with the increasing political tension, especially over theKorean War. Other
countries, notably France, were able to take advantage of the dollars and the
dislocation of social patterns arising from the war not just to repair, but
massively to modernize their economies; by the late 1950s the French
economy was no longer recognizable as a development of theThird Repub-
liceconomy. The Marshall Plan lives in American political memory as their
most generous effort to help democracy, and has become a catchword, so that
plans to aid the post-communist Eastern European economies were often
referred to as ‘a new Marshall Plan’. It has not escaped critics that the Marshall
Plan was, in the long term, both politically and economically helpful for the
USA. It not only strengthened pro-American governments threatened by
domestic communist parties, as in France, but ensured useful markets for
American exports. Doubtless similar observations could be made about the
Eastern European countries receiving aid 40 years later.
Martial Law
Martial law is a state of affairs declared by a civilian government in which the
military forces are empowered to rule, govern and control an area, which can
be a small locality or the entire nation, in a way involving direct force, and
without the usual constraints of democratic decision-making or the acceptance
ofcivil rights. It is always seen as a temporary state of affairs and, unlike a
military regime, haslegitimacy, because it has been decided upon and
granted by the civilian government. Martial law is, without doubt, both
draconian and unpopular; there have been no instances of martial law being
declared in a major Western democracy since the Second World War, though
Poland was subjected to martial law in 1981–83. It can only be either useful or
acceptable given the complete breakdown of law and order—a situation where
the civilian government authorizing it has probably lost all legitimacy anyway.
In international law the term refers to the rule of a military commander over a
foreign, typically colonial, territory.
Marx
Karl Marx (1818–83) is the most famous of all socialist or communist figures.
More has been said and done in the name ofMarxismthan in the name of
the work of any other social thinker in history. By origin he was a German
academic and journalist, heavily influenced by the German philosophy of
idealism, and particularly byHegel. His political beliefs curtailed his career in
Germany, and Marx moved to Paris in 1843 and to London in 1849,
Marx