Abstract
The prospect of peace brought back into the political discussion and Kalecki’s research agenda the question of the consequences of full employment for international trade and payments. Kalecki had earlier expressed his critical view on the possibilities of achieving full employment without international co-operation. In his articles for Przegląd Socjalistyczny in 1932, he had alluded to the difficulties of trying to achieve and maintain full employment in an open economy. On a unilateral basis, if one government alone attempts to reflate its economy, it risks difficulties in balancing its foreign trade, as domestic demand rises faster than demand among its trading partners. These difficulties could be overcome on a multilateral basis if reflation is coordinated with other governments, in order to ensure that all imported more so that all exported more. But this would be prone to imperialist rivalry, undermining international co-operation.
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Notes
- 1.
See Volume 1 of this biography, p. 53. See also Toporowski ‘Multilateralism and Military Keynesianism’ 2016.
- 2.
White Paper Proposals for an International Clearing Union London 1943 and Preliminary Draft Outline of a proposal for an International Stabilisation Fund Washington, DC 1943.
- 3.
In effect, it was the US Treasury’s proposals that won out at the United National Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods in July 1944.
- 4.
These talks, and Keynes’s part in them, are detailed in Chaps. 9–11 of Skidelsky John Maynard Keynes Volume 3 2001 and Keynes Collected Writings Volume XXV 1980a.
- 5.
‘Lessons of the Past’ Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Statistics 1943.
- 6.
Schumacher ‘The New Currency Plans’ 1943b. See also ‘Multilateral Clearing’ 1943a. Schumacher had been a German Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, but ended up as an agricultural labourer working on the farm of Robert Brand, the Managing Director of Lazard Brothers, who was, with Keynes, one of the British delegation to the Bretton Woods Conference. In 1941, Brand passed on to Keynes a memorandum written by his farm labourer entitled ‘Some Aspects of Post-war Economic Planning.’ See Keynes Collected Writings Volume XXV 1980a p. 21.
- 7.
Schumacher ‘The New Currency Plans’ 1943b.
- 8.
Skidelsky, op. cit., p. 231.
- 9.
Kalecki and Schumacher ‘International Clearing and Long-Term Lending’ 1943. Kalecki’s friend from his pre-war days in Poland, Oskar Lange, was rather more sanguine about the Keynes Plan, and defended it in a lengthy letter to the New York Times, on 9 April 1943. Lange’s only criticism was that the proposed method of determining the ‘fundamental disequilibrium’ of exchange rates by a majority vote of the Board of the IMF offered too much scope for political manipulation. See Lange 1985, pp. 198–200. The International Investment Board proposal was realised at Bretton Woods in the form of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or the World Bank.
- 10.
Kalecki and Schumacher ‘International Clearing and Long-Term Lending’ 1943.
- 11.
White Paper Proposals for an International Clearing Union London 1943, par 32 and 33.
- 12.
See United Nations ‘Growth, disequilibrium and disparities’ 1950.
- 13.
Cf. Samuelson ‘Theoretical Notes on Trade Problems’ 1964
- 14.
Skidelsky John Maynard Keynes Volume III pp. 334–335.
- 15.
Balogh ‘The Foreign Balance and Full Employment’ 1943.
- 16.
White Paper ‘Joint Statement’ 1944b; Skidelsky John Maynard Keynes Volume III pp. 338–340.
- 17.
Schumacher and Balogh ‘An International Monetary Fund’ 1944.
- 18.
Keynes letter to Kalecki, dated 30 December 1944, in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume XXVII 1980, pp. 381–382. With the negotiations for an American loan after the war, Keynes’s opinion of Balogh soured still further, and he called him a ‘Jewish Nazi’ (Skidelsky John Maynard Keynes Volume III p. 543.)
- 19.
Robinson, review of The Economics of Full Employment 1945. The ‘scarce currency’ clause was an arrangement introduced by the American Government allowing governments to discriminate in foreign trade against countries with persistent trade surpluses. See Kahn ‘Historical Origins of the International Monetary Fund’ 1976 pp. 16–19.
- 20.
Goldmann ‘Remembering Michał Kalecki’ Kalecki Papers PAN III—319/49.
- 21.
Osiatyński, editorial notes, Collected Works of Michał Kalecki Volume VII, p. 483.
- 22.
Kalecki and Tew, ‘A New Method of Trend Elimination’ 1940. The Gibrat distribution is a normal distribution of the logarithm of a variable. Kalecki showed in his paper that the distribution of factory size and personal incomes conforms to a modified version of this distribution. In his paper, Kalecki acknowledged the contribution of D.G. Champernowne, who was to be appointed Director of the Institute of Statistics. Kalecki ‘On the Gibrat Distribution’ 1945c.
- 23.
Institute of Statistics archive UR6/CQ/SI/ file 1 Part 2.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Letter of the Master of Balliol College to William Beveridge, 24 October 1944 in Institute of Statistics archive UR6/CQ/SI/ file 1 Part 2.
- 26.
Institute of Statistics archive UR6/CQ/SI/ file 1 Part 2.
- 27.
Friszke Adam Ciołkosz 2011, Chap. 14.
- 28.
Lange’s second wife Felicja told the author in an interview in 1991 that Lange had secured for Kalecki his UN positions. Malinowski went on become one of the founders of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
- 29.
Minutes of the Standing Committee of the Oxford Institute of Statistics, Institute of Statistics archive UR6/CQ/SI/ file 1 Part 2.
- 30.
Osiatyński, editorial notes, Collected Works of Michał Kalecki Volume VII, p. 483
- 31.
Letter of Michał Kalecki to Piero Sraffa, 15 March 1945, Sraffa Papers C152.
- 32.
Ibid., pp. 483–484.
- 33.
Ibid., p. 484.
- 34.
Ibid. Minutes of the 50th Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Institute of Statistics on 4 May 1945.
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Toporowski, J. (2018). Planning for Peace. In: Michał Kalecki: An Intellectual Biography. Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69664-5_8
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