Self-sufficiency vs. Interdependence

Abstract

In its extreme form, the redistributive model is a model of autarchy: everything necessary is to be found inside the oikos, be it the household or the state. If nevertheless certain products have to be obtained from the outside, two means are employed by the central state to overcome the ideological difficulty that this produces. First, the foreign goods are dismissed as coarse ‘raw materials’ that have no significance until processed and utilized by the only civilized country. Secondly, acquisition of the foreign goods is cited as evidence of central control of the entire world; thus self-sufficiency is extended rather than renounced.