Word: arons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...best observers end by changing it entirely on pretext of describing it." (This is a direct stab at Herbert Luethy, author of the very widely-read France Against Herself. Luethy devotes considerable space to a description of French economic stagnation.) In economics, as in no other field, (says Aron) legends and inaccurate conclusions thrive. Some of the most prevalent myths are that industrial production per worker has stagnated, there are no French entrepreneurs, worker's wages are absurdly low, the tax structure is rife with fraud, and in general, industry and agriculture are heterogeneous to the point of anachronism...
...Raymond Aron, a professor who know something about France, rather amused and occasionally note of this widespread virus in own discussion of the change from Fourth to the Fifth Republic, Steadfast and Changing. His "commentators' country," he says , for "in politics, sickness is interesting than health." The commentators speak of nothing but and paradoxes; "Yesterday feared that France would die of . But now observers are she will not stand the stress of . Eternal France, whose death at any moment...
...resolve all the contrasts and in the structure of modern would be an impossible task. object of Aron's book is to explain of them, and to destroy, in a et way, what he feels are orthodox and largely specious effusions on the causes and consequences of de Gaulle's new Republic. For commonplace evaluations of such matters as changes in the French economy, the roots of ministerial instability, or the policy of de Gaulle and his predecessors toward Algeria, Aron has little tolerance, and while his own may not be any more convincing, they are at least excellently supported...
...Aron never makes the mistake of insisting that these complaints are the malicious maunderings of critics who have nothing better to do than to set France's hopes for grandeur against the backwardness of her economy. Certainly, he says, there is some validity to most of them. France is a nation of small business, but this does not automatically mean inefficiency in production. Besides, as in most capitalist countries, large companies divide the market in the modern economic sectors. Fraud in tax returns is frequent, but hardly more so than elsewhere. Wages are low, but not significantly lower in terms...
...exactly "national character," Aron points out, but "intellectural rigidity and failure to appreciate reality," that accounts for the slow reaction of his country to the processes of industrialization. Although economic action proposed by legislators is still inevitably colored by engaging romanticism ("crude oil exerts a true attraction only on condition that it be buried under burning sands"), it is by this time fairly flexible and realistic. Always relying on historical perspective, Aron makes a good case for his contention that no inherent inefficiency will retard the growth of the economy...