This Fleeting World

Our World: The Modern Era 83
Contemporary Period:
1945–Present
After World War II the capitalist engine roared to life again to generate
the most rapid economic growth in world history. From 0.91 percent per
annum between 1913 and 1950, global rates of growth of GDP rose to
2.93 percent between 1950 and 1973 before falling to the more modest
but still impressive rate of 1.33 percent between 1973 and 1998.
The international economic order was revived and re-stabilized by
expanding markets, by massive reconstruction aid from the United States
during the Marshall Plan, and by the creation of global regulatory institutions
such as the United Nations (in 1945) and the International Monetary
Fund (in 1947). After falling between 1913 and 1950, the proportion of
goods produced for international markets tripled between 1950 and 1995.
A revival in international trade and the spread of mass consumerism, first
in the United States and then in Europe and Japan, stimulated economic
growth in all the leading capitalist countries. For the first time significant
numbers of consumers in Europe and Japan began to buy private cars,
televisions, and radios and even exotic foreign holidays, made possible by
the reduced cost of air transportation. A new wave of innovations in electronics,
many stimulated by wartime research programs, ushered in the
electronic revolution of the 1980s and 1990s, and innovations in biology,
including the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA,
the carrier of genetic information), spawned new techniques of genetic
engineering whose implications are still unclear.
Capitalist governments became increasingly adept at sustaining growth
by stimulating consumption and by seeking the right balance between intervention
and “laissez-faire” (a doctrine opposing governmental interference
in economic affairs). Slumps during the early 1970s and the late 1990s
demonstrated that the business cycle has not been completely tamed. Nevertheless,
many of the protectionist illusions of the late nineteenth century
were shed as governments realized that
in a world of rapid global growth, the
wealth of individual nations (even the
most powerful) usually depends more
on global economic growth than on
the possession of protected markets. A
clearer understanding of the economic
Topics for Further Study
Climate Change
Cold War
Consumerism
Globalization