Evening star., 1947-09-29
Economics and the Iron Curtuin

Speaking before the General AsSemblys
Economic Committee, DR.. Oscar Lange of
Poland has given voice to a curious, up
sde-doWn criticism. In his view, the
Marshall proposal is inadequate" because
the sixteen nations cooperating under it
do not have Complementary economies.
BY and large, they represent the industrial
half Of the continent and for sound
comeback they must work with the agri-
cultural half. just as the latter must work
with them. AS DR.. Lange has put it, How
can you expect to reconstruct them with
out Eastern Europe's participation?"
The only thing wrong with this criticism
is that the critic has addressed it to the
United States and the sixteen cooperating
nations instead of addressing it to the
Soviet Union, his own country and the
other satellites pressed by the Kremlin
into boycotting the great enterprise pro-
posed by Secretary Marshall. When first
made, of course, that proposal invited the
whole of Europe to take part-East as we'll
as West. 1t did so because the agricul-
tural and industrial halves are in fact
interdependent and need to exchange
erations past-to achieve recovery and
maintain healthy continent-wide econ
omy. But the Stain government, for
reasons of its own, rejected this approach
and insisted that the satellites reject 1t.
too. So they rejected it, even though
their first response to it-before Moscow
laid down the line-was highly favorable,
on the whole.
Nevertheless. even though DR.. Lange
needs to reverse the direction of his criti-
cism, he is on sound ground in emphasiz-
ing the Importance of East-West economic
cooperation. Thus in. prewar days, his
own country sent 73 per cent of its exports
westward In Europe and received the bulk
OF its imports from that region. Thus,
too, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria
sent, respectively, 76, 10 and 50 per cent
OF their exports to the same area and
received, in turn, most of their imports
from 1t. In sum, stated in overall figures,
the countries now within the Soviet sphere
used to send 80 per cent of their exports
to the sixteen countries working together
on the Marshall proposal and received by
far the greater part of their imports from
them.
This normal traditional East-West ex-
change, though not stopped entirely, has
been greatly inhibited since the war with
the Eastern satellites trading their sur
pluses predominantly with Russia. 1t Is
doubtful in the extreme, however, that
this can continue indefinitely. Indeed, In
the case of Poland, for example, DR.. Lange
has pointed out that Russia now takes
only 43 per cent of the total of Polish ex-
ports, whereas earlier in the postwar
period it took almost 95 per cent AS Soviet
recovery grows, moreover, the largely agri-
cultural output of Eastern Europe may
find less and less room in the Soviet
market
At any rate, If the pattern of the past
means anything, Eastern Europe is likely
to find 1t needs Western Europe not merely
as an outlet for exportable surpluses but
also as source of manufactured goods.
Economic realities push hard against the
Iron Curtain. Instead of misdirecting
their criticism, what DR.. Langes country
and the other satellites should now try to
do is to persuade Russia to let them act
as they wanted to in the first place
namely, to cooperate in the program en-
viSioned by Secretary Marshall.