The Frontiers of Management. Peter F. Drucker

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СКАЧАТЬ and in its structure, and irreversibly so in all probability.

      Within the last ten or fifteen years, three fundamental changes have occurred in the very fabric of the world's economy:

      1 The primary-products economy has come “uncoupled” from the industrial economy;

      2 In the industrial economy itself, production has come uncoupled from employment;

      3 Capital movements rather than trade in goods and services have become the engines and driving force of the world economy. The two have not, perhaps, become uncoupled. But the link has become quite loose, and worse, quite unpredictable.

      These changes are permanent rather than cyclical. We may never understand what caused them—the causes of economic change are rarely simple. It may be a long time before economic theorists accept that there have been fundamental changes, and longer still before they adapt their theories to account for them. They will surely be most reluctant, above all, to accept that the world economy is in control rather than the macroeconomics of the national state, on which most economic theory still exclusively focuses. Yet this is the clear lesson of the success stories of the last twenty years: of Japan and South Korea; of West Germany, actually a more impressive though far less flamboyant performance than Japan; and of the one great success within the United States, the turnaround and rapid rise of an industrial New England that, only twenty years ago, was widely considered moribund.

      But practitioners, whether in government or in business, cannot wait till there is a new theory, however badly needed. They have to act. And then their actions will be the more likely to succeed the more they are being based on the new realities of a changed world economy.

      The Primary-Products Economy

      The collapse in nonoil commodity prices began in 1977 and has continued, interrupted only once, right after the 1979 petroleum panic, by a speculative burst that lasted less than six months and was followed by the fastest drop in commodity prices ever recorded.

      In early 1986, overall, raw-materials prices (other than petroleum*) were at the lowest level in recorded history in relation to the prices of manufactured goods and services—as low as in 1932, and in some cases (lead and copper) lower than at the depths of the Great Depression.

      The collapse of raw-materials prices and the slowdown of raw-materials demand is in startling contrast to what was confidently predicted. Ten years ago The Report of the Club of Rome predicted that desperate shortages for all raw materials were an absolute certainty by the year 1985. Even more recently, in 1980 the Global 2000 Report of President Carter's administration concluded that world demand for food would increase steadily for at least twenty years; that food production worldwide would go down except in developed countries; and that real food prices would double. This forecast largely explains why American farmers bought up whatever farmland was available, thus loading on themselves the debt burden that now threatens so many of them.

      But contrary to all these predictions, agricultural output in the world actually rose almost a full third between 1972 and 1985 to reach an all-time high. And it rose the fastest in less developed countries. Similarly, production of practically all forest products, metals, and minerals has been going up between 20 and 35 percent in these last ten years, again with production rising the fastest in less developed countries. And there is not the slightest reason to believe that the growth rates will be slackening, despite the collapse of prices. Indeed, as far as farm products are concerned, the biggest increase, at an almost exponential rate of growth, may still be ahead.*

      But perhaps even more amazing than the contrast between what everybody expected and what happened is that the collapse in the raw-materials economy seems to have had almost no impact on the industrial economy of the world. Yet, if there was one thing that was “known” and considered “proved” without doubt in business cycle theory, it was that a sharp and prolonged drop in raw-materials prices inevitably, and within eighteen months to two and a half years, brings on a worldwide depression in the industrial economy. The industrial economy of the world is surely not normal by any definition of the term. But it is also surely not in a worldwide depression. Indeed, industrial production in the developed noncommunist countries has continued to grow steadily, albeit at a somewhat slower rate, especially in Western Europe.

      Of course the depression in the industrial economy may only have been postponed and may still be triggered, for instance, by a banking crisis caused by massive defaults on the part of commodity-producing debtors, whether in the Third World or in Iowa. But for almost ten years, the industrial world has run as though there were no raw-materials crisis at all.

      The only explanation is that for the developed countries—excepting only the Soviet Union—the primary-products sector has become marginal where it had always been central before.

      In the late 1920s, before the Great Depression, farmers still constituted nearly one-third of the U.S. population, and farm income accounted for almost a quarter of the gross national product (GNP). Today they account for one-twentieth of the population and GNP, respectively. Even adding the contribution that foreign raw-materials and farm producers make to the American economy through their purchases of American industrial goods, the total contribution of the raw-materials and food-producing economies of the world to the American GNP is, at most, one-eighth. In most other developed countries, the share of the raw-materials sector is even lower than in the United States. Only in the Soviet Union is the farm still a major employer, with almost a quarter of the labor force working on the land.

      The raw-materials economy has thus come uncoupled from the industrial economy. This is a major structural change in the world economy, with tremendous implications for economic and social policy and economic theory, in developed and developing countries alike.

      For example, if the ratio between the prices of manufactured goods and the prices of primary products (other than petroleum)—that is, of foods, forest products, metals, and minerals—had been the same in 1985 as it had been in 1973, or even in 1979, the U.S. trade deficit in 1985 might have been a full third less, $100 billion as against an actual $150 billion. Even the U.S. trade deficit with Japan might have been almost a third lower, some $35 billion as against $50 billion. American farm exports would have brought almost twice as much. And our industrial exports to one of our major customers, Latin America, would have held; their near-collapse alone accounts for a full one-sixth of the deterioration in U.S. foreign trade. If primary-products prices had not collapsed, America's balance of payments might even have shown a substantial surplus.

      Conversely, Japan's trade surplus with the world might have been a full one-fifth lower. And Brazil in the last few years would have had an export surplus almost 50 percent higher than its actual one. Brazil would then have had little difficulty meeting the interest on its foreign debt and would not have had to endanger its economic growth by drastically curtailing imports as it did. Altogether, if raw-materials prices in relationship to manufactured goods prices had remained at the 1973 or even the 1979 level, there would be no crisis for most debtor countries, especially in Latin America.

      What has happened? And what is the outlook?

      Demand for food has actually grown almost as fast as the Club of Rome and the Global 2000 Report anticipated. But the supply has been growing much faster. It not only has kept pace with population growth; it steadily outran it. One cause of this, paradoxically, is surely the fear of worldwide food shortages, if not of world famine. It resulted in tremendous efforts to increase food output. The United States led the parade with a farm policy successfully aiming (except in one year: 1983) at subsidizing increased food production. СКАЧАТЬ