Expropriation and nationalization of private oil properties, and the growth of government oil companies, extended public ownership in oil. However, t… - Neil H. Jacoby

During 1968, more than forty-four hundred companies disappeared by mergers involving an estimated $43 billion in securities—an all-time record. In this tidal wave of mergers, which subsequently crested and receded, conglomerate firms accounted for either a substantial or a preponderant fraction, depending upon the definition of ‘conglomerate’ adopted.

Whenever any thought or idea or moral imperative is transferred from one society to another an important question is whether that which is transferred is freely sought by the recipient or is, to one degree or another, forced down his throat. Does the transference occur freely through reading or the reports of visitors to other lands, i.e., does it occur as a voluntary importation by one society of what another has developed or found, or does it occur through the coercion of the bayonet or propaganda?

State ownership of, and control over, much of the means of production has been an essential part of Middle Eastern economies. Unlike Europe, the Middle East did not produce a politically and economically influential bourgeoisie that could act as a countervailing power to the state and its rulers.