Veiling the Controversies with Dubious Moral Attitudes? Creditors and Debtors in Keynes’s Ethics of International Economic Relations

Abstract

This paper addresses the enduring insistence on the moral dimension of international economic relations in Keynes’s economics and diplomacy. The issue has so far raised scarce attention in the literature, which tend to attribute some outstanding failures of Keynes’s economic diplomacy to the presumed instrumental use Keynes made of moral arguments. The paper provides a comprehensive account of the ethical arguments used by Keynes in his lifelong attempt to design a fair international order, and aims to demonstrate that this moral dimension is part of a well-defined ethics of international relations which privileges national policy space and freedom to choose.

Keywords: John Maynard Keynes, international economic relations, ethics, complexity

JEL Classification: B31, B40, F02, F5, A13