A persuasively argued brief for the proposition that the West's
economic development and comparatively high living standards are
attributable mainly to the autonomy ceded the industrial/commercial
sector by ecclesiastic as well as political authorities. Rosenberg
(a Stanford professor) and Birdzell (an attorney) take the High
Middle Ages as their point of departure. In Western Europe, they
note, feudalism began yielding to a new order around 1600, about
the time the continent's population regained the levels of 1347 - a
plague year. Of particular importance in this process (made
possible by the chartering of towns where trade could flourish
unhindered) was the relaxation of controls on wages and prices,
traditionally set by law or custom under a religious standard of
justice. By the mid-18th century, an active merchant class was
creating a plural society encompassing not only market networks but
also the institutions (depository banking, insurance, a legal
system) required to exploit the opportunities afforded by the
industrial revolution. Among factors responsible for the subsequent
expansion, the authors cite the business community's receptivity to
technological advances, a shift from an agrarian to an urban
culture, widespread acceptance of supply/demand forces, and a
flexible approach to organization and operations. Rosenberg and
Birdzell explore the important role that applied science has played
in the New World's prosperity, noting that Western enterprise,
which is largely free to set its own risk/reward agenda, produces
consistenly better results than, for example, the centrally planned
and managed economies of Socialist Bloc nations. They also trace
the rise of "conspicuously large" publicly held corporations. These
leviathans, they comment, arrived on the scene too late to account
for Western affluence. In fact, they argue, smaller firms dominate
industrialized economies by virtue of their collectively larger
employment rolls and capacity for innovation. The authors close on
an optimistic note, declaring there's little reason to believe the
West has exhausted its potential for economic growth. They caution,
however, that government policies designed "to create a society
better in ways other than being richer" could reduce the capacity
of future generations to reach still greater heights of material
well-being. On balance, then, a provocative evaluation that does
not shrink from the implications of its challenging conclusions.
(Kirkus Reviews)
How did the West,Europe, Canada, and the United States,escape from
immemorial poverty into sustained economic growth and material
well-being when other societies remained trapped in an endless
cycle of birth, hunger, hardship, and death? In this elegant
synthesis of economic history, two scholars argue that it is the
political pluralism and the flexibility of the West's
institutions,not corporate organization and mass production
technology,that explain its unparalleled wealth.
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