Keynes and the Complexity of International Economic Relations in the Aftermath of World War I

Ethics, economics and power in the Cambridge Apostles’ internationalism between the two world wars

“…Covenantal ethics, in fact, implies a much broader concept of mutual obligation than contractual ethics, and requires a higher degree of mutual trust (Elazar, 1998). As Carabelli andCedrini (2010b, 2012) have shown, Keynes's views of the adjustments between debtor and creditor countries after the First World War contain distinct ethical arguments, with similar non-economistic and non-contractualist features, which can be ascribed to the influence of Moore's anti-utilitarianism. In claiming that Germany's liabilities should be considered 'as a matter of politics and not of law and contract' (Keynes, 1982(Keynes, [1937: 64), and that 'the sanctity of contract is not an immutable law of nature' (Keynes, 1982(Keynes, [1937: 384), Keynes was attacking the false analogy of war debts with ordinary business transactions, then upheld by the US, and denouncing the 'rentier-like attitude' of creditor nations leading to global financial instability.…”

“…For Moore's association with Bloomsbury and the Apostles, see Regan (1986) and Levy (1981). The literature on the relationship between Moore and Keynes is very large: besides Keynes's major biographies (Harrod, 1963(Harrod, [1951; Moggridge, 1992;Skidelsky, 1983), see Braithwaite (1975), Carabelli (1989Carabelli ( [1988), O'Donnell (1989) and Marzano (1998), pointing to a substantial continuity of Keynes's Moorean ethical fundamentals, and Bateman (1988) and Davis (1991), stressing Keynes's rejection of part of his own earlier philosophic tenets after the First World War. Moore's influence on other Cambridge economists has not received equal attention, but see Donnini Macciò (2011Macciò ( , 2013aMacciò ( , 2013b.…”

On the Theoretical and Practical Relevance of the Concept of Gift to the Development of a Non-imperialist Economics

“…), and rather saw them as social actors who can and should cooperate internationally in the name of mutual respect for each other's freedom, if the opportunities of global interdependence must exceed its threats. Now, Mallard (2011) and Carabelli and Cedrini (2010a) have recently stressed the affinity between Keynes's and Mauss's reasoning about German reparations and the European economic conflict at the end of WWI -it is to be noted that Mauss, who considered the international environment as "le milieu des milieux" (Ramel 2004, p. 231) The Maussian character of Keynes's new order -wherein, as Sahlins (1972, p. 162) observed in relation to gift exchange in archaic societies, "the freedom to gain at others' expense is not envisioned by the relations and form of exchange" -may profitably 28 become the focus of a strongly interdisciplinary research on the international economic order. In particular, this research should aim at establishing the political foundations of a possible alternative to the current "non-system" which favored the most severe global crisis since the Great Depression in a context of unprecedented global and European imbalances.…”

“…The literature has mainly focused on Keynes’s presumed political naïveté and identified an abuse of moral arguments in his WWI diplomacy. A methodological reading of Economic Consequences of the Peace as an essay in the complexity of international economic relations (see Carabelli and Cedrini 2010a), to the contrary, provides reasons to believe that the concept of gift plays a fundamental role in Keynes’s vision.…”

Keynes'sGeneral Theory,Treatise on MoneyandTract on Monetary Reform: different theories, same methodological approach?

“…His concerns for organicism and interdependence are easily detectable in both Indian Currency and Finance and the Economic Consequences of the Peace. This latter is an essay on organic interdependence; that is, the organic interrelationships characterizing the European continent, threatened by the probable disruptive effects of the dispositions of the Versailles Treaty (see Carabelli and Cedrini 2010). Indian Currency and Finance ends with Keynes warning readers of the "complexity and interdependence of fact" and "the coherence of the [Indian financial] system", which, he writes, requires "the constant attention of anyone who would criticise the parts" (Keynes 1971a, pp.…”