Hendrik de Man - The Man with a Plan

Hendrik de Man - The Man with a Plan

Jan Huijbrechts

From: https://www.facebook.com/jan.huijbrechts.9  

Hendrik de Man was and still is a controversial figure with whom the socialists in particular have never come to terms. This month marks 140 years since he was born in Antwerp.

De Man grew up in a liberal, literary, artistic and Flemish-minded family – his maternal grandfather was the Flemish poet Jan Van Beers – which explains why he became interested in Flemish and social issues at an early age. When he joined the Antwerp Socialist Youth Guard (SJW) in 1902, he flirted with anarchism, like so many others from the milieu in which he grew up. However, he soon exchanged this for the radical variant of Marxism. Later, however, he formulated a great deal of criticism of Marxism and, in an even later phase, De Man evolved as a cadre member of the socialist Belgian Workers' Party (BWP) towards a form of ethical socialism. All this served him well. Under the protective wing of BWP chairman Emile Vandervelde, who recognised De Man's many talents, De Man grew from an SJW militant and correspondent for various socialist newspapers to secretary of the Central Workers' Education Centre.

As a young man...

When the First World War broke out, he immediately volunteered for military service and became an officer. His experiences at the front had a major influence on his later ideas.

He later wrote that the war had fundamentally changed his perspective on class struggle and the Marxist concept of ‘survival of the fittest’ and that he had had to ‘sell off’ his earlier Marxist ideas. His evolving insights led him to conclude that class struggle could no longer be seen as a struggle between competing classes, and that the state had to play a greater role in the emancipation of the working class.

After the war, he was impressed by the ideas of American President Woodrow Wilson, who advocated the right of peoples to self-determination, and he moved to the United States. On his return in 1921, he became director of the Workers' College in Uccle. Through his work in “workers” education', he renewed his pre-war contacts with the German socialists. After taking on the job of secretary of the International Workers' Organisation, De Man accepted an academic position at the University of Frankfurt in 1923. There he was impressed by the young veterans of the First World War who wanted more than the dry bookkeeping socialism that offered them only a future of repayments under the terms of the Versailles Treaty. In keeping with the spirit of the times, which exuded willpower, dynamism and nationalism, they wanted to change the world. 

Influenced by these ideas, which were propagated by, among others, the social revolutionary wing of the emerging NSDAP, De Man published his book Zur Psychologie des Sozialismus (On the Psychology of Socialism) in 1926, in which he rejected materialistic socialism and advocated a socialism driven by “intuition and elements such as strength, energy and inspiration, instincts”. A socialism that promised to put an end to the humiliations of Versailles.

After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, De Man lost his chair. He was forced to return to our country, where he worked  to broaden the labour movement and attempted to design a new conceptual framework for socialism. His book De Socialistische Idee (The Socialist Idea, 1933) was published in many languages and caused quite a stir. With his Plan van de Arbeid (Labour Plan), he attempted from 1933 onwards to stem the effects of the economic crisis. In his view, this was the best response to the growing influence of fascism and communism. Hendrik de Man became vice-chairman of the BWP in 1934 and, after the death of Emile Vandervelde in 1938, he took over the chairmanship from him. At that time, there was already a deep mistrust of de Man. Moreover, de Man, who was known for his difficult character, had had decades of heated clashes with prominent figures both inside and outside the BWP, which did not exactly increase his popularity.

On the eve of the Second World War, De Man was a disappointed politician. His ambitious Labour Plan had been a complete failure. As a minister, De Man had also failed. He claimed that his own party bosses and the hostile attitude of the financial powers had thwarted and sidelined him. His disillusionment with the functioning of the party system and parliamentary democracy in general drove him towards an authoritarian view of the state.

The German invasion on 10 May 1940 caused a dramatic turning point in his career. According to him, the Belgian capitulation on 28 May sealed the failure of the parliamentary democratic system. While most socialist leaders fled the country, De Man remained in Belgium. He offered his services to King Leopold III and was the only politician of note who remained at his side. On 31 May 1940, the BWP leaders who had fled decided in Limoges, France, to expel De Man from the party. However, this decision was kept secret until it could be proven that he was indeed acting as a cavalier seul. He ultimately did so alongside Leopold III.

On 28 June 1940, De Man published a controversial “Manifesto to the members of the party” in which he stated unequivocally that the role of the BWP on the Belgian political scene should be considered to have come to an end. In the summer and autumn of 1940, he made various plans for a radical reform of the political landscape, but these clashed with the ambitions of the collaborating Flemish National Union, while the German occupiers were not particularly enthusiastic either. Disillusioned, De Man chose to go into voluntary exile in Haute-Savoye after being dismissed as a professor at the University of Brussels in November 1941. At the end of the war, he fled to Switzerland, where he was granted political asylum.

On 12 September 1946, he was sentenced in absentia by the Brussels court martial to 20 years in prison and had to pay damages of 10 million Belgian francs. This was a relatively severe punishment. If the sentence could not be enforced – which was the case, as De Man never returned to Belgium – there was a civil sanction that would strip him of his Belgian nationality. The Belgian state never requested his extradition, which reinforces the suspicion of many historians that they would rather see him gone and wanted to sideline him politically for good. Hendrik De Man died on 20 June 1953, together with his wife, in a car accident that some considered a possible suicide....