Röpke pointed out that the overwhelming share of industrial production remained highly concentrated in just a few countries, in spite off the dedicated efforts to industrialize new countries. To back this assertion, he quoted a recent study of his Beauvallon co-speaker and fellow MPS member John Jewkes. Jewkes argued that the inherent advantages of industrialization, science, and technology lead to benefits accruing to industrialized nations, and these had described precisely the reasons for import-substituting industrialization strategies: dedicated efforts were needed in order to break the “vicious cycle of poverty” and to overcome the dependencies resulting from the prevailing global division of labor, according to Myrdal and others. Röpke assured his readers, however, that traditional production was not inferior, and he forecasted improving terms of trade for primary commodities in the long run for those developing countries that dedicated their efforts to this sector. The crisis of raw materials production and trade in the aftermath of the Great Depression was regarded as the key culprit in erroneous thinking (of Prebisch and Singer, without mentioning them) (Röpke 1953, 88–89).

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1287