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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
THE TERM ‘INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION’ HAS RECENTLY EMERGED as a rallying call in the vocabulary of economic policy-makers in national governments and international organizations. At the same time the political consequences of the adaptation process, such as the reorientation of whole areas of government activity towards industrial priorities, or the escalation of unemployment, have redefined the agenda of economic policy for students of politics. This article, based on a comparison of the systems of industrial adaptation that have operated successfully in West Germany over the post-war period and, far less successfully, in Britain, focuses on the subsidy issue in the two countries and points to the hypocrisy of official economic doctrines and programmes. Insofar as governments must concern themselves with economic activity, issues such as subsidy must be evaluated not in pejorative, polemical fashion but in terms of their goals and of policy frameworks within which they can be controlled.
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