Le Plan Marshall et le relèvement économique de l’Europe
| ,B. Les retombées du Plan Marshall sur les autres économies occidentales
Technical assistance and productivity in the Netherlands, 1945-1952
Assistance technique et productivité aux Pays-Bas, 1945-1952*
Résumé
Pour reconstruire l’économie néerlandaise les autorités ont appliqué une politique de bas salaires qui s’est poursuivie jusqu’à la fin des années 1950. Cette politique n’a pas été imposée à la population de manière brutale. A partir de 1945, les hommes politiques, les dirigeants syndicaux et tous ceux qui s’estimaient en devoir de le faire, n’ont cessé d’en expliquer la nécessité. On pourrait parler en l’occurrence d’une politique d’auto-discipline. Auto-discipline et dur labeur. L’obligation de travailler dur était le second volet de cette idéologie. Les affiches des ces années-là montrent des hommes puissamment musclés et résolus.
Le terme de productivité a été mis à la mode plus tard par le Plan Marshall. L’accroissement de la productivité était l’un des objectifs proclamés du Plan pour la Reconstruction économique de l’Europe. Aux Pays-Bas, un groupe de travail sur l’« Assistance technique » a été mis en place en novembre 1948 ; il s’est ensuite transformé, en 1950, en Commissie Opvoering Produktiviteit (COP). En 1951, un poste de ministre sans portefeuille, ayant pour mission de promouvoir la productivité, a été créé.
Les activités de la COP, financées par les fonds du Plan Marshall, étaient multiples : voyages d’études à l’intention de groupes d’agriculteurs, d’employeurs, de syndicalistes et autres aux États-Unis, visites d’experts américains aux Pays-Bas, publication de rapports, de brochures de propagande et même de bandes dessinées à valeur éducative, etc. La COP s’efforçait de faire passer le message suivant auprès de l’ensemble de la population, et même des ménagères : « L’accroissement de la productivité commence au foyer... Il est en votre pouvoir de veiller à ce que celui ou celle qui doit se rendre à son travail y arrive à l’heure ».
Cette citation montre que la notion de productivité était utilisée dans une acception très large. Dans sa première note, la COP mentionnait trois types de problèmes affectant la productivité : retards injustifiés, incompétence et absence du désir de se surpasser de la part des ouvriers, les principales causes de cette situation étaient attribuées aux carences de l’organisation interne et à une mauvaise atmosphère au sein de l’entreprise. Le remède devait être trouvé dans les méthodes « de gestion scientifique » et également dans la nouvelle approche américaine, mettant l’accent sur l’épanouissement personnel, celle du courant de pensée centré sur les « relations humaines ». Cette première orientation de la COP était plutôt cohérente, mais cette cohérence disparut par la suite. Presque tout semblait avoir, à un degré ou un autre, un lien avec la productivité. Le seul dénominateur commun étant la conviction qu’aux États-Unis tout était mieux qu’ailleurs : « la standardisation est nécessaire parce qu’aux États-Unis... ; il convient d’instaurer le travail posté parce qu’aux États-Unis... ; il faut une gestion scientifique, parce qu’aux États-Unis... ».
Il est difficile de déterminer à quel moment la population néerlandaise a cédé aux charmes de cette idéologie de la productivité, si tant est qu’elle l’ait fait, mais il est pratiquement certain que dès 1950, le gouvernement et ses porte-paroles firent de leur mieux pour répandre cette idée. Reste à savoir toutefois quel était l’élément de nouveauté dans cette notion de productivité. En quoi ce discours se distinguait-il de la propagande des années 1946-48 selon laquelle les gens devaient travailler plus dur pour ramener la prospérité ?
Texte intégral
- * La traduction de ce résumé à été réalisée par le Service de traduction du ministère des Finances.
- 1 Archief Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken (ABZ), DGEM 693, minutes 15th meeting COP 25-8-1950,
1 After a slow start the Technical Assistance Program of the European Coopération Agency in the Netherlands was in full gear by 1951. The Commissie Opvoering Produktiviteit (COP, Committee for Increasing Productivity) produced more plans than the agency in Washington had expected1. Another sign that the Dutch were seeming to take the question of productivity very seriously was the appointment, for the first time, in the same year of a minister (without portfolio) for productivity. The minister, A.H.M. Albregts, came out with the first white paper on productivity in the autumn of 1951. The main message was that it was of vital interest to improve national productivity. The figures showed that productivity still had not reached the pre-war level and that the Dutch were falling behind other European countries.
- 2 Nota betreffende de productiviteit in Nederland, 28-10-1951, 8.
2The explanation of the low productivity was looked for on the one hand in the présent circumstances – for example, the high degree of employment meant that also the less skilful workers had to be set in and the high profits made the employers relax on measures of economy – and on the other hand in a lack of knowledge of American production methods. « Organisation science in this country found itself until 1945 in its first stage of development and the methods and tools that are used in this science were not yet systematized sufficiently to pass them on to the future leading officiais in the companies2. » The fundamentals of this new science, Albregts stated, had been formulated as long as fifty years ago and it was now widely practiced in the United States.
- 3 ABZ, DGEM 1110, ECA. The Netherlands Country Study (m9) 10.
3The idea that the State of productivity in Holland was comparatively bad had been mentioned before in « The Netherlands country study » by the ECA of February 1949. According to this study the low labour productivity was due mainly to the shortage of capital equipment, insufficient materials to keep workers continuously employed, the scarcity of skilled workers and to comparatively low but rising morale of employées3. Also, the report acknowledged, the index had been depressed by the large amount of repair work, an area where productivity was inherently lower than in new construction.
- 4 Cited by WJ. Dercksen, Industrialisatiepolitiek rondom de jaren vijftig ; een sociologisch-economis (...)
4In the vision of Albregts the Commissie Opvoering Produktiviteit had to play a major rôle in making the Dutch more productivity-minded. The COP took up the challenge and increased its activities : study tours of groups of employers, trade unionists, farmers and others to the United States, visits of American experts to Holland, publication of reports, propaganda leaflets and even comic strips with an educational value, etc. The COP tried to get the message through to the whole population, even to the housewives : « Raising productivity starts at home... You can take care that he or she who has to go to work can be there in time4. »
- 5 Dercksen, op. cit. 184.
5This quotation shows that the notion « productivity » was used in a very wide sense. In its first note the COP mentioned three types of problems which affected productivity : unnecessary delays, a lack of skills and a lack of ambitions of the workers to do their utmost best. It was pointed out that faults in the internal organisation and a bad atmosphère in the company were the main causes. The solution should be found in the methods of « scientific management » and also in the new American approach which stressed the importance of personal well-being, known as « the human relations movement ». This first note of the COP was rather cohérent, but this coherency then disappeared. Almost everything seemed to hâve some sort of relation with productivity. The only common denominator was the conviction that everything was better in the United States : « standardisation is needed because in the U.S... ; a shift System is needed because in the U.S... ; scientifïc management is needed because in the U.S...5 ».
6How successful has the COP been ? Most authors argue that the COP must hâve been successful to a certain extent because it is hard to believe otherwise. Ail the trips to the United States, all the visits of American experts to Holland, the Dutch must hâve learned something. Nobody, however, tries to make an estimation and put a figure to it. That is very difficult indeed, but there is more to the question of productivity than just that. Starting from the Hogan-Maier-Milward discussion and using the well-known concept of the ideology of produc-tivity I shall try to throw some new light on the Dutch case.
- 6 MJ. Hogan, The Marshall Plan ; America, Britain and the reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952(...)
- 7 A.S. Milward, The reconstruction of Western Europe 1945-1951 (London 1984) 492.
7According to Hogan the ultimate goal the Marshall Planners had in mind was « a prosperous and stable European community secure against the dangers of Communist subversion and able to join the United States in a multilatéral system of world trade6 ». To achieve this goal they strove not only after international liberalization and intégration, but promoted also national consensuses by trying to unité the different social groups around a common political and économie agenda. The main point on the agenda was a shared commitment to economic growth and productivity. Comparing the bilateral and unstable world of 1947 and the liberalized and prosperous world of the early sixties Hogan concludes that Europe has made a big step forward and that the USA deserves a large part of the crédit. This statement is directed against Milward who, in The reconstruction of Western Europe, finds the explanation of the integration process in Europe itself : « the very limited degree of intégration that was achieved came about through the pursuit of the narrow self-interest of what were still powerful nation States7. »
- 8 A.S. Milward, « Was the Marshall Plan necessary ? », Diplomatie History 13 (1989) 231-253 ; Ch. S. (...)
8Hogan has not been able to convince Milward. In an extended book review in Diplomatie History Milward counter-attacks, firing in passing some shots at Charles Maier who has coined the phrase « politics of productivity » to characterise the American diplomacy versus Western Europe8. It is wrong, Milward argues, to ascribe the postwar political consensus to this ideology of productivity because that is putting ideas before the events that generated them. It seems to him that the West European governments did not accept this ideology before the middle and late 1950s. But the consensus itself was created in the years directly after the war by the restored national governments, desperate for political legitimacy. In these circumstances governments were more sensitive to popular demands than before the war. This explains for example the massive wage increases in France and Belgium, the welfare measures in Belgium, Britain and Italy as well as the acceptance of organized labour as a part of the government managerial machine in most countries.
- 9 Milward, « Was the Marshall Plan necessary ? », 252.
- 10 Maier, op. cit. 146.
9In one important respect Milward, Hogan and Maier agréé, namely in the observation that « deep intellectual harmony joined the creators and administrators of the Marshall Plan and succesful postwar West European politicians9 ». But they draw different conclusions from this observation. Milward argues that this fact reduces the importance of the Marshall Plan. Without it the world would not hâve looked much different. For Maier and Hogan this intellectual harmony was a prerequisite for the succes of the American politics of productivity but these politics themselves are mainly responsible for the « unparalelled growth » of the 1950s and 1960s10.
10The relevance of this debate is of course not how grateful the Europeans should be towards their overseas friends. The authors try to understand the causes of a « uniquely long period » of stability, peace and économie growth in the Western world.
11When Milward writes that the West European countries could hâve maintained their growth rate of capital formation without Marshall Aid by reducing other imports, he makes an exception for two countries, France and the Netherlands. As far as the Netherlands is concerned, not only had the Dutch economy been more damaged by the war than in most countries, it had also lost its main trading partner Germany. One of the conséquences was that more capital goods had to be paid for in dollars which led to an acute dollar shortage. Logically the announcement of the Marshall Aid was greeted heartily.
12The next step for the Dutch was to get as big a slice of the pie as possible and in this they were quite successful, receiving a relatively high amount of dollars per head of the population. To explain the American benevolence towards Holland, Benelux is often mentioned. The creation of Benelux, the Americans hoped, would be a lesson in intégration to the other countries. The Dutch were well aware of the American feelings and tried to make the most of it, even when the intégration process in Benelux itself stagnated.
- 11 A. Bakker en M.M.P. van Lent, Pieter Lieftinck 1902-1989. Herinneringen opgetekend door A. Bakker e (...)
- 12 P. van der Eng, De Marshall-hulp ; een perspectief voor Nederland 1947-1953 (Houten 1987) 169.
13How important were the Marshall dollars for the Netherlands ? Recently Pieter Lieftinck, Minister of Finance from 1945 till 1950, has reiterated in his memoirs the traditional view that Marshall Aid came just in time to avoid a disaster. « The recovery would hâve corne almost to a standstill11. » So far the most elaborate effort to calculate what « almost » exactly means has been made by Pierre van der Eng in his book on the Netherlands and the Marshall Plan. The results are not very shocking and in line with the flndings of Milward. According to Van der Eng without Marshall Aid the growth of the National Income would have been delayed with one year and national expenditures with 13 year. Consumption per capita would hâve suffered a more substantial delay of 5.6 years12. The assumptions on which these outcomes are based are very debatable but there are no better estimâtes available. If we accept them as rough indications, it would mean that the economy would not hâve collapsed, but that the people would hâve had to shelve their dreams of a better life for many more years. The question is whether they would hâve accepted that. Another point if we consider the importance of the Marshall Aid is the ideological impact. According to Maier and Hogan the Marshall Plan was the vehicle that brought the « politics of productivity » to Europe, helping to stabilize the war shaken societies. We shall see in what respects this goes true for the Netherlands.
- 13 E.H. van der Beugel, « Drees als minister en minister-president », H. Daalder en N. Cramer, Willem (...)
14The big amount of Marshall dollars the Dutch walked away with can be explained by other factors than by their Benelux image. A funny explanation for this resuit has been given by Ernst van der Beugel, director of the Dutch office for the European Recovery Program. When Paul Hoffmann and Averell Harriman, the American leaders of the organisation, came to Holland to acquaint themselves with the State of affairs, they were received by the Prime Minister Willem Drees in his own house. The fact of the matter is that Drees lived in a simple middle class house in a dull Street in the dullest neighbourhood of The Hague. This réception came as a surprise to the two Americans who had just been treated like kings in Rome. When they left, Van der Beugel overheard Hoffmann saying to Harriman : « In a country where the Prime Minister lives like this, our money is well spent13. »
- 14 H. de Liagre Bîhl, J. Nekkers en L. Slot (eds.), Nederland industrialiseert. Politieke en ideologie (...)
- 15 J.C.H. Blom speaks of the years of discipline and asceticism ; J.C.H. Blom, « Jaren van tucht en as (...)
15Of course this is just an anecdote but it points to one important fact : the years after the war were years of soberness and Drees set the example. Unlike in France and Belgium the libération did not bring a dramatic rise in wages. On the contrary, the Dutch economic recovery was based on a policy of low wages, which lasted until the end of the 1950s. This policy was not brutally imposed on the people. From 1945 onwards the necessity of it was endlessly explained by the politicians, the leaders of the trade unions and everybody else who felt a duty14. By analogy with the politics of productivity one could speak of politics of soberness. Politics of soberness and hard working15. The obligation to work hard was the second element in this ideology. If we look at the posters of those early years we see strong-muscled and willful men.
- 16 Van der Eng, De Marshall-bulp, 191.
16The term productivity came in vogue later, indeed through the Marshall Plan. Furthering productivity was one of the official purposes of the European Recovery Program and the OEES countries had expressed their intention to raise the productivity of labour with fifteen percent between 1948 and 195216. In the Netherlands a working group « Technical Assistance » was installed in November 1948. The initiative was taken by the employers’ information centre for Marshall aid (financed by the employers’ organisations) on instigation of the Dutch government, itself under American pressure to show its good will. Chairman of the working group was W.H. van Leeuwen, president-director of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Gist- en Spiritus Fabrieken. The start was difficult. The members of the working group did not hâve enough time, there was uncertainty about the American conditions, employers were reluctant to participate and the trade unions of different dénominations did not want to travel in the same délégation. It took nine months before the working group TA presented itself to the press just to find out that the press was not very interested. In 1950 this working group was transposed into the foundation Commissie Opvoering Produktiviteit.
17It is hard to say exactly when such a thing as an ideology of productivity got hold of the Dutch population, if it ever did, but it is quite certain that since at least 1950 the government and its subsidiaries did their best to propagate the idea. The question is, however, what was new about this notion of productivity. What was the real différence with the earlier propaganda of 1946-48 that the people should work harder to bring back prosperity ? At first glance there is a world of différence between the primitive sweaty notion of working harder and the sophisticated idea of productivity, but my argument is that this is merely a question of words. If we look at the stream of literature on management that was publicized in the Netherlands directly after the war (and even during the first years of the war), we find there ail the arguments which were used later by the COP. Only the word productivity is seldom heard. The authors still used the pre-war term rationalisation instead, which was blotted with the stain of unemployment since the 1930s. So they happily traded it in when the undefiled word productivity appeared on the horizon.
- 17 See H.S.A. Bloemen, Scientific management in Nederland 1900-1930 (Amsterdam 1988).
- 18 It should be realised that there was no powerful communist trade union in the Netherlands ; ail the (...)
- 19 P.E. de Hen, Actieve en re-actieve industriepolitiek in Nederland (Amsterdam 1980).
18 The idea of rationalisation dates back to the 1920s and contains as many different elements as the idea of productivity later17. At the root of it lies the héritage of the American Frederick Taylor who formulated his ideas in the beginning of this century. Although Taylor writes in a very derogatory way about trade unions, in the Netherlands his work became curiously enough, in contrast to France for example, most popular amongst social democrats and trade union leaders18. The reason for this was that in their eyes raising productivity could lead to an improvement of the standard of living. The United States were seen not only as the country of naked capitalism but also as the country with the highest wages in the world. Besides, scientific management contained ideas that came very close to socialist thinking, namely the concept of planning. The protestant and catholic parties, which dominated Dutch politics in the interbellum, were much more hésitant, mainly because they feared that industrialisation itself would dépravé the soûls of the common man and because they saw Taylorism as the embodiment of a new godless world. Attitudes began to change slowly in the 1930s, however, when under pressure of the catholic party a cautious beginning was made with industrialisation plans on a régional scale19.
19The point is that before the war the American ideas on efficiency and productivity were better known and more popular than is often thought (and than Minister Albregts admitted in his White paper). But as long as the farmers oriented protestant Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (ARP) was in power, something like politics of rationalisation were unfeasible. That was to change after 1945 when the ARP was left outside the government. The new industrial policy would not be purely American, however, but had clearly Dutch overtones.
- 20 See for the backgrounds of the (very positive) réception of the Marshall Plan by the PvdA : Friso W (...)
- 21 J. Bosmans, « Het maatschappelijk-politieke leven in Nederland 1918-1940 », Algemene Geschiedenis d (...)
20The new Cabinet after the first post-war élections in 1946 was a break with the past in the sense that for the first time the social-democrat Parti] van de Arbeid (PvdA) was allowed to play a main rôle, together with the catholic party, Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP). These two parties were to dominate politics until 1958, when the PvdA was banished to the opposition seats. The composition of the Cabinet was something new, but the views of the parties showed continuity with the pre-war era. In the case of the PvdA that meant a very moderate, almost technocratie form of socialism, heavily influenced by protestant ethics and a very strong anti-communism20. The continuity in catholic thinking lies in the just mentioned fact that they were already in the 1930s orientating themselves on industrialisation as well as on a bigger rôle of the government in social législation. To make progress in these fields they needed coopération with the PvdA. They needed the social-democrats also for another reason. In the 1946 élections the communists had collected more than ten percent of the votes. There was fear of a radicalisation of the workers. With the PvdA in Cabinet and the communists out the left was divided21.
21Since 1922 the catholic party had lived by the doctrine that they would participate in a government with the social-democrats only in the face of utter necessity. The logical question is whether this was the case in 1946. Was the communist danger so imminent and had the traditional parties lost their political legitimacy ? The catholic leaders were certainly worried about that last possibility. After the war they changed the party’s name from Catholic State Party into Catholic People’s Party. They also supported the idea to give the old trade unions (not the new union with links with the communist party) more influence. But ail this is not a proof that the political stability in the Netherlands was in danger, but only of the fact that the party was afraid of losing votes. The 1946 elections showed that these fears were exaggerated, even though the communists were quite successful. Their ten percent of votes, however, would prove to be their ail time record and from then on they went on the way downwards.
22Most Dutch historians do not see the war as a caesura in political life. Despite the fact that some parties changed their names, the majority of the électorale remained faithful to its traditional preferences. But a strong adhérence to their own party does not mean that the Dutch did not agree on many issues. From the many inquiries which were held in the first post-war years the picture emerges of a considérable consensus on many questions. Interesting in the context of this article are the questions on productivity. When asked (in 1947) whether the Dutch could pull through by working hard, living soberly and saving a lot, 74 % of those questioned agreed, while 21 % disagreed. There turned out to be less consensus on the question whether people actually worked harder before or after the war. In november 1947 59 % said most people worked harder before the war, 10 % after the war, while 22 % could not see the différence and 9 % had no judgment. In march 1950 the answers on the same question gave a slightly different picture : now 51 % was of opinion that people worked less hard than before the war and the percentage of those asked thought people worked harder had risen to 20 %. For another 20 % there was no différence and 9 % still could not make up their mind.
- 22 J.C.H. Blom, « Jaren van tucht » 136.
23These figures do not suggest that the government campaign to urge the people on to work harder was very successful. Hans Blom, who has collected these inquiries, gives a different and more convincing interprétation22. He noted that as soon as people were asked to judge their own efforts the percentages became much more favourable. He explains this decrepancy the other way around. People were constantly told by the government and the press that they did not work hard enough, so they started to believe it, except for themselves because they knew better. The message was understood because it linked up with the very strict labour morals which still reigned in Holland.
- 23 J.L. van Zanden en R.T. Griffiths, Économische geschiedenis van Nederland in de 20e eeuw (Utrecht 1 (...)
24Since the end of the nineteenth century the Netherlands had become one of the most decent nations in the world. Whether you look at alcohol consumption, illegitimate births or strike frequencies, ail the figures show that the Dutch were comparably decent23. Thia is usually ascribed to the so called procès of « pillarisation ». The Dutch organised themselves in different camps, protestant, catholic and socialist, and inside these camps a very strict social control was exercised. The resuit was a very stable political System and a very disciplined working class. This situation still existed in 1945. That is why the low wage policy and the politics of sobernes and working hard were so easily accepted.
- 24 See Elma Verhey and Gérard van Westerloo, « De pont van kwart over zeven », Vrij Nederland 7-11-198 (...)
25Now, some historians try to prove the opposite, pointing at the flourishing black market and the loose behaviour of the Dutch girls in front of the allied soldiers after the libération. They also can corne forward with one of the finest pieces of Dutch literature, De avonden (Les soirs) by G.K. van het Reve, as evidence of a new rebellious mentality. How can one prove that these phenomena were not representive, not even in the first post-war years. The problem is that a boring ideology (work hard !) does not produce exciting literature. When people are told to keep their mouth shut and work, we do not hear them. Only at the moment they loose their faith in the ideology they start talking again. Well, in a sense that is what happened in the mid seventies, when the économie crisis brought mass unemployment and the older people started to wonder why they had given their best years to build a new society just to see this society crumbling down before their eyes and others walk away with the best pièces24.
- 25 A. Maddison, Phases of capitalist development (Oxford 1982) 212.
- 26 J.L. van Zanden and R.T. Griffiths, Économischegeschiedenis van Nederland in de 20e eeuw (Utrecht 1 (...)
26The COP and other government agencies published several reports in the early 1950s which showed that the State of productivity was dramatic. In reality, however, it seems productivity recovered very well after the war and during the 1950s the Dutch were amongst the frontrunners. According to Angus Maddison, there was a wide gap in 1950 in labour productivity between the United States and Europe, but inside Western Europe the Netherlands took a third place behind Great Britain and Sweden and in 1960 they had surpassed the British to take the second place25. Van Zanden and Griffiths argue that this high productivity was caused by different factors : the opennes of the Dutch economy, which obliged every sector to compete with the rest of the world, a very efficient agricultural sector, a relatively big service sector with high earnings and also an efficient industry. They suggest that the productivity of the industry was related with the disciplination of the working force that did not resist to new management techniques to raise efficiency26.
27If it is true that productivity in Holland was much better than the official figures suggest, the question arises why those reports gave such a gloomy picture. No evidence has been found that they tried to mislead the people on purpose. Officiais repeatedly admitted, however, that their findings were based on very shaky material. More important is another factor. The définition of productivity they used (and economists use) was simply ’production divided by the number of workers’. Logically the outcome is that productivity in a war-shaken economy is much lower than in an economy that had not suffered. For example, Albregts stated that productivity in agriculture was lower than before the war. The argument was that farmers had less cattle than before the war. This has, of course, nothing to do with productivity in the sense of efficiency and the knowledge and implementation of American production methods.
- 27 CBS, sérié bedrijfsvergelijkende meting van de produktiviteit, number 8, onderzoek gieterijen.
28Realising that their statistics were not reliable, the Dutch decided to participate in an OEEC project, started in 1950, on productivity measurement. The results of this Project were in the Dutch case very limited but the preliminary conclusions that were drawn tell us a lot about Dutch thinking on productivity. One of the studies concerned productivity in foundries27. The researchers found that the number of man hours needed to produce one ton of casting in the 26 examined factories ranged from 28.6 to 189.6 hours. They also had an American study at their disposai which showed that in 20 selected foundries in that country the figures ranged from 25.5 to 87.6 hours. Now for some reason the four best Dutch foundries had to be left out when comparing with the US figures (new range : 90.8 to 189.6 hours) and it turned out that on average the productivity in the American factories was more than 140 per cent higher than in Holland. The conclusion was that there was ample room to increase productivity in the Dutch foundries.
29The statisticians did not comment on the spécifie causes of this big différence in productivity. However, if we look doser at the data they provide, one factor attracts attention. When we calculate the average production in the Dutch and American factories we find a number of 260 ton per month for the Dutch factories, 4000 ton for the American foundries in general and 20,000 ton for the 20 examined foundries. This points clearly to economies of scale as the dominant factor. The fact that the authors of the report do not emphasize this seems remarkable but can be understood if we know that the subject of économies of scale does not play a role at all in the discussions on productivity in the early 1950’s in the Netherlands. I want to stress this point because économies of scale are central to Milward’s description of the ideology of productivity. Apocryphally I summarize this description as : modernization is a function of productivity growth, production growth is a function of économies of scale, économies of scale are a product of foreign trade, so the movement towards foreign trade modernizes economies.
- 28 It is interesting to see that when finally in 1952 a white paper on export policy was published, th (...)
- 29 ABZ, DGEM 1110, Blaisse, Opmerkingen m.b.t. het Country report Netherlands 14-1-1949.
30This sort of reasoning was completely absent in Holland during the years of the Marshall plan indeed. Not only économies of scale were not discussed, curiously enough for a traditionally open economy as the Dutch also the movement towards foreign trade was missing28. Strongly criticized by the ECA, the Dutch led a big part of the investments to import-substituting industries in stead of to the export industries29.
31All this does not mean that no form of ideology of productivity existed. It was just of a different type. It was rooted in the expériences of the 1920’s and 1930’s. It stressed the increase of efficiency through economizing (prime minister Drees had led such a campaign in the 1920’s when he was alderman in The Hague) and it tried to improve labour productivity through the wage System (incentive wage Systems in stead of payment per hour).
- 30 Big companies like Philips and Hoogovens had their own specialists.
- 31 De geschiedenis van Berenschot (Utrecht 1989) publication by the company.
32The introduction of new wage Systems was mostly carried out by private consultant companies30. The leading firm was Raadgevend Bureau Betenschot31. The director, B.W. Berenschot, had founded the company in 1938 after working thirteen years in the same field for the firm of J.M. Louwerse. Berenschot had started with 10 employées in 1938. This number increased to 68 in 1946, long before the Marshall aid was in sight, and to 112 in 1950. In that last year it was calculated that Berenschot (had) worked for 300 companies with more than 50 employees on a total of 3000. Market penetration was much lower among the small companies, only 40 on a total of 9000.
33Berenschot had always followed the developments in the United States very closely. Before the war he had made several trips to America and in 1946, as soon as the circumstances allowed it, he travelled again to the US. In 1949 he applied for a Marshall travel stipend. It was turned down for formai reasons but he went anyway. During the war it had, of course, almost been impossible to keep informed about the latest trends and to try them out. Still they made an effort. In 1941 Berenschot started to experiment with standard costing techniques, a System that was to become become very popular after 1945. From 1940 onwards courses were given for supervisors. At the time this was more or less considered as a pastime to keep the employées busy. However, after the war courses became an important field of work. In 1946 Berenschot sent two of his collaborators to England to study the American method, developed during the war, of Training within industry. This method, inspired by the human relations movement, was meant for the lower management making them more productivity minded and teaching them how to instruct the workers. Training within industry was so successful that Berenschot established a spécial department for it.
- 32 M.A. van Elteren, Staal en arbeid ; een sociaal-historische studie naar industriâle arbeidsprocesse (...)
- 33 A. Carrard, Le chef, sa formation et sa tâche (Neuchatel/Paris 1942) 14-5 ; quoted by Van Elteren, (...)
34 Berenschot was not the only one who had discovered the value of training within industry. By January 1947 Philips, Unilever and the Dutch coalmines had independently introduced the System in their fïrms. A year later 65 companies had decided to change over to this method. By then 120 teachers had been trained and 10.000 supervisors had followed a course. The coordination rested now in the hands of the Fundatie « Werkelijk Dienen » (Foundation Truely Serving), the Dutch branch of the moral rearmament movement32. The shining example was the Swiss institute of professer A. Carrard. The Dutch translation of Carrard’s book, Le chef, sa formation et sa tâche, had been received with great enthusiasm, at least in management circles. His approach, a mixture of Christian ethics, human relations methods and industrial psychology was quite after the heart of Frits Philips and his peers. His message that the ultimate goal of every leader and of ail who were entrusted to his care was to become human beings, liberated from their « ego », and to make themselves subservient to the company and to the country, seemed to show the right way to the future33. The importance of this is that it shows that the Dutch industrial leaders were not interested in an ideology of productivity per se and in the promise of higher earnings. They wanted the people to work for their country and to see their company as the kernel of national solidarity.
35The Dutch government supported these endeavours knowing, however, that the faith amongst the workers that the abilty of the employers to safeguard their jobs had been severely shaken during the depression in the 1930’s. Therefore they proceeded very carefully, demanding a close coopération between employers and trade unions. In 1946 and 1949 committees were installed to develop fair but incentive wage Systems and take other measures which would lead to an increase of productivity. In 1949 the government conceded the First rise of wages since 1946 as a compensation for the inflation, on the condition that it was economically justified. First trade unions and employers had to reach an agreement on ways to increase productivity (lengthening of working days, shifts and the introduction of rates based on work study). This way the productivity drive was connected with the policy of low wages. Until mid 1951 these activities, in which also ail the major Dutch organisational advisory bureaus took part, were completely seperated from the work of the COP. In fact, the government attached much more importance to the careful planning of their committees than to the propaganda of the COP. It seems that the government only went along with the COP out of fear to endanger their Marshall funds. But this reluctance does not mean that it was not interested in increasing productivity as I hope to hâve shown.
- 34 ABZ, DGEM 681, minutes kleine commissie, 1-11-1951.
36One of the reasons why the government showed hésitation towards Technical Assistance was the American demand to impose certain measures on industry34. In 1948 a new cabinet had been formed, still with the participation of the social-demoçrats but of a more pragmatic character than the cabinets before. In the Ministery of Économie Affairs the socialist « planner » Vos was replaced by the catholic Van der Brink who was very liberal at heart. In his view it was up to the companies what efficiency measures to take. The other reason was that they were prepared to go a long way to keep the structure of consultations with the (non-communist) trade unions in tact. The trade unions, especially the social-democratic NVV, still feared the possibility of the return of unemployment. At the slightest sign of a recession, as in 1951, they required a hait to efficiency measures. In reality this had few implications and it was said probably more for publicity reasons, but it meant that the employers as well as the government had to be careful what they were saying out loud.
37Christian Stoffaes has described the technical assistance and its impact in France as la révolution invisible : « Mais derrière le « hard » des investissements lourds du Plan Marshall, il y a aussi le « soft », l’investissement immatériel des changements de l’organisation des usines et des mutations des comportements productifs. Pour invisible que fut cette révolution, c’est elle, probablement, qui importe les conséquences les plus importantes et les plus durables35. » If we look at the Dutch case and try to make a comparison, we have to realize that two questions are involved : whether an invisible révolution has taken place in the Netherlands, comparable with the events in France and if it has, whether it has been triggered off by the technical assistance program. It is difficult to answer the first question because the Dutch figures on productivity are unreliable. If this would turn out to be the case – a research project by the Central Office for Statistics will soon start then the evidence suggests that the origins of this invisible révolution hâve to be traced back to the first years after the war. The technical assistance program reinforced the efforts to modernize the industry and to increase productivity which had been undertaken from 1945 onwards. Before TA started already many thousands of supervisors had followed the training within industry courses. On the other hand, it seems that the break with the past was not so sharp as Stoffaes argues it has been in France. The most important reason is the absence of resistance against, or even welcoming of, rationalisation in the Netherlands in the 1920’s. There was a severe setback during the 1930’s, due to the fact that the économie crisis struck harder in Holland than in most other countries, but the foundation had already been laid.
38I want to make a last point. According to Hogan, « as évident from the persistence of unemployment, not to mention the restraints on consumption, the low wages, and the maldistribution of wealth, government and business dites divested the Marshall Plan of its social-democratic dimensions36. » The Dutch were very grateful for the Marshall aid but the social-democratic dimension eluded them. In 1949 they were criticized by the ECA for lifting the restraints on consumption and for investing too much in the consumption industry. As far as productivity and the Technical Assistance is concerned, they tried to fit it in in their framework of national consensus that had been formed during the war and basically already before the war.
Notes
1 Archief Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken (ABZ), DGEM 693, minutes 15th meeting COP 25-8-1950,
2 Nota betreffende de productiviteit in Nederland, 28-10-1951, 8.
3 ABZ, DGEM 1110, ECA. The Netherlands Country Study (m9) 10.
4 Cited by WJ. Dercksen, Industrialisatiepolitiek rondom de jaren vijftig ; een sociologisch-economische beleidsstudie, (Assen/Maastricht 1986), 164.
5 Dercksen, op. cit. 184.
6 MJ. Hogan, The Marshall Plan ; America, Britain and the reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (New York 1987) 427.
7 A.S. Milward, The reconstruction of Western Europe 1945-1951 (London 1984) 492.
8 A.S. Milward, « Was the Marshall Plan necessary ? », Diplomatie History 13 (1989) 231-253 ; Ch. S. Maier, In search of stability ; Explorations in historical political economy (Cambridge 1987).
9 Milward, « Was the Marshall Plan necessary ? », 252.
10 Maier, op. cit. 146.
11 A. Bakker en M.M.P. van Lent, Pieter Lieftinck 1902-1989. Herinneringen opgetekend door A. Bakker en M.M.P. van Lenf (Utrecht etc. 1989), 151.
12 P. van der Eng, De Marshall-hulp ; een perspectief voor Nederland 1947-1953 (Houten 1987) 169.
13 E.H. van der Beugel, « Drees als minister en minister-president », H. Daalder en N. Cramer, Willem Drees (Houten 1988), 151-158, 158.
14 H. de Liagre Bîhl, J. Nekkers en L. Slot (eds.), Nederland industrialiseert. Politieke en ideologiese strijd rondom het naoorlogse industrialisatiebeleid 1945-1955 (Nijmegen 1981).
15 J.C.H. Blom speaks of the years of discipline and asceticism ; J.C.H. Blom, « Jaren van tucht en ascese. Enige beschouwingen over de stemming in Herrijzend Nederland 1945-1950 », Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de Gescbiedenis der Nederlanden 96 (1981) 300-333. See also E.H. Kossmann, De lage landen 1780-1980 \o\. 2 (Amsterdam/ Brussel 1986), 231.
16 Van der Eng, De Marshall-bulp, 191.
17 See H.S.A. Bloemen, Scientific management in Nederland 1900-1930 (Amsterdam 1988).
18 It should be realised that there was no powerful communist trade union in the Netherlands ; ail the main trade unions were « jaune », the most important one having close connections with the moderate social-democrats.
19 P.E. de Hen, Actieve en re-actieve industriepolitiek in Nederland (Amsterdam 1980).
20 See for the backgrounds of the (very positive) réception of the Marshall Plan by the PvdA : Friso Wielenga, « De Partij van de Arbeid en het Marshallplan », Het vijfde jaarboek voor het democratisch socialisme (Amsterdam 1983), 128-159. For the réception by the NW (trade union linked with the PvdA) : Herman Langeveld, « Die Niederlndische Gewerkschaftsbewegung und der Marshall-Plan », O.N. Haberl und L. Niethammer (eds.), Der Marshall-Plan und die europische Linke (Frankfurt am Main 1986), 381-406.
21 J. Bosmans, « Het maatschappelijk-politieke leven in Nederland 1918-1940 », Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, vol. 14 (Haarlem 1979) 200-253 ; A. Visser, Alleen bij uiterste noodzaak ? De rooms-rode samenwerking en het einde van de brede basis 1948-1958 (Amsterdam 1986).
22 J.C.H. Blom, « Jaren van tucht » 136.
23 J.L. van Zanden en R.T. Griffiths, Économische geschiedenis van Nederland in de 20e eeuw (Utrecht 1989) 14.
24 See Elma Verhey and Gérard van Westerloo, « De pont van kwart over zeven », Vrij Nederland 7-11-1981.
25 A. Maddison, Phases of capitalist development (Oxford 1982) 212.
26 J.L. van Zanden and R.T. Griffiths, Économischegeschiedenis van Nederland in de 20e eeuw (Utrecht 1989) 19.
27 CBS, sérié bedrijfsvergelijkende meting van de produktiviteit, number 8, onderzoek gieterijen.
28 It is interesting to see that when finally in 1952 a white paper on export policy was published, the question of productivity was mentioned only once, in spite of the protests of Albregts ; ABZ, DGEM 103, Pen aan Albregts 4-4-1952.
29 ABZ, DGEM 1110, Blaisse, Opmerkingen m.b.t. het Country report Netherlands 14-1-1949.
30 Big companies like Philips and Hoogovens had their own specialists.
31 De geschiedenis van Berenschot (Utrecht 1989) publication by the company.
32 M.A. van Elteren, Staal en arbeid ; een sociaal-historische studie naar industriâle arbeidsprocessen onder arbeiders en het desbetreffend bedrijfsbeleid bij Hoogovens Umuiden, 1924-1966 vol. A (Leiden 1986) 206-217.
33 A. Carrard, Le chef, sa formation et sa tâche (Neuchatel/Paris 1942) 14-5 ; quoted by Van Elteren, op. cit. 212.
34 ABZ, DGEM 681, minutes kleine commissie, 1-11-1951.
Notes de fin
* La traduction de ce résumé à été réalisée par le Service de traduction du ministère des Finances.
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