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Mankind was in the grip, not of new motives, but of new mechanisms. Briefly, the strain sprang from the zone of the market; from there it spread to the political sphere, thus comprising the whole of society. But within the single nations the tension remained latent as long as world economy continued to function. Only when the last of its surviving institutions, the gold standard, dissolved was the stress within the nations finally released. Different as their responses to the new situation were, essentially they represented adjustments to the disappearance of the traditional world economy; when it disintegrated, market civilization itself was engulfed. This explains the almost unbelievable fact that a civilization was being disrupted by the blind action of soulless institutions the only purpose of which was the automatic increase of material welfare. (en) |
