ABSTRACT

During the years of reconstruction there was a deluge of economic and journalistic analysis on the theme of what ought to be done, most of it characterized by an absence of any longer-term historical perspective to an extent unusual even in hastily written contemporary comment. It is as if in 1947 events had taken so dramatic and inexplicable a turn and moved so quickly as to invalidate the traditional modes of analysis on which most commentators rely. After 1953 this spate of comment stopped short and there was an almost complete absence of discussion of the reconstruction for two decades while Europeans busied themselves with the life of getting and spending for which the reconstruction had prepared the way. Most economics literature was concerned to explain why rates of growth of national income were so high and so sustained, and how they could be maintained. In this discussion the post-war reconstruction made only a very perfunctory introductory appearance. After the Second World War, it was suggested, something called ‘the Bretton Woods system’ had been created which permitted and even encouraged-other things being equaleconomies to pursue similar policies leading to higher rates of economic growth. There had been, it was usually indicated, some initial difficulties in making ‘the Bretton Woods system’ function, because the United States had at first underestimated the dimensions of the needed recovery from the damage and dislocation wrought by the Second World War. This, however, had been put right by Marshall Aid, which at the same time had produced a certain measure of European economic co-operation lacking after the First World War. Thus by 1950 the foundations had been laid for the bright new world of sustained economic growth. The only alternative explanation was that the two decades of high growth rates which followed were due to high levels of armaments expenditure and were thus the product of the Cold War, an explanation which implied that the reconstruction was either irrelevant or a failure.