Working-Class Politics and Economic Development in Western Europe

HOW far has economic development conditioned working-class politics in Western Europe in the last century and a half ? Are there stages of economic development in which protest is always sharp and others in which it is dull? To what extent are the differences in protest among the nations due to differences in economic growth, to what extent to different patterns of general historical development caused by other factors? What types of studies may promote our understanding of these questions? These are questions I propose to raise or to discuss here. The study of economic development has had a tremendous revival in the last decade. This revival springs largely from considerations of public policy, an honorable stimulus to scholars' quickened interest. One source is the pressure of the economically underdeveloped countries, those we used to call backward countries but which are often extremely forward these days. Another is the threat of economic stagnation in older industrial nations. A third is the concern of the democracies for their very survival in the face of the vast economic growth of the Soviet Union and, in the offing, of Communist China. Economic development, the economist James S. Duesenberry says, seems to be one of those peculiar phrases whose meaning everyone knows without the aid of any formal definition. Onward and upward expresses the term's meaning as well as anything else.' Here I should like to consider