Government and Private Enterprise in European Recovery

Extract

I take it as a truism that for at least the past half century the relations between government and private enterprise in Europe have irregularly evolved in such a manner as to expand the role of government policy and action. Leaving aside the European countries which now have Communist governments and almost wholly socialized economies, this trend has been, in only small part, a matter of conscious or ideological development. Primarily, it has been the consequence of piecemeal adaptation of societies to the specific pressures and problems with which they have been confronted, latterly the problems of world depression, of war, and now of postwar adjustment.