The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Article Review Example

The work of John Maynard Keynes titled The Economic Consequences of the Peace was a real breakthrough in understanding the outcomes of Versailles Settlement signed after the First World War – it have an alternative point of view at the whole possible range of consequences that the cruel decision to paralyze Europe economically would involve. The issue concerned not simply preventing the countries that were the former rivals in the war to be unable to attack once more – the question already included the voluntary, conscious agreement to arrange homicide, mass hysteria, famine and panic in the countries that would be unable to provide for its dense population and would thus destroy themselves.

The arguments of John Maynard Keynes are every clear – due to his successive giving out the thoughts in a chronological order the reader becomes able to see the whole flow of events that took place in Europe before the war and how the Treaty impacted the life in Europe after the war. In chapter 1 of his book Keynes (1920) makes transparent and accurate observations on the account of Europe state of affairs in the social, economic and commercial spheres and introduces his opinion about the ‘destructive significance of the Peace of Paris’ (Keynes 5). The author recalled how full of comfort, rising in its standards Europe was before the war, and then turned to the Peace Conference in Paris in detail. Keynes tried to understand how the members of that conference, seeing the drama and the horror of the ruined Europe could sign such a catastrophic treaty from the point of view of the fullest neglect to rehabilitation of Europe. The author was guided by the question of what considerations the members were guided by that they managed to adopt the Settlement dooming millions of people to famine and death. At first Keynes aggress that England was apart from the suffering Europe because it was aside of the continent, thus being not crippled by the war. For this reason Keynes (5) emphasizes the impossibility of London’s members the Conference to understand the real treat of the European decay. The main surprise the author shows is that the crisis shouting at the members’ faces was so deeply neglected at the conference that it was too impossible to be true – the members were so obsessed by political, theological and ideological issues that they seemed completely uninterested in the further destiny of their nations, no matter whether they belonged to the defeated or the winning camp (Keynes 6-7).

Chapter 5 is dedicated to the awful financial losses that the defeated Europe had to suffer together with the economic crisis that came straight after the war. Keynes (184) tries to keep a proper account of the reparation that was imposed on the defeated countries and economically approaches the issue trying to find out by which means the countries could provide that reparation, what they needed to make it happen and what goods they would need to purchase to provide the standards that were far from the welfare situation in Germany before the war. The conclusions that Keynes reaches are very pessimistic – for Germany to achieve a more or less stable economic situation by May 1921:

“Germany would probably require foreign purchasing power of from $500,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 at least, in addition to the value of her current exports. While this is not likely to be permitted, I venture to assert as a matter beyond reasonable dispute that the social and economic condition of Germany cannot possibly permit a surplus of exports over imports” (Keynes 185).

The conclusion that he makes from Chapter 6 titled ‘Europe after the Treaty” is shocking by its obviousness – the Settlement signed in 1918 simply endorsed killing of millions of people due to their inability to provide for their living under the paralyzed economic situation. According to observations of Keynes (227) is that the population of Europe is not self-sufficient and high living standards that can be observed there are very much determined by their ability to conduct foreign trade:

“This population secured for itself a livelihood before the war, without much margin of surplus, by means of a delicate and immensely complicated organization, of which the foundations were supported by coal, iron, transport, and an unbroken supply of imported food and raw materials from other continents” (Keynes 227).

So what would happen to countries in which such import will become impossible? According to the opinion of Keynes, people are likely to seek migration, but there is no country that will welcome migrants from Germany. Thus, people are doomed to death from starvation and desolation in their native countries – this is the future to which the members of the Treaty agreed with their signatures in 1918 (Keynes 228).

In the address to the Peace Conference of the Allied and Associated Powers Count Brockdorff-Rantzau included his investigations of the consequences to which economic destruction would lead in Germany, emphasizing the fact that the country was solely industrial and heavily populated, that its economy was closely tied up to global one, and that provided the international ties are broken the country will experience mass famine and death (Keynes 228-230). However, the appeal found no answer, and the situation remained unsolved, leading the population of Europe, and Germany in particular, on the path of despair, famine and mass hysteria intensifying with the growing scale of deaths (Keynes 231). The figures provided by Keynes pertaining to the economic and industrial decay in Europe are shockingly eloquent – the essential region of the world was left neglected.

One more issue which Keynes addresses is the problem with the currency – on the example of Lenin’s revolution and ideology that dictated the possibility of redistribution of wealth only under the condition of destroying the accustomed currency (Keynes 285) the author shows the similar situation in Europe.

Surely, the present account does not touch upon all arguments enlisted by Keynes in his work; nonetheless, the major points that the author was trying to prove are analyzed. It is clear that the member of the Peace Conference in Paris were far from objectively realizing the true consequences of their Treaty and Versailles Settlement, which caused famine and death in Europe and prevented the powerful region of the world from full reconstruction, delaying it and pushing strong industrialized countries into despair, desolation and poverty. Much could have been prevented if the members of the Conference in Paris perceived the European problems in a more reasonable and realistic way, thus freeing Europe from many decades of sufferings and trauma.

Works Cited

Keynes, John Maynard. The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.