friedrich list, Foreign Policy

Hinrich Kuhls kls at mail.online-club.de
Fri Sep 25 12:21:12 PDT 1998


In 1837-1840, the building of the Belgian state railway system was a big progress for the capitalistic industrial revolution. It's initiator and founder was List - celebrated by both the Belgian bourgeoisie and the French Government (Thiers).

In 1998-2000 the reconstruction and extension of the Siberian railways will not resolve the economic and social crisis in Russia - even if a huge airport system for international flights from North America to South Asia via the North Pole would be added to it in Krasnojarsk.

However Arno Daastol's consideration is: Lebed will win the next presidential campaign in Russia relying on List's Political Economy. This is a harsh illustration of one of history's cruel ironies - back to Witte, Stolypin, and List in the country of the October Revolution.

Daastol at http://home.sol.no/~arnomd//rus97.html : "This article has intentionally been written "without focus" trying instead to gain perspective. It is about geopolitical economics and concerns economics as an ingredient in international power politics. The article addresses the failed efforts to reform the communist system as well as the failed efforts to introduce a radical market system. An alternative is suggested with strong roots in Russian and Western historical experience. This alternative is based on Minister Count Sergei Witte's (1849-1915) successful and state-led grand investments into infrastructure, as a vehicle of economic growth and general welfare. On the road to US President Clinton`s 2nd inauguration, the "most-likely-to-become-Russian President", General Lebed, claimed January 12th in a TV6-interview, that the whole of the Russian society is on the edge of collapse. (Aftenposten, Jan.13, 1997). January 15th, at a press conference in Bonn, Germany, he claimed that, "Russia has to proceed on the basis of the Stolypin reforms, and the reforms of Sergei Witte." This article will look into the nature of these reforms. Witte was inspired by Russian experience, but especially by Friedrich List (1789-1846), and thereby indirectly by Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) and James Steuart (1712-1780). Witte believed that this policy in particular had three characteristics. First, investments in infrastructure would unify Russia, and also unify Eurasia into one market promoting international division of labour and economics of scale. This would eventually promote international friendship across borders. Secondly, investments in infrastructure would create public and private demand for capital goods and later on demand for consumer goods, and thereby act as a locomotive for general economic growth. Thirdly, the policy was deliberately protectionist according to the infant industry argument, so as to establish Russian industry in the face of strong foreign competition."

Hinrich Kuhls



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