After the war Europe lay in ruins. In Western Germany more than three quarters of the river bridges were impassable. Nine out of ten of the trucks in France were out of action. Vast stretches of railway lines were unusable, and less than half of Europe's locomotives were in working order.
Holland, Norway and Britain had all lost half of their merchant fleets whilst France and Italy had lost 70 and 90 per cent respectively. Coal production in Europe was running at under 40 per cent of pre-war levels. The German Ruhr, which had previously produced 400,000 tons of coal a day, was only turning out 24,000 tons a day.
In Southern Germany production was only 5 per cent of pre-war levels. In Belgium, France, Greece, Holland and Italy it was less than a quarter of pre-war levels. Britain, which had entered the war as the world's creditor nation, finished up as the world's largest debtor.
At Potsdam in 1945 the Allied powers agreed literally to dismember German industry. The most reactionary and nationalistic forces in the capitalist class had led the Allied war effort. Enraged by fascist Germany's plans to establish the supremacy of German capitalism, the Churchills and the de Gaulles bayed for the reduction of Germany to a 'pastoral economy. The USSR and France in particular joined in the plunder like rapacious bandits. nore secure and attractive proposition for this purpose. The S therefore made a quick about-turn. It saw its task was to unite and prop up European capitalism, and understood that this meant creating a strong Germany and some type of European economic integration.
In June 1947 the Marshall aid plan was launched. Its aim was simple: firstly, to give an economic transfer to the ailing capitalist economies of Western Europe; secondly, to use this as a means of re-arming the capitalist states and forming a military bloc against the USSR and the East European states. European working class in 1945 had ebbed. The social democrats and the Stalinists had channelled that into the by-ways of reformism and class collaboration. By the 1950s a mood of passivity had settled on the working class, and no big working class opposition threatened the plans of the European ruling classes The political recovery of the European capitalists enabled them to take advantage of the exceptional economic situation By 1954, when the Americans decided to go full steam ahead with their plans for re-arming German capitalism, opposition had been isolated to the most nationalistic wings of the bour geoisie and the left social democrats and the CP.
These two disparate wings joined in an unholy alliance to oppose the US plans. The attitude of the CP and its left allies had nothing in common with working class internationalism. The capitalist opponents of German re-armament could find no note of response in their own circles because their policies were so sadly out of touch with the needs of post-war capitalism The temporary upward turn of world capitalism and the decline of working class struggle papered over the cracks and fissures between the capitalist states. The ECSC appeared in practice to work. The basis was laid for the signing of the Treaty of Rome in early 1957.
Foundations
Capitalism could only survive with the growth of the multinationals and the expansion of its markets. However, the foundations for the capitalist Common Market were not laid simply because the ruling classes of Europe had understood and acted according to their best interests.
In 1945-46 the mass workers' parties of Western Europe had failed to make an effective challenge to capitalism's rulein fact they had propped up the decrepit and shaken capita List regimes in Italy, France and Greece. This gave the ruling class time to re-group and by the use of the Marshall Plan they were able to restore their battered economies.
The signatories of Rome ought to have muttered a gratefu thanks to the social democrats and reformists when they put their pens to the document in Rome in 1957