Hans Bayer’s journal article examines postwar transatlantic economic relations through two connected questions: whether Europe constitutes a coherent economic entity, and whether its connection with the United States is genuinely reciprocal. The familiar “dollar gap” is his starting point, but not his fundamental explanation. Payment difficulties reveal deeper failures of European economic organization and an imbalance of power. His conceptual move is to distinguish a sociological relationship between autonomous actors from a function expressing one-sided dependence:
Beziehung in diesem Sinn unterscheidet sich zum Beispiel von Funktion, die eine einseitige Abhängigkeit beinhaltet.
English translation: A relationship in this sense differs, for example, from a function, which entails one-sided dependence.
This distinction supplies the article’s structure and evaluative standard. Its first section asks whether Europe exists as a unified actor; its second examines American predominance through François Perroux’s “Dominant-Effekt.” Trade between countries is not sufficient to establish a relationship in Bayer’s stronger sense. That requires partners capable of exercising reciprocal influence with reasonably comparable strength.
Bayer places Europe’s fragmentation within a three-stage historical account: former intellectual and economic ascendancy, disintegration, and a present choice between renewed integration and the loss of independent standing. His account joins Christian and classical cultural inheritance to industrial leadership and Europe’s former role as an international creditor. The retreat of Christianity signifies, for him, a weakening of the continent’s cultural foundations. Yet he rejects the idea that spiritual renewal can dispense with economic recovery: falling living standards also undermine the material basis of cultural development.
The economic counterpart of this disintegration is nationalism in production and trade. Bayer traces it through nationally motivated industrial development in the Habsburg monarchy, postwar autarky, and investment decisions that disregard Europe-wide efficiency. Marshall aid sometimes reinforced these divisions by financing industries at locations unjustified from a European perspective. Integration therefore means more than lowering trade barriers: it requires changing how productive capacity is distributed and developed.
His assessment of contemporary institutions turns on this distinction. The Coal and Steel Community covers only part of the economy; the European Payments Union has delivered limited results; the proposed agricultural union lacks general support. The OEEC’s target of increasing production by roughly 25 percent over five years remains inadequately supported by coordinating institutions. An aggregate growth target cannot determine the appropriate expansion of individual industries. Nor can monetary restraint or budget balancing, applied in isolation, resolve structural weaknesses. In discussing France, Bayer reverses the usual causal diagnosis: inflation follows defects in economic organization rather than constituting their ultimate cause.
Nur dann kann eine Koordinierung Europas gelingen, wenn man sich nicht bloß auf Maßnahmen der Geld-, Finanz- und Handelspolitik beschränkt, sondern darüber hinaus die Maßnahmen der Produktion und Investition aufeinander abstellt.
English translation: Coordination of Europe can succeed only if one does not confine oneself to measures of monetary, fiscal, and trade policy, but also aligns measures concerning production and investment.
Investment coordination is thus the bridge between national reconstruction and European integration. Bayer invokes Benelux consultation over significant industrial investments as evidence that such coordination can work. More distinctively, he proposes beginning with the gemeinwirtschaftlicher Sektor, the sector oriented toward collective economic purposes. Since enterprises in this sector account, in his estimate, for more than half of European investment activity, their cooperation offers substantial leverage where private-sector collaboration has proved inadequate.
The second section interprets the dollar gap as an expression of American predominance rather than a temporary monetary disturbance. Bayer stresses the long history of American export surpluses and the renewed widening of Europe’s deficit in 1951. Worsening terms of trade compound the problem: European import prices have risen faster than export prices. Metals and machinery face raw-material constraints, while textiles encounter sales difficulties and competition from American production developed during the war.
Das anscheinend so einfache Rezept der klassischen Schule der Volkswirtschaftslehre, die Kurswerte der Währungen so zu ändern, daß Angebot und Nachfrage nach Dollars sich ausgleichen, reicht praktisch nicht zur Lösung des Problems hin.
English translation: The seemingly simple prescription of the classical school of economics—to alter currency exchange rates so that the supply of and demand for dollars balance—is insufficient in practice to solve the problem.
His alternative includes restoring East–West trade. Following Gunnar Myrdal, Bayer treats its contraction as a source of currency difficulties and slow European growth. Expanded trade within Europe could improve industrial capacity utilization and lower costs, thereby strengthening exports to America rather than displacing transatlantic commerce.
Marshall aid likewise failed to transform the underlying asymmetry. Bayer notes that only about $1.5 billion of more than $12 billion went to machinery and equipment, and that even these investments were not consistently allocated efficiently. His criticism falls especially on European policy’s failure to use available resources for integration. Dependence also appears in Europe’s sensitivity to American business fluctuations: even a pause in American industrial growth could sharply reduce European exports.
The conclusion answers both opening questions negatively. Europe lacks economic unity, and its connection with America remains characterized by predominance rather than balanced reciprocal influence. Responsibility for changing this situation rests principally with Europe:
Kurzfristige Wirtschaftspolitik, die nur von heute auf morgen denkt, wird zweifellos nicht zum Ziel führen.
English translation: Short-term economic policy that thinks only from one day to the next will undoubtedly not achieve the goal.
Bayer’s remedy is long-term self-help through coordinated investment and productive development. The article’s significance lies in connecting external dependence to internal fragmentation: genuine transatlantic partnership requires Europe to organize itself as an effective economic actor, not merely to correct its payments balance.
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