My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyPart TwoThe crisis we face at homeHow far we are from any sane regulation of European affairs is well illustrated by thefurious resistance even within Britain itself to any State intervention in the question ofwages and prices, which is clearly a prerequisite both to any solution of our owneconomic problems today and to the later establishment of a fair basis of competitionwithin the larger European community which Britain now thinks of entering. Whatappears to me a major error will probably continue so long as the complacency of theaffluent society endures, until we have a real crisis; then things can change almostovernight.The leading authorities of the present system in Britain, America and Europe believethat nothing of the kind will occur, though their complacency begins to be shaken. Iremain convinced that crisis in a form fairly similar to that of the thirties can recur,even in an aggravated degree. We are told that all the pre-war tendencies have beenovercome by new devices, that the built-in stabilisers of a more expert handling ofcredit and taxation—all too easy to understand, for we were advocating thesemeasures thirty years ago— coupled with new arrangements for international liquidity,will prevent a return of economic crisis. Opposition to this opinion is regarded as alegacy from the thinking of the thirties. Thus we are in deep disagreement at the keypoint, and at last approach the answer to my old question: is Keynes enough? Thepundits of the present system reply yes, for in America they have brilliantly andhitherto successfully applied the doctrines of Keynes. I reply no, for the reasons Igave long ago, which have been reinforced and increased not only by my subsequentthinking but by the long-term trend of events.Before we approach the deeper question—is Keynes enough?—it is well shortly toregard a matter in which Keynes more than thirty years ago was still seeing furtherthan our present rulers, or any representatives of the three old parties of the Britishstate. I have already mentioned Keynes's articles on national self-sufficiency in July1933, when he approached the economics which I advocated on my resignation fromthe Government. The exaggeration of the classic free-trade doctrine expressed in theexport theory of the Labour Government in 1929 and of its successor the NationalGovernment, seemed to him then an error. He approached sympathetically questionsraised directly in my resignation speech in May 1930: 'We must always, of course,export sufficient to buy our essential foodstuffs and raw materials, but we need notexport enough to build up a favourable trade balance for foreign investment... or topay for the import of so many manufactured luxury articles as today come into thecountry. We have to get away from the belief that the only criterion of Britishprosperity is how many goods we can send abroad for foreigners to consume.' Keynesthen recognised the inevitable difficulties of our export trade inflated to this abnormalextent and suggested a change of position, which was not far from the policy of'controlled imports' advocated in my resignation speech.The concept of controlled imports coupled with the floating exchange rate which wasinherent in my policy from the Birmingham proposals in 1925 to my resignation in1930 is the exact opposite of the present method of all main parties of the state, but ismuch nearer to the views of Keynes. I wrote after the war in I954: 'It is the control ofimports and not the control of exchanges that is the key ... it is the movement of goodsin and out of countries which matters in terms of economic reality, not the movement408 of 424