Marshall Plan, or European Recovery Plan, was a US economic aid program to Western European countries after World War II. The aim of the plan was to economically rebuild Western European countries that were destroyed or suffered losses as a result of the war.
The Marshall Plan was named after its founder George Catlett Marshall, a general in the US army, and totaled a contribution of 18 billion dollars to the Europeans, used for the rebuilding buildings and industries, importing food and industrialized goods, as well as financing the agriculture.
Some bodies were created to manage financial resources, such as the Economic Cooperation Administration, by the USA, and the European Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD).
The Marshall Plan was in force between 1947 and 1951, being the main reason for the rapid economic start of European countries. The main beneficiaries were England, France and Italy, among the Europeans, and the USA, which managed to create institutions to strengthen the internationalization of capital in the second half of the 20th century.
Another objective of the Marshall Plan was to carry out massive propaganda against the USSR, to stabilize the political and social situation in Germany and contain the advance of power of communist parties in France and Italy. With the Soviet victory in World War II, the prestige of the USSR was on the rise, in addition to the Red Army troops being stationed in countries in central-eastern Europe.
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Capitalists in the US and Western Europe were betting on economic recovery and improving levels of material consumption in the population, in addition to the creation of a strong state structure for the provision of social services, in the areas of health, education and employment, by example. In this way, they intended to show that the Western model of capitalism was better than Soviet capitalism (wrongly called communism).
The Marshall Plan proved to be efficient and guaranteed high economic growth rates to the countries of Western Europe in the decades after the end of World War II. The plan also served to create the foundations of the so-called Social Welfare State, which would be attacked from the 1970s onwards. Furthermore, the Marshall Plan made the transnationalization of Western capitalism possible, being one of the reasons for the victory of the US sphere of influence in the Cold War.
By Me. Tales Pinto
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PINTO, Tales dos Santos. "What is Marshall Plan?"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/o-que-e/historia/o-que-e-plano-marshall.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
