This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. ( Learn how and when to remove these template messages) You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Dutch. (January 2024) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Dutch Wikipedia article at [[:nl:Plan van de Arbeid]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|nl|Plan van de Arbeid}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Find sources:  "Plan of Labour" –  news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Plan of Labour ( Dutch: Plan van de Arbeid) 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 plan was largely written by the Dutch economists Hein Vos and Jan Tinbergen, the latter becoming the first laureate of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

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. ^[1] 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. ^[2] This change in policy towards the Depression came following the loss of two seats in the 1933 General Election to the extreme-left Stalinist CPH and Trotskyist RSP, which was blamed on the SDAP's inactive policy towards the Depression. ^[3] Thus, at the SDAP Party Congress in 1934, a plan commission was established to provide a socialist response to the Depression. ^[4]

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, to increase working-class purchasing power and reinvigorate the Dutch economy. ^[5] 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. ^[1] Thus the Plan of Labour was the rejection of Marxist orthodoxy of passive opposition during the end crisis of capitalism, providing a template for the SDAP to seek government responsibility. ^[6]

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 (SER), which was based on the aforementioned General Economic Council. ^[7]

References

Sources

• Abma, R. (1977-01-01). "Het Plan van de arbeid en de SDAP". BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review. 92 (1): 37–68. doi: 10.18352/bmgn-lchr.1968. ISSN  2211-2898.