The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950

"Or Rosenboim’s book has many interesting parallels with Frederick Cooper’s on African colonies. As early as 1939, everyone in Western countries could feel the world changing: they understood that it was on the brink of war, that the colonial empires were slowly crumbling down, and that both the United States and the Soviet Union had to somehow fit into this global equilibrium. This book is dedicated to the many debates that went on at the time on how to organise this new world. Some of these debates led of course to the creation of the United Nations—which is, in the end, quite a weakly integrated organisation—but also to many ideas about federalism. For example, few people know about the fascinating discussions between British and French intellectuals on what a possible Franco-British federation could look like after the war. In March–April 1940, they gathered in Paris and imagined this potential alliance, but with many different forms in mind. Some people’s intentions, such as Friedrich Hayek’s, was to prevent the advent of socialism and general redistribution, and preserve free market competition . On the opposite end, intellectuals like Barbara Wootton or William Beveridge—who later founded the National Health Service in the UK—were interested in redistribution, social security systems, progressive taxes on wealth and income, et cetera. Some others fell in the middle, such as Lionel Robbins, accepting the idea of free market competition but implying that a federal power and federal redistributive taxation could step in, if the flow of capital didn’t automatically correct for inequalities. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter This opposition indeed came back with the creation of the European Economic Community, and still holds back the EU. Of course, it’s not like Friedrich Hayek’s ideas completely won. His book Law, Legislation and Liberty went very far with the idea of creating institutions that would truly constitutionalise private ownership and prevent redistribution. But the EU’s refusal to go beyond purely economic and commercial federation means that it looks much more like what Hayek wanted than Wootton and Beveridge’s dream. Given the incapacity of social democrats to create transnational forms of democracy and fiscal justice in the last few decades, I think it’s time for Europeans to have this debate again. “All the graphs and tables in the world will never reach the expressive power of great novels” I do believe that they are under-utilised historical sources, but also a very good way of looking at the consequences of money and social inequalities on the lives, hopes, and dreams of individual people. All the graphs and tables in the world will never reach the expressive power of great novels, and these works of literature truly helped me to better grasp the daily reality of these societies. This interview with Thomas Piketty was conducted in French and translated by Edouard Mathieu."