The origins of TM can be traced to the short-lived Resistance group Socialisme et Liberté, founded by Sartre after his release from prisoner-of-war camp in 1941. Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques-Laurent Bost, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean Pouillon were members and all were to become prominent in the TM team. By 1943, Albert Camus had become associated with the group and the idea of a post-war periodical had taken shape. Specifically, its vocation was to ‘fournir à l'après-guerre une idéologic’. In the event, Camus had become too involved with Combat by 1945, and the first Editorial Board consisted of Raymond Aron, Beauvoir, Michel Leiris, Merleau-Ponty, Albert Ollivier, Jean Paulhan and Sartre.

It is likely that purchasers of TM in October 1945 had little idea of what the review would contain. The name derived, none too obviously, from Chaplin's Modern Times, and the presence of Paulhan suggested that here was a publication to take the place of the disgraced Nouvelle Revue Française. The published work of Sartre promised a specialist interest in phenomenology and literature, but whether or how this would be translated into a particular political position was hard to predict.

A statement of intent, if not a manifesto, was clearly in order. It was bound to make explicit, as Beauvoir does in her autobiography, the lessons which had been learned in the war.