scholarly journals The Creation of the Monnet Plan, 1945–1946: A Critical Re-Evaluation

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUC-ANDRÉ BRUNET

Drawing on an extensive range of French archival sources as well as Jean Monnet's papers, this article challenges several commonly held views regarding the establishment of the Monnet Plan by re-examining the domestic political context in post-war France. It reveals that the distinctive ‘supra-ministerial’ structure of the Monnet Plan was developed only after, and in direct response to, the October 1945 legislative elections in which the French Communist Party won the most seats and subsequently gained control of France's main economic ministries. Furthermore, Monnet managed to convince communist ministers to surrender important powers from their ministries to Monnet's nascent planning office on false premises, a finding that challenges the usual depiction of Monnet as an open and honest broker.

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-155
Author(s):  
Neil Macmaster

The Algerian Communist Party (PCA) played a particularly important role in the anti-colonial movement in the Chelif region, a prominence that explains why it was chosen as the primary base for the ‘Red Maquis’ guerrilla force in 1956. Chapter 7 looks at the way in which the PCA, dominated by the French Communist Party, initially opposed nationalism and followed the orthodox Marxist doctrine that the peasantry could not constitute a revolutionary class, a vanguard role that could only be assumed by an industrial or urban proletariat. In the Chelif region the veteran communist and trade union leader Mohamed Marouf reflected this position and focused propaganda work on the farm labourers of the plain while neglecting the mountain peasants that were seen as a form of seasonal, blackleg labour. However, from 1932 onwards a minority movement began to emerge in the PCA that was favourable to a peasant-based strategy, and in 1944 this led to the creation of the Syndicat des petits cultivateurs (SPC). The peasant-based movement that developed in the Aurès, Tlemçen, and Chelif mountains during the late 1940s and prepared the ground for a later guerrilla movement.


Author(s):  
Thomas Baldwin

Merleau-Ponty belongs to the group of French philosophers who transformed French philosophy in the early post-war period by introducing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers Husserl and Heidegger. His central concern was with ‘the phenomenology of perception’ (the title of his major book), and his originality lay in his account of the role of the bodily sense-organs in perception, which led him to develop a phenomenological treatment of the sub-personal perceptions that play a central role in bodily movements. This account of the sub-personal aspects of life enabled him to launch a famous critique of Sartre’s conception of freedom, which he regarded as an illusion engendered by excessive attention to consciousness. None the less, he and Sartre cooperated for many years in French political affairs, until Merleau-Ponty became exasperated by the orthodox Marxism-Leninism of the French Communist Party in a way in which Sartre, who remained a fellow-traveller, did not. As well as several substantial political essays, Merleau-Ponty wrote widely on art, anthropology and, especially, language. He died leaving some important work incomplete. Although his work is still esteemed within the French academic establishment, his influence in France has waned, because of a tendency there to study his German forebears almost to the exclusion of all else. But elsewhere, and most notably in the USA, Merleau-Ponty’s work is widely studied, especially now that questions about the distinction between personal and sub-personal aspects of life have become so prominent.


2020 ◽  
pp. 225-251
Author(s):  
Ernest Ming-Tak Leung

This article explores a commonly ignored aspect of Japan–North Korean relations: the Japanese factor in the making of Korean socialism. Korea was indirectly influenced by the Japanese Jiyuminken Movement, in the 1910s–1920s serving as a stepping-stone for the creation of a Japanese Communist Party. Wartime mobilization policies under Japanese rule were continued and expanded beyond the colonial era. The Juche ideology built on tendencies first exhibited in the 1942 Overcoming Modernity Conference in Japan, and in the 1970s some Japanese leftists viewed Juche as a humanist Marxism. Trade between Japan and North Korea expanded from 1961 onwards, culminating in North Korea’s default in 1976, from which point on relations soured between the two countries. Yet leaders with direct experience of colonial rule governed North Korea through to the late 1990s.


Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 492-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALISTAIR KEFFORD

ABSTRACT:This article examines the impact of post-war urban renewal on industry and economic activity in Manchester and Leeds. It demonstrates that local redevelopment plans contained important economic underpinnings which have been largely overlooked in the literature, and particularly highlights expansive plans for industrial reorganization and relocation. The article also shows that, in practice, urban renewal had a destabilizing and destructive impact on established industrial activities and exacerbated the inner-city problems of unemployment and disinvestment which preoccupied policy-makers by the 1970s. The article argues that post-war planning practices need to be integrated into wider histories of deindustrialization in British cities.


1944 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-241
Author(s):  
Carl B. Spaeth ◽  
William Sanders

The war and the present preoccupation with post-war plans have brought about a general awareness of the fact that the Americas have been a testing ground for the orderly organization of relations among sovereign states, especially in the development of cooperative principles and techniques. The construction of a political organization within which these principles and techniques could be consolidated has not, however, characterized the American experience. The Pan American Union, for example, is expressly denied the right to consider political or controversial questions, and proposals for the creation of a “league” or “association” of American states has met with courteous but definite coolness.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Jakub Majkowski

This essay will firstly address the extent of Stalin’s achievements in leading the course for domestic policy of the Soviet Union and its contribution towards maintaining the country’s supremacy in the world, for example the rapid post-war recovery of industry and agriculture, and secondly, the foreign policy including ambiguous relations with Communist governments of countries forming the Eastern Bloc, upkeeping frail alliances and growing antagonism towards western powers, especially the United States of America.   The actions and influence of Stalin’s closest associates in the Communist Party and the effect of Soviet propaganda on the society are also reviewed. This investigation will cover the period from 1945 to 1953. Additionally, other factors such as the impact of post-war worldwide economic situation and attitude of the society of Soviet Union will be discussed.    


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (121) ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
Bertel Nygaard

The Danish Social Democratic propaganda movie The Dream of Tomorrow was produced for the first post-war parliamentary election in Denmark in October 1945 to illustrate the project of social happiness as inscribed in the new electoral program of the party, Denmark of the Future. The vision of a future welfare state in the program was informed by new conceptions of the feasibility of relatively far-reaching social reform within capitalism, but also by concerns about the post-war strengthening of the Communist Party as a rival to the traditional hegemony of Danish Social Democracy, promp­ting the Social Democratic leadership to emphasize the radical nature of the change envisioned by the program. In the movie this specific political conjuncture of programmatic renewal and tactically determined rhetorical radicalism was translated into a synthesis of a political orientation towards immediate change and a utopian narrative of imaginary social happiness, seeking to appeal especially to young workers radicalized by the experience of occupation and resistance during the war. The overall result, however, was an uneasy balance between a political reform program and a utopian vison tied to the main ideological coordinates of the present, projected onto a future in which history seemed to have ended.


ICONI ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 36-48
Author(s):  
Ivan D. Porshnev ◽  

The article dwells upon the process of the artistic cooperation between Vsevolod Meyerhold and Sergei Prokofi ev by the example of their collaborative work on Alexander Pushkin’s play “Boris Godunov.” The preparation for the actualization of the conception had started long before the main rehearsing period — in 1934, after the issuance of the edict of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) (Communist Party) “Concerning the Foundation of the All-Union Pushkin Committee in connection with the centennial anniversary of the death of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin.” The performance was supposed to have become the appropriate response to the festivities of the Pushkin jubilee, but it never got round to being performed at that time. The peculiarities of the interpretation of the drama in the dialogue of the two Masters are examined on the basis of the materials connected with the history of the creation of the performance and the music to it. Analysis is made of the semantic content of the musical numbers (“The Song of the Lonely Wanderer” and the “Songs of Loneliness”), which carry out the function of the through leit-motifs and indirectly characterize Boris Godunov and the Pretender, and also play an important role in the formation of the “general intonation” of the performance. The conclusion is arrived at that the “politically saturated” production of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Sergei Prokofi ev touched upon the prohibited “territory of meanings”: the denoted implication unwittingly projected itself on the personal fate of the ruler of the Soviet state.


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