A LOOK AT THE THINKING BEHIND NATIONALIZA TION - THE NATIONALIZATION OF BANKS UNDER THE 3RD REPUBLIC

Since the publication of the special issue of Le Mouvement Social devo ted to << Post-war nazionalizations in Western Europe >> (Jan.-March 1 986), and since the appearance of Les nationalisations de la Liberatio n. De l'utopie au compromis published in Paris by the Presses de la Fo ndation nationale des Sciences politiques in 1987, the history of nati onalizations in France has become rather well known. The aim of this a rticle is not therefore, to retrace its stages, but to show how the na tionalizing thinking emerged in the context of the history of ideas an d intellectuals. The example of the banks is a striking illustration o f the process of fuming an old idea into an elaborate project. Delimit ed in time - the making of it lasted five years from 1934 to 1939 -, a nd limited to socialist circles as well as C.G.T. confederal circles, the intellectual creation benefitted from the support of individuals r ather than structures. The example of Leon Blum and the encouragement of Leon Jouhaux enabled the proponents to apply themselves to the task . Thanks to the reviews which they published however modest they might be, and the international conferences they organized for themselves, their thinking concerning nationalization came to fruition. Even if it remained contradictory and sometimes fuzzy, it played an important pa rt in the culture of nationalization and constituted the premise of th e nationalization act of 1945.