The Global 1970s

Radicalism, Reform, and Crisis

Duco Hellema

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780415737487
• eBook ISBN: 9780429874710
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

No other decade evokes such contradictory images as the 1970s: reform and emancipation on the one hand, crisis and malaise on the other. In The Global 1970s: Radicalism, Reform, and Crisis, Duco Hellema portrays the 1970s as a period of global transition.

Across the world, the early and mid-1970s were still years of political mobilization with everything seemingly an object of public controversy and conflict, including economic development, education, and family matters. Social movements called for the reduction of social inequalities, for participation, and the emancipation of various groups at the same time as the rise of ambitious and reform-oriented governments. Ten years later, a different world was emerging with the call for state-controlled social and economic changes in decline and new economic policies centred on liberation and deregulation taking their place. This book examines a range of explanations for this radical transformation, highlighting how economic problems, such as the oil crisis, political battles and dramatic confrontations resulted in a free-market-oriented conservatism by the end of the period.

Divided into nine broadly chronological chapters and taking a global approach that allows the reader to see the familiar themes of the decade examined on an international scale, The Global 1970s is essential reading for all students and scholars of twentieth-century global history.

1
Legacies of the 1960s

The start of the long seventies

History, of course, does not come neatly parcelled in periods of ten or a hundred years. Nor is it likely that historical changes have followed the Christian calendar. It is, on the other hand, common practice to organize our historical memory as recognizable periods, such as decades and centuries, and to label these periods to distinguish them from others and perhaps thereby establish long-term developments. Even professional historians, despite all theoretical misgivings, are tempted to define and characterize decades and centuries in unequivocal terms. The 1960s, for instance, are often described as optimistic or rebellious, and the 1970s as individualistic or bleak.

On closer inspection, one finds that such labels are mostly inadequate, or at least one-sided. Historical periods are never consistent or one-dimensional; they contain several, sometimes even contradictory developments, and moreover they undergo change. Even shorter periods of time, like decades, can only adequately be characterized using concepts such as ‘multiple’ or ‘layered’ time, and not so much by all-encompassing, general terms such as ‘rebellion’, ‘progress’, or ‘malaise’. Moreover, centuries and decades are often characterized by conflict, by struggle between different movements or political tendencies. In this respect, the 1970s are no exception, which is one of the reasons why the 1970s have such a mixed reputation.

Nonetheless, this book takes on the challenge of dealing with the ‘global 1970s’ as an identifiable and typical period: typical, because it was characterized by specific developments that had begun just before the beginning of the decade, viz. the wave of similarly minded political activism in the Western world, the progressive reform-oriented governments of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and – perhaps a little later in the decade – the remarkable rise of a conservative reaction against all on-going social and cultural changes. And, there was the process of détente, the temporary weakening of the United States, and the rise of anti-Western and even communist movements in the non-Western world, and last but not least, two worldwide economic crises.

The most important reservation in this book is the acknowledgement that some of the main characteristics of the 1970s had already become apparent in the late 1960s, and continued into the early eighties. So, like many others who have shortened or stretched decades and centuries, the 1970s are presented as part of a somewhat longer period, which one could describe as the ‘long seventies’. We begin this story, therefore, in the late 1960s: the beginning of the ‘long seventies’. First, we focus on the economic and political situation in what was at the time still at the heart of the global economy and the international state system: the Western world.

The welfare state

The 1970s have often in retrospect been identified – as far as the Western world is concerned – with bad times: economic crisis, social malaise, and growing social uncertainty and selfishness.¹ Yet around 1970 the situation in most Western countries still seemed promising. Economic growth rates were still relatively high in the late 1960s and early 1970s, on average around 4 percent in Western Europe. In Japan, growth was even considerably higher: not as high as in the mid-1960s, but still around 8 percent. This trend was not typical merely for the West; it included the Soviet bloc and even parts of the non-Western world, in particular Latin America and East Asia. Unquestionably, global average economic growth rates up to 1974 were higher than they would be in the succeeding decades. According to World Bank figures, global GDP growth per capita was 3.6 percent in 1972, as high as 4.4 percent in 1973.²

In the Western states, unemployment remained low in the late 1960s and early 1970s: between 1 and 2 percent in France, for instance; somewhat higher in Great Britain; even less than 1 percent in West Germany. The same could be said of other industrialized countries: unemployment was under 2 percent in Australia, around 1 percent in Japan.³ This meant that in all these countries, the goal of full employment had been more or less realized, which gave the unions substantial leverage at the negotiating tables. To alleviate tensions on the labour market, by the late 1960s, several West European governments still encouraged labour immigration – particularly from the Mediterranean countries – assuming at the time that ‘foreign workers’ would only stay in Western Europe temporarily.

During the 1950s and 1960s, West European governments had extended the welfare state. New social security laws were introduced, and pensions, benefits, and other allowances were increased. Most of the time, such policies were based upon broad political coalitions that included the Christian democratic and even the conservative parties. The state took on responsibility for its citizens’ well-being ‘from the cradle to the grave’. These ambitions were not only typical for Western Europe. In 1964, the American Democratic administration, led by Lyndon B. Johnson, announced its ‘Great Society’ programme, which included substantial federal investments among other things in the field of education, health care, old age pensions, and housing. Distracted by the Vietnam War, and because of its rapidly increasing financial consequences, Johnson’s administration would not be able to realize all its ambitions. Meanwhile, however, as in Western Europe ‘the federal government permeated nearly every aspect of American life’.⁴

Under these circumstances, most Western societies had been entering, what the American economist Walt Rostow has called, the stage of ‘high mass consumption’, something the United States had already done in the immediate post-war period.⁵ As a result of rising wages, pensions, and benefits, many families began to enjoy the fruits of the welfare state. There were good reasons to spend money. The latter half of the sixties brought remarkable technical innovations at more affordable prices – refrigerators, colour television, and other modern electronic equipment. In Western Europe, supermarkets began to offer all kinds of consumer products which, up till then, had been considered exotic luxuries for the happy few.

By the end of the 1960s, however, the first signs of economic trouble had become visible. Growth rates started to decline, and unemployment was slowly rising, not least in the United States, with an unemployment rate reaching almost 5 percent in 1970.⁶ Inflation, though, was still considered the most urgent economic problem of the late 1960s. Many Western governments actively tried to control the increase of wages and prices, but it was difficult to limit wage growth. In most West European countries, the labour market was tense, which was one of the reasons why employers were giving in to union pressure – and initially to mostly ‘wild cat’ actions – and accepted substantial wage increases.

There were, however, no indications of an impending economic disaster. On the contrary, the late 1960s were still years of confidence in the future and in its technological promises. One of the most spectacular achievements of those days was the US Apollo 11 mission that put the astronauts ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the moon in July 1969. But closer to earth, transport and communication also underwent spectacular changes. The first communication satellites were launched, and in 1970 the American company Boeing presented its first ‘jumbo jet’, the 747. The possibilities of air transport seemed unlimited. France and Britain were working on the Concorde project to build an airliner that would transport travellers in less than four hours from London to New York. In the context of Cold War rivalry, the Soviet Union developed its own supersonic airliner, the Tupolev-144 which made its first test flights in 1968.⁷

Also, and not least, revolutionary technical developments were taking place in the medical field. In late 1967 and early 1968, the South African heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard carried out his first successful heart transplants. For the public at large, new pharmaceutical discoveries were obviously more significant than heart transplants. One of these discoveries was the anti-conception pill that became more widely available by the mid-1960s, although not immediately used on a mass scale (that came in the early 1970s). At first in the United States and somewhat later in other parts of the Western world, more and more people began to consume all kinds of pharmaceutical products: vitamins, pain killers, and tranquilizers. It seemed as if health and well-being could be controlled by the increasing number of pills and powders that consumers could buy at drugstores and supermarkets.

In the late 1960s, more generally there was still widespread optimism concerning the benefits of further industrialization and technological development. During the 1970s, this economic and technological optimism would increasingly be put in question, not only due to economic problems and rising unemployment, but also as a result of growing doubts about the consequences of continued industrial and technological growth, for instance in view of the exhaustion of natural resources and the impact on the environment. Apart from that, there was also growing controversy over the distribution of wealth, and over social relations under capitalism in general. This declining optimism and increasing controversy is one of the storylines in the following chapters.

The revolution that failed

Despite (or perhaps as a result of) a prevalent prosperity, the 1960s saw the rise of growing – particularly juvenile – protest and rebellion. In the United States, this new mass opposition and protest was already flourishing by the mid-1960s. The American civil rights movement was perhaps the first example of what would later be labelled as a ‘new social movement’. It had originated in the late 1950s in the South of the United States, where blacks were still openly discriminated against, repressed, and in some cases not even allowed to vote. In the early 1960s, the civil rights movement became massive, contributing to the adoption of the Civil Rights Act (that outlawed racial discrimination) and the Voting Rights Act in, respectively, 1964 and 1965. In the meantime, the American student movement, and in particular the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was radicalizing a generation, addressing not only more or less university-related or intellectual questions, such as the Free Speech Movement, but increasingly also broader political issues such as civil rights and the war in Vietnam.

From the mid-sixties, the atmosphere and the outlook of most Western European countries began to change as well. A new and dynamic youth culture appeared, in the streets, in schools, and other educational institutions. Pop music was an important element and expression of this changing atmosphere, as were style and clothing. The younger generation, not least its musical spokesmen, soon demanded more individual freedom. ‘I am free to do what I want, any old time’, as the Rolling Stones sang in 1965. This more libertarian and hedonistic attitude contrasted strongly with the feelings and opinions – and the discipline – of the post-war ‘reconstruction’ generation.

By the mid-1960s, the first signs of political rebellion became evident. The Provo-movement in the Netherlands, which from 1965 on, in a humorous and playful manner, tried to provoke police and authorities in the city of Amsterdam, was one of the first public expressions of this rebellious, anti-authoritarian attitude.⁸ Soon, the political climate in other Western European countries changed as well. Demonstrations, for instance against the Vietnam War, became more massive and radical, leading to harsh confrontations between demonstrators and the police. In June 1967, a young West German named Benno Ohnesorg was shot dead by a police officer in West Berlin during a demonstration against a visit of the Shah of Iran, provoking widespread indignation and protest over repression and ‘police brutality’. From that moment, as the German historian Manfred Görtemaker writes, the ‘counter-cultural’ and anti-authoritarian atmosphere of the sixties became a real political movement that began to influence West Germany’s state and society.⁹

During the ‘revolutionary year’ of 1968, these developments reached their apotheosis. In early May, student demonstrations in Paris turned into a real revolt against the existing political order, symbolized by the authoritarian French President Charles de Gaulle. The unions and the French communist party (PCF) joined the student movement with a certain reluctance, but by mid-May perhaps more than 10 million people participated in strikes all over the country. For some weeks it seemed as if students and workers were capable of realizing a true revolutionary transformation of Gaullist France, based upon autogestion (‘self-management’). Meanwhile, the French ‘May Revolution’ seemed to have spread to other parts of Western Europe. In West Germany, an attack on student leader Rudi Dutschke in April led to widespread street battles, occupations, and not least, violent actions against the Springer Press, which was held responsible for inciting right-wing radicalism. In Italy, radical students and workers also rebelled against the existing political and economic order, with university occupations, nationwide strikes, and the rise of all kinds of leftists and revolutionary groups. The whole world seemed on fire. In Mexico, in the summer of 1968, several hundreds of thousands of demonstrators followed the example of student activists and took to the streets to protest against governmental corruption and authoritarianism, and not least against all the money spent on the Olympic Summer Games held in Mexico. Even the communist world was in turmoil. In Czechoslovakia, the Prague Spring challenged the Stalinist political order, while in the People’s Republic of China, the so-called Cultural Revolution – although the Chinese army was trying to contain it – was still creating chaos and havoc.¹⁰

Nonetheless, the ‘Revolution of 1968’ soon turned out to be a failure, even in the country where it had started. In France, President de Gaulle remained in power, supported by a large electoral majority, to be succeeded in June 1969 by another ‘Gaullist’ president, Georges Pompidou. The Prague Spring was crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks; the Mexican student revolt scattered with police brutality, and the Cultural Revolution came to an end. The failure of the revolutions of 1968 would cast its shadows into the 1970s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, among many Western intellectuals, journalists, and artists, there was a feeling that The Sixties, the happy years of freedom and rebellion, of a libertarian ‘counter-culture’, were finally over.

There were several reasons for growing disappointment and cynicism, not least in the field of pop music and youth culture. The British and American pop music scene was struck by a series of tragic events. In 1969 and 1970, several musical icons, such as Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, the American singer Janis Joplin, and guitar virtuoso Jimi Hendrix, died as a result of drug abuse. And in December 1969, a free concert by the Rolling Stones in the American city of Altamont led to chaos and random violence perpetrated by members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, acting as security guards, against fans standing close to the stage. All in all, four spectators died at the Altamont concert, which symbolized in many eyes the end of an optimistic era, literally and figuratively the end of The Sixties.

But the causes of disappointment and pessimism were m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Legacies of the 1960s: the start of the long seventies
• 2 Everything is political: the early and mid-1970s
• 3 Reform mania: the early and mid-1970s
• 4 Self-reliance: the non-Western world in the early and mid-1970s
• 5 The communist states: the early and mid-1970s
• 6 Crisis in the world economy: from the mid- to the late 1970s
• 7 The free market alternative: the mid- and late 1970s
• 8 Confrontation and deadlock: the late 1970s
• 9 Dawn of a new world: the end of the seventies
• Postscript: the end of progress?
• Bibliography
• Index