For all whom may read this blog, please be aware that I did not post my samples in chronological order.
To view my most recent essays, please look at the top left corner of each post for the date of submission.
The most recent essays are those from the Fall of 2012.
Thank you.
Writing Samples
Saturday, December 29, 2012
A Psychodynamic Approach to Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness
Modern British Literature
22 April 2010
Minds
at Odds: A Look into the Psychodynamic Theory in Literature
In both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
and Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, the role of “the journey”
works as the ultimate vessel of social education. The premise of “the journey” works
as a vehicle with which the authors express their concerns for Man’s moral psychology.
More specifically, Conrad and Shelley are concerned about what circumstances may
push “good” individuals to commit nefarious acts. A closer reading of these
texts reveal that both Victor Frankenstein and Kurtz’s journeys are
explorations into the dangers of what psychologist Sigmund Freud calls the “Psychodynamic Theory.”
This theory suggests that people lack inherent
morality, and human behavior is instead governed by two fundamental instinctual
forces: sex and aggression. These unconscious forces compose the “Id,” and are
believed to be in perpetual conflict with the other subconscious, morally idealistic
“Superego” and the conscious, rational “Ego.” Freud suggests that the reason
individuals behave in a civilized manner is due to the suppression of Id
instincts demanded by society. Consequently, the Psychodynamic Theory implies
that an individual’s moral standards are malleable, and when given the proper
circumstance, an individual may succumb to Id urges and act barbarically. This
essay will compare the plot developments of Frankenstein and Heart of
Darkness in order to examine how the role of “the journey” supplements our
understanding of Kurtz’s and Victor’s fall into insanity within the context of the
Psychodynamic Theory.
Perhaps the most disturbing part about
the journey of Victor Frankenstein’s life is his total loss of control of his
Id urges. Despite being born into “one of the most distinguished” (Shelley 27)
families of Geneva, Victor’s life focuses on attaining fame and power if only
he could “render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!” (35-36) Close
reading reveals that Victor’s obsession is actually an attempt to channel his
sexual frustrations into a “productive” project.
In the first chapter Victor establishes
his incestuous lust for his adopted sister Elizabeth. He remembers her as “a
child fairer than pictured cherub—a creature who seemed to shed radiance from
her looks, and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the
hills” (30). He continues to describe her as a “promised gift…a possession of my
own,” of which “no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which
she stood to me—my more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only”
(31). Victor’s insatiable lust for Elizabeth serves as the primary source for
his obsessive behavior in later chapters. The torment of growing up next to the
girl of his forbidden sexual desires leads him to transcend all moral
boundaries and make a nefarious attempt to emulate God. The motivation to
discover the Elixir of Life serves as Victor’s method of coping with his subconscious
psychological conflict. Not only does this passage introduce the emotional
conflict afflicting Victor, but it also sets the stage for his maniacal
journey.
As the plot continues, we see the
tension between these subconscious forces grow. One key turning point in
Victor’s increasing psychoticism occurs in the passages surrounding the creation of the monster. Although Victor
shows devout conviction in his project just preceding the creation, he
experiences a brief lapse of confidence when he confesses
I doubted at first whether I should
attempt the creation of a being like myself, or one of simpler organization;
but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to
doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man (48).
This
confession provides insight into Victor’s psychological state at a crucial
point in the novel. The structure of his opening phrase—“I doubted”—indicates a
degree of self-awareness and shows that at this point Victor’s behavior is
still controlled by the rationality of his Ego (the conscious force which acts
to balance the Id and Superego urges). Although Victor seems aware that his
actions affect other people, he eventually succumbs to the irrational motivations
of his Superego and proceeds to emulate God and give life to the monster. This
internal struggle is evidenced when Victor confides that he “had desired [to
bestow life] with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that [he] had
finished…breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (51). At this point
in the story, Victor’s conscious Ego fights to retain control over his
subconscious urges, but he eventually loses himself and gives in to his
psychotic desires, demonstrating the fragility of the human mind and marking
his fall into madness.
Later on, Shelley places Victor in
circumstances that further catalyze his descent into madness. He becomes
depressed, and his guilt (yet another side effect of contradictory subconscious
motivations) pushes him into extreme isolation to the point that he no longer
understands how to deal with his emotions. By chapter XXI he shares his
despair: “I often endeavored to put an
end to the existence I loathed; and it required unceasing attendance and
vigilance to restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence” (162). This
last plea solidifies Shelley’s message, warning her audience that when placed
under the correct triggers, anyone is
capable of atrocity.
Although Heart of Darkness
was published decades after Frankenstein, Conrad tells his story using
many of the same thematic elements as Shelley. As Kurtz’s story gains light via
Marlow’s narration of the Congo, we eventually discover that his reason for his
barbarity during his quest for ivory stems from the same obsessive motivation
as Victor—the motivation to satisfy his sexual urges by marrying his “Intended”
(Conrad 71). Their initial engagement “had been disapproved…He wasn’t rich
enough or something…He had given [Marlow] some reason to infer that it was his
impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there” (75). Once again,
basic Freudian instinctual urges underscore the protagonist’s motivation and
lead him on treacherous pursuits. Though Kurtz himself never revealed his desire
for his Intended, Conrad uses Marlow to relate her mysterious allure. Upon
their encounter, Marlow recalls how
she struck me as beautiful …I concluded
I would go and give her back her portrait and those letters myself. Curiosity.
Yes. And also some other feelings perhaps…I don’t defend myself. I have no
clear perception of what it was I really wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of
unconscious…one of those ironic necessities that lurk in the facts of human
existence. I don’t know. I can’t tell. But I went (72).
This passage reveals Marlow’s inability
to explain his true motivation for visiting the Intended, and reinforces the
Psychodynamic Theory. The first line suggests Marlow’s physical attraction to
her, while his lack of “clear perception” and blatant awareness of some
unconscious motive force serve to illustrate Marlow’s
struggle to understand his own behavior. While he is aware of the presence of a
subconscious force, Marlow’s sexual attraction to the Intended proves strong
enough that he still yields to these urges and visits her. From this passage,
it is reasonable to deduce that the Intended held the same, or stronger,
influence on Kurtz, since he willingly risked his life in the Congo in order to
marry her and thus win a sexual monopoly on her. This passage parallels
Victor’s obsession with Elizabeth, as both protagonists engage in highly
irrational behaviors in order to cope with their sexual frustrations.
As
Marlow continues his journey into the Congo, he hears about Kurtz’s insanity
from people who’ve witnessed his sadistic behavior, but only gets a few chances
to witnesses it himself. One of these moments occurs when Marlow arrives at the
inner station. Marlow uses the hut surrounded by human heads stuck atop wooden
stakes to show how much “Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his
various lusts, [and] that there was something wanting in him—some small matter
which when the pressing need arose could not be found under his magnificent
eloquence” (57). The fact that Kurtz actively murdered the Congolese and was
reputed to shoot people at will is sufficient to conclude that at the time of
Marlow’s arrival, Kurtz was already under complete control of the Id. At first,
these lines suggest that Kurtz may have lost sight for his Intended, as he
seemed too engrossed in satisfying his animal urges to remember the idealistic
goal which sent him to the Congo in the first place, but later passage reveal
that Kurtz’s Superego did indeed maintain an influence on him, in the form of
writing letters of his experiences to his Intended.
Just as in Frankenstein, a
number of environmental and social factors led to Kurtz’s moral corruption. As
with Victor, prolonged social isolation and an obsessive channeling of sexual
desires provided the right environment to exacerbate the battle between the Id
and Superego. Although the audience does not directly witness Kurtz’s mental
demise, Conrad chose to emphasize his remorse for his actions while he lies on
his deathbed. As he dies, Conrad gives allows him to reflect on his immoral
atrocities, making him utter “ ‘The horror! The horror!’ “(69) as his final
words. These words work to signify Kurtz’s brief, but final, reclamation of
rationality (and therefore his Ego). This inference is further supported by the
stress Marlow gives to try to alleviate negative attitudes towards Kurtz,
saying that he likes
to think my summing-up would not have
been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry—much better. It was an
affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable
terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory (70).
These lines, just like Victor’s
declaration of suicide, assert that there lies within every individual the
possibility for repentance, and that the opportunity for individuals to regain
their sanity never fades.
Overall,
the role of “the journeys” presented in Frankenstein and Heart of
Darkness work as secondary tools to support our understanding of each
protagonist’s descent into madness. Although the situations and social contexts
of the protagonists differ, both novels share the major thematic elements
aforementioned which have earned their place at the forefront of Western culture.
Their universality undoubtedly comes from the fact that Shelley and Conrad have revealed an ugly, yet undeniable
truth to their audience: no one, regardless of economic or social background,
is invulnerable to the influences of the subconscious forces outlined by Freud.
Whether we want to admit it or not, at some point each and every individual has
entertained thoughts of taboo desires, but have been able to suppress those
motivations due to the self-control imposed on them by their Egos. What keeps Frankenstein
and Heart of Darkness relevant in today’s literature is the fact that
they provide us with a mirror to our inner psyche, and provide us examples of
the dangerous potential we all possess.
Bibliography
Conrad,
Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Norton, 2006. Print.
Shelley,
Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2003.Print.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Critique on Right-Libertarianism
Potential Problems of Libertarianism
Social and Political Philosophy
D. Wright
Social and Political Philosophy
D. Wright
13
December 2010
A Critique on Right-Libertarianism
Doubts about the viability of
right-libertarian societies come from its radical attitudes against
institutions that employ egalitarian programs to rectify the unequal
distribution of holdings brought on by capitalism. Right-libertarianism takes
an astute stance on individual rights and believes that the incomparable preservation
of these rights provide a sufficient framework for establishing a theory of
justice.
Their advocation of full self-ownership
leads them to reject any force that they perceive to inhibit an individual's
negative rights. This concept of self-ownership suggests that people have a
right to self-determination in pursuing their individual interests. This causes
right-libertarians to oppose conventional political institutions, on the grounds
that they violate self-ownership rights through compulsory taxation and
mandating other social duties from individuals under the threat of imprisonment
or monetary penalties. They believe that it is unjust to let governments
override "what people in a particular society believe to be the rights of
individuals with respect to other individuals" (Friedman 111).
The particular beliefs of
right-libertarians (and anarchists in general) are discomforting to many
because they seem to disregard popular intuitive notions about social justice;
especially in what appears to be their huge disinterest in elevating the
situation of individuals whom are the economically worst-off. It has become the
norm in western societies for people to sympathize (to various degrees) with
those groups whom appear to be at a substantial economic disadvantage through
no obvious fault of their own. This clash between intuitive justice and the
rationality basis for absolute self-ownership has been the sours of extended
scholarly debate, although neither side has yet to 'win' the ideological
debate.
This
paper aims to examine further the right-libertarian notion of full
self-ownership and challenge its discontinuities within political society,
under the auspices of left-libertarianism. The main problem with the
right-libertarian argument is its astute commitment to enjoining the concepts
of moral self-autonomy and political autonomy. This is problematic because the
conditions that right-libertarians establish for each of these concepts are
mutually exclusive. This essay will first provide background on basic
right-libertarian attitudes, followed by a brief discussion on its
inconsistencies. It will then consider a right-libertarian response to these
inconsistencies, and attempt to justify the left-libertarian's reconciliation
of self-ownership rights and political autonomy.
The framework from which libertarians
have formulated their attitudes on self-ownership and property rights have
their roots in the Enlightenment and the political theory of John Locke (Moulin 348). Locke's theories empowered the role of the individual
within political societies, and greatly influenced modern liberal philosophy.
Besides emphasizing self-ownership and equal rights for all citizens,
liberalism advocated that political legitimacy could only come from popular
consent. This developed into today's 'social contract' theory. The factions
within liberalism are largely based off divergent interpretations of Lockean
philosophy. While right-libertarians interpret self-ownership to be absolute
and unchanging, left-libertarians believe Locke was willing to concede a
portion of these rights in order to function within political communities.
For right-libertarians, Locke's theory
of private property has consistently been used to legitimize their argument for
self-ownership. This theory rests is his belief that because we exist, as
equals, as the end-result of God's labor, and thus are ultimately His property,
we have a moral duty to abstain from actions that would compromise the
well-being and preservation of our fellow Man. This implies Locke's belief that
because we are God's property, we cannot claim absolute, metaphysical
self-ownership. While this religious appeal for incomplete self-possession may
not offer the ideal counter argument for the right-libertarian debate, it is
significant that Locke admits to Man's subordination to a higher power. It is
this misinterpretation of Locke that misleads right-libertarians into endorsing
the inseparability of individual rights, even in the name of the public good.
One key point to examine when in
figuring out the proper function of individual autonomy within political
societies is Locke's theory of private property acquisition through labor.
"Although
everything on Earth is initially given in common, Man has an exclusive property
in his own person: this no body has a right to but himself" (Locke 19).
Locke says that the "labour of his body…are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes
out of the state that nature…he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that
is his own, and thereby makes it his property" (Locke 19). Thus, he believes that
"that labour put a distinction between them and common" (Locke 19). With this understanding self-ownership
and private property rights, we should examine how modern right-libertarians
treat Locke's distributive justice.
Right-libertarian justice is a historical approach because it defines 'justice'
as the fair exchange of initial holdings, and the continuance of justice as the
continued fair exchange of all property transfers thereafter. Robert Nozick
calls this the "Entitlement Theory" of justice (Nozick 359). Its
conditions for just holdings are as follows: just acquisition, just transfer,
and the rectification of past unjust acquisitions and transfers. Its corollary
principle sets a morally arbitrary bound to how far the rectification of past
injustice goes. It states that the rectification of justice "needn't be
that the foundations underlying desert are themselves deserved, all the way down" (Nozick 225).
When this logic is applied to property,
we see that these negative rights grant individuals the full protection of his
property from all nonconsensual seizure. The principle of conduct embedded
within the concept of negative rights (and which is also necessary for its
success) is the "nonaggression axiom," which implores the adoption of
a 'do unto others' moral mentality (Rothbard
23).
While right-libertarians seem
persuasive in saying that self-ownership demands a conception of the 'self'
that entails complete, autonomous property rights over themselves and their
external possessions, there seems to be something inherently dissociative in
this claim. "Surely, if every
man has a right to own his own body, and if he must grapple with the material
objects of the world in order to survive," then he "the right to own
the product he has made, by his energy and effort, a veritable extension of his own personality"
(Rothbard 31). Contrastingly, they circumvent the fact the economic theory they
employ to promote individual rights carries with it internal mechanisms that
more often than not, dissolve these rights of any substantive value. As we will find, the arbitrary
distinction made between the inalienability of negative rights and the ability
to contract out labor serves to weaken the right-libertarian argument.
While it protects individuals from
violations on their rights to life, liberty, happiness, and (real) property,
they willingly concede one's right to the property produced from one's physical
labor. They make an exception for labor because their theory heavily relies on
using capitalism as a means for people to procure resources and (theoretically)
to "choose our life and our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar
as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing
the same dignity" (Nozick 334). But since capitalism itself relies on
having continuous access to the means of production (i.e. access to resources
and human labor), it had to find a way to extract labor in a manner that does
not contradict their principles of negative rights.
It is under the premise of capitalism
that forced liberal thinkers like John Locke to change the relationship between
property rights and government. This provoked Locke's concession of certain
individual rights in the presence of organized society.
This fundamentally changes the nature of libertarian self-ownership, because now the property
rights an individual was purported to have under Locke's 'acquisition through labor' doctrine
can no longer be interpreted to mean that the individual is promised full-fledged
ownership over those things to which he has annexed his labor.
We must consider whether or not this
understanding of Locke undermine right-libertarian conceptions of absolute
self-ownership. I believe that it does, on the grounds that the ability to
contract-out one's labor proves the alienability of individual rights, and that
the flaw in right-libertarianism is that their attitudes about the moral injustice of
conceding "property rights to the state…has little or no theoretical
purchase; it becomes "so indeterminate that anything or nothing follows
from it" (Patemen 24). This issue materializes during no better time than when both
libertarian sides discuss the legitimacy of formal government.
The argument about the moral
justifiability of governments using compulsory taxation brings our discussion
back to the question of how right-libertarians ought to treat the concept of
self-ownership. As hinted to earlier, the legitimacy of government rests on how
one approaches the idea of labor within the scheme of private property rights.
Right-libertarians believe that there is some form of inner hierarchy of the
"self" which makes infringing on the 'highest' abstract rights (i.e.
the right to pursue happiness) more morally detestable than it does to infringe
on the 'lower' right to property. If labor can justly be exchanged under
voluntary consent, then the issue with permitting the right-libertarian
argument stand is that certain capitalist forces demand that businesses keep
production costs as low as possible in order to remain competitive. In
practice, this creates wage-labor classes that are deprived of the financial
means to pursue those civil liberties right-libertarians so adamantly endorse.
Because capitalism must regenerate its labor resources, all successive
generations after the populous of the 'initial acquisition' will be forced to
inherit those holdings which they had no say in acquiring. This suggests that
latter generations deserve
the results of those exchanges of which they had no opportunity to consent. There is something to be said about the patterning of this
unsolicited alienation of rights under the right-libertarian system.
Right-libertarians might respond to
this issue by emphasizing that their ideology is based on their stance against
coercive property seizure, and finds the proposed discrepancy between the
legitimacy of annexing one's labor, and the illegitimacy of annexing one's
rights to life, liberty, and happiness irrelevant to their cause. Their
emphasis lies in the "right to his own property without
having to suffer aggressive depredation, then he also has the right
to...exchange it for the property of others…without interference"
(Rothbard 24). They find no issue with arbitrarily alienating one subset of
rights for their argumentative convenience.
The problems with their objection is
that it does not do anything to explicate their moral justification in
compromising property rights. It is hard to understand how right-libertarians
feel comfortable with a theory which not only demonstrates incongruities with
the original philosophy that inspired it, but one whose promises of justice
dissolve (as has been evidenced by early industrialized societies) fall through
after its initial members exit the community. Their Lockean interpretation
seems inconsistent with the ends they try to achieve. Eschewing the idea of
involuntary labor while accepting the empirical conditions that exacerbate this
practice undermines their philosophical purchase; Locke's theory cannot be read
to advocate such circumstances, since his theory takes action to address these
structural problems, while right-libertarians allow them to remain. If both
theories really aim to seek similar end-goals (human flourishment), then
right-libertarians would do well to reconcile their attitudes about the
alienability of labor and the inalienability of life, liberty, and happiness.
Bibliography
Friedman, David. The
Machinery of Freedom. 2nd ed. Open Court: New York, 1989.
Locke, John. Second
Treatise of Government. Ed. C. B. Macpherson. Hackett: Indianapolis, 1980.
Moulin, Herve, and John
Roemer. "Public Ownership of the External World and Private Ownership of
Self." Journal of Political Economy.
Vol. 97, No. 2. Apr. 1989: 347-367. Nov. 12, 2010. <www.jstor.org>.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy,
State, and Utopia. Blackwell: Oxford, 1999.
---. "Libertarian
Rights." Arguing About Political
Philosophy. Ed. Matt Zwolinski. New York: Routledge, 2009. 358-370.
Pateman, Carole.
"Self-Ownership and Property in the Person: Democratization and a Tale of
Two Concepts." The Journal of
Political Philosophy. Vol. 10, No. 1. 2002: 20-53. Nov. 12, 2010.
<www.jstor.org>.
Rothbard,
Murray. For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. New York: Collier,
1973.
The Political Development of the Euro
The
Battle Over the Euro
In
the book, The Euro: The Battle for the New Global Currency, David Marsh
offers a historical account of the development of the continental currency, the
Euro, and explains what challenges Europe’s monetary union faces today. In this
essay, I wish to summarize some key events of its development, followed by an
analysis of some of the vital political and ideological aspects that have laid
the foundations for its current challenges. Finally, I will conclude this paper
by offering my personal assessment about the prospects of the Euro’s future.
Marsh’s
story begins with the financial tensions that began across Europe in the wake of
World War I. According to Marsh, the fiscal damages that both world wars
incurred “provided an inkling of the self-feeding effects of a breakdown
in political and financial cooperation” (p.28, Marsh). By the 1970s, Western Europe
had emerged from the monetary recovery provided by the Marshall Plan and the
Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system.
The
stability of this system, however, appeared to be waning in light of the
changing landscape of U.S. monetary policy and the emerging global markets. Soon
enough, European fears of the U.S. abandoning the Bretton Woods system were
confirmed. This declaration shifted Western markets from a “fixed” to a
“floating” exchange rate system, thereby usurping any security that European
nations previously held about the stability of their currency values.
Fearing
that drastic devaluations of their currencies as a consequence of turning away
from the U.S. Gold Standard, European leaders looked to the European Commission
of the European Economic Community (EEC) for a program to re-stabilize their
national currencies. Although there was a general consensus among European
states for necessity of establishing a single currency, France and Germany soon
became advocates of conflicting, and mutually exclusive, monetary theories. This
ideological fissure would prove to be a major obstacle on the path towards total European economic
unity (p.59, Marsh). This fissure will be discussed at greater length later on
in the essay.
One
of the first programs attempted to mediate the exchange rate fluctuations
inherent in the Bretton Woods system was the colloquial “Euro Snake” (p. 66,
Marsh). This program was set up by the EEC to control floating rates among its
member states by limiting their currency oscillations (p.66, Marsh). However, a
few weeks after Bretton Woods ended, this ‘floatation tunnel’ came to a halt,
proving to be an EEC failure. The implications of this were proof that “the
beginning of generalized floating left Europe with a de facto D-Mark bloc” (p.71, Marsh). Succeeding years showed how
the “Snake had shrunk from a major European Community policy instrument to an
informal mechanism” (p.80, Marsh). Clearly, a new monetary instrument was
needed.
This
new instrument came in the form of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) within the
European Monetary System (EMS). The ERM was intended to reduce volatility
between European currencies, and did an adequate job. Despite surviving these
challenges, pressures on the EMS were soon to far exceed the expectations that
its original authors could have imagined.
Over
the course of the 1980s and 1990s, efforts towards solidifying a single
currency union were stifled by various factors, some coming from within the
leadership of the EEC member countries, and some coming from external global
events. By the turn of the millennium,
however, the EEC—now the European
Union—managed to enact a single currency, the Euro. While this was certainly a triumph of
political and economic coordination, the years immediately following its
inauguration proved to challenge the strength of this project to the core, as a
global recession was dawning and pushing
European Union’s peripheral member nations to the fiscal brink. To reiterate, the
remainder of this essay will analyze some significant political and ideological
issues present during the Euro’s development that may have unnecessarily
increased the burdens facing the Euro area today. This will be followed by my
personal assessment of the Euro’s future.
Perhaps
the most intractable obstacle to successfully implementing a single European
currency is the longstanding ideological discrepancies between the French and
German monetary policies. Fearing a devaluation of their national currency and
the unlimited strength of the D-Mark, French politicians aggressively
campaigned to create a single continental currency after Bretton Woods.
Advocates of French monetary policy came to be known as “Monetarists.”
The
reasoning behind their theory was akin to the “strength in unity” theory, in
the sense that through cooperative economic policies, Europe would be able to protect
itself from global financial shocks. France, Belgium, and Luxemburg leaders
generally believed that a single European currency would insulate economically
weak states from global predation or obsolescence be instituting mandatory—yet strategic—capital
redistributions funded by more economically viable states (p.46, Marsh). This
would be done by capital redistributions from wealthy countries to weaker
countries in order to “provide
governments with the right tools to produce the convergence budgets, growth and
incomes that was both the goal of, and an essential support for, monetary
union” (p.46, Marsh).
Hence,
Monetarists believed that taking early steps to fix exchange rates were “a
prelude to full monetary union later,” and that successful monetary convergence
mostly depended on establishing “a common approach to monetary issues” across
member states.
While
one may find this fiscal ideology intuitively compatible to his or her sense of
justice, we must consider the rational of its ideological opponent before we
judge its real-world merit. Opponents to Monetarism mainly came from Germany
and the Netherlands, and operated under the label of “Economists” (p.48, Marsh).
Although Economists found a continental
monetary union for the sake of
maintaining Europe’s global competitiveness agreeable, they differed on the process by which this union should
occur.
This
ideological divergence “hinged on a crucial issue: whether money should be the
instrument, or the objective, of economic convergence” (p.46, Marsh). While
Monetarists saw money as the instrument, Economists saw it as the objective of economic unionization. Hence,
they “believed countries had to run convergent economic policies before they
could permanently fix exchange rates…monetary union would come at the end of a
long journey” (p.45, Marsh).
Pursuant
to this point, German and Dutch leaders resisted French unitization proposals that
could potentially obligate them to give monetary relief to those economically
“weak” countries. Such averseness towards this type of economic relief stemmed
from the Bundesbank’s “desire to prevent any repetition of the economic
waywardness that, in the 1920s and 1930s, had promoted the rise of Hitler”
(p.41, Marsh). It is no surprise then, why Germany was for so long completely
unmoving in its position to retain its D-Mark. The buildup of external
political pressures, however, would wear down the “divisions of responsibility
for the ‘internal stability’ of the D-Mark set by the Bundesbank’s interest
rate policy, and the ‘external stability’ governed by the Government’s stance
on the exchange rate” (p.40, Marsh).
When
put side by side, it is easy to see why nearly all of the early attempts at
economic integration either ended in stalemates or in policies that were too
weakened by their shortsightedness to survive the various
economic pressures placed upon them. It seems plausible that these prejudices
carried over between the successive administrations of France and Germany,
frustrating attempts at concessionary negotiations until less ideological
leaders emerged on both sides in the forms of Mitterrand and Kohl. Only then,
with their more politically oriented policy goals, and with younger, more
open-minded constituent bases, could these leaders afford to take the policy
risks they did pursuant to the dream of a unified continental market.
Another
obstructing theme in the Euro’s development manifested itself throughout Marsh’s
account in the form of more logistical apprehensions of managing a transnational currency: that is, German concerns about
the contingency strategies of a single monetary system. With our understanding
of the French and German attitudes towards monetary policy, the following
contingency concerns are sure to appear consistent with each party’s respective
beliefs.
One
major contingency issue concerning non-German EEC members ironically played on
Germany’s own apprehensions about obligatory financial bailouts for weak
states. This issue came about when West Germany was faced with the task of
reunifying with East Germany.
The
unanticipated collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 left West Germany unprepared
for this challenge. This was a major undertaking for Chancellor Kohl, whom was in
the midst of resisting increasing pressures from President Mitterrand and the
EEC to make a definitive decision on Germany’s commitment towards creating a
single currency. Given West Germany’s preexisting position as the monetary
‘anchor weight’ of the EEC, and the massive economic discrepancy between the East and West,
it was vital that Germany reunite with the impoverished GDR with tact to
prevent continental currency devaluations. Unfortunately, tumultuous currency
fluctuations are exactly what happened.
This
is due to Kohl’s “blatantly political” unilateral move to “introduce the West German currency to East
Germans,” as a means of persuading East Germans not to migrate to the Western
territories (p. 145, Marsh). This was an unprecedented departure from the
traditional “principles of financial probity on which West Germany had built
its forty-year post-war success” (p.145, Marsh). This move caused “the terms of
the monetary conversion” to be “greatly exacerbated” by the “East German
economy’s lack of competitiveness and inflated the overall German monetary
supply,” causing higher interest rates all over Europe (p.145, Marsh).
Kohl’s
blatant disregard for pursuing cooperative monetary policy initiatives, I
believe, set a precedent for the behavior of other nations, like Greece, to ignore
the rules set by the EMS. As the events of the 2000s unfolded, Greece and other
prospective Euro member nations repeatedly disregarded EMS policies themselves,
or became the beneficiaries of delegated ‘exceptions to the rule’ in the
European Union’s monetary proceedings. Such a lack of authority, combined with
the absence of an independent fiscal institution that could act like an arbitrator
for the continent’s capital flows, has pushed Europe’s economic future to the
brink of existence.
Although
idealistic, Europe’s crises have proved the inadequacy of the Monetarist
approach to creating a unified currency. I believe that the economic problems
Europe faces today—that of their ever amounting debt obligations among member
states and abroad—could have been avoided if leaders chose to establish an
independent and stringent fiscal institution to monitor and regulate capital
investments.
With
these considerations in mind, my assessment about the future of the Euro is
bleak. I think that both French and German leaders mishandled the process
towards unification. Both sides seem to have allowed their ideologies to get in
the way of progress, yet when they abandoned their policy principles, they
failed to fully commit to the cause. Such perpetual second-guessing of their
positions on the project and the ad hoc programs that ensued have proven that
perhaps Western Europe was not economically nor politically prepared to take the plunge into a
monetary union. In this sense, I would have to side with the Economist’s
approach, because it seems that the Monetarists relied too much on the D-Mark’s
power to alleviate their woes.
It
seems that after such a long process of integration, the Euro project will not
be abandoned easily, if at all. With the limited understanding of global
financial markets I have gained from Marsh’s history, it seems that the only
way that Europe can resolve its economic crisis would be to absolve all of the
debts of its insolvent member states. After this process, I think the Euro
would have to be put onto an economic respirator, to be closely monitored by an
independent central authority, much like the Federal Reserve. This massive
centralization would benefit the Euro states by avoiding the corruptive affects
of political and nationalistic interests that the leaders of its member states
have for so long pursued.
Although
strongly resisted in former years, this prospect is likely to become attainable,
as national leaders grow increasingly desperate for a solution to their
economic woes. This will not occur without stark resistance, but I think that
European leaders will be able to swallow their national pride and agree to
forfeit some of their economic sovereignty if it means saving their states from
financial chaos.
Bibliography
Marsh, David. The Euro: The Battle for the New Global Currency. Yale. 2011.
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