Meeting in the wake of the Great Depression, they were deeply aware of what the republican political theorist Hannah Arendt termed 'the terrifying predicament of mass poverty'. The previous decades had made clear that individual effort and personal responsibility were painfully inadequate in the face of mass unemployment and social dislocation – and that state inaction risked fostering rebellion. The rise of socialism and communism had placed 'the social question' on the international political agenda – including at the United Nations.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 150