The mishandled problem of reparations and inter-Allied war debts looms large in customary analyses of the wreckage of the European peace settlement after World War I. The seminal source of trouble then was the insatiable appetite of the Versailles victors for “spoils,” joined by the Shylock American insistence on repayment of war debts.

After World War II the war debt problem was gently erased, but reparations proved even more troublesome. Although those powers which a generation before had moulded the Versailles Treaty were, under American leadership, comparatively tame in their reparations demands, the Soviets were not. This is readily understandable, since the German armies spent their destructive fury on Eastern and not on Western lands. The Soviet loss of life and resources in repelling German armies from the heart of Russia was truly colossal. The war wiped out hard-won advances (factories, inventories, power plants, residences, tractors) achieved since 1917 under lash and by dint of incredible austerity.1 The Soviet economy was planned and, with its insistent commodity needs, could absorb immense quantities of manufactured goods. Despite bomb-smashed German city centres and residences, German manpower remained, as well as powerful industrial facilities which operated up to the closing months of the war. Any trained observer would expect the Soviets to demand maximum one-time drainage and continuing arrangements whereby some German industrial facilities would be worked by some German labour to produce goods and services for Eastern benefit. This was precisely the policy later carried out within the Soviet Zone of Germany which, if it was not “milked dry,” was converted into a massive pumping station for current product reparations.2 A less self-regarding Soviet policy toward the leading “ex-enemy” country would have been astonishing in view of the substantive drainage from “liberated” satellite areas.

Modern war has frequently been described as “total” war. While such a description may not be precisely meaningful, it serves to emphasize the magnitude of the social changes which are now inevitably associated with a major war effort. Modern war has been well described as an industrial art, whose effective prosecution necessitates fundamental alterations in the manner of operation of the democratic peace-time economy.

The basic problems which confront a country in time of war may be classified as follows: (1) producing the goods and services necessary for carrying on the war; (2) paying for the goods and services used for war purposes; (3) supplying the everyday needs of the civilian population. While it is with the second problem, that of financing the war effort, that we shall be directly concerned in this paper, the fundamental and most immediate problem is that of production, to which all others must always be subordinated. Because of the enormous technological advances in the methods of modern warfare, World War II presented all of these problems on a scale vastly greater than ever before.

In time of war there occurs a revaluation of social ends, and maintenance of the state itself becomes the supreme social objective. To accomplish this objective under conditions of modern warfare, it is essential that, the organization and expansion of war production be accomplished with the utmost, possible speed. This point was well illustrated by the experience in World War II, where the problem of mobilizing the required quantities of productive resources was extremely complex, and where various nations with superior economic war potentials found themselves in imminent danger of suffering defeat before their full economic strength could be directed effectively against the enemy. Under these circumstances, where speed is the essence of effective economic mobilization, the sudden demand for an ever-increasing quantity and variety of war goods and services is likely to be highly inelastic, since the needs must be satisfied, if at all possible, regardless of price. But in the short run, supply is also relatively inelastic, and the government consequently finds itself confronted with immediate problems of procurement.

I Have been asked, before introducing the speakers, to take a quarter-hour to pay tribute on behalf of this Association to the memory of the great economist whose life and work are the subjects of this evening's meeting. I propose to use these few minutes to inquire very briefly into the philosophy and characteristics which made Lord Keynes so great a human being, perhaps as nearly a whole person as the twentieth century can show us.

In a recent article Mr. Harrod has expressed the conviction that Keynes had a more distinguished mind than Ricardo. There is food for reflection in the fact that Ricardian thought developed along two quite different lines, one through the so-called Manchester School and the other through the Christian Socialists and Karl Marx, and that Keynesian influences are already showing a similar bifurcation. On the one hand, we find developing a stereotype labelled a “Keynesian,” presumably preoccupied with unemployment, with a simple philosophy based upon the possibility of management of the economic macrocosm through monetary and fiscal means. On the other hand, we find Marxists claiming Keynes and non-Marxists repudiating him on the ground that the “philosophic implications” of his “doctrines” are Marxist in nature.

With respect to the first line of development, it seems to me that Keynes's devotion was to ends rather than to means, that he viewed means always as experimental, and that it is a central conviction in his personal philosophy that we do not know how human beings will react to a change in environment. For that reason, and also because circumstances alter with the passage of time, we must be prepared always to alter economic modes, or even to “reverse a process” which has been initiated. This is not the philosophy of the Keynesian stereotype.

Statistics provide data for action. A statistic which will not be used was not worth the trouble of collecting. I consider this a part of the definition of the subject and will not undertake to support it here. The action of course need not follow immediately; it may not be taken until the results of many other observations are available.

Specifically, statistics deal with random variation. In any practical situation, after we have accounted for every variable which can be brought under control, we still cannot say exactly what will happen. In manufacturing a coil spring, we may use metal of fixed chemical specification, even from the same heat, have a fixed setting on the machine which coils the spring, the same time and the same temperatures in tempering it, and still the tensions of the successive springs which are produced will vary. Given a variety of wheat whose seed is the purest strain we can procure, we plant a number of plots in soil of the same chemical composition, apply the same manurial treatment, see to it that the slopes and the irrigation are the same, plant the seed and cultivate the grain in the same way, and yet we find that the yields vary. In no practical case can theory provide an exhaustive account of the relevant variables, our physical control of real situations is never perfect, and consequently we are never in a position where the result will come out exactly to order.

Political opponents of Mr. Norman Manley, Jamaica's able chief minister, whose party has supported federation, once quoted against him a speech in which he referred to The West Indies as “the most improbable federation ever conceived.” Even its friends must admit that the original federal agreement lent colour to his description, by establishing a central authority which the Prime Minister, Sir Grantley Adams, recently characterized as both weak and poor. The constitution of 1958 gave the national government very limited jurisdiction and no power to tax. Its main sources of income were contributions from the unit governments, which produced an annual revenue of some nine million West Indian dollars—less than one-fifteenth of that in Trinidad or Jamaica. Profits on the currency issue yielded an additional three million dollars.

Thus the political framework of The West Indies resembled the American Articles of Confederation or the Federal Council of Australasia far more closely than that of a genuinely federal state. West Indians have sometimes said that their constitution was modelled on the Australian, because each assigned residual powers to the units. This view, however, is misleading, since in Australia as in Canada the national government has paramount power to tax and thus authority has inevitably gravitated to the centre.

When the executive committee of the Canadian Social Science Research Council met in Ottawa on September 6, 1957, concern regarding the future programme and policy of the Council led it to establish a special committee with Professor S. D. Clark as chairman to give consideration to the kind of support for research which Canadian social scientists appeared to need most. To aid the committee in its task, Professor Clark was asked to visit as many of the universities of Canada as possible. Visits were made to the universities of New Brunswick, Mount Allison, Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s, Acadia, Saint Francis Xavier, Memorial, Laval, McGill, Montreal, Queen’s, Ottawa, Carleton, McMaster, Western, Assumption, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, and to United College and Victoria College. In addition, interviews were arranged with two persons from each of the following institutions: Regina College, Brandon College, and Bishop’s University. The report of the committee was presented to the Council at a special meeting on November 30. In view of the interest which the report aroused, Professor Clark was asked at the meeting to prepare for publication a paper setting forth some of the ideas and thoughts which had found expression in his report to the Council. The paper he prepared is now published as a special supplement to the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, the costs of publication being met by a grant from the Canadian Social Science Research Council. To the University of Toronto which kindly released Professor Clark from his teaching duties during the Fall Term, 1957, and to Professor Clark himself, the Council is deeply indebted.

This article analyzes the principal features of industrial policy in the post-war advanced capitalist economies. Industrial policy is defined as a series of discriminatory measures developed by the state to promote industrial growth. Four main directions are outlined: increased financial aid to replace tariff protection; preference accorded to the more concentrated industries, particularly those related to, or in association with, national defense; new interest in the development of peripheral regions; and priority accorded to large corporations.

A number of explanations are proposed for each of these main policies. The common thread running through them is the process of internationalization of production and trade liberalization. These lead each national economy to redefine its role in the global system. The analysis also underlines the ambivalent position of the state vis-à-vis a free market. Capitalist states rely upon the market to assure economic growth. The growth, nevertheless, is accompanied by regional and sectoral disequilibria which can reduce the political legitimacy of the state. This is why the state seeks to regulate growth, with a minimum of social conflict. State intervention is not designed solely to promote the interests of a class of large capitalists, but corresponds at the same time to the logic of capitalist accumulation and the requirements of political legitimacy.

En mars 2020, le premier ministre Legault a fait appel aux influenceur.euses et aux célébrités québécoises dans le cadre de la campagne #Propage l'info, pas le virus afin de sensibiliser les jeunes au respect des consignes sanitaires liées à la COVID-19. Cet article offre un éclairage inédit sur les différentes manières dont ces personnes renommées ont répondu à l'appel ainsi que sur les formes de leurs réponses à l'aide d'une analyse de contenu de leur vidéo partagée sur les réseaux sociaux. Le codage des vidéos s'est fait à partir d'une grille d'analyse qualitative de contenu, inspirée de celle de Fields (1988). Il ressort des analyses que différents moyens ont permis d'accentuer le sentiment de proximité entre la célébrité et son public, dans le but d'augmenter l'adhésion au message. L'utilisation du pronom « On », l'emploi de formules narratives et l'intimité qui se dégage des vidéos informatives vont en ce sens.

Scholarly opinions on the linkages between foreign military interventions and human rights promotions or violations are highly divided across the board. While many scholars see military interventions as effective means to save and promote human lives and rights from the clutches of repressive regimes, others reject such interventions as harmful to domestic reconciliations and rights promotions. The Arab Spring has renewed the debates between the liberal enthusiasts who staunchly supported NATO's military intervention to free up the Libyans from the Gaddafi regime and the critics who saw creeping dangers in this new intervention, ostensibly inspired by the “responsibility to protect” doctrine. This paper investigates the issue of Arab Spring-led foreign direct and indirect military interventions in Libya, Bahrain and Syria and critically examines the consequences of interventions for improvements or decline in Arab human rights conditions. Its findings support the position of the anti-intervention scholars that foreign military interventions produce deleterious effects on human rights in the target states.