ABSTRACT
The economic consequences of war and peace and organised liberalism In France, the idea of substituting planning to markets to organise economic life is ancient and has deep roots. It can be traced back to Colbert, the Minister of Finance from 1665 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV.1 During the twentieth century, the development of planning was related to warfare during the First World War. It is worth mentioning the part played in this evolution by Etienne Clémentel (1864-1936). A notary with a background in law and humanities, his political career extended from 1900 to 1936. Aristide Briand, the President of the Council of Ministers appointed him Minister of Trade and Industry on 29 October 1915. He was the only Minister to remain in charge from then until November 1919, during this time his ministerial duties increased relentlessly. In 1915, he inherited the Industry, Posts and Telegraphs sectors from the Commerce portfolio. In December 1916, he cumulated these functions temporarily with Agriculture and Labour, involving de facto responsibility for the entire national civilian economy. Clemenceau even extended (at Clémentel’s request) his Ministry to the sensitive area of Maritime Transport and Merchant Marine, giving him the upper hand in fuelling the country. Clémentel had the flair to select an original team of staff, including academics (for example, Henri Hauser, a historian; engineers; and a self-made man, Jean Monnet). By means of fixed prices and requisitions and by prohibiting imports and exports, all the chief features of the economic framework that guided and confined the country’s activity were now set up. Nevertheless, during the last period of the war, the services were further extended and complicated; it was the supply of mineral oil in particular that attracted the attention of the public authorities. There had been a General Petroleum Committee since 13 July 1917, and a Technical Section at the Ministry of Commerce since October 1917. A Petroleum Consortium was organised on 29 March 1918, which bought from the state the oil that it imported, and resold it to its members. However, there was soon a change of system: a General Commissariat of Petroleum and Motor Spirit was formed on 21 August 1918. On 1 February 1919, this Commissariat assumed the appearance of a Ministry: it had a general secretariat, a “home service”, a
purchasing service, a group of technical services, a distributing service (apart from a central office for the distribution of motor spirit) and a service for consumption control. This is a good example of “the exuberance with which administrative plants will grow” (Renouvin2 1927 [1924], p. 67). From 1917 onwards, Clémentel undertook an assessment to reorganise the French economy and put forward proposals for the industrial modernisation of France after the war (Letté 2012). These proposals would require considerable state intervention and collective action by groups of producers. The report is by no means a plea for state control of the economy; on the contrary, it is targeted to prevent a radical questioning of the liberal economic order. It can be seen as the first of several interwar “plans”. It reflected a sense among many organisers that concerted action was needed to prevent France from falling behind in the international economic race (see Clarke 2011, p. 16). From 1917, a social scientist, Henri Hauser, who had been Clémentel’s top aide at the ministry with whom he kept in touch, developed this concern in several books during the interwar period. Both were convinced that the days of Manchester liberalism were over, and they supported organised liberalism instead. Hauser determined a new agenda for the state: the state should organise an industrial mobilisation and distribute work between the regions. It should improve the organisation of the transport system and promote scientific research. These goals were designed to ensure national economic security: “The state has to defend the interest of the masses and oppose the free play of economic laws that results in the death of producers” (Hauser quoted in Marin and Soutou 2006, p. 192). He advocated an extension of this organisation of the economy on an international level, and lamented that the decisions of the Economic Council of the League of Nations lacked enforcement (Hauser 1935, p. 179).
