9781422282809

Officially known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, the goal of BrettonWoods was to provide war-shattered economies with the financial help they needed to rebuild. The guiding principle was the belief that free trade promoted international pros- perity and peace. Most of those who attended the Bretton Woods Conference believed high tariffs , unfair trading practices, and the devaluation of currencies all contributed to the economic calamity that preceded World War II. Several new institutions were formed to aid in the rebuilding effort as a result of the Bretton Woods Conference, including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which is now part of the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). While its representatives attended the conference, the Soviet Union refused to ratify the agreements resulting from it, con- tending that the Bretton Woods institutions favored the U.S. capitalist system. Aid from the United States In March 1948, the U.S. Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act, originally drafted

Workers, ca. 1950, in present-day Gabon, then part of French Equatorial Africa, assembling drill pipes with training, parts, and financing by the Marshall Fund.

in June 1947, to provide Europe with $12 billion. Eventually, sixteen nations partici- pated in the Marshall Plan—named after the U.S. secretary of state, George Marshall, who proposed it. They received nearly $13 billion in aid, allowing their economies to grow quickly and helping to stop the communists from expanding westward. Earlier, President Harry Truman had also offered American aid to help rebuild the Soviet economy and those in the Soviet sphere of influence. Stalin declined the offer and ordered all Eastern European countries not to accept American help. In 1947, in reaction to the original development of the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union established the Cominform—an international forum of communist parties. Under the Cominform, which had its precedent in the prewar Comintern, the ac- tions of communist parties in Europe were to be coordinated.

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EDUCATION, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY