Unemployment

Before the world war, there were people who said that a catastrophe of this kind could not last long. The world economic conditions that have emerged for the present, with the complicated relationships between nations, should soon bring about conditions under which such a war could not continue.

It was “political economy” that spoke thus. Reality spoke differently. Its language penetrated more deeply. It overran the world economic interrelations. And today this overrunning has become world economic chaos.

One bitter symptom, among many, of this chaos is unemployment. Its origins are just as much a mystery to the “economic insight” as the long duration of the war.

But both the long duration of the war and unemployment, as well as many other things, clearly show that the “economic insight” that has judged them is not really insight.

In the development of the world economy, the historical necessities of human evolution have been at work. However, the institutions that have been set up in the course of this development have been influenced to a large extent by political intentions that ran counter to economic necessities.

The exchange rate conditions that are now paralyzing and corrupting all economic activity could never have arisen from a world economy that was not crossed by political thinking.

The emergence of the world economy has made it necessary to create administrative bodies for economic life that work from the conditions of the economy itself. Such administrative bodies can only be associations that arise from the conditions of production, consumption and the circulation of goods. Only such associations are able to shape the interaction of the three factors mentioned in such a way that, for example, unhealthy production on the one hand does not deprive countless people on the other of the opportunity to produce. Unemployment can only be the result of unhealthy economic management.

It is not claimed here that unemployment can be counteracted by this or that theoretically conceived recipe. That would be utopian thinking. It is meant that in the living activity of associations that arise from the needs of the economy itself, a way of thinking can develop that results in healthy conditions.

Only in an economic life that develops in this way can a healthy political life also flourish.

As long as there was no world economy, political intentions could be realized in the old way. For the individual national economies could be shaped in their own interests. The world economy can only develop in a healthy way out of its own conditions.

And in a similar way to which the development of the world economy strives towards an independent associative economic administration, so through historical necessity the newer spiritual life is shaped out of its own conditions.

Lord Cecil dreams of the future of the League of Nations. For what he said at the League of Nations conference is indeed a dream: that “later on” this League of Nations will bring salvation to the world through the participation of the statesmen of all countries in impressive debates. This “dream” comes from the same root as the “insight” that a world war cannot last long because of the world economy. The same root could well give rise to the “insight” that unemployment on the scale that prevails today cannot arise within the world economy.

If the world economy had been effective based on its conditions, we would not have had a world war. Its length had its origin in the ineffectiveness of the world economic underpinnings. The discussions Lord Cecil dreams of can only become a fruitful reality if they do not create causes in the life of nations that “cannot” actually be there, just as, according to “economic insight”, the causes for a long duration of the war were not there at all. But thanks to political “insight,” what was impossible in terms of world economics was possible after all. The “politically insightful” also had dreams that, in the opinion of the “economically insightful,” had no possibility of being realized.

After the experiences of recent years, there can be little confidence in the realization of dreams in the manner of Lord Cecil.

A League of Nations needs world politicians. They must replace the “dreams” of the old style of politics with the doctrine that speaks so loudly of how much this old politics has corrupted the world economy. It has simply not thought about the independent conditions of the world economy. In the debates that arise on the basis of an associative economic life, the economic forces themselves will flow in. They will be able to be shorter than the political-economic ones. For a large part of the essential will not be expressed in words but in the actions of the personalities in the associations. What is said will only be the guiding principle for action.

Those who really think in terms of the world economy will be able to be assisted by politicians who work fruitfully with them.

Unemployment! People cannot find work! But there must be work. Because people are there. And in a healthy social organism, the work that cannot be done cannot be superfluous, but must be missing somewhere. So much unemployment, so much scarcity. But this clearly indicates that unemployment can only be counterbalanced by the general recovery of economic institutions.

The chaotic interaction of politics, intellectual life and the economy undermines this recovery. It produces statesmanlike dreams, just as a chaotic interaction of the organic functions in man produces disturbing dreams. It is time that the public life of nations learned to distinguish dreams from true realities. Dreams are not without effect. If their character as dreams is not recognized, they create false realities. The world war was the result of many people being too comfortable in their dreams to avoid oversleeping true reality.