Hendrik De Man, Jan Tinbergen: from Cultural to Plan-Socialism Erwin Dekker, Erasmus University Rotterdam, [email protected]
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Hendrik de Man, Jan Tinbergen: From Cultural to Plan-Socialism Erwin Dekker, Erasmus University Rotterdam, [email protected] The Plan is the symbol of vigor, and the emblem of self- confidence, strength and knowledge. It replaces the mythos of the dictator with clarity, intelligibility, and will-power. M. Sluyser, 1934 In 1935 Jan Tinbergen and Hein Vos published the Plan van de Arbeid (Plan of Labor) in the Netherlands, a political plan to get out of the Great Depression. It followed the model of the 1934 Plan de Man of Hendrik de Man in Belgium. In both countries these plans were launched along with extensive propaganda campaigns including pamphlets, brochures, songs and flags. The goal was to propose a way out of the crisis which could garner broad social support across party lines. Its combination of high-flown idealism and pragmatic solutions was the social-democratic answer to the threat of fascism, as well as the failure of the social-democratic movement to come up with good plans to combat the crisis. In fact those associated with the plan-movement felt that the social- democratic intellectuals had responded with too much complacency to the Great Depression, thinking of it as merely a symptom of a fundamentally sick social system, which would sooner or later be overthrown. On the other hand these reformers were concerned that the social-democratic parties in Europe were caught up defending an imperfect democratic capitalist system against its detractors. The plan-activists argued that this mixture of apologism and complacency attitude was likely to destroy not merely capitalism but also the social-democratic movement and the hopes of a socialist future. They sought to bring new élan and spirit to the socialist cause. This paper will argue that the plan-movement was crucial for the development of the means and the technique of economic policy. It represented an imperative to improve the here and now towards a more just and socialist society. The Plan popularized the notion of public works and unemployment policies, along the lines of the New Deal. As Peter Dodge has put it: “What Roosevelt’s New Deal meant pragmatically in America, de Man’s Plan of Labor represented ideologically in Europe” (Dodge 1979, 290). But it also operationalized what a mixed economy would look like: the nationalization of certain sectors which already tended towards monopoly and of sectors which were singled out as having caused the severity of the economic downturn, notably finance. It created an institutional position for economic expertise, which would supplement if not replace parliament in certain matters of economic policy. The Plan of Labor was for Tinbergen the definite step towards the first macro-econometric model of the Dutch economy which he would present a year later. So the plans of labor in Belgium and the Netherlands have had great impact on the way in which modern economic policy is formulated, operationalized and executed. Most importantly for our subject Tinbergen, it marks his transition from an idealistic and culture type of socialism to a final combination of his socialist ideals with his scientific economic concerns. The plans are at the same time interesting for they represent a rather radical break with the way in which social-democratic parties in Europe thought about policy and more generally about socialism. They represented a break in the economic thinking within the social-democratic movement which had been in the making throughout the 1920’s, when slowly but surely Marxist theory came under attack from within. The Plan of Labor is the moment that socialist goals became definitely detached from socialist means. No longer was the socialization of the means of production believed to be necessary to realize the goals of socialism. A space for a new scientific socialism was created by this decoupling, because now the socialist goals could be realized while adopting the (new) methods of science. And although the plans were self-consciously crisis-plans they nonetheless formed a crucial step on the path towards gradual reformism. More importantly than those changes still, was the fact that they sought to appeal to idealists of all parties, they sought to transcend party lines. No longer was the social-democratic party a workers party, but the plans were national attempts to get out of the crisis, and they appealed to the general national interest. The social theory underlying these plans was not one of class struggle, but of shared problems, which could be overcome if we willed it enough, and importantly of shared goals. This step would prove crucial also for thinking about social welfare after the war, as for example, in the burgeoning literature on welfare economics. The goal of this article is to explore the intellectual origins of this plan-movement through a biographical study of Jan Tinbergen’s development in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It will demonstrate that the idealist socialist youth movement was a crucial influence and development in socialism that gave rise to this plan-movement. Hendrik de Man was an early pioneer in the socialist youth movement, Jan Tinbergen joined the Dutch Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale (AJC, Workers Youth Society) early in the 1920’s. This socialist youth movement saw itself as a socialist vanguard which would explore and demonstrate how different socialist culture would be from the dominant capitalist culture. More importantly it presented itself as a kind of socialist reformation, which sought to purify socialist idealism. Its primary purpose, at least during the 1920’s was not to reform the political-economic program of the party, but instead to demonstrate the superiority of the socialist life-style, socialist culture. As such it was often called cultural socialism. The enlightened leadership created in this youth movement would help prepare the workers culturally for socialism, especially since capitalism degraded culture. Cultural socialism was an early counter-cultural movement that celebrated authentic folk and outdoor culture, over the latest capitalist fads. It sought an idealistic if not spiritual renewal of socialism. The socialist culture as lived in the AJC was thus a means to show that socialism could, at least partly, be realized by a mere act of will: the level of discipline, and self-discipline in these movements, is the stuff of legends. This was also the recent that they felt close affinities with the Quakers, who had similarly realized their ideals in a hostile environment. In these youth movements socialism was transformed into a set of ideals, rather than a particular societal order, as Marxists and social-democrats still believed it to be. This move away from economic-political goals, allowed them the freedom to come up with an alternative type of planning, based on ideals rather than a fixed blueprint for society. This cultural socialism also sought to renew the idea of a scientific socialism. It argued that much of Marx’s predictions had not come true and were rooted in a flawed 19th-century idea of science, based on immutable laws. This new connection provided an opportunity for technically trained people like Jan Tinbergen and Hein Vos to renew the connection between socialist ideals and modern science, while remaining true to the ideal of a scientific socialism of the old Master. The paper will proceed as follows. The first section will be devoted to the socialist youth culture of the 1920’s, and the particular way in which this shaped Jan Tinbergen. The second section will detail the important contribution of Hendrik de Man to this socialist youth culture, and his movement of plan-socialism. The third section will analyze the role of Jan Tinbergen in the drafting of the Plan of Labor in the Netherlands. The fourth section will analyze the impact of these Plans of Labor, and argue for their fundamental importance in the transformation of Tinbergen’s thought and social- democratic thought more generally. The socialist youth movement The major programs of socialist worker and youth education started around WWI in a number of European countries, such as Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The Dutch branch the AJC was founded in 1918 by the SDAP (Social-Democratic Labor Party) and the NVV (Dutch League of Unions), but initially it was little more than a means to keep the children off the street. This changed when it came under the direction of Koos Vorrink. He was a highly idealistic man who was particularly concerned about alcohol-abuse among workers and the youth of his day, and who more generally felt that moral standards were in steady decline, not least among the proletariat. Under his leadership the AJC was transformed into a youth movement which, although it only boosted a few thousand members, was of great cultural impact and from which most of the mid- century leaders of the social-democractic party in the Netherlands would come. Vorrink had, from the start important intellectual and financial support from Floor Wibaut. Wibaut was an elder statesman within the social-democratic movement around 1920, perhaps best described as a Dutch Walter Rathenau. This free-sprited and progressive entrepreneur not only had behind him a successful career in business, but was also publishing a steady stream of intellectual reflections on socialism, and around the time was busy realizing the social housing projects in Amsterdam, which to this day are world-renowned as the ‘Amsterdamse School’. These social housing projects reflected well the combination of economic and moral improvement that was pursued, the housing projects not merely sought to raise living standards, but also alter life-styles of the proletariat by preventing alcohol-abuse and providing access to modern communication through post-offices.