The London Economic Conference of 1933 was envisioned by Jane Addams and her ally, Eleanor Roosevelt, as a last, best chance to build an economic basis for an end to war. War, Addams believed, was clearly obsolete in a world where nations
depended heavily upon one another for natural resources, for
manufactured goods, and for markets for those goods. Therefore, a regularization of international trade, with tight restrictions on currency and commodity speculation, could create an economics that rewarded peace so well that nations would be deeply motivated to solve conflicts via diplomacy, not war. What went spectacularly wrong in l933 can inform us now, as we try to envision a new economics of peace for our time.
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