PLANNING SOCIAL REFORM
Satellite city Sarcelles, 1963. Source: Getty Images.
Ten miles outside Paris the high-rise apartments of Sarcelles jut into the sky, punctuating the once bucolic landscape with concrete towers as a “true city of the future.” Built in three phases from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, this grand ensemble began as a solution to the postwar housing crisis but subsequently developed into a showcase of architectural modernism. Its promoters were both social reformers seeking to restore the health of the family and architects trying to develop an urban design that would “constitute a harbor of peace and tranquility for modern man.” The resulting mix of 12,331 apartments, shops, parking areas, streets, and green spaces was carefully laid out to create the feeling of a community, offering a leisure space in which to regenerate for work. Tired of the cramped and decrepit apartments of older cities, renters flocked to the development in hopes of a better life, defined by modern conveniences such as indoor plumbing and electric stoves.1 Even if they differed in details, similar satellite towns sprang up all over Europe during the 1960s, epitomizing the optimism of social engineering.
In 1965 the jurist Joseph H. Kaiser articulated this renewed confidence in the possibility of progress by scientific design: “Planning is the great tendency of our times…. Planning is the systematic blue-print of a rational order on the basis of all available knowledge.” While cultural pessimists considered the future unknowable and economic liberals objected to regimentation, many scientists, journalists, and politicians began to believe that it was possible to predict what was going to happen and to make decisions accordingly. Overwhelmed by what they considered to be the rapid pace of economic growth, social change, and cultural experimentation, observers felt that piecemeal reactions did not suffice any longer. Instead, systematic plans were needed in order to guide such development. Ignoring philosophical objections, the public was willing to endorse transportation planning in order to accommodate the increasing numbers of automobiles clogging urban streets. At the same time, behavioral scientists claimed to offer research-based solutions to social problems, shifting policy arguments from opinions to evidence.2
This turn toward social planning responded to the widespread preoccupation with shaping the future as a method of anticipating and directing coming developments. In literature and film, the genre of science fiction gained popularity in the 1960s by appealing to the public as speculation about the potential consequences of space exploration. Its attraction derived from a peculiar blend of technological fantasies with dreams of social alternatives, alternating between utopia and dystopia.3 Only slightly more respectable was the academic discipline of “futurology,” promoted by Bertrand de Jouvenel and Robert Jungk, which aspired to finding a systematic, scientific method of making prognoses about what was to come. The establishment of think tanks and professorships concerned with the future resulted from the desire of governments and corporations to predict developments in order to minimize the risks of erroneous decisions. Reinforced by the emergence of mainframe computers, the new interdisciplinary science of cybernetics promised to handle the complexities of advanced industrial society in both the East and West, leading to hopes for a convergence of market with plan.4
This optimistic outlook was based on shared assumptions about modernization that transcended the Iron Curtain but possessed limitations that became visible only in retrospect. One common belief was that technological innovation was benign and would provide ever more ingenious ways of reducing the need for labor. Another conviction, due to the postwar boom, was the presupposition that economic growth would automatically continue as long as there were no new wars. Perhaps even more important was the notion that society was basically plastic, amenable to being shaped by political decisions. Yet another premise implied that scientific research, institutionalized in various advisory bodies, could provide empirical data as well as objective interpretations that ought to guide actual decisions. As a result, politics would become more rational and efficient, no longer consisting of struggles over ideology but rather turning into an effort to implement scientific recommendations. Propelled by experts, this enthusiasm for social planning was the high point of classical modernity, since it recovered the lost faith in progress through human rationality.5
This planning effort modernized the face of Europe during the postwar decades but fell short of achieving a perfect society. While all levels of planning played a crucial role in organizing reconstruction, the direction of that effort remained highly contested. During the postwar boom, the revival of western growth was largely a consequence of the return to market competition, moderated by a neo-Keynesian approach to government direction that encouraged corporatist cooperation between management and labor.6 Planning cities for automobile traffic, designing satellite towns, and building commercial space created an urban landscape of concrete, steel, and glass—comprising not only buildings but also much of the space between them—whose technocratic inhumanity provoked a counterimpulse of restoring and reviving older neighborhoods. Similarly the drastic expansion of secondary and tertiary education, which broadened social mobility, also alienated many of the new graduates. Finally, the expansion of welfare benefits created greater equality but also involved costs that triggered resentment. Ironically, the very success of modern planning eventually limited its further advance.
ORGANIZING RECONSTRUCTION
In contrast to the Anglo-American credo of free trade, continental Europeans had a long history of state involvement in the economy. Memories of the mercantilism pursued by absolutist rulers facilitated government guidance during catch-up industrialization, even in the liberal nineteenth-century interlude that favored market competition. After the Second World War, the deep trauma of the Great Depression predisposed the public toward statist measures to prevent its recurrence, while socialist agitation called for nationalization of key sectors of industry and redistribution of land. Moreover, the experience of wartime coordination of the economy also militated in favor of public coordination of rebuilding efforts. While everyone agreed that the most onerous controls such as rationing cards for food and clothing ought to be lifted, opinions were divided over the course to be followed in the future. Socialist supporters of government organization of the economy so as to create a more egalitarian society clashed with liberal advocates of the free play of the market in order to ignite growth.7
One extreme was the communist course of economic planning in the hope of duplicating the success of Soviet industrialization in Eastern Europe. In part, Marxist-Leninists wanted to fulfill the aspirations of the labor movement to end capitalist exploitation by nationalizing industry and breaking up landed estates. In part, they sincerely believed in eliminating pricing as a method of allocating resources and replacing the individual profit motive with a collective sense of social responsibility. The mechanism for achieving such a lofty aim was the plan. In the most general sense, the party set economic priorities that functioned as an overall framework. In a more specific application, industrial managers formulated targets for their factories such as raw-material needs, labor requirements, and production goals, based on prior performance. These competing individual plans were then coordinated by a central planning bureaucracy, which aggregated their goals into an overall design for the next three to five years. For rebuilding the war damage and forced industrialization this system functioned reasonably well.8
In contrast, the Scandinavian model, promoted by progressive scholars like the economist Gunnar Myrdal, rested on a compromise between market freedom and welfare support. When the Swedish Social Democrats were elected in 1932, they had agreed with business leaders on a compromise that established a broad array of social protections but preserved free trade and private property. Following the vision of a people’s home (folkhemmet), they created a safety net with high unemployment and pension benefits, authorizing as well sizable transfer payments that drastically reduced the number of the poor. Since this approach had proven successful in fighting the effects of the Great Depression, the Nordic states extended it further after the war, creating the most extensive welfare states in the West. Of course, such social supports required high public spending and some of the steepest income taxes in Europe, averaging around 50 percent. But in most international comparisons of well-being the Scandinavian countries ranked at the top of the scale, while surveys of life satisfaction inevitably also showed them in the lead.9
The French planning for postwar reconstruction was less generous but animated by a similar spirit. Convinced that France “must modernize,” Jean Monnet sent “Proposals for a Modernization and Investment Plan” to President Charles de Gaulle in December 1945, which led to the establishment of a Commissariat Général du Plan. This planning commission set goals to be achieved and requested the necessary resources for twenty-four key industries. Starting as a response to the postwar crisis, the Monnet Plan tried to renew the basic infrastructure so as to make France more competitive with its eastern neighbor. In many ways this approach was a product of Parisian centralization promoted by the elite graduates of the hautes écoles, who wanted to direct economic affairs in the provinces from the capital. Based on a large nationalized sector of the economy, the French plan proposed a strategy of investment helped by American loans and intended to put the country back on its feet. Since it thereby reenergized private business, this plan generally succeeded in launching postwar recovery and modernizing the French economy.10
Though forced to cope with austerity, Britain’s key effort focused on the introduction of a modern welfare state as compensation for the wartime effort of the lower classes. The victorious Labour government did nationalize some industries like the railroads but gave more attention to implementation of the Beveridge Report, which proposed minimum standards of social protection. With breathtaking boldness, the Attlee cabinet introduced a series of measures such as the National Insurance Act of 1946, which provided sickness, unemployment, retirement, maternity, orphan, and death benefits through one comprehensive payment by most working citizens, deducted from their wages or salaries. Moreover, this initiative was complemented by family allowances, accident insurance, and national assistance for the poor. The most ambitious legislation, championed by Aneurin Bevan, was the controversial introduction of the National Health Service, which socialized the provision of medical care to be paid out of tax receipts.11 While leaving private business largely untouched, this impressive package of welfare measures vastly expanded the scope of government action for important sectors of society.
In contrast, defeated and devastated West Germany tried to escape from an excess of state control in order to revive the largest economy on the continent. While Nazi measures were quickly repudiated, the underlying cartel structures proved more difficult to undo. Concerned with preventing a revival of German military power, the victorious occupiers moreover insisted on large-scale dismantling of factories and lowering industrial production levels in order to pastoralize the country. Since these Allied plans were only gradually revised upward, the reemerging German authorities were forced to administer aid to a population facing severe deprivation: they had to provide a minimum of food (twelve hundred calories per day), assign cramped emergency housing, and distribute scarce heating materials. In this dire situation, calls for nationalization of industry and for distribution of estate land to farmers found a receptive audience even in bourgeois Christian Democratic Union circles. Only a small minority of liberal economists followed Friedrich von Hayek’s call in The Road to Serfdom and argued vigorously for a lifting of restrictions in order to have the dynamism of the free market spark a recovery.12
American pressure and assistance, however, kept Western Europe from experimenting further with socialist planning and led to a return to the free market. While some New Dealers sympathized with welfare reforms, on balance U.S. elites were rather inclined to favor capitalist competition. In occupied Germany the American veto stopped nationalization drives in Hesse and North-Rhine Westphalia, limiting the socializing impulse to codetermination between management and labor. In Western Europe direct U.S. loans as well as the Marshall Plan and indirect financial assistance through the OEEC helped revive private enterprise and allowed competition to recover. Moreover, the dynamic growth of the American economy was an attractive example of what an unrestricted market at home and free trade between nations could accomplish. Encouraged by exchange programs and service clubs like Rotary and Lions, European business leaders therefore strove to emulate this example and positioned themselves in domestic debates in favor of reducing the role of the state and returning to competition.13
Ultimately the superior performance of the market over the plan tipped the balance in favor of free enterprise, albeit within the framework of welfare-state expansion. Once the initial balance-of-payments crisis was solved, the western market economies outperformed the East European planned competitors, even if one were to believe the inflated socialist statistics. The fastest-growing economies were those of the FRG, led by Ludwig Erhard, as well as Austria and the Netherlands. They profited from the abolition of restrictions, low unit costs, a favorable mix of basic and consumer industries, sizable reinvestment of earnings, an export-oriented structure, and a cooperative workforce supported by welfare-state measures. Helped by flexible planning and coordination, France and Italy grew somewhat more slowly, since their labor relations were more contentious. Great Britain, Belgium, and Ireland were the laggards, partly because they started at a higher level, partly because their productivity gains remained lower.14 Though the mix differed between various countries, postwar modernization was propelled by the compromise of a social market economy.
ECONOMIC PLANNING
After the return to the free market during the 1950s, the new “planning fervor” of the 1960s in Western Europe was all the more surprising. In many ways the turn toward thinking ahead was a response to the pace of technological innovation, which required public investments in such areas as the building of transmission towers for television signals. While a piecemeal approach of local rebuilding sufficed to repair most of the housing damage, a more coordinated effort was needed to move ahead and find new ways to meet the demand for better habitation. Moreover, both conservative and labor parties agreed on the need to find a way to sustain growth so as to increase prosperity and reap the blessings of consumer society. At the same time engineers and scientists also offered solutions like nuclear power to satisfy the growing demand for electricity and statistical methods to evaluate the performance of the economy.15 This constellation produced a euphoric sense of possibility that promised to reap the rewards of a benign modernization, if only the necessary changes were planned systematically.
Ironically some pioneers of planning in Eastern Europe were concurrently seeking to modify their bureaucratic system by reintroducing market incentives. It had been easier to gain control of the commanding heights of the economy than to administer the details of business exchanges as long as pricing reflected political decisions rather than actual costs as well as supply and demand. Moreover, the amount of information needed by the planning commission exceeded the capacity to process it, since mainframe computers were just beginning to come on line. At the same time the administrative choices proved too cumbersome. If forecasts for a warm summer, for which bathing suits were needed, turned out to be wrong, it was impossible to switch quickly enough to umbrellas to fend off the rain. East German planners like Erich Apel and Czech economists like Ota Šik therefore advocated a return to some market mechanisms in order to motivate workers, exchange goods efficiently, and meet consumer desires. But ultimately their efforts to modify the command economy foundered on the communist parties’ resolution to maintain political control.16
Undeterred by these negative experiences, the Commission of the European Economic Community in October 1962 initiated a western discussion about economic planning. Its memorandum for the second stage of European integration called for “an overview over its future development for several years.” Inspired by the French example of planification, it differed from communist control by offering only “a framework” for coordinating the measures of the governments and community institutions in order to develop a stability-oriented growth policy. The purpose of this initiative was to harmonize the divergent national policies with the strategy of the European Commission. Liberals like German economics minister Ludwig Erhard were appalled and rejected this “economic fashion,” since it reeked of state interference. But the Left was rather delighted, since the proposal agreed with its inclination to extend the welfare state. Moreover, most economists, organized in councils of economic advisers since the late 1950s, were only too happy to assist governments with recommendations, based on macroeconomic statistics.17
The French model of dirigisme was a moderately successful form of planning the modernization of the economy by setting goals, providing investment, and creating incentives. Paris controlled an extensive state sector in railroads (SNCF), communication (PTT), power (EDF), and airlines (Air France) while at the same time investing in key sectors like automobile production. The Planning Commission defined general targets, directed investment, and used inducements rather than micromanaging, thereby guiding rather than replacing private business. The definition of priorities and the consolidation of companies into national champions that would be internationally competitive scored some remarkable successes such as the development of high-speed trains (TGV) and the proliferation of nuclear power plants. But government direction also produced spectacular failures that were not commercially viable such as the Minitel telephone-computer hybrid as well as the supersonic Concorde airplane. Moreover, the fragmented trade unions exacted wage concessions that made large companies like Renault uncompetitive.18
Reluctantly Britain also turned to state planning in order to compensate for its disappointing growth rate, which was only half the European average. To modernize industry and increase productivity, even the Conservative government in 1961, prodded by Selwyn Lloyd, set up a National Economic Development Committee in order to recommend measures to achieve better results. But Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s effort to get the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the employers’ associations to agree to moderate wage increases failed because of deep-seated mutual suspicion. After the Labour victory in 1964, the Wilson cabinet created an entirely new Department of Economic Affairs under George Brown to draft a comprehensive National Plan in the hope of greater TUC cooperation. Based on inadequate statistical data, the targeted growth rate of 4 percent per annum turned out to be too ambitious, since the British economy proved to be too complex to be directed from above and the underlying structures were too fragmented to be coerced into cooperation. As a result, the public grew disenchanted, dooming the effort to failure.19
Deterred by these problematic examples, the Federal Republic of Germany moved toward economic planning only in response to the first postwar recession in 1966–67. The pause in growth and small rise in unemployment were so shocking that they cost Ludwig Erhard his chancellorship, initiating a Grand Coalition between the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) in Bonn. By endangering the fruits of the Economic Miracle, this unexpected downturn gave the Social Democratic economist Karl Schiller the chance to argue for a countercyclical growth program and a rational plan for future economic development, while the conservative Bavarian (CSU) politician Franz Josef Strauß attempted to rebalance the budget. Enshrined in the Stability Law of June 1967, Schiller’s program was in effect a neo-Keynesian effort to surmount the recession and to prevent future setbacks through a “global direction of the economy.” Inspired by the concurrent American discussions of a “new economics,” this effort tried to balance the competing goals of currency stability with a resumption of economic growth.20
In practice Schiller’s approach relied on the “concerted action” of management and labor, moderated by government, in pursuit of stable growth. Presented with convincing rhetoric, this concept pursued a “magic quadrangle” of aims. The top priority was price stability in order to assuage inflation fears; almost equally important was full employment so as to prevent a recurrence of the Great Depression; another goal was a balanced international trade for the sake of keeping exports flowing; and its capstone was an appropriate level of economic expansion for financing the welfare state. Since this vision was supported by the Council of Economic Advisers, created in 1962, both management and labor were persuaded to cooperate, with the former willing to invest and the latter restraining its wage demands. When growth quickly resumed because of greater liquidity and a revival of exports, it seemed that the countercyclical approach had been successful. For the next half decade this soft version of indicator-driven planning dominated German economic policy, since it was clothed in “an aura of progressiveness.”21
Encouraged by the return of expansion, the planning consensus was ready to tackle a number of other reforms. In the Federal Republic the victory of the social-liberal coalition under Willy Brandt in the 1969 election installed Horst Ehmke in the chancellor’s office in order to undertake systematic policy planning. One big challenge was the modernization of the bureaucracy to streamline organization, eliminate redundant personnel, and make it more efficient. Another task was the dissolution of small administrative districts and their recombination into larger units better capable of providing necessary service. With the slogan “dare more democracy,” the coalition undertook a whole raft of reforms to modernize the Federal Republic.22 However, since planning the development of an entire society was too complex to be realized in practice, planners subsequently focused on more specific areas like housing, education, and welfare. But until the fixed exchange rates of Bretton Woods collapsed and the Oil Shocks eroded the economic basis for additional initiatives, European elites faced the future with renewed optimism, confident that rational analysis could solve any problems that might arise.
URBAN DESIGN
One particular area in which planning played a central role was the resolution of the postwar housing crisis in those regions in Europe that had been subjected to bombing or ground combat. Photographs of Rotterdam, Coventry, Warsaw, Cologne, and Dresden, just to mention some of the most affected cities, show a moonscape of devastation with hardly a wall left standing. Not only was no new housing built during the Second World War; about half the available units were destroyed or damaged. While DPs and POWs hoped to go home or emigrate, millions of refugees poured into Central Europe, compounding the scarcity. People crowded into bunkers, basements, barracks, or barns—anywhere they could find some shelter from the elements. As a result municipal authorities had to redistribute the scarce housing, assigning strangers to families living in dwellings that had survived more or less intact.23 The resulting overcrowding and unsanitary conditions required public investment, since piecemeal private reconstruction remained clearly inadequate.
European governments responded to the housing shortage by financing the rapid construction of low-rent apartment blocks in order to get the people off the streets. Continuing the social experiments of the 1920s, the British Labour cabinet set out to replace four million damaged units through “council houses” sponsored by local authorities. In Germany an even more ambitious program was called sozialer Wohnungsbau, since it provided subsidies to municipalities or cooperatives for the erection of unpretentious apartments in the gaps between the remaining buildings. Spurred by the uncommonly cold winter of 1946–47, this public effort attempted to create basic housing that would allow families to reconstitute themselves and daily life to return to a semblance of normalcy. The buildings tended to be simple multistory affairs and the individual units relatively small, but they at least had indoor plumbing. State subsidies kept rents low enough to be affordable for workers or impoverished middle-class occupants who could not afford to pay the rapidly rising prices of the commercial market.24
Once the immediate emergency had passed, urban planners were confronted with rising expectations for better accommodations. The demand for new housing continued to increase, since the decline of agriculture pushed former farm laborers into cities, while the fragmentation of families augmented the number of independent households. At the same time the old dwellings deteriorated, and many would never meet higher standards for comfort. The public started to demand more space per individual occupant, insisting on the privacy of separate bedrooms for each child, and at the same time also expected modern conveniences such as a shower-bath, central heating, or an electric kitchen. Moreover, the progress of motorization required the construction of new streets, highways, garages, and parking lots. The pressure to build additional units forced planners to rethink the entire layout of cities, figuring out where to construct clusters of apartment buildings, cut thoroughfares, and locate centers for shopping, even including some new churches.25
Aided by increasing prosperity, the continuing demand for housing provided architects and construction companies with an unprecedented opportunity to design novel high-rise cities. In international building exhibitions such as the Berlin IBA of 1957 the stars of the architecture scene—Le Corbusier, Eero Saarinen, Oscar Niemeyer, Walter Gropius—vied with each other in proposing futuristic visions of urban space. Disregarding the weight of tradition and the context of existing buildings, their modernist style emphasized steel, glass, and concrete slabs, creating skyscrapers situated in parklike green spaces connected by roads and supplied with clusters of shopping infrastructure. The leading construction firms embraced such designs because building large-scale high-rise apartments with prefabricated materials was easier than erecting detached single-family homes. Politicians endorsed the architects’ exciting blueprints, since they promised a cheap way of creating entire new quarters of cities, thereby rapidly providing housing for the masses.26
The cooperation between ambitious architects, construction companies, and political leaders produced new satellite cities like Sarcelles, entirely determined at the designer’s table. In 1956 Hans Werner Reichow used four hundred hectares outside the West German manufacturing center Bielefeld to create a novel suburb called Sennestadt. In order to accommodate expellees and refugees from Eastern Europe, he developed a plan for a mixture of high-rises, regular apartments, and row houses along curving streets and under pine trees. Accessible by tram, bus, and road, this satellite town had a friendly feeling. In contrast, the East German project of Halle-Neustadt, a.k.a. “Chemical Workers’ City,” set out to accommodate workers for the nearby “chemical triangle” of industrial sites. Approved in 1963 and designed by Richard Paulinck, it used only prefabricated high-rise buildings, separated by some green spaces, in order to establish a socialist model city. But from the beginning it was plagued by shortages, had an insufficient commercial infrastructure, and therefore developed into a sterile bedroom community.27 During the 1960s similar peripheral settlements sprang up all over Europe.
With only minor alterations, the methods used for building satellite towns could also be applied to renewal of the declining inner cities or special problem areas. Neglected by the new construction boom, older urban districts and unused areas like abandoned waterfronts had become decrepit and unattractive. As a result migrants and the new poor congregated there, often using drugs and attracting crime. Since refurbishing seemed too expensive, communist leaders in the East simply called in bulldozers and built new prefab apartment complexes in the cleared space regardless of the architectural value being lost. In the West the more innocuous term “urban redevelopment” through public subsidies or private tax incentives also implied evicting tenants, tearing down dilapidated buildings, and replacing them with faceless concrete structures. In some cities like Manchester, in the United Kingdom, the “slum clearance” approach resulted in impressive but lifeless central districts, whereas in the London dockyards the new investment sparked a colorful mixed-use economy that later proved attractive to tourists.28
Not surprisingly, responses to this kind of urban modernization varied considerably. For the promoters of urban reform like the architect of Sarcelles, such towns were model suburban islands that followed Le Corbusier’s injunction to live, work, relax, and circulate, marking “a lifestyle evolution” for humanity. Having escaped from their run-down firetraps, many of the new buildings’ inhabitants also appreciated the larger size and technical conveniences of their apartments, which were a definite step up in comfort. But one critical psychiatrist diagnosed, in these faceless high-rise apartment blocks, a new disease he called sarcellite, that affected especially women through “menstrual irregularities, gastrointestinal hypermotility, false cardiac-arrest, tachycardia, extra systoles, anxiety,” and so on. Similarly a socialist journalist was appalled by the sterility of the modernist design. Hyperbolically, he claimed that in contrast to the men, whose lives gained variety through work, the women staying behind were afflicted by a “kind of stupor,” feeling as if they were “living in a dead city, placed in a space without real location, almost the same as purgatory.”29
As a result of such criticism, the pendulum of planning fashions eventually swung away from satellite towns and urban renewal toward an incremental reclamation of older city districts, sometimes helped by public funds. From the 1970s on citizens’ initiatives opposed the construction of superhighways through their neighborhoods as well as the tearing down of buildings, rejecting the logic of architectural modernism. At the same time younger professionals rediscovered the charm of Victorian apartments with parquet floors, high ceilings, and stucco trim, deciding to renovate historic structures while adding new kitchens or bathrooms. Such conversion of older buildings was called gentrification because it was typically accompanied by the influx of wealthier residents, the new in-town “gentry,” who brought with them an upscale and countercultural lifestyle. The successive transformation of neighborhoods like Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin thus created new conflicts, since increasing rents and condo conversions displaced older and poorer residents.30 But on the whole, this revival has been benign, since it preserved more complex and humane living spaces.
EDUCATIONAL EXPANSION
Another field of planned reform was the expansion of European education, which seemed increasingly inadequate for the demands of modern life. Though producing distinguished scholarship, the traditional system consisted of a pyramid with a broad primary base, followed by a much narrower pillar of secondary schools and ending in a thin column of universities for the elite. Access was socially stratified, with working-class children getting only elementary instruction, the middle class completing a longer course while acquiring some foreign languages, and only the future professionals being exposed to higher learning and academic research. The great majority of youths were funneled into apprenticeships where they were prepared for practical occupations. Moreover, the secondary school curriculum was still dominated by the classics rather than modern subjects, and technical training was considered socially inferior. With the Sputnik shock in 1957 it became obvious that such a structure was incapable of coping with the challenges of technological innovation in an emerging service economy.31
Although expansion had already begun, in various countries a chorus of critics vehemently demanded a reform of education during the 1960s. For instance, in the Federal Republic, the publicist Georg Picht created a stir with a series of articles on the “crisis of education” in 1964, charging that there were too few graduates and that the conditions in the schools were deplorable. The liberal sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf went even further, claiming that education was “a general citizenship right,” pointing out that children from the working class, rural and Catholic homes, as well as girls were drastically underrepresented in secondary and tertiary institutions. Calling for “investment in education,” industrialists also criticized the traditional content of the curriculum, demanding more instruction in science and mathematics as well as modern languages. The conservative defenders of the stratified system responded that any changes would water down quality and endanger the transmission of cultural heritage.32 Yet buoyed by reform euphoria, the demand for greater “equality of opportunity” ultimately prevailed.
The communists in Eastern Europe implemented the most radical reform of education by largely transferring the Soviet system. Considering the schools as a seedbed of reaction, the party demanded a purge of teachers and an antifascist revision of instructional content. Intent on realizing the labor movement’s call for “breaking the educational privilege” of the bourgeoisie, the communists made strenuous efforts to advance children of workers and farmers, often formally excluding the offspring of professionals. Considering the classical curriculum irrelevant, the functionaries insisted on “polytechnic training,” sending classes into the factories for one day each week in order to get acquainted with the working world. The introduction of comprehensive secondary schools was a progressive move, but the requirement of political loyalty showed that education was instrumentalized for the maintenance of party power. While such reforms increased attendance in secondary schools, strict manpower management constrained individual choice and limited university study to about one-fifth of the age group, half of the western average.33
In Western Europe, the modernization of the educational system proceeded more incrementally, favoring expansion over reformation of content. The first task was the enforcement of actual school attendance through the primary grades to erase illiteracy in the Mediterranean and Balkan countries. A second effort concerned the raising of the length of schooling from age ten to sixteen, accomplished in Britain by 1972. Another step forward was the abolition of separate religious schools in Germany, so that all children attended secular institutions, though confessional instruction continued in Catholic states like Italy. At the same time rural minischools with one or two classes were consolidated into larger institutions with a full complement of age grades. Especially in Scandinavia and France, preschool offerings and kindergartens were expanded in order to make it possible for mothers to work. Finally, teacher training was upgraded in most countries and made part of higher education. Together these efforts noticeably improved learning outcomes, although they were unable to eliminate all peculiarities like half-day instruction in the FRG.34
Pedagogical planners also promoted the expansion of secondary education in order to widen social access by producing more graduates. Reformers campaigned especially among skeptical working-class parents to send their gifted children on to high school so as to give them a chance to move up into white-collar occupations. To facilitate access, existing institutions were expanded and many new schools built in industrial districts and small towns. At the same time the curriculum was updated, jettisoning Greek and reducing Latin in favor of modern languages like English, with additional emphasis placed on the natural sciences and mathematics. In many countries the old divisions between different types of secondary institutions were abolished and the higher age grades included in comprehensive schools, even if some traditionalists tried to defend the classical Gymnasium. These efforts made continuing schooling more attractive to girls and Catholics. But raising the proportion of graduates in an age cohort from 10 percent to over two-thirds by the end of the century also devalued the diploma and broke the link with the “entitlement system” that had hitherto guaranteed attractive government jobs.35
Higher education experienced an equally dramatic construction boom in existing institutions as well as new foundations. The growth in high school graduates led to a steep increase in the number of university students from about 4 percent to 30 percent of an age cohort by 1990, which threatened to overwhelm traditional instruction. Education planners responded to this overcrowding with four strategies: they tried to raise the capacity of older campuses through adding classroom space; they upgraded pedagogical academies and technical schools to university status; they founded a spate of new institutions; and they tried to transform technical colleges into universities by adding humanities and social sciences. For instance, during the 1960s Britain created twenty new “plate-glass” universities (as opposed to the older “red brick” civic universities and the prestigious “ancient” Cambridge and Oxford). In France the Parisian Sorbonne swelled to several hundred thousand students, forcing it to divide into thirteen campuses. In Germany, several dozen industrial-looking universities were built in Bochum, Bielefeld, Konstanz, and the like. The resulting transition to mass higher education relieved some of the pressure but created new feelings of alienation in turn that would inspire the student revolt.36
The last beneficiary of the educational expansion of the 1960s was research in independent centers and institutes outside the universities. The rapidity of technological development and the rise of the social sciences rendered the traditional academy model of a learned society inadequate. In the Eastern Bloc, the academy name was kept, but the institution vastly expanded, following the Soviet model, to house research institutes for basic and applied science with thousands of employees. Similarly ambitious was the huge French Centre des Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS), which also focused on the natural sciences and on technology, with just a nod to the social sciences. In contrast, the Federal Republic chose a decentralized model of several hundred independent institutes, loosely coordinated in the Max Planck, Fraunhofer, Helmholtz and Leibnitz societies. Britain retained more advanced research in its leading universities, supported by grants from the Research Council. These institutions kept Europe competitive in Nobel prizes by greatly increasing the amount and quality of extrauniversity research.37
Public responses to the modernization of all levels of education remained nonetheless ambivalent, since the new opportunities also created unforeseen problems. Unquestionably, the numerical growth raised levels of literacy, improved citizens’ understanding of complex issues, and widened social access for underprivileged groups such as women and working-class children. Moreover, the doubling or tripling of staff provided career opportunities for an entire generation of teachers, professors, and researchers who now became part of a self-sustaining academic enterprise. But the unparalleled enlargement soon reached its limits, since costs of maintaining a bigger system rose to unsustainable levels and the increase in size also made managing the system more complicated. Many of the new pupils and students who came from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds felt alienated from their less-educated parents and strange in a system that had been designed for the cultivated taste of the Bildungs-bürgertum.38 The very success of the expansion therefore posed new challenges of having to alter pedagogical methods, change curriculum content, and liberalize authority relations.
WELFARE STATE
The most popular project of reformist planners was the expansion of the welfare state, which reached its high point in the early 1970s. Ironically, it was the conservative statesman Otto von Bismarck who had a century before introduced social insurance so as to stop the spread of Marxism by giving workers “a stake in society” with protection against old age, illness, and unemployment. Britain moved toward a similar scheme under the Liberal Asquith cabinet before the First World War, while in France it took the Popular Front reforms under Léon Blum in the mid-1930s to establish a comparable system. But it was in the Scandinavian countries, controlled by the social democratic parties, that the welfare state achieved its greatest coverage in the West, while the Soviet model of Marxist egalitarianism prevailed in the East. As a result several different approaches to providing social protection emerged—the East European communist variant of basic provision; the social democratic Scandinavian comprehensive model; the Christian Democratic French, German, and Italian variant of subsidiarity; and the liberal British and Swiss market version.39
Driven by the aspirations of the labor movement, the communists’ effort to eliminate exploitation, inequality, and illness was rather ambitious, because it attempted to restructure the entire economy and society. Its primary method was to guarantee everyone a job, since that would avert unemployment, the greatest of the capitalist dangers. Another element was subsidizing the price of basic food, housing, and transportation so that nobody would go hungry, live on the street, or be unable to get to work. A final dimension was the free provision of education and health care in order to allow all children to be educated and the entire population to receive medical attention. Because of the enormous cost of this comprehensive effort, wages remained relatively low and pensions meager. During the initial postwar decades communist leaders argued that a social policy was unnecessary, since socialism was already taking care of all needs. As a result the classic western welfare instruments remained underdeveloped until the party realized during the 1970s that “real existing socialism” had not solved all social problems.40
Promoted by social democrats, the Nordic model represented the most extensive welfare system in the West by trying to provide a high level of social services within a capitalist framework. In contrast to the Soviet Bloc, the Scandinavian countries maintained individual initiative and monetary rewards as engines of economic growth. Moreover, they supported market competition and free trade and therefore imposed few regulations on products and labor mobility while supporting technological innovation. But the strong trade unions pushed through a social pact regulating collective bargaining with business that was mediated by the government. Perfected in subsequent decades, this approach offered comprehensive insurance against the vagaries of life plus free education and universal health care. Trying to escape the polarity of the Cold War, the Nordic model strove for a third way between capitalism and communism. Leading to public expenditures of over 50 percent of the GDP, this generous redistribution of wealth required a high rate of taxation, about half of personal income. While celebrities like the children’s writer Astrid Lindgren grumbled, voters supported this system since it brought them social peace and security.41
Still extensive, but less comprehensive, was the Christian Democratic model exemplified by the Federal Republic. Its Basic Law defined the purpose of the state as the “social rule of law,” which promised security and equality. While Erhard believed that the market was the best guarantee of welfare, the strong trade unions clamored not only for alleviating the consequences of the war but also for improving the lot of the working class. To be able to win elections, the Adenauer cabinet gradually expanded coverage but retained individual achievement as the basis for insurance premiums, which yielded graduated benefits. Since war and inflation had wiped out savings, the pension system was financed by current taxes—unproblematic as long as there were enough wage earners to keep up with the costs after their indexing in 1957. The social-liberal coalition under Willy Brandt expanded the Sozialstaat further by increasing benefits and including new clients based on the assumption of continued growth. Since health insurance remained privatized, German income taxes and public expenditures also remained lower at about one-third.42
The system of French social protection also started out with insurance but then systematically expanded its coverage in the direction of a universal guarantee of a minimum standard of living. Established immediately after the war, Social Security grew to cover lack of income due to illness, maternity, disability, death, and accident as well as provide for old age and offer family supports. Owing to this broad coverage, the funding gradually changed from payroll deductions to general taxes. In order to make up for a stagnating population size, both the Catholic Church and secular nationalists agreed on establishing extensive maternity benefits and family support. From crèches to kindergarten, most mothers had a system of infant care available that allowed them to have children and continue to work at the same time, since these institutions were open the entire day. As a result of such support, the French birthrate became one of the highest in Europe. The downside of this broad protection sociale was a high rate of deductions and taxes and a large amount of public expenditure, which slowed economic growth.43
Growing out of the Beveridge Report in 1942, the British welfare state was an effort to combat the evils of “want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.” Its implementation by the Labour government was nonetheless based on a “welfare capitalism” that tried to combine full employment, housing, food, and health care with a market economy. The subsequent Conservative cabinet under Macmillan tried to rein in expenses and limit claims. But the Wilson government returned to expanding welfare provisions in order to attack inequality, and added wage-related unemployment benefits to the guaranteed minimum. Other programs like child benefits followed, and social-service departments were created, while the National Health Service began to devour ever larger funds. The basic problem was, however, that the underperformance of the British economy drastically limited which services the state could actually sustain in the long run. Though social policy became an entitlement for the poor, its extent remained an ideological and practical battleground between the Labour and the Conservative parties.44
The results of this welfare-state expansion were somewhat contradictory. As a consequence of extensive support the absolute number of the poor sank below 10 percent of the population between 1960 and 1991 in all European OECD member states except Italy. While not completely eradicated, poverty therefore declined notably. Moreover, the consistent effort at the redistribution of earnings reduced the income disparity between rich and poor considerably, creating not complete equality but narrowing the gap between the top and bottom deciles sufficiently so that it remained socially acceptable. Of course such efforts at diminishing inequality required substantial marginal tax rates, approximating or even occasionally exceeding 50 percent. Moreover, the funding of the expansion of welfare programs also increased the share of public expenditures as percentage of GDP to well over two-fifths in the Scandinavian countries, somewhat less so among the Christian Democratic states, and one-quarter in Britain.45 No wonder that this growing burden eventually created resentment among those who had to shoulder it.
On balance most European voters were, however, willing to pay the price during the postwar years, because they were convinced that they had a moral obligation to practice social solidarity. Of course, the direct beneficiaries in the various client groups appreciated their support, even if their lobbyists could never quite get enough. The churches were glad that they no longer had to carry the load of charity alone and that the state was ready to step in. The vocal trade unions also congratulated themselves for having a central plank of their socialist agenda put into practice so that they could prove their continuing relevance to their members. Moreover, social scientists were happy to have convinced the public that their recommendations increased social peace by solving specific problems. Finally, the social politicians of various parties were able to argue that these welfare expenditures broadened citizenship and put postwar democracy on a more solid footing by limiting the appeal of extremist parties. Based on higher public expenditures than in the United States (16.8 percent versus 10.6 percent of GNP in 1990), the provision of a generous welfare state became characteristic of European modernity.46
RISE OF EXPERTS
During the seemingly long 1960s, the sense of rapid change ushered in a technocratic attempt to guide the process of modernization through a corps of experts capable of planning the future. Confronted with unprecedented complexity, European governments felt in need of scientific knowledge in order to make the right decisions.47 Designing highways, airports, nuclear reactors, or computer systems appeared to demand informed choices so as to develop responsible policies. Transcending the calculus of partisanship, promoters of a technical logic argued that the structure of problems required “objective” solutions. Since the legally trained civil service often proved incapable of dealing with complicated issues of technology or society, governments turned to researchers in the universities or independent centers for assistance, thereby creating a group of academic advisers. Flush with confidence in their professional authority, these consultants produced plans for the economy, urban design, education reform, and the welfare state. In many ways, the emergence of these experts represented the culmination of modernist politics.48
Rivaling technical experts, social scientists also grew confident of being able to solve societal problems through social reforms. One prerequisite was the ever more extensive collection of social indicators and their publication in various statistical series, which allowed detailed quantitative studies of economic and social trends. Another impulse was the growing sophistication of survey research, both as political-opinion polling and as the study of consumer preferences, which provided governments with a firmer sense of public wishes. Reinforced by behaviorism, an empirical approach to psychology imported from the United States, these improvements led to a shift from normative argumentation to generalizations derived from empirical research. This methodological revolution made economics, sociology, and political science the new lead disciplines for government planning of economic and social policies in contested areas such as reforming family policy or liberalizing the labor market. Such experts convinced the public that they possessed sufficient knowledge to forecast the economy, regulate society, and manage politics scientifically.49
The Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal was one such socially engaged expert who combined research with politics. Born around the turn of the century into modest circumstances, he forsook law for economics, anticipating in his early work some of the Keynesian theories. Together with his spirited wife Alva, he undertook a study of Swedish population policy in the early 1930s that shocked the public because it uncovered a declining birthrate. Elected as a Social Democrat to the Senate, Myrdal helped lay the foundations of the Swedish welfare state by instituting social supports for families in order to help reduce the birth deficit. During the war he studied the discrepancy between the U.S. rhetoric of opportunity and the reality of racial discrimination, laying through his book, An American Dilemma, the foundation for desegregation. Subsequently he served as minister of trade in the Swedish government and then chaired the UN Economic Commission for Europe that aided postwar reconstruction. Also getting involved in decolonization and peace research, Myrdal was a reformer who used his academic expertise to advocate progressive changes.50
The growing influence of experts changed the nature of political debate, because they employed research reports, policy analyses, and statistical predictions rather than partisan rhetoric. Prominent natural and social scientists like the historian A.J.P. Taylor became media personalities, giving the public advice on controversial questions. At the same time interest groups began to recruit scholars who might support their causes, trying to insert them into the deliberations of political parties. Governments created a series of standing commissions, such as the councils of economic advisers, in order to obtain forecasts and work out planning projections. They also convened ad hoc commissions charged with reporting on topics like making public administration more efficient, and they sponsored research projects on controversial issues such as the new poverty, right-wing radicalism, youth unemployment, and gender equality. Their recommendations claimed to depoliticize politics by following only scientific evidence. But it soon became evident that experts themselves had distinct value preferences and therefore did not speak with a united voice.51
The rise of the experts therefore turned out to be a mixed blessing for the modernization of democracy. No doubt the effort to base political decisions on scientific evidence brought gains in information and reflection about technical, economic, and social problems. But implementation was another matter. In communist countries the party retained the ultimate authority, while in the West many recommendations were shelved because they were too costly, impractical, or unwelcome. And correctness was yet another issue. More often than not predictions like economists’ forecasts of continued growth were simply wrong because unanticipated events changed the parameters, thereby tarnishing the planners’ credibility. Moreover, experts liked to proceed without consulting the concerned public sufficiently, for instance producing angry grassroots rebellions against their plans to install nuclear power plants in the German countryside. Measured by their claims, even many well-conceived plans failed, because politics could not be reduced to a clear scientific choice. At best, expert interventions added another voice to the multivocal debate in modern democracy.52