***Please Note...

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.

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.

Critique on Right-Libertarianism

Potential Problems of Libertarianism
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 Political Development of the Euro 

Western European Politics 

J. Robertson 

4 December 2012  

  

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.