Second Year (1949-1950): Toward Economic Growth ... - PDF, 101 mb

6 The Marshall Plan and Its Meaning
policy: the interest of the United States was to be linked to an unprecedented
degree with economic and political concerns in other
parts of the world.
For the first time in history, resources from one continent were to be
channeled,. deliberately and on a huge scale, into rebuilding production,
trade, and stability in another. An' effort was to be made to reverse
a trend of decades by breaking down European economic barriers and
extending healthy cooperation. In parts of Asia outside Communist
control, and indireotly in European dependencies. comprising threefourths
of Mrica, economic advancement was to be promoted. The
preamble to the act· showed moreover that its framers were concerned
not only with providing economic aid, but also with preserving and
strengthening individual liberties and democratic institutions among
the free peoples of the world.
The Marshall Plan as approved by Congress was more, then, than
a reaction to an immediate crisis. It reflected more than a desire to
alleviate distress, or to restore a prewar level of economic activity, or
to check Communist expansion. It revealed also the beginning of a
recognition that these goals could no longer be effectively pursued
in isolation.
When the operation was ended, ahead of schedule, there were many
opinions, informed and otherwise, about what had been achieved.
Many saw only a large-scale relief task. Many, on the other hand, attached
great significance to the Marshall Plan for its contribution
toward an unprecedented revival of economic life in free Europe, or
to the way it brought leaders and technicians of many -countries together
as never before in time of peace for joint work on common
problems, or to its staying effect on Communist expansion, or to its
demonstration that the democracies could seize the initiative and carry
out a vast international undertaking cooperatively in .time of peace,
or to its pioneering work in underdeveloped areas.
Widespread satisfaction with the result, however conceived, was
offset in some quarters by impatience that economic assistance was still
needed. Complaints or criticisms were heard on many different grounds:
that the recipient countries were insufficiently aware of, and grateful
for, generous American aid; that certain European countries had not
done all they could for themselves; that the benefits of the assistance
had not in some nations reached the neediest people; that progress
toward European integration was slower than it might have been;