The Politics of Prosperity: The Postwar Consensus in Western Europe
i. The boring 1950s, or the golden years?
ii. Economic miracles
iii. Creating the welfare state
iv. The politics of consensus
v. First moves toward European integration

primary source readings:
1. the Beveridge Report ("Social Insurance and Allied Services,") 1942
2. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (excerpts), 1949

compare Europe in 1938 with Europe in 1965, twenty years after each World War

the reinvention of parliamentary democracy and capitalism
after World War II in Western Europe:
1. nationalism (=aggressive nationalist rivalry) discredited>>>steps toward European integration
2. neo-capitalism: Keynesian economics, mixed economies
3. welfare state
4. consensus politics

Germany: Wirschaftswunder, the economic miracle
France: les trentes glorieuses, the thirty glorious years
Great Britain: recovery and growth far more sluggish

 

why did the Western European “"economic miracle"”happen?
1. a unique, unrepeatable historical moment:  need to rebuild infrastructure + skilled and educated labor + advantages of starting with latest technology
2. neo-capitalism: mixed economies, some industries nationalized
     France: la planification
     Germany: “social free-market economy” (soziale Marktwirtschaft)
3. Keynesian economic policies (Keynesian economics became the new orthodoxy)
4. large supply of cheap labor: postwar migrations, then “"guest workers"

capitalism saved: one optimistic view of the results
Traditionally, socialist thought has been dominated by the economic problems posed by capitalism, poverty, mass unemployment, squalor, instability, and even the possibility of the collapse of the whole system……[But now] capitalism has been transformed out of all recognition. Despite occasional minor recessions…full employment and at least a tolerable degree of stability are likely to be maintained. Automation can be expected steadily to solve any remaining problems of under-production. Looking ahead, our present rate of growth will give us a national output three times as high in fifty years.
•     --Anthony Crosland, The Future of Socialism (1957)
     >>>Crosland was a member of the British Labour Party

some roots of the postwar European consensus on the welfare state
1. lessons: the experience of the Great Depression and its political consequences
2. on the left: moderate, “reformist” social democracy
3. on the right: postwar Christian-Democratic parties (social Catholicism)
4. an older legacy: conservative paternalism (19th c.: Bismarck, Disraeli)
5. new converts: liberals and social rights (Beveridge, "New Britain")

Third Labour Government (GB), 1945-1950
decolonization (India)
National Health Service
full employment
limited nationalization
Beveridge report (1942)

political consensus (i): narrowing of the political spectrum
1. on the right: fascist parties and openly authoritarian parties had been discredited
2. on the left: in the Cold War, even large Communist parties remain outside (e.g. France, Italy)

political consensus (ii): new policies, new parties, new collaborations
reformist Social Democratic parties
Germany: SPD's Bad Godesburg program (1959):  social democrats now a popular, reformist party rather than a working-class, revolutionary party
Christian Democratic parties
Konrad Adenauer (German chancellor, 1949-1963) --worries about "chancellor democracy"
Charles de Gaulle (general, resistance hero, president of the Fifth Republic in France, 1958-1969)

how to understand the postwar:
a "social democratic moment" (Judt)
or
the "Christian democratic moment?" (Müller)

first steps toward European integration
Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman
step one: European Coal and Steel Community or ECSC (1951)
“ the six”: France, West Germany, Italy, & Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg)
step two: Treaty of Rome (1957)
European Economic Community (EEC) or “Common Market”