About four in 10 Americans believe in ghosts, and half of those people say they’ve seen one. I’m not in their camp, but I’ve sometimes found myself wishing to bump into some of those who have left this side of the veil.
In fact, at this time last winter, I was poking around an elegant old hotel in New Hampshire, hoping for some sort of encounter with ghosts – namely, the several hundred men and women from throughout the Western world who met there 80 years ago to hash out a new international financial system. They called it the Bretton Woods conference.
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 desperately wish the ghosts of Bretton Woods might show up and help us do what flesh-and-blood humans apparently cannot do anymore — namely, come together to solve a complex and divisive issue.
The Bretton Woods conference of 1944 came shortly after D-Day. Delegates from 44 nations gathered, acutely conscious of how the cost of reparations after World War I had left Germany in economic tatters – which had made it fertile ground for the rise of Nazism – and they knew that it was their own lack of cohesive action that had allowed Adolf Hitler to march through Europe, and ultimately begin the slaughter that became the Holocaust. Everybody seemed to agree that a system to foster international economic cooperation would help protect from such a crisis – but there was very little agreement on how that might take shape.
Yet after three weeks of long and detailed talks in Bretton Woods, delegates emerged with a plan: 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 — the idea being that cooperation among nations, rather than competition, would build stability. A few years later, similar negotiation gave us the United Nations.
What I long for just now is the spirit of Bretton Woods. I wonder if there’s any hope for such agenda-setting today. You know, global efforts to fight climate change haven’t exactly winged along, and in our own nation, leaders can’t agree even about facts, and often can’t even figure out how to keep government running. And plenty of our political leaders seem willing to turn away from the fights in Ukraine and the Mideast, as though ignoring today’s reality won’t lead us to tomorrow’s calamities.
We seem to be desperately in need of bold and thoughtful leaders, and people of good will who can work together. Saying that, though, 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.
We should know better by now. Back in the 19th century, a notion emerged that the world had been shaped by the influence of unique individuals. It’s the so-called “great man theory” of history. Not that all the influencers were either good or male: Genghis Kahn founded the largest contiguous empire in history by killing tens of millions of people, and Cleopatra surely changed the world by force of either her intellect or her charm.
But I’m not so sure about the “great man theory.” Yes, individuals shape events and events shape history. But leaders rise based on the actions of countless others — or other events. Take Genghis Kahn: 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” took hold because countless leaders globally averted their gaze – and because millions of Germans embraced a morally indefensible outlook.
Do you see where we’re going here?
Donald Trump changed the world during his four years in power. He slowed momentum on climate change solutions. He sowed chaos as a global pandemic took hold. He gave license to autocrats in many societies. But his rise to the White House didn’t occur because of his intellect or his charm. No, it was a result of forces that had been at work in America for years -- including society’s failure to protect the economic interests of the working class as more wealth started flowing to the top in the 1980s. And that, in turn, gave unscrupulous politicians an opportunity to capitalize on fears among white voters that ethnic and racial minorities were displacing their power in society.
So pining for the days when an assembled crowd of sober leaders can change our direction – as I did wandering the halls at Bretton Woods – well, that’s not useful. Big change comes only by the work of many hands, 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.