The Plan of Labour () was a proposed economic program formulated by the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) and Dutch Association of Trade Unions (NVV) in 1935. The plan was formulated to respond to the economic malaise caused by the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. The plan was largely written by the Dutch economists

Hein Vos Hendrik "Hein" Vos (5 July 1903 – 23 April 1972) was a Dutch politician of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (Netherlands), Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) and later the Labour Party (Netherlands), Labour Party (PvdA) and economist ...

and

Jan Tinbergen Jan Tinbergen ( , ; 12 April 1903 – 9 June 1994) was a Dutch economist who was awarded the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the ana ...

, the latter becoming the first laureate of the

Nobel Prize in Economics The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (), commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics(), is an award in the field of economic sciences adminis ...

History

When the Great Depression started to affect the Netherlands in 1931, the Dutch Government, consisting of confessional and liberal parties, responded with austerity, whilst maintaining the value of the Dutch guilder at the

Gold standard A gold standard is a backed currency, monetary system in which the standard economics, economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the ...

. Although Dutch socialists had hailed the Great Depression as the start of the end of capitalism and thus believed it necessary to run its course, the SDAP would realise it was their constituency, the working class, who were most harshly affected by the Depression and the Government's policies. This change in policy towards the Depression came following the loss of two seats in the 1933 General Election to the extreme-left

Stalinist Stalinism (, ) is the totalitarian means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by dictator Joseph Stalin and in Soviet satellite states between 1944 and 1953. Stalinism in ...

CPH and

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

RSP, which was blamed on the SDAP's inactive policy towards the Depression. Thus, at the SDAP Party Congress in 1934, a plan commission was established to provide a socialist response to the Depression.

The Plan

The Plan of Labour had two aims, firstly it sought to end economic stagnation and secondly, it sought to fundamentally change the economic system. To achieve the first, Vos and Tinbergen argued for the investment of 200 million guilders in public works, which would employ nearly 200,000 workers, thereby, relying on Keynesian economic idea of a

multiplier Multiplier may refer to: Mathematics * Multiplier (arithmetic), the number of multiples being computed in multiplication * Constant multiplier, a constant factor with units of measurement * Lagrange multiplier, a scalar variable used in mathema ...

, to increase working-class purchasing power and reinvigorate the Dutch economy. To achieve the second, the Plan of Labour envisaged a General Economic Council in which businesses, workers and the government could coordinate the economy through rationalization, industrialization and investment. Thus the Plan of Labour was the rejection of

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

orthodoxy of passive opposition during the end crisis of capitalism, providing a template for the SDAP to seek government responsibility.

Aftermath

At the 1937 General Election, in which the SDAP campaigned with the slogan ''"Het moet, het kan! Op voor het Plan!"'' (Dutch: It's necessary, it's possible! For the Plan!), the SDAP and its progressive-Protestant ally the CDU won two seats from the extreme-left, reversing the defeat of 1933. However, with only 25 out of 100 seats, the centre-left did not enter government to implement the plan. Nevertheless, following the Second World War, the Labour Party (PvdA), the catch-all-successor of the SDAP and CDU, implemented large parts of the plan, most notably in the fields of agriculture and economic coordination, the latter with the establishment of the

Social-Economic Council The Social and Economic Council ( Dutch: ''Sociaal-Economische Raad'', SER) is a major economic advisory council to the cabinet of the Netherlands. Formally it heads a system of sector-based regulatory organisations. It represents the social p ...

(SER), which was based on the aforementioned General Economic Council.

References

Sources

* {{Cite journal, last=Abma, first=R., date=1977-01-01, title=Het Plan van de arbeid en de SDAP, journal=BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review, volume=92, issue=1, pages=37–68, doi=10.18352/bmgn-lchr.1968, issn=2211-2898, doi-access=free Economic history of the Netherlands Great Depression 1930s in the Netherlands Socialism in the Netherlands