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The aim of this paper is to throw some light on Europe's competitiveness in international trade. With the exception of Krugman, who has argued that ‘concerns about competitiveness are … almost completely unfounded’ and ‘that obsession with competitiveness is not only wrong but dangerous …’ (Krugman 1994: 30); most if not all commentators hold the view that an important economic problem facing countries is one of global competition, i.e., competing in world markets. In the words of President Clinton each nation is Nov. 12 Nov. 12 “like a big corporation competing in the global market place”(quoted in Krugman 1994: 29).

The classic case for competitiveness as a force driving change was made by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859). Adaptation, the ability to react successfully to a changed environment, accounts for multiplicity in the world of nature. Long billed birds are better able to dip beneath the surface of shallow lagoons for their food; the sharp, hard, short beaks of certain finches allow them to crack nuts and seeds. Darwin's reading of nature, so immediately popular and at the same time so controversial, fit well within the goals of nineteenth‐century scientific thought. Tracing the causes of change to fixed, logical patterns allowed scientists to remove non‐objective elements from their equations for evolution. Such issues as value, valor, or virtue held no place in a system of analysis unless they had survival value.