It’s winter in the Great Northeast, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s not winter-y enough. I mean, unless you’re in Buffalo or thereabouts – and, if you are, I’m sorry for you – there just hasn’t been much snow. This is the Northern Hemisphere, folks: Winter should mean something.
A year ago right now, I was waist-deep in snow during a mid-winter break at Mount Washington, New Hampshire. That place has snow. Also, ghosts. Mount Washington is in Bretton Woods where, in 1944, several hundred men and a few women from around the world met to hash out a new international financial system. As I wandered the massive hotel there last year – which had hosted the great economist John Maynard Keynes, and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and so many other world leaders – I wanted to summon their ghosts.
Not that I’m looking to reshape the world financial order; I’d just like to ask them to show up in the 21st century and bring along some of their sensibility. I just wish the ghosts of Bretton Woods might do what flesh-and-blood humans apparently cannot anymore — namely, come together to solve complex and divisive issues.
The Bretton Woods conference came shortly after D-Day, when the Allies felt optimistic that they would be able to shape the post-war world. Delegates from 44 nations gathered because they knew that their own lack of cohesive action hadn’t stopped Adolf Hitler. They wanted a system to foster international economic cooperation to help protect from another such crisis.
There was a lot of division, but a plan eventually emerged: an International Monetary Fund to stabilize exchange rates and the flow of money, and a World Bank to lend funds that might speed rebuilding. Key to the agreement was the idea of open markets — since cooperation among nations, rather than competition, builds stability.
The approach lasted for decades, and the institutions the delegates established are essential players on the world stage today.
Think about that. Do you imagine there would be any hope for such agenda-setting today? So far, global efforts to agree on steps to retard climate change haven’t been very successful. And in America, leaders can’t agree among themselves about facts, on that and a lot of other issues, let alone shape a unified set of solutions.
But to say that we need bold and thoughtful leaders, and people of good will, tends to put too much stock in those important people who gather in great meeting halls to ratify agreements. That gives all the rest of us a convenient break from our own responsibility.
Back in the 19th century, a notion emerged that the world had been shaped by the influence of unique individuals. Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish philosopher, was the leading proponent of what came to be called “the great man theory” of history.
But leaders rise to their positions of historic influence based on the actions of countless others — or, notably, the inaction of those who might face them down. Genghis Kahn changed history – but his authority grew not only because he marshaled a massive fighting force, but also because a potential rival lost popular support after boiling 70 young male captives alive in cauldrons. Hitler’s “Final Solution” emerged as countless leaders averted their gaze and as millions of Germans embraced a morally indefensible outlook.
And hasn’t America seen this more recently? Donald Trump changed the world during his four years in power — but he didn’t rise to power because of his intellect or his charm. Rather, it was a result of forces that had been at work in America for years – including a failure to protect the economic interests of the working class as more wealth started flowing to the top in the 1980s, and an embrace of unscrupulous politicians who capitalized on racist fears.
In fact, many decisions by many people have led us to this point of vulnerability, because too many people failed to step forward to confront what they knew to be wrong when that opportunity presented itself.
Pining for the days when an assembled crowd of sober leaders can change our direction, as I did wandering the halls at Bretton Woods, isn’t useful. Big change comes only by the work of many hands, laying groundwork day by day and year by year — or by the failure to take up those necessary fights, which can leave the field open for ambitious opportunists who envision themselves as “great men.”
We don’t need ghosts as much as we need to be haunted by the recognition of our own failure to act as energetically as the situations have demanded. History suggests that rather than trying to summon supernatural spirits, we would do well to call forth activists and other people of good will — and join with them to bring about the change we await today.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack."
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.