Conclusion: Out of Anarchy?

Abstract

Amidst the carnage of the First World War Lenin saw global capitalism as a system of monopoly competition and imperialistic nationalism which had become ‘a shell which no longer fits its contents … which must inevitably decay … [and] will inevitably be removed’.₁ He anticipated a general socialist transformation which, in the event, was to be initially confined to his own country. Elsewhere the capitalist system lived on, but in circumstances which could only serve to confirm rather than negate his diagnosis. The Versailles settlement, correctly viewed by Keynes as a recipe for disaster, imposed burdens on the weaker areas which made it impossible for them to rebuild, while the overwhelming strength of the USA, compounded by an irresponsible protectionism, caused it to appropriate an increasing proportion of the world’s surpluses. The greater part of the world’s population lived in colonial subordination, with industrialisation blocked by the self-interested policies of their occupying powers.₂

the avoidance of unemployment or under-employment, through the achievement and maintenance in each country of useful employment opportunities for those willing and able to work and of a large and steadily growing volume of production and effective demand for goods and services, is not of domestic concern alone, but is also a necessary condition for the achievement of the general purposes and objectives of the Charter, including the expansion of international trade, and thus for the well-being of all other countries.

(Havana Charter for an Intemational Trade Organisation, Article 2,1,1948)

The correction of maladjustments in the world economy of the magnitude of those which confronted the world after the last war and will again confront it at the end of this war cannot be left to market forces. The necessary adjustments will have to be carefully planned if we are to avoid a repetition of the international economic chaos of the interwar period.

(H. W. Arndt, The economic lessons ofthe nineteen-thirties, 1944, p.297)

Non-intervention in the market cannot apply when there is no more market. (C. G. Langoni, former Governor of the Central Bank of Brazil, Euromoney, October 1983, p. 20)