Acta Oeconomica 22. (1979)

1979 / 1-2. szám - BOOK REVIEWS - Simai, M.: Mutual Dependence and Conflicts in World Economy (Becsky, Gy.)

Acta Oeconomica, Vol. 22 (1-2), pp. 171-177 (1979) BOOK REVIEWS SIMÁI, M.: Kölcsönös függőség és konfliktusok а világgazdaságban (Mutual dependence and conflicts in world economy.) Budapest, 1978. Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó. 314 p. The external conditions of Hungary’s economic development grew markedly worse in the mid-seventies, and we have to reckon with these negative effects permanently as long as the acute problems of the Hungarian export structure will not have been solved. M. Simái’s latest work tries to assess practically this new period of economic history with the tools of economics exploring the future if not with those of a monograph in economic history. The inter­national relationships and their presumable medium or long-term tendencies are looked upon not in themselves but are analyzed from the point of view of a definite guiding principle, i.e. the mutual dependence of states, regions, continents and world systems. That is why the book does not depress the reader by its sheer size, despite the general grasp, the interrelations and weight of the problems examined. The content is selected and arranged with a steady hand by the author, so that he has succeeded in presenting the world-wide panorama of mutual dependence on hardly more than 300 pages. After a critical survey in the first part of the questions of internationalization, the category of mutual dependence and its different inter­pretations, the author proceeds to examine the medium-term prognosis of international relations and the so-called global problems of the world, the defensive and adaptive mechanisms of national economies, the institutionalized inter­national system of interstate relations and - last but not least - the problems of Hungarian foreign trade and the new world economic environment. In the internationalization process of states or macroeconomies the following main stages are distinguished by M. Simái: isolated interactions (e.g. Hungarian-Japanese, Hungarian-Chinese relations), then the period of intensive inter­actions, where “although the elements of mutual dependence have come into being, they are not strong enough to affect the circumstances of existence, the internal and international conditions for the individual states.” This is nowadays characteristic of relations between the socialist and the developed capitalist countries of Europe. The relations established among the developed capitalist countries during the past 30 years may be characterized by the category of interdependence or complex interdependence, where the life and existence of a state is manysidedly intervowen by the consequences of the life and existence of other states. That is why their aims on both the political and economical fields can only be realized if the existence and effect of the other countries are also taken into account. According to the author, this category excludes the international relations between the politically oppressed and the oppressors of “empires”. Although this statement cannot be argued literally nowadays, the relations among the developed capitalist countries are not entirely free from past or present “imperial” elements. Examples for the above situation are the relations between Great Britain and the erstwhile “white” .dominions, which gradually adapted themselves Acta Oeconomica 22,1979

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