2024-01-02 13:55:08
by MARIO MONTI
In a volume published by the Corriere Foundation, edited by Andrea Moroni, the articles of the British economist written for the newspaper on Via Solferino: here an extract from the preface by Mario Monti
Read a century later, the articles by John Maynard Keynes written for the «Corriere della Sera» between 1922 and 1925 arouse multiple considerations and even emotions. I would like to mention here some aspects that struck me most, especially in relation to the era in which we live.
These writings are Keynes’ correspondence from the Genoa Conference, held in April-May 1922 with the aim of examining the most suitable means for the economic reconstruction of the European continent after the First World War. Keynes did not attend the conference as an official member of the British delegation. He had done so, as economic advisor to the government, on the occasion of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which he had then abandoned in dissent with the decisions on the heavy reparations imposed on Germany, as he forcefully argued in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
Those decisions, as is known, were one of the fundamental causes of German revanchism, the advent of Hitler and the Second World War. The objective of avoiding the repetition of a similar tragic chain of events inspired the commitment of the victorious powers and the international community in giving life to a new international order in 1945 with the creation of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank . One of the main protagonists of the Bretton Woods Conference, which designed the Fund and the Bank, was again Keynes. As in 1919 in Paris, his ideas were considered too visionary. It was particularly opposed by the United States, which wanted to maintain the supremacy of the dollar. A few decades later, this proved to be a factor in the instability of the system. As an extraordinarily lucid economist, Keynes sometimes proved too far-sighted for his contemporaries […]. Today, in the 1920s, we perceive a weakening of the second globalization (the one that erupted from the years of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan onwards) which in some ways recalls the collapse of the previous globalization on the rocks of the First World War. Like a century ago, the world is looking for new forms of international governance. The United Nations is all-encompassing but its effectiveness is severely limited by the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
Informal structures that arose subsequently and were made up of groups of countries with the common intention of pragmatically addressing emerging challenges — as the G20 did with the global financial crisis, the pandemic, climate change — lose their effectiveness when strong tensions arise between participants , as has occurred over the past two years following Russian aggression in Ukraine and the growing strategic rivalry between the United States and China.
Even the European Union, to date the most advanced realization of regional integration or, if we want, of “globalization” on a continental scale with a governance that is in some respects unitary, which has continuously expanded and acquired greater powers, now meets here and there the hard core of aspects of national sovereignty which the Member States are not willing to give up. […]
Beyond the European case, the world today finds itself in just as much need of a global governance system as it did in the aftermath of the First and then the Second World War. Indeed, an even greater need, because in addition to the “permanent” need to avoid new world conflicts, today it is clear that without effective governance of some essential “global public goods” – such as public health, the fight against climate change, government of migrations and others — the world will implode. […]
Sovereignty and Nation
Sovereignty. It is precisely this concept, which carries within itself the ambiguity of dreams and often brutal reality, the common thread that runs between the 1920s and our 1920s. […]
In recent years, the attachment to sovereignty has spread widely, becoming “sovereignism”, almost as if to act as a buttress for thoughts and actions aimed at greater integration or sharing of aspects of sovereignty. And countries, as if to intensify their identifying and mutually distinctive characteristics, are more often meticulously called “Nations”. The “nationalism”, which follows on a logical and emotional level, will this time be able to keep itself from overflowing, as has happened so many times in the history of peoples, in a sense of superiority of one’s own nation, of moral justification – if not actually of moral imperative — to overwhelm other Nations? In 1995, the President of the French Republic François Mitterrand, born during the First World War and fighting in the Second, concluded his last speech to the European Parliament by exclaiming: «Nationalism is war».
Economists, newspapers, political decisions: the affinities between Keynes and Einaudi
When Keynes exercised an important influence on the Paris (1919) or Genoa (1922) Conferences, he was certainly an internationally known economist, but he had not yet published either the Treatise on Money (1930) or the General Theory on Employment , Interest and Money (1936) which would make him a great innovator in economic thought and one of the most influential figures of the 20th century on a global level not only in the economic, but also in the social and political fields. How can we explain, then, that the British economist already had considerable authority in Paris? And even more so in Genoa, where he wasn’t even a member of his country’s delegation?
The answer is all in this volume: his articles. Yes, Keynes was convinced of how necessary it was for an economist to write in newspapers to disseminate and promote his ideas, both among the general public and in the circles of policy-makers themselves. […] Our author not only threw himself passionately into journalistic discussions, but he did it, we could say, with an industrial method and with the entrepreneurship of a great “influencer” of today. In his Introduction, Andrea Moroni explains the meticulous planning of the releases not only in English but also in French, German, Italian and Spanish, so that public opinion and experts from all the main Western linguistic communities were reached by his message. […]
Naturally, the Italian newspaper chosen by Keynes was the «Corriere della Sera». Thus, both due to the mutual esteem and direct relationships that existed between Keynes and Einaudi, and due to the choice of the «Corriere» made by Keynes, a corpus of thought was created, sometimes dialectical, between the two economists [.…]
Moreover, there was a surprising affinity between Keynes and Einaudi in the economist’s understanding and practice of journalistic activity. The Cambridge economist, we saw above, relied on multinational journalism to influence the British government and other governments. The economist from Turin and Bocconi was convinced both of the educational function of the news press and of the fact that the formation of a public opinion favorable to a thesis influences the authorities themselves, making them more willing to accept that thesis. […] Both Keynes and Einaudi, in a certain sense, considered it their duty not only to educate their students and public opinion in the economic field, but also to constitute a challenge – today we would say a benchmark – for the government authorities. The large newspapers therefore have a very important role, almost as a “public service”, in pushing for “good governance”. […]
The United Kingdom after Keynes and the international order: intellectual leadership and inward-looking
This volume shows in an exemplary way, through the public activism and political persuasion of John M. Keynes, the leading role that, also thanks to him, the United Kingdom had in that historical phase, but also more general, in contributing to designing the international order, particularly in the economic and financial fields.
In Keynes’ time, it was Lloyd George who launched the Genoa Conference (1922) for the economic reconstruction of the European continent and Keynes in a certain sense “guided” it from the outside. Bretton Woods (1944) saw the United Kingdom and Keynes in a very prominent position and with an ambitious program, although not a little opposed by the United States.
The first post-war manifesto for European unification is contained in the short speech given by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich in 1946. Yet the United Kingdom would only become a member of the European Communities in 1973.
Perhaps the most important pillar of today’s European Union, the Single Market born in 1993, was intellectually conceived and politically pushed, during the presidency of Jacques Delors at the Commission, by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and by the British Commissioner for the Single Market, Lord Cockfield . […] When the United Kingdom was still a member of the EU, it was its Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in his capacity as rotating president of the G20 in 2009, who made this body the engine of new regulation after the global financial crisis and directed a great effort common to counteract its recessive effects.
After leaving the EU, approved by referendum in 2016, the United Kingdom government has repeatedly declared that, free from the “weight” of the EU, the country would take a leading position in a new globalization, benefiting greatly in terms of of economic growth and political weight in the world.
Without underestimating the many strengths that the United Kingdom retains, that prophecy cannot be said to have come true.
Sometimes I think about what the European Union could be today, if the United Kingdom had not undergone the very long ordeal that led it to leave the EU, if it were still a driving force for structural reforms and for the competitiveness of the whole Union, as it had been for years and if, perhaps, he had at his disposal a courageous and persuasive mind like Keynes was.
January 2, 2024 (modified January 2, 2024 | 12:10)
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