3 - Re-conceptualising Capitalism and Democracy

Summary

Chapter 3 reconstruct how the (collective) emotions, the political and economic practices, and the geopolitical and societal circumstances of the war times guided Western Europe to a path of deeper international and regional cooperation focused on free trade and valuta convertibility. During exile and occupation, European governments fleshed out plans and schemes for post-war cooperation, primordially in the domains of socio-economic and the financial-economic planning, in greater (practical) detail. These exercises were emotionally charged and driven by the lessons of the war against the Nazis and the post-war period after the First World War—a learning from history in which the churches played a leading role and co-prepared the political ground for the popularity of a new and hugely influential conservative political family in Western Europe: Christian Democracy.