tendency to rise, and the farmers will have to work harder and harder and will find it more and more difficult to make both ends meet. For this, also, the German example provides abundant and officially authenticated material.7

An analysis of the effects of agricultural nationalism on agriculture itself is especially important, because it opens up a field of study which has scarcely been explored. Also, it is obvious that, if this should expose agricultural nationalism to criticism from this special point of view, we have an argument a fortiori against it. We are meeting it on its own chosen ground and answering it in its own terms. The attempt at such an analysis, as it has been made in the preceding paragraphs, clearly suggests a final judgment of a plainly adverse character.

Turning now to the second group of effects, i.e. those to be observed outside agriculture, we find ourselves on very familiar ground, so that it is possible to be brief. In general, it is extremely difficult to measure with reasonable accuracy these wider effects about which there may be a divergence of opinion, but we are assisted by the fact that, as is well known, economic phenomena present themselves the more unequivocally the more macroscopic and crude the circumstances are. If agricultural import duties are moderate, a study of their effects on the national economy must necessarily be rather subtle, so that any evaluation requires great circumspection and important qualifications. If, however, agricultural protection becomes as far reaching as it is to-day, judgment can be made in a much more peremptory fashion, with less emphasis on niceties and qualifications. There is no denying the fact that the present policies of agricultural nationalism, in so far as the means for aiding agriculture are not obtained by the much overrated device of diminishing the margin between farm prices and consumer prices, demand enormous sacrifices from the rest of the community in the form of a higher cost of living (at least in relative terms), of less sufficient nourishment and of downright subsidies. It is possible to underestimate the order of magnitude of these sacrifices if attention is confined to the immediate effects of agricultural nationalism on household budgets and public finance, instead of being extended to its wider effects on the industrial markets, exports and international trade relations. On these wider and perhaps more decisive effects, enough has been said on previous occasions, especially in the first chapter of this part, to make it unnecessary for the present purpose to resume discussion of this subject.

There is, however, a definite limit to the sacrifices for agriculture which the community will tolerate and it is probable that this point has already been reached in more than one country. If this is the case, it is evident that agricultural nationalism will be in a serious dilemma, which may be stated like this: In order to achieve its aims, agricultural nationalism must have recourse to planning and regimentation; planning presupposes a minimum of obedience and co-operation on the part of the farmers but this is a condition which will be fulfilled only as long as they are always being humoured by better prices. Yet, if this is done beyond a certain limit, urban discontent will assume proportions which cannot be ignored; at this point it will become more and more difficult to enforce agricultural regimentation and planned control—unless, perhaps, the government does not shrink from following the example of the Soviet régime in the “liquidation” of individual farmers and in completely collectivizing agriculture. Even if a country followed the Russian example, however, it is no longer possible to ignore what seems now to be a well-established fact, viz. that the Soviet Government is encountering growing difficulties in its attempts to enforce a stable and workable system of collective agriculture against the wishes of the peasants. It seems that not even the most ruthless terror and the cold-blooded annihilation of millions of peasants have been able to suppress the natural gravitation towards individual farming.8

 

______________

9 Cf. the report of the Economic Committee of the League of Nations, Considerations on the Present Evolution of Agricultural Protectionism, 1935, and L. Robbins, Economic Planning and International Order, London, 1937, pp. 134-157.

10 For England see: L. Robbins, The Economic Basis of Class Conflict and Other Essays in Political Economy, London, 1939, p. 158.

11 In this respect it is to be noted that a great stabilizing influence on international markets of cereals is exerted by the enormous and costly grain storage in the overseas export countries.

12 See on this point for England, e.g. A. G. Street, Farming England, London, 1937; for Italy, C. T. Schmidt, The Plough and the Sword, Labour, Land and Property in Fascist Italy, New York, 1938, and for Germany, W. Röpke, German Commercial Policy, London, 1934.

13 In this connexion it should be stressed that some current views about the effects of agricultural free trade and protection on the social structure of agriculture are badly in need of correction. This is especially true in the case of English agriculture, which is said to have been ruined by free trade in the nineteenth century so as to create the impression that a full-blooded agriculture is not to be had without protection. It goes without saying that this is a very crude view, which takes no account of the great complexity of the conditions which influenced the development of English agriculture during that time. That it is a mere fallacy of the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” type is proved sufficiently by the opposite example of Denmark, which, under free trade, has become one of the leading agricultural countries in the world and the model country for what peasantry may achieve if it is given a fair chance and if, especially, the essential social and spiritual conditions are fulfilled. (Cf. Einar Jensen, Danish Agriculture, its Economic Development: a description and economic analysis centering on the free trade epoch, 1870-1930, Copenhagen, 1937.) Why English agriculture went the other way is a question on which, it seems, the standard work is still to be written. So much appears to be clear, however, that the decay of English agriculture is largely equivalent to the decay of British rural life—caused by the secular effects of feudalism. It is the story of a system of agriculture which lost its peasantry long before free trade, and which did not find any satisfactory solution of the problem of land tenure. This view had been strongly emphasized by Cobden himself. Cf. also Sir William E. Cooper, England’s Fatal Land Policy, London, 1913.

14 The net loss of workers in German agriculture from 1933 to 1938 has been estimated at 400,000 (Deutschlands wirtschaftliche Lage an der Jahreswende, 1938-9, Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft, Berlin, January, 1939, pp. 48-49). The total loss, however, is much higher, since the working members of the family leaving the open country would have to be added, and still higher is the total loss of all people, including the farm owners themselves, who have recently joined the human stream to the cities and industries (a new phenomenon in Germany). An enquiry made in spring 1939 by the Reichsnährstand (the official organization of German agriculture) revealed that from 1935 to 1938 the total loss of fully employed agricultural workers of all kinds is to be estimated at 650,000, an enormous loss which has been much aggravated by the fact that those remaining in agriculture show a higher percentage of female, juvenile or not fully able workers. In the class of farms of from 5 to 20 hectares (12.5 to 50 acres), the loss of male workers above 18 years is as high as 38 per cent. This rural depopulation of Germany finds its parallel in the wholesale destruction of the class of artisans and small shopkeepers by the Nazi régime. It goes without saying that all this is a very natural development in a totalitarian country where the ultimate aim is to turn the entire population into an amorphous mass of proletarians. Only those who do not understand the real nature of Totalitarianism can associate it with a policy of protecting the class of peasants and other independent middle class people. Such a policy is, indeed, the very opposite of Totalitarianism.

15 Cf. especially the current Weekly Reports of the Berlin Institut für Konjunkturforschung, and a number of articles in the semi-official periodical Die Deutsche Volkswirtschaft. On the recrudescence of agricultural indebtedness in Germany see also Leo Drescher, Entschuldung der ostdeutschen Landwirtschaft, published by the Bank für Deutsche Industrieobligationen, Berlin, 1938.

16 Cf. the report in the Economist of 25th November, 1939, based on articles in Pravda.

• 1Cf. my paper “A Value Judgment on Value Judgments” in which I am explaining my attitude in this very important methodological question. It will probably be published in the “American Economic Review.”
• 2The following pages are largely based on a memorandum which the author wrote together with Professor Alexander Rüstow (University of Istanbul) in the summer of 1938.
• 3See also: W. Röpke, Die entscheidenden Probleme des weltwirtschaftlichen Verfalls, Zeitschrift für schweizerische Statistik und Volkswirtschaft, 1938, No. 4.
• 4In current literature there is already some evidence that the understanding of the scientific situation outlined above is growing. See E. F. M. Durbin, “Methods of Research—A Plea for Co-operation in the Social Sciences,” Economic Journal, June, 1938; A. Löwe, Economics and Sociology: a Plea for Co-operation in the Social Sciences, London, 1935: F. Akerman, Das Problem der sozialökonomischen Synthese, Lund, 1938. The essential things have been said on a wider scientific scale by A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, New York, 1926; and by Ortega y Gasset, El Tema de Nuestro, Tiempo, Madrid, 1923.
• 5See Der deutsche Aussenhandel unter der Einwirkung weltwirtschaftlicher Strukturwandlungen, l.c., pp. 362-363.
• 6The vast literature on this subject has recently been enriched by M. J. Bonn, The Crumbling of Empire, The Disintegration of World Economy, London, 1938; and by Lionel Robbins, The Economic Causes of War, London, 1939.
• 7See my own approaches to these problems given in the article: “Kapitalismus und Imperialismus,” Zeitschrift für schweizerische Statistik und Volkswirtschaft, 1934, pp. 370-386; and in my book Crises and Cycles, pp. 4-6.
• 8Cf. Röpke, Crises and Cycles, London, 1936, p. 88n.
• 9The purpose of this book is to make a new and more promising approach to the diagnostics of that long-run crisis in international economic relations which is one of the most striking symptoms of the general economic, social, and political crisis of occidental society. I believe that the urgent necessity of such an approach has been enhanced rather than diminished by the outbreak of the war. However, I would betray my own philosophy if I regarded this book as anything more than a mere beginning, an invitation to constructive criticism, and a way of opening or furthering a discussion for which the world seems to be ripe. In submitting this book to criticism, I am not afraid to expose myself as one who believes not only in the scientific legitimacy but even in the utmost scientific necessity of employing a measure of judgments, which is ultimately based on a definite conception of what is wrong with the world, and of what should be done in order to put it right again. Those who are shocked by such an attitude may be reassured that I gave more thought to this methodological problem than I am able to explain on this occasion.
• 10(b) This crisis puts social science in a new situation, which is itself highly critical and which no partial investigation in any field of this science whatever can ignore without running the risk of missing its aim. Nobody conversant with the current development of the social sciences can overlook the fact that the feeling of being on insecure ground is becoming more and more widespread, until even the most tenacious followers of the traditional lines of approach sense the need for reorientation. The growing literature on methodological questions even in countries like England, where it was formerly distinctly unpopular, is a sure token of this scientific situation, as is also the fact that it has been felt necessary to open the present report in such a roundabout way as would have appeared rather strange even five years ago.
• 11As the present historical crisis finds its first, its most painful and its most conspicuous manifestation in the economic sphere, and since the nineteenth century has accustomed us to treat the economic problems as the main ones, it is easy to understand why the crisis is conceived primarily as an economic one and why, therefore, the traditional approaches of economics have been relied upon thus far. Whether or not this traditional conception corresponds to the inner convictions of our scholars and statesmen, it is at least exemplified in the character of by far the greater part of scientific activity in our field. Accordingly, men and means have been mobilized, during the last ten years, on an unprecedented scale. Facts have been piled up sky-high; conferences have been held in endless succession; economic analysis has been brought to an ever greater degree of refinement (and, incidentally, to an ever greater degree of unreality); vast and detailed programmes of research have been elaborated; a complicated machinery of institutionalized science has been set up; and questionnaires have been sent to almost every country and to every section of the population. It would surely be no pessimistic over-statement to say that nobody feels that this hectic activity has brought us any nearer the fundamental diagnosis which alone could serve as the basis for effective therapy.
• 12The real cause of this deficiency in the social sciences seems to lie just in the narrowness of our economic conception and the lack of courage and ability in really synthetic interpretation to connect the economic phenomena with the wider aspects of society. There is, in fact, increasing evidence that the real epicentre of the earthquake does not lie by any means in the strictly economic sphere, but rather that the economic disturbances are only the external manifestations of a deeper organic disease, of which overemphasis on economic matters—a legacy of the nineteenth century—is only one of the many symptoms. If that is true, then it becomes clear that the traditional approach is doomed to failure and that a new point of departure has to be found.
• 13That the development of world economy has been, first of all, a process of intensification is as important as it is evident. It can be deduced from the fact that the most highly developed countries showed the greatest percentage of world trade, which, in view of the reciprocal nature of trade, proves that the bulk of world trade must have belonged to economic interchange within the high-capitalistic sphere itself. This deduction is corroborated by a number of calculations of the relative intensity of this “intraindustrial” economic interchange. One of these calculations, made by the Kiel Institut für Weltwirtschaft und Seeverkehr, shows that the commodity trade between the industrial countries of Europe (Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain and Ireland, Italy, Austria and Switzerland) amounted in 1913 to 30.2 milliard RM (=$7.2 milliard), which was equal to about one-third of the total reciprocal trade between all industrial and agricultural countries of the world. The same story is told by the calculation that out of average total exports of industrial Europe (comprising the same countries) during the years 1909–1913 slightly more than one half (51%) constituted an exchange of goods among these countries themselves. It is also a well-known fact that such leading countries as England and Germany were practically each other’s best customers. In 1913, for example, exports from the United Kingdom to Germany formed 7.74% of the total export trade of the former (higher than the percentage of any other country except British India), while imports from Germany into the United Kingdom as a percentage of the total import trade (11.56%) were surpassed only by those from the United States. Another very interesting illustration of the same tendency is to be found in the development of reciprocal trade between the two leading industrial countries outside of Europe, i.e. the United States and Japan.
• 14There is no denying the fact that world economy and capitalism have been to a large extent forced upon the “new” countries by political pressure and in some cases—as in the opening-up of China—by undisguised war. The problems thus presented are, at the present moment, far from a universally accepted solution; but it seems clear that no satisfactory study of international economic integration and disintegration could evade them. This holds especially true for one of the many aspects of the problem of economic imperialism—the difficult question of whether and how far extensification and intensification of world economy were, and perhaps still are, correlated to each other. In other words, was it not just the spatial expansion of capitalism which kept the whole mechanism of dynamic development going, by providing more and more new markets for the surplus production which constantly increased as productive technique improved, by giving the necessary stimulus to entrepreneurial initiative and speculative optimism and by allowing the “play” essential for any working mechanism? Allowance must also be made for the possibility that the existence of an economic “frontier” in world economy may have been instrumental in providing that psychological atmosphere essential for the breadth of outlook, which is the basis of a liberal commercial policy. This refers not only to the exploitation of new markets, but also to the opening of overseas territories to human settlement. Thus the vast problem of international migrations would also have to be studied in this context.
• 15There is no denying the fact that world economy and capitalism have been to a large extent forced upon the “new” countries by political pressure and in some cases—as in the opening-up of China—by undisguised war. The problems thus presented are, at the present moment, far from a universally accepted solution; but it seems clear that no satisfactory study of international economic integration and disintegration could evade them. This holds especially true for one of the many aspects of the problem of economic imperialism—the difficult question of whether and how far extensification and intensification of world economy were, and perhaps still are, correlated to each other. In other words, was it not just the spatial expansion of capitalism which kept the whole mechanism of dynamic development going, by providing more and more new markets for the surplus production which constantly increased as productive technique improved, by giving the necessary stimulus to entrepreneurial initiative and speculative optimism and by allowing the “play” essential for any working mechanism? Allowance must also be made for the possibility that the existence of an economic “frontier” in world economy may have been instrumental in providing that psychological atmosphere essential for the breadth of outlook, which is the basis of a liberal commercial policy. This refers not only to the exploitation of new markets, but also to the opening of overseas territories to human settlement. Thus the vast problem of international migrations would also have to be studied in this context.
• 16Full treatment of this set of problems must wait till a later occasion. At this juncture let it suffice to emphasize that this is not only important for a full appraisal of the past development, but even more so for a diagnosis of the present situation of world economy and for a prognosis of its future. It is obvious that it would make a tremendous difference if it were really true that spatial expansion (for both goods and men) has been one of the indispensable and irreplaceable springs behind the development of a highly integrated world economy up to 1914. Here, then, is another of those strategic factors we are looking for, though it seems probable, even at the present stage of enquiry, that the result would be a refutation rather than a corroboration of popular views. But, since here as elsewhere popular views are a very important element in shaping actual policies, a convincing refutation amounts in itself to a constructive action. It may be added that, if there is a grain of truth in this theory, the “saving-investment” approach made familiar by recent developments in business cycle theory will probably indicate the most promising direction of analysis. The problem, therefore, will be encountered again in that part of this investigation reserved for the relationship between economic stabilization and economic nationalism.