Modern capitalism: Changing balance of public and private power

This is a survey of the change which has occurred in the capitalist system in the West since the 1930s. The author describes the various political and economic impulses which have shaped the policies of the major Western countries in the twenty years following the Second World War. Although there have been great differences in the responses of individual countries to the new situation-ranging from France, which enthusiastically adopted centralized economic planning, to Germany, which equally forthrightly rejected it there are, the author argues, clear traces of a common pattern of behaviour in West European society, and to a lesser extent in North America. The implicit question which this argument is intended to illuminate is: how firmly based is the new order of mid twentieth century capitalism, in which there are no violent alterations of boom and slump and in which steady economic growth and social welfare seem to be assured? A final chapter discusses the political consequences of the continuing reinforcement of public power in modern capitalist society.