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25 de Mayo 3762 – 3000 – Santa Fe

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ispbrown@ispbrown.edu.ar

Profesorado de Inglés

Estudios Sociales II

Instancia Final Integradora

Social Revolution in the Post-War Era

Profesora: Perla Hassan

Alumno: Pablo Berardo (pabloagustinberardo@gmail.com)

8 de noviembre de 2017

Santa Fe
The end of World War II, in 1945, signalled the emergence of a new world order,
with the United States and the USSR as its leading superpowers, each representing different,
and opposing, socioeconomic models: capitalism and communism. It meant, then, the
beginning of an era of “open yet restricted”1 confrontation between these two blocs the world
was now split into; it was the start of the Cold War.
However, more importantly, it was to be the starting point of a series of changes that
would cumulatively amount to “the greatest and most dramatic, rapid and universal social
transformation in human history” (Hobsbawm, p. 288). A Social Revolution, to put it simply.
The greatest of these changes, for it ended what had been a constant since the
neolithic revolution, in prehistoric times, was the death of the peasantry. Technological and
scientific advance brought an agricultural revolution which, thanks to new machinery and the
achievements of agricultural chemistry, selective breeding and bio-technology (p. 292),
allowed developed countries to vastly reduce their farming population while becoming the
biggest producers of agricultural goods for the world market.
So, while before the end of the Second World War, only Britain and Belgium could
claim to have less than a fifth of their population working the land, by the early 1980s, no
country west of the Iron Curtain2 in the developed world had more than 10 percent of its
population engaged in farming, except for Spain, Portugal and the Irish Republic. Even then,
the countries of the Iberian Peninsula moved from having close to half of their population
involved in agriculture to less than 20 percent.
In the poor countries —basically, what was called the Third World—, the
transformation was even more extraordinary. Though still inhabited by a majority of farming
people halfway through the Twentieth Century, only three regions continued to be
predominantly rural thirty years later: sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and China. In spite
of this, these were regions surrounded by countries in which peasant population was
declining fast.
The rural exodus into urban areas was, then, a worldwide phenomenon, but its effects
were not the same everywhere. Where peasants had been, so far, a majority, it translated into
them flooding, mostly, into the great cities. As a consequence of this, the most gigantic urban
agglomerations were now to be found in the third world: Cairo, São Paulo, Mexico city and
Shanghai. The developed world, on the other hand, while still far more urbanized, saw the
population of its giants cities acceleratingly dispersing from them and into “suburbs and
satellite out-of-town communities” (p. 293).
First and Third-World did, however, converge in terms of how their urban areas came
to be structured. Conurbations increasingly became collections of autonomous communities
“focused on some central area of business or administration” (p. 294). These, in the
developed world chiefly, became interconnected by new subway and rapid suburban systems
that appeared as part of a new revolution in public transport, while the cities of the
developing world continued to depend on their obsolete public transit services, not ready to
bound together these growing groups of urban settlements.
1
https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War
2
The boundary that separated Communist from Capitalist states in Europe (see pic. 1).
A second transformation, perhaps not as historically significant but much more
universal, was the explosion of demand for both Secondary and, especially, Higher
Education. Occupations which required higher levels of education rose, as did, in response,
the numbers of people who chose to continue their studies past Primary School.
Of all levels, university education saw the most dramatic increase in numbers. Before
WWII university students in developed countries represented around 0.1% of the population.
By the 1980s, in educationally ambitious countries, students formed upwards of 2.5 percent
of the total population, though the rush was less marked in socialist countries.
The “great world boom” (p. 297), aided by Welfare State social policy, made it
possible for more families than ever to afford to send their children to study full-time. And
when they could, they did not hesitate to do so, for it was widely believed that it was the best
way to multiply their chances of achieving better income and, most probably, a higher social
status. Higher education was thus democratized throughout most of the world in the postwar
years as a result of consumer pressure: governments had no choice but to create new
establishments to take them in.
University campuses were suddenly home to huge groups of students and teachers
which, empowered by their growing numbers and radicalism, became a novel and explosive
factor in both culture and politics. Uniquely effective in making their revolutionary ideas,
born of political and social discontent, heard, civil unrest reached its climactic height in May
1968, when Paris became the epicenter of a Continent-wide student uprising (p. 298). It did
not amount to revolution, but it had a profound effect on society. If anything, it inspired a
wave of working-class strikes for higher wages and better conditions.
However, even if May 1968 helped to unite and mobilise the working class for a
moment, it seemed to be collapsing under the pressure of post-industrial society. Traditional
industries were shifted to new industrial countries, with old industrial areas progressively
de-industrializing and entering economic and population decline. Moreover, when these old
industries were replaced by new ones, they were not the same, nor located in the same places,
and they were structured differently. ​Post-fordist ​industries, as they were called, were not
centered on great industrial cities concentrating workers and mass-production plants,
generally focused on a single industry, as was the case in classic industrial era, but much
smaller and spread across town and country, which paved the way for the fragmentation of
the working force.
Technological advance played its part, too, especially in the 1980s. New production
processes allowed for increases in productivity without expanding worker numbers, and the
economic crises of the 1970s and early 1980s dealt a huge blow, recreating mass
unemployment for the first time in forty years, at least in Europe (p. 304).
Nevertheless, the crisis of the working class and its movements had begun much
earlier, and it was not necessarily related to its diminishing numbers; it was rather a crisis “of
its consciousness” (p. 305). Ironically, it was a newfound affluence which broke the bonds
that united workers all over the world; ​their economic progress meant they no longer
identified themselves with what was once thought to be characteristic their class. Moreover,
the privatisation of entertainment and —paradoxical as it sounds— of social bonding —most
clearly expressed by the introduction of TVs and telephones into practically every
household— discouraged public participation (such as attending football matches or
gossiping at the market), an old factor of unity among them.
Neo-liberalism, in the 1980s, widened the cracks, for it favoured the skilled sectors of
the working class —as the era modern high-tech production dawned—, who saw their
situation improve while their brothers lagged behind, creating what was termed “the
two-thirds society”3. Low-skilled workers, as beneficiaries of welfare payments, began, then,
to be resented by those in better positions, who thought to be subsidizing lives which were
not their responsibility.
In addition to this, mass migration brought ethnic and racial diversity to cities and,
therefore, factories and the working class. Conflicts between these groups arose as they had
to compete for the same jobs, in an era when full-employment was a distant reality.
All these changes (and the tensions they created) “diffused and dissolved the formerly
clear outlines of ‘the proletariat’” (p. 310), but there is one more change which must be
mentioned, though its influence extended far beyond the limits of the working class. It is the
last great transformation in this era of social revolution: the far more important role women
began to play in society, including married women.
The second half of the twentieth century was witness to the massive incorporation of
women into both the labour market —in which, by 1980, over half of american married
women participated, up from 14 per cent in 1940— and higher education —where, come
1980, too, they constituted half of the total students across a good share of the world’s
developed countries—.
These developments constituted the background for the lively resurgence of the
feminist movement in the 1960s, which swept the world, from the Netherlands to America,
where it intertwined itself with the Civil Rights movement, which fought for black people’s
rights and ​equality​, the main concern of feminism. Women, as a result, much like students
during the same time period, became a major political force, as manifested by their
achievement regarding the insertion of the word “sex” into the American Civil Rights Act of
1964 (p. 317).
Most importantly, however, societal assumptions about the public role of women and
their public prominence (p. 313) began to, and effectively did, change. While women during
this period did not reach equal numbers or status in prominent positions, some of them, of
which Margaret Thatcher is a prime example, managed to climb to the top of the political
ladder as heads of government, something unthinkable before 1945. Moreover, jobs which
had never been thought of as appropriate for women, through collective and individual action
—as seen in the video “Half the People”—, for the first time in history allowed their entry,
though not without reservations, initially.
So, while the period we have been concerning ourselves with transformed society in
many respects, and affected all parts of it differently, it can be said that, at the very least, it

3
A society in which two-thirds of the population are said to enjoy the benefits of affluence, while
one-third are locked into poverty or near-poverty.
gave fifty per cent of humans a better chance at equality than they had been offered ever
before.
Videos
Chapter 10, The Social Revolution 1945-1990​:
Boomtime: The explosion of urbanization, industry and prosperity and its
consequences on society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylvwk5ehjSI&t

Half the People: Women’s fight for a new place in society.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nxpyonf5j4
(also related and relevant to events described in Chapter 11)

Chapter 11, Cultural Revolution​:


New Release: Youth culture in the 60s and beyond.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBjZRh4KOOI

Chapter 12, The Third World:


20th Century History, Part 10: The Third World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0IlCl9ODiw&

Freedom Now: Decolonization and its consequences


during the second half of the 20th century
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fie7H9EThUQ

Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths


The progress of the Third-World during the 20th century, through statistics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI&
References
Hobsbawm, E. (1995). ​Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991​. London:
Abacus.
Annex

Picture 1: The Iron Curtain (1945 - 1991) was the boundary which separated the Red
(Communist) States from the Western (Non-Communist) States.

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