At least as important as the physical assistance that the Marshall Plan brings to European reconstruction, is the political state of mind in which this aid is given and received. For if the European democracies come to regard American foreign policy as a power-grabbing and warmongering “capitalistic maneuver,” as the Communists would have it—and especially if our own actions lend aid and comfort to this propaganda—there is little hope of preventing the political community of the West from relapsing into nationalistic anarchy, or worse. In this article, George Lichtheim writes from London on how American foreign policy, in the wake of the Truman election, shapes up in the eyes of European social democracy.

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London

Any inquiry into the present state of relations between progressives in Britain and in the United States must start with the recent presidential election. In this country we believed Dr. Gallup too; and, as a matter of fact, the impact of Truman’s liberal-labor victory was perhaps greater here than in America itself—if only because Europeans can no longer afford to take political upsets philosophically.

In this country it was the Conservative party, and in particular Mr. Churchill, that felt the shock, just as in France it was General de Gaulle. The day after the vote count, Labor was more firmly in the saddle here than it has been since its own astounding sweep in 1945, and the prospects of winning the crucial 950 election had become distinctly brighter. The Truman victory also sharpened the dispute between the Churchill-Woolton-Beaverbrook wing of official Conservatism, which clings to laissez-faire and hopes to win the next election on the furious reaction against planning and controls, and the Eden-Butler-Stanley wing, which plumps for Tory-controlled planning (and a modified version of corporatism). Finally, the election destroyed the basis of Churchill’s notorious Llandudno speech of last October, with its open appeal to the United States to bring matters to a head over the Berlin dispute in the near future. Whether or not President Truman revives the projected Vinson mission, it seems clear that “atomic diplomacy” will be at a discount for some considerable time. Labor party headquarters were in any case inclined to make the Llandudno speech the basis of a general “warmongering” charge against Churchill and the Tories at the next general election; what held them back was fear of a Dewey administration (although Mr. Attlee and the Cabinet are said to have received very accurate pre-election forecasts—among the few that there were). Now that this danger is past, it is pretty certain that the next election will largely be fought on the peace issue, and that the Conservatives will be thrown on the defensive.

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The New Deal victory, however, also effected certain subsurface changes which are possibly of even greater importance. In addition to restoring Labor’s self-confidence as a party it also restored its threatened internal cohesion, which a Dewey administration, it was felt, might have strained beyond the breaking-point. Signs of such strain had become evident in the weeks immediately before the election. Both the New Statesman and the Tribune—reliable weathervanes if without great influence on the government—were beginning to reflect the sullen mood of the Socialist rank and file, a mood which found vent in “isolationist” slogans or in plain defeatism. The Statesman, after observing that the President’s “public humiliation” over the Vinson incident “made no difference to Mr. Truman’s own chances of re-election which were nil, but probably puts paid to the last Democratic hope of winning a majority in the Senate,” consoled itself with the reflection: “At least . . . we shall know where we are. . . . In a few weeks’ time the United States will adopt the policy which Mr. Churchill preached at Llandudno.” The Tribune similarly prepared its readers for a further reactionary drift in world affairs, complete with recognition of Franco Spain, and asked how far this could go without splitting the Labor party and destroying the government. These were not isolated expressions of opinion. Whether the Left’s fears of a Dewey administration were warranted or not is hardly a question that needs discussion now; the fact is that the entire Left, including its most vigorously anti-Russian elements, was gloomily prepared for a political ice-age.

In retrospect it is clear that, in this climate of political opinion, the United Kingdom had a narrow escape when Mr. Dewey failed to reach the White House, for his accession to the presidency would have revived the flagging fortunes of Toryism in this country, hamstrung the Labor government, and perhaps lost them the next election. In which case Britain would be split, whereas today she is united on the one essential point: resistance to Soviet expansion. Given the political outlook of the British working class, Labor is the only force that can unite the country in the face of this challenge, just as in 1939 the Conservatives were needed to unite their own followers and those of the Left in the face of the Nazi danger. Not that people here take the war scare seriously, but they know that in the long as well as in the short run the above holds good: if war does come the Tories can be relied on, whether they are in the government or not, but if they are in the government their presence there may split the nation from top to bottom. The idea of a Churchill government allied with a Gaullist regime in France, and backed by a Republican administration in Washington, is a nightmare to the more clearheaded Foreign Office and State Department officials. As the Tribune put it, “it would be of no earthly use to anyone except Stalin.”

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From the above it does not follow that Larbor has already achieved a unified political outlook or that there may not be further squalls ahead, but undoubtedly the outlook is more hopeful than at any time since 1945. Primarily this is due to the fact that the Truman victory killed the incipient anti-Americanism which the Communists had been busily stimulating. Progressives have found it impossible to identify themselves with Dewey or to regard an America typified by Dewey as anything but the plutocratic imperialism the Communists said it was. They can and do identify themselves with Truman—especially since most of the press and big business were against him—and it is this that has currently knocked the bottom from under the Communist propaganda campaign in this country.

It should be borne in mind that the Communist party is far more influential here than in the United States, since, apart from its direct control of certain important trade unions, its agitation colors the outlook of large numbers of Labor party supporters. A Dewey victory would have made it more difficult for the Labor left-wing to maintain its hold over those elements who are attracted by the Communists’ claim to represent the only consistent alternative to “Wall Street and the warmongers.” Not surprisingly, the Daily Worker was one of the few papers to greet the election results with scarcely veiled irritation. Wallace’s eclipse was a particularly heavy blow, coming as it did after an intensive build-up. The present tendency is for the Communists to keep their fingers crossed for another Vinson mission, this time with official approval. If it comes off, Truman will be promoted to the status of an unreliable peace champion, after having been pictured for two years as a determined though incompetent warmonger. It might do no harm for some such mission to take place, if only to do away with the myth that the United States is set on war. This myth received a heavy blow on November 2, but working-class distrust of “American capitalists” goes deep, and the less bellicose Washington sounds, the better for all concerned.

Meanwhile it is to be hoped that the United States will put its democratic foot forward when dealing with other nations, and that less will be heard of Free Enterprise and more of human rights. No European, however conservative, can be expected to get excited over the antithesis capitalism-communism (which the Amsterdam Assembly of Protestant Churches last September was naive enough to adopt for purposes of distinction between rival “ideals”). On the other hand, nearly all Europeans feel strongly about civil rights, having recently experienced their total abolition and fearing that the Russians would prove as ruthless as the Germans. If Mr. Truman can get his own civil-rights program adopted, it would do no harm if the “Voice of America” subsequently raised the question of similar rights behind the Iron Curtain.

But it would be fatal to couple such propaganda with appeasement of Franco and praise of Salazar. The strongest card in the Communist pack is the assertion—half believed by many Socialists who hope it isn’t true—that Americans don’t really care about democracy.

It is after all no secret to anyone that Washington and London have for the last three years deliberately kept Franco in power for fear of worse to come. A continuation of this base and cowardly approach could undo some of the beneficial effect of the New Deal revival, just as a Gaullist coup in France would throw everything once more into the melting-pot.

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If Mr. Truman’s re-election heartened the Left, the Gaullist sweep in France did not altogether reassure the Right. British Toryism, like Conservativism in Holland or Scandinavia, is parliamentary and democratic, or at least constitutional. In this it differs not only from the Central European model but also from the historic Right in France, which has never overcome its hankering after authoritarianism. No one knows exactly how far de Gaulle would go in the direction of stifling civil liberties, but his public utterances are not reassuring and his entourage includes some neo-fascists as well as old-fashioned authoritarians.

In his statement following the strong showing of his “Rally” in the elections to the Second Chamber, de Gaulle not only sneered at the parliamentarians but implied that he retained his faith in corporatist organizations of labor differing from ordinary trade unions. Apparently these are to be established under the patronage of his super-party while it is still in opposition. From here it would be no great step to full-fledged corporatism should de Gaulle obtain power. It is of course open to the General’s supporters to claim that these organizations will be voluntary and that no attempt will be made to interfere with labor’s own creations, but the genuineness of such assurances will probably be measured by the amount of trouble likely to be caused by departing from them.

In any event, there is not the slightest doubt that de Gaulle would run into headlong collision with the Communist-dominated CGT, which still includes a majority of the organized workers, and in the process of overcoming their resistance he would find himself impelled to go farther and faster than he himself might wish. A Gaullist regime might tolerate the Socialist and Catholic unions, but if the half-baked ideas on corporate solidarity and management-labor cooperation that de Gaulle has uttered from time to time are to be seriously applied, labor would soon find itself fighting for its elementary rights. It is significant that the Gaullists have on this issue broken with the very moderate Catholic unions, which form the backbone of the now much shrunken MRP.

The “Rally” has in fact become a meeting place for various brands of authoritarianism previously disunited by the Pétain-de Gaulle split, and to judge from the failure of the MRP in the recent elections, the Church, through the obedient country clergy, is once more shepherding its politically passive rural flock into the conservative camp. There is of course no great harm in this provided the ordinary rules of the constitutional game are preserved and the MRP is allowed to offer liberal-minded Catholics a political alternative, but nobody can be sure just how far constitutional liberty would survive under Gaullist rule.

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To the British Labor government, a Gaullist regime in France would be a body-blow. It would probably lead to the formation of a reactionary Latin Bloc, including Franco Spain, and to endless French intrigues in Southern and Western Germany. Britain would then become even more dependent on the support of the Scandinavians and other small Western nations, and in fact would have to content herself with leadership of the Northwestern group of European countries. This prospect is not altogether to the liking of British Conservatives, who also have a clearer understanding of the real balance of world forces than the provincial and obscurantist French Right.

It was noticed here that de Gaulle coupled his contemptuous references to parliament, and his demand for French predominance on the Continent, with unfriendly side-glances at the United States. “France has lived for centuries without the Marshall Plan”—ergo, there is no need to give in on the subject of the Ruhr. Even those who sympathize with the French thesis that the Ruhr should not be controlled by its former owners are at a loss to account for this lack of perspective. There is, however, a very genuine issue at stake, namely whether Germany or France should be the stronger factor in the Western Union—to the construction of which de Gaulle does not object in principle. Without having said so in so many words, both Washington and London seem to have decided to put their chips on Germany. In taking this decision they may have been influenced by the thought that German Communism is a mere sect compared with the mass movement in France, and that the Germans are more likely than the French to put their hearts into a military struggle, should it be forced upon the West. The choice is nonetheless a dangerous one, no matter how unreliable the political state of France today.

And of course it is never to be avowed openly and in public. The British electorate, which still does not realize that Britain’s control of the Ruhr was liquidated in 947 under pressure of financial need, would be even more surprised to learn that after letting the Americans control the bi-zone, Mr. Bevin is now prepared to hand the works back to their former owners; or that as between their German “enemies” and their French “allies,” the British and American governments have opted for the former. Similarly, the Labor party would be astounded if it were told that the Franco-German dispute over preeminence in Western Europe has become a conflict between the Catholic nationalists of France and the “Christian-Democratic” nationalists of the former Reich, with the Socialists reduced almost to the role of onlookers.

That the United States is not to be wholly blamed for this result is evident when it is remembered that Mr. Bevin had the ball at his feet for two years and could have kicked it through the goal of Ruhr socialization at any time if his political and military advisers had not decided otherwise. Nevertheless some blame must attach to the Americans for obstructing socialization, as even so friendly a critic as Miss Barbara Ward recognizes.¹ Here again the New Deal revival and labor’s increased political standing in Washington hold out slightly improved hopes for the future. It is probably no exaggeration to say that from now on most of the progressive initiative will have to come from Washington. Apart from Mr. Bevin’s personal conservatism, there is the general parochialism of the British Labor government, its tendency to turn aside from matters not directly under its control, and the colorless Fabianism which handicaps it in the search for effective political symbols in the international arena. A government that hardly knows how to address its own people, and that has accomplished the seemingly impossible result of making socialism boring, is not very well equipped to win the affection of foreigners. Its solid virtues go unnoticed or are taken for granted. There is of course a case for holding that Mr. Attlee, like Horatio, represents the commonsensible qualities without which the whole drama would lack reference. But clearly the British Horatio is being made to carry a load, if one may judge from the diminishing effectiveness of his claim to represent the true middle-road. Like it or not, Mr. Truman will henceforth have to undertake the leadership of the Third Force in Europe.

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It is here that one touches upon the real problem of the Left in Britain: its growing disillusionment with the fruits of its own victory. Socialism so far has failed to usher in the brave new world, and Labor’s continuation in office seems unlikely to change the prevailing tone of society. In part this is due to the familiar economic difficulties through which Britain is going at present, but these difficulties are themselves the symptoms of a shift in power relations which has nullified a good part of the significance of Labor’s victory in 1945. The “dwarfing of Europe,” to use the fashionable Toynbeean phrase, inevitably gives a parochial appearance to what twenty years ago would have been the central fact of world politics. It is an ironic fact that the Labor party grew to political maturity and finally achieved power at the very time when Britain lost its former pre-eminence. In 1930 a Socialist government in Britain meant a great deal more than it does today, but it was only after the Great Depression, the Keynesian revolution in economics, the Hitler experience, and the Second World War, that conditions were mature for a full-fledged Socialist experiment. By then, unfortunately but not accidentally, the center of world power and of capitalism had both definitely shifted across the Atlantic. Again, Britain is both less solvent and more Socialist than any other part of the Commonwealth, including Australia and New Zealand, who are under Labor management but have not embarked upon extensive socialization schemes, while the planned development of the African empire not only calls for huge capital investments which have to be wrung out of the home market, but drains off many of the ablest and most energetic people in the managerial stratum. Once in Africa, though employed by state corporations, they are difficult to distinguish from private businessmen.

Thus the only area in which some sort of socialist mystique can be expected to take root is the expanding welfare activities of the British community, its housing, education, medical care, etc. This, although important, is insufficient to generate the kind of conviction which the Poles or the Yugoslavs seem to derive from the construction of “youth railways” and similar enterprises. Not that anyone envies the kind of system which produces such results, by means of state-controlled youth movements, forcible recruiting of unskilled labor, and similar devices; it is just that one senses the absence of a corresponding, if undirected, purposefulness. Nationalization and the export drive are not substitutes, for the successful attainment of critical export goods is in the main being accomplished by private firms, while the nationalized industries are struggling with bureaucratic reorganization schemes in which the workers take little part.

Significantly, the few novel and successful experiments in joint labor-management control of production are being quietly undertaken by private businesses. There is little sense of partnership in management under the bureaucratic National Coal Board. Conversely, the projected nationalization of the steel industry leaves untouched the whole sphere of worker-management relations, the chief purpose of the scheme apparently being to eliminate the present owner-directors in favor of state nominees at the top management level. Further down it is hoped to give somewhat greater latitude to the technicians. All this may be good socialism, but it is not very visionary or exciting and the electorate seems to be getting bored with the whole subject.

The Left therefore is once more inclined to take a more hopeful view of the United States, and to look to it for political guidance and inspiration. It is being encouraged in this attitude by the manner in which ECA has been functioning, and particularly by the close cooperation established under Mr. Harriman’s direction between liberal economists and labor representatives. The mere fact that somebody from “Wall Street” can get on well with Socialist labor leaders is in itself a blow to the Communists. Finally, the part played by ECA in getting European governments to draw up common plans cuts across their propaganda lines.

It is all the more unfortunate that the Ruhr settlement seems designed to place Germany’s steel industry in the hands of an arrogant and reactionary cabal of industrialists. There is the further incongruity that the compulsory disarmament likely to be imposed on Germany will work in favor of its steel exports at the expense of France and Britain, a large proportion of whose steel capacity will of necessity be devoted to arms production while the Germans will be free to concentrate on exportable civilian goods. This matters little to the United States, but it is bound to hurt Britain economically, and France politically. The alternative is to place the whole of West European steel production under international control. Failing this, an uncontrolled Ruhr is likely to revive both the pre-war German steel cartel and the intransigence of German nationalism. This is the type of problem which progressives here would like to think the United States is trying to solve on lines acceptable to labor.

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It Would be a mistake to leave this subject without a brief glance at the controversy about “American imperialism” which goes on wherever Socialists discuss foreign affairs. In the process of clearing their minds of Communist cant on this topic, some Labor party supporters tend to relapse into the state of political innocence typified by the writings of Norman Angell, for whom “imperialism” is strictly a military phenomenon. Others are frankly worried and unhappy. Still others content themselves with the reflection that the imperialism of a democratic country is less dangerous than that of a totalitarian despotism. Miss Ward has already been cited, and her important and interesting book will bear further quotation. Since it is mainly written in defence of ERP, her argument not surprisingly pivots on the assumption that the Marshall Plan is intended to make Europe independent of the United States as well as the Soviet Union. To state the matter in her own terms:

As for the suggestion that ERP will be used as a spearhead of control, the contrary cannot yet be proved since the Plan has still to run its course. Yet two facts suggest caution. The first is that the Plan is essentially one of industrial revival with the aim of restoring a viable and independent Europe. The idea that the United States will not in five years’ time be bearing so heavy a European commitment is one of the chief attractions of the scheme. The second point is the Americans’ scrupulous care taken so far to avoid demanding an economic (or political) quid pro quo for the gifts that are to be made. This mood of disinterested generosity may pass, but when one remembers how dire was Europe’s plight in 1947, how desperate its need for help, and how ready some of its more hardly pressed governments were to give away anything they were asked for, America’s restraint can only mean—to the unbiased eye—that imperialist control of Europe was neither the open nor the covert aim of ERP.

In following this line of argument, liberal-minded Socialists have the advantage of being able to rebut the crude and silly Communist propaganda thesis which pictures an America run by a handful of monopolists taking over control of Europe’s physical assets—mines, railways, factories, etc.—and forcing the reluctant European governments to join an anti-Soviet crusade. This propaganda has proved self-defeating-but only because labor here and across the Atlantic has proved sufficiently strong to nullify the tendencies making in precisely that direction. To deny the existence of such tendencies is no help to anyone, and to ignore that Japan is today as much an American protectorate as Egypt was until recent years a British one, is to shut one’s eyes to reality.

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The truth is that the simple antithesis imperialism—democracy which has grown up in this country over a period of years does not quite fit the American reality; the United States is both more democratic politically, and more progressive economically, than Britain was at the height of her imperialist expansion, so that it is not necessarily a retrogressive step for America to take control of territories where modern capitalism is still a novelty, modern democracy unheard of. But any such suggestion is heresy both to the Tory Right and the Socialist Left in Britain; to the former because the lesson it points is too uncomfortable, and to the latter because Socialists have been conditioned to equate imperialism with stagnation and oppression—though of late they are beginning to find some use for the colonial system, at least in Africa and Malaya where it is still functioning reasonably well.

Nor is this reaction surprising; it takes a certain amount of detachment to make even Socialists admit that American imperialism—if there is such a thing—may actually make for progress and need not run counter to democracy. The Communists have worked hard to give everything connected with the United States a bad name, and it is tempting to counter their propaganda by claiming that the objects of American policy are purely selfless. The trouble with this kind of argument is that it fails to convince those for whom it is chiefly intended. The politically conscious elite of the British Labor movement is still distrustful of the United States even where it is already sceptical of Soviet “socialism”: hence the strength of “Third Force” sentiment and the incipient isolationism which is today so pronounced a feature of all political discussions in Britain.

These suspicions, moreover, are constantly fed by the disgruntlement of the left-wing intelligentsia—reflected, for example, in the gloomy satisfaction taken by a representative journal like the New Statesman in every sign of political imbecility across the Atlantic. The people who act as opinion-formers on the Left are very ready to believe that the rest of the world is as stupid and malignant as they have always thought, and every proof to that effect is duly noted and publicized. A welcome surprise like the recent elections acts as a tonic for a moment, but wears off unless it can be regarded as a sign that things are genuinely moving in the right direction. Nothing is more important than that this impression should continue to be given and that, to vary a legal phrase, the United States, in its international policy, as well as domestically, should not only be, but manifestly appear to be democratic.

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¹ Cf. The West at Bay, especially page 107. Miss Ward is assistant editor of the Economist and one of the Marshall Plan’s most eloquent apologists in Britain. She is also a moderate Socialist and a liberal Catholic. It is therefore interesting to find her deploring the American preference for conservatives, especially of the Christian Democrat variety, as against the Social Democrats. The Americans, as she points out, had no firsthand opportunity to watch the wholesale collapse of the European Right in the fight against Hitler, and its subsequent zealous collaboration with the “New Order.” This is of course particularly true of the German Right, which since 1945 has changed its name but not its nature.