natural sciences the "macroscopic error." An implicit presumption is made that
a total national plan for conversion differs from a community program to cope
with the shutting down of a "defense facility" only in degree. We find no reason
to believe that this is the case, nor that a general enlargement of such local
programs, however well thought out in terms of housing, occupational
retraining, and the like, can be applied on a national scale. A national economy
can absorb almost any number of subsidiary reorganizations within its total
limits, providing there is no basic change in its own structure. General
disarmament, which would require such basic changes, lends itself to no valid
smaller-scale analogy.
Even more questionable are the models proposed for the retaining labor for
nonarmaments occupations. Putting aside for the moment the unsolved
questions dealing with the nature of new distribution patterns---retraining for
what?-- the increasingly specialized job skills associated with war industry
production are further depreciated by the accelerating inroads of the industrial
techniques loosely described as "automation." It is not too much to say that
general disarmament would require the scrapping of a critical proportion of the
most highly developed occupational specialties in the economy. The political
difficulties inherent in such an "adjustment" would make the outcries resulting
from the closing of a few obsolete military and naval installations in 1964 sound
like a whisper.
In general, discussions of the problem of conversion have been characterized by
an unwillingness to recognize its special quality. This is best exemplified by the
1965 report of the Ackley Committee. One critic has tellingly pointed out that it
blindly assumes that "...nothing in the arms economy--neither its size, nor its
geographical concentration, nor its highly specialized nature, nor the
peculiarities of its market, nor the special nature of much of its labor force---
endows it with any uniqueness when the necessary time of adjustment comes."
Let us assume, however, despite the lack of evidence that a viable program for
conversion can be developed in the framework of the existing economy, that the
problems noted above can be solved. What proposals have been offered for
utilizing the productive capabilities that disarmament would presumably
release?
The most common held theory is simply that general economic reinvestment
would absorb the greater part of these capabilities. Even though it is now
largely taken for granted (and even by today's equivalent of traditional laissez-
faire economists) that unprecedented government assistance (and concomitant
government control) will be needed to solve the "structural" problems of
a total national plan for conversion differs from a community program to cope
with the shutting down of a "defense facility" only in degree. We find no reason
to believe that this is the case, nor that a general enlargement of such local
programs, however well thought out in terms of housing, occupational
retraining, and the like, can be applied on a national scale. A national economy
can absorb almost any number of subsidiary reorganizations within its total
limits, providing there is no basic change in its own structure. General
disarmament, which would require such basic changes, lends itself to no valid
smaller-scale analogy.
Even more questionable are the models proposed for the retaining labor for
nonarmaments occupations. Putting aside for the moment the unsolved
questions dealing with the nature of new distribution patterns---retraining for
what?-- the increasingly specialized job skills associated with war industry
production are further depreciated by the accelerating inroads of the industrial
techniques loosely described as "automation." It is not too much to say that
general disarmament would require the scrapping of a critical proportion of the
most highly developed occupational specialties in the economy. The political
difficulties inherent in such an "adjustment" would make the outcries resulting
from the closing of a few obsolete military and naval installations in 1964 sound
like a whisper.
In general, discussions of the problem of conversion have been characterized by
an unwillingness to recognize its special quality. This is best exemplified by the
1965 report of the Ackley Committee. One critic has tellingly pointed out that it
blindly assumes that "...nothing in the arms economy--neither its size, nor its
geographical concentration, nor its highly specialized nature, nor the
peculiarities of its market, nor the special nature of much of its labor force---
endows it with any uniqueness when the necessary time of adjustment comes."
Let us assume, however, despite the lack of evidence that a viable program for
conversion can be developed in the framework of the existing economy, that the
problems noted above can be solved. What proposals have been offered for
utilizing the productive capabilities that disarmament would presumably
release?
The most common held theory is simply that general economic reinvestment
would absorb the greater part of these capabilities. Even though it is now
largely taken for granted (and even by today's equivalent of traditional laissez-
faire economists) that unprecedented government assistance (and concomitant
government control) will be needed to solve the "structural" problems of
