Paul D. Cravath, The First World War, and the Anglophile Internationalist Tradition

The First World War played a central role in the creation within the United States of an Atlanticist foreign policy elite or establishment, a group of influential Americans drawn primarily from upper class lawyers, bankers, academics, and politicians of the Eastern seaboard, committed to a strand of Anglophile internationalism which to date has received considerably less scholarly attention than that of Wilsonian universalism. The evolution of the Atlanticist Establishment can be traced in the career of Paul D. Cravath, one of New York's foremost corporation lawyers. For Cravath, in his mid-fifties when the war began, the conflict served as an epiphany, sparking an interest in international affairs that dominated his remaining career. Fiercely Anglophile, he strongly supported American intervention in the war, and hoped that close Anglo-American cooperation would be the guiding principle of post-war international organization. In the 1920s Cravath urged the reduction of both German reparations and inter-allied war debts; he also supported United States membership in the World Court. Before his death in July 1940 Cravath, though initially far from optimistic that his country would once more take arms against Germany in the Second World War, was as staunchly pro-Allied as during the previous conflict.     

Labour in post‐colonial India: A response to Jan Breman

Resuming the debate with Breman about debt bondage in post‐Independence India, this reply to his two‐part survey explores the fact of and the reasons for continuing disagreements about the capital/unfreedom link in general, and in particular the connection between accumulation, the decommodification of labour‐power, the enforcement of debt‐servicing labour obligations, the presence/absence of coercion, and worker agency. Also considered is the analytical efficacy of using a depoliticized concept of worker ‘assertiveness'; the mere existence of the latter, it is argued here, is neither a defining criterion of proletarianization, nor an indicator of rising levels of class consciousness, and thus not as empowering as claimed.     

Old conservatism in ‘new’ clothes

This review article considers two books about development theory and practice informed by what is variously referred to as an ‘impasse'/'post‐impasse'/'post‐Marxist’ framework. The latter, its adherents maintain, is a new approach to development that transcends economic reductionism and instead recognises/celebrates cultural ‘difference’, ‘diversity’ and ‘choice’. By contrast, it is argued here that many of the allegedly ‘new’ claims/arguments advanced by the postmodern ‘impasse’ are those traditionally made not just by populism but also by conservatism.

Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, edited by F.J. Schuurman. London: Zed Books, 1993. Pp.ix + 233. £13.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85649 2109

Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research and Practice, edited by D. Booth. Harlow: Longman Scientific & Technical, 1994. Pp.ix + 319. £19.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 582 234972     

President-Elect Trump: Is the Past Prologue?

There is worldwide interest and concern over the pending US Presidency of Donald Trump. This article recounts the experience of the author and entrepreneur Merv Griffin with Trump in his business career and suggests clues for examining his exercise of the power of the Presidency. His choices for his cabinet and his advisers may well determine his success or failure. The evidence thus far is troubling.