ABSTRACT
The whole Western world witnessed a major debate in the 1960s and 1970s: Would communist and capitalist societies overcome their differences and eventually converge under the influence of similar economic, social, and political necessities arising from their common nature as industrial societies? This was a new approach, resting on economic and social considerations, and was vastly different from the usual approach during the Fifties, which had sprung from a much more ideological and political standpoint. A good example of this evolution can be found in the works of Zbigniew Brzezinski. In 1958, he had published his book The Soviet Block that stressed the totalitarian, ideological nature of the Soviet system. In 1964, he published with Samuel P. Huntington Political Power: USA/U.S.S.R. Similarities and Contrasts? Convergence or Evolution? In contrast to the earlier work, this book stressed instead a sociological and political science approach, concluding that the decision-making process in both countries was not radically different: There was such a thing as Soviet society with pressure groups not unlike the American lobbies. One could also quote the seminal book of 1960 by John K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society, which insisted that the U.S. economy had reached a state of affluence and that now its major challenge was to provide more public services and to give a greater economic weight to the state, thus narrowing the gap with the Soviet model.
