In the United States, the leftward trend of postwar European politics caused many to worry that the Communists might seize power in several countries. A strong socialist workers’ movement had never existed in the United States because of the primacy of race issues over class issues, and the Communists remained a small splinter party of utopians. Consequently, Americans did not appreciate that a strong majority in favor of socialist reforms was coalescing in Europe, and the large vote gains by the Communists frightened those on the other side of the Atlantic. The danger posed by the Communists appeared all the greater while the war’s lasting depravations impeded reconstruction efforts. It seemed certain that the Communists would exploit the impoverishment of Europe for their own purposes. As the assistant secretary for economic affairs at the State Department, William Clayton, put it in a memorandum of March 5, 1947: "Full of hunger, economic misery, and frustration," the majority of European countries were standing "on the very brink and may be pushed over at any time; others are gravely threatened." It was already possible to see that Communists would seize power in Greece and France in the wake of economic collapse in those countries. 779
As a consequence of this view, the first tool of America’s containment policy was economic. The Marshall Plan was intended to promote the resuscitation of Europe to such an extent that revolutionary programs would lose their appeal. The plan thus constituted an economic crisis response with a geostrategic rationale. Economic support for the European countries was desirable in any case in order to revive them as trading partners and foreign markets, and in order to prevent a lasting crisis ofoverproduction after the cessation of war-footing economic policy. That such motivations converged as a coherent plan in the spring of 1947 - following a series of individual measures - was the result of fears that the impoverishment of Europe might bring Soviet hegemony as far as the eastern shores of the Atlantic. Structural reform of Europe’s economies was intended to guarantee that the Western model would enjoy higher long-run productivity (and thus also legitimacy) than the Communist alternative.
Yet, fears of Communist takeover due to economic privation were greatly exaggerated. Reconstruction actually progressed rapidly after 1946. As early as 1947, most European countries had retrieved the industrial production levels of 1938; the very hard winter of 1946-47 was followed by an exceptionally good harvest in 1947-48, prior to the first deliveries of the Marshall Plan. The Communists did not aim to exploit economic distress but, on the contrary, urged workers to refrain from demanding wage increases so as not to endanger reconstruction. Nevertheless, the Marshall Plan propagated a vision of the future that countered the Marxist one: the model of a liberal society, founded on a market economy and parliamentary democracy, the needs of an advanced industrial society met by state planning for modernization, state-organized social equalization, and the greatest possible integration of national economies within a multilateral free-trade system. It was the American ideal in its ultimately successful New Deal variant rather than a resumption ofprewar liberalism, and during conflict-filled negotiations with the democratic governments of Europe it developed into the Western societal model. In the debates on the Marshall Plan, the West perceived itselfas an association ofpowers and as a societal vision, which stood opposed to the embodiment of the Marxist version in the Soviet Union.
Contrary to Western perceptions, the Soviets’ campaign against the Marshall Plan was not connected to a turn away from the expanded Popular Front strategy. Yet, intense pent-up frustration over lack of consumer goods during the reconstruction period produced large strike movements in the autumn and winter of 1947, leading to the Communists’ long-term isolation in the West. It was impossible for them to get back into government in France or Italy; even in Finland, they found themselves in the opposition once again after the elections of July 1948. This meant that the movement for social democracy lost its parliamentary majority almost everywhere, and that the expansion of the social welfare state proceeded less rapidly than its adherents had expected. Many spoke of a "restoration" of the old order, but, in fact, participation in the Marshall Plan pushed reforms onto a liberal course and promoted the integration of recipient countries into a wider economic and political association.
Two political circumstances strengthened the productivity promoted by the Marshall Plan. First, the outbreak of the Korean War generated a massive demand for capital goods. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was able to satisfy that demand all the more effectively because its productive capacity was not tied up in the armaments sector. Thus, the FRG was able not only to regain market share lost during the war, but also to achieve a strong long-term position in the world market. Second, the supranational nature of the Schuman Plan offered Western Europeans a guarantee that the liberation of German production from the constraints of the Allies’ occupation regime would not lead to the return of German political hegemony over the continent. Only by these means was German reconstruction made palatable to its European neighbors in terms of security policy and domestic public opinion.
The newfound climate of trust among the countries of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) was further strengthened by the high growth rates that Marshall aid had brought about. In order to avoid jeopardizing reconstruction, workers had to restrain their pay demands, entrepreneurs could not seek quick profits, and consumers had to accept higher prices for foodstuffs and other necessities. Investors were forced to accept that the war had obliterated their wealth, and those who depended upon the welfare state had to be satisfied with more modest aid. All of these strictures were easier to bear when the communal pie was getting larger and larger. Thus, high growth rates helped limit dissatisfaction and created a wide consensus about the desirability of reconstruction. It was indeed the case that this consensus remained vague and varied somewhat from country to country within the OEEC. The impression that the benefits of reconstruction were more or less fairly distributed was sufficient to avoid struggles over distribution that would have threatened its success. Unemployment rates fell, and during the 1960s, full employment was achieved almost everywhere in Western Europe.
On the basis ofthese indices, Western European reconstruction turned into long-term growth. Industrial production expanded at an annual average of 7.1 percent fTom 1950 to 1970. During the same period, gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of 5.5 percent overall and 4.4 percent per capita. These figures reflect advancing industrialization as well as significant rises in productivity and income. In 1970, output per capita was almost two and a half times greater than in 1950, and per capita income had grown at an average of 4.5 percent per year. This growth was more than twice as fast as the rate seen in the United States and exceeded anything previously known in Europe. In the two decades from 1950 to 1970, annual per capita income rose between 250 and 400 percent. 780
The rapid rise in real income produced an expansion of consumption. Living standards grew significantly. Durable consumer goods such as refrigerators, televisions, and automobiles became ubiquitous mass-market products, as did one-time luxuries like high-value foodstuffs, tasteful clothing, vacation trips, and investments in social welfare. There was an expansion of education, the disparity between the urban world and the countryside faded, and local and national governments assumed more and more public responsibilities. The diversification of professions, increasing mobility, and widely accessible free-time activities led to a far-reaching dissolution of traditional social milieus. The traditional distinct circles of peasant, bourgeois, and working-class culture faded into history. Instead, a consumer society arose in which differences within existing class cultures became stronger, while the lines between those class cultures began to blur. Now, fine differences in taste and style characterized the many social groupings more strongly than did material contradictions or distinct class consciousness. Western Europe was developing into an advanced industrial society along the lines of the United States.
At the same time, growing prosperity promoted the stabilization of the democratic order. This was especially the case in West Germany, Austria, and Italy, where democracy had been reintroduced under the supervision of the victorious Allied powers, and where embedding the habits of democracy in local society was a major challenge. In those countries with stronger democratic traditions, economic success also preempted the rise of radicalism. The Communists, who in any event no longer held any realistic revolutionary prospects, lost up to two-thirds of their support. In France and Italy, where they did manage to retain the support of 20 to 30 percent of the electorate for a long time, the Communists languished in the isolation of a counter-culture. After the suppression of the Hungarian revolt by Soviet forces in November 1956, most intellectuals also gave up on Soviet Communism. In the social democratic parties, the Marxist prediction of ever-growing antagonism between capital and the masses lost its plausibility. German social democracy established a pluralistic basis for itself in the Bad Godesberg Program of 1959.
Aside from the dictatorships in southern Europea (Portugal, Spain, and, after 1967, Greece), the calculus behind America’s containment strategy worked out on a grand scale. Western Europe became "safe for democracy," and at the same time developed into an exceptionally productive trading partner. The region was less susceptible than ever to revolutionary seizures of power based on class conflict; on the contrary, Western Europe became increasingly attractive to the societies of the Eastern bloc.
World History
