(...) Let me put it another way. It is not so much the errors made by certain political scientists or economists in the case of specific countries that are irritating, but the stubborn belief that economic interests are the primary, and moreover the correct, driving force in this world.

I am not claiming that economic considerations do not sometimes trigger positive change. For instance, there are authors who believe that, fearful of the influence of the USSR in Western Europe in the first decades after the Second World War, politicians could think of nothing better than to combat the "spectre of communism" by creating various elements of a so-called welfare state. Ultimately, this not only worked, so to speak, but also benefited the workers. Sometimes the positive impact of business interests manifests itself accidentally or even somewhat tragicomically. For example, when Czech politicians were trying to gain support from the countries that won the First World War for the creation of a Czechoslovak state in 1918, this support was by no means clear – for instance, a number of influential members of the British government believed it would be wiser to maintain Austria-Hungary in some form (no longer as an empire). It worked in the Czechs' favour that France, in turn, was not satisfied with a seemingly minor detail in this plan – the Škoda company was at that time a powerful manufacturer of military hardware, and Paris thought it wiser that Škoda should be under the control of a new state, Czechoslovakia.
Photo by Yovan Verma used

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