It’s the autumn of 1920, and we are in Brussels. Politicians and economists from across Europe sit at worktables, gathered for the first international economic conference in history. Despite the formal tones and elegant attire, the tension in the air is palpable. Their statements reveal a sense of encirclement, even anguish, over what they consider an unacceptable disorder, a social chaos that is pushing the capitalist economy to the edge of the abyss.
“The manual workers,” declares the English financier Robert H. Brand,
were encouraged to expect, and do expect, some new way of life, some great betterment of their lot. These changes, they believe, at any rate in my country, can be achieved if the system of private industry is replaced by some sort of Government or common ownership. They do not realise the hard truth that . . . a better life can, owing to the losses of the war, be now reached only through labour and suffering.
The conference was organized by the newly created League of Nations in the immediate wake of World War I with a crucial objective: to rebuild an economic order that had collapsed. Across Europe, nations were facing record inflation, food shortages, and mass strikes. Ordinary workers who had suffered during the war were now challenging the moneyed elite and demanding a complete overhaul of the economic system.
Amid the turmoil of that convulsive moment, politicians and economists fervently advocated a “hard truth”: citizens’ behavior had to be shaped and controlled according to the principles of economic science. People had to work harder, consume less, and expect little or nothing from the government. It was essential for citizens to renounce any form of labor action or assertion of their economic rights that hindered the flow of capitalist production. Lord Robert Chalmers, former permanent secretary to the British Treasury and one of the representatives of the English delegation, stated it plainly: “Work hard, live hard, save…
Auteur: Clara E. Mattei
