Through The Woods

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Spreading The Humanism

In the second half of the twentieth century, the decades of the fifties, sixties, and also that of the seventies, were characterized by several important struggles that, in consequence, were going to change the world. What it happened? As long as the economic development created richness and new possibilities in the United States and other western societies, people started to demand new rights within its own borders and also to protest about the social situation in the others. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, the representative of the other bloc, had to cope with other sort of problems, like those of more liberty, more democracy or, even, more opened and tolerant societies. Then, the Third World experienced a little transformation in order to control somehow their natural resources to improve the economy. That’s what I can call the challenges of the three-world order.

The case of the United States is, maybe, the most important one in terms of human development. Here we have to explain a little bit how women initiated campaigns for equality and empowerment. The Worlds Together, Worlds Apart book, for instance, says: ‘Women now questioned a life built around taking care of home and family’ (p. 779). The main figure of that feminist movement was Betty Friedan, who described the ‘idealized 1950’s sub-urban home as a comfortable concentration camp’ (p. 779). Moreover, I must stressed the demands of African American people, who until those years had not the same rights than the whites and they fight to conquered them, but ‘legacies of racism and inequality were not easy to overcome. In spite of Supreme Court decisions, most schools remained racially homogeneous not only in the South but across the United States, as “white flight” to the suburbs left inner-city neighborhoods and schools to minorities’ (p. 779). Protests to end poverty, to spread education (both demands were included in the protests of Paris in May of 1968), to vote and to end the vietnam war, are other plaints of that era in the western.

Carlo Leidi, Prague, 1968

The Soviet Union, in the meantime, needed to control other kind of unrests. The main one was that of Prague, when workers and students supported Alexander Dubcêk in order to create a new model of socialism and also calling for more freedom of expression and even of debate. Later, soviet forces did a counterattack and quelled the revolt, although its spirit would remain in the air. The Prague Spring of 1968, as was baptized, inspired what other people would do later in Poland or even within Russia. I would like to emphasize the importance that had the edition of a book called 'The Gulag Archipelago’, in which the author, Alexander Sholzenitshyn, ‘repudiated the notion that Socialism could be reformed by a turn away from Stalin’s policies’ (p. 781). At the same time, the other major communist power, China, who had designed a 'Great Leap Forward' to transform the country into a big industrialized one, failed in its aims and had to deal with and severe famine which forced the rulers to think in other alternatives. Den Xiaoping would show us later another radical and different ones.

In the Third World, the more important thing could be the fact of trying to control resources like oil in order to enrich countries. Firstly, they were supposed to choose between alignment with the first world or with the second, but some radical policies took some nations to unify and empower themselves. The creation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was an example of that collaboration, which included the next countries: Algeria, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Although at the beginning they seized oil sales creating, above all, big problems to the western consumers, the result of that was that emerged more efficient ones, like Canada or Mexico, and, what was the most important issue, the strategy was backfired when they were aware that revenues flowed back to the first world banks. As a result: ‘Some of it was in turn re-loaned to the world’s poorest countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, at high interest rates, to pay for more expensive imports - including oil!’ (p. 782).

To sum up, I would like to say that this age represents the spread of humanism, understood as the need of the people to control their own lives and to create a better society in which the differences of sexe, age, race or origin don’t exclude anybody. That’s to say, a world where people have more rights, more liberties and more capacities to decide their own destiny. 

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Cold War: Kitchen Debate

Khrushchev: It’s clear to me that the construction workers didn’t manage to finish their work and the exhibit still is not put in order ... this is what America is capable of, and how long has she existed? 300 years? 150 years of independence and this is her level. We haven’t quite reached 42 years, and in another 7 years, we’ll be at the level of America, and after that we’ll go farther. As we pass you by, we’ll wave "hi" to you, and then if you want, we’ll stop and say, "please come along behind us" ... If you want to live under capitalism, go ahead, that’s your question, an internal matter, it doesn’t concern us. We can feel sorry for you, but really, you wouldn’t understand. We’ve already seen how you understand things.

Nixon: It’s a very effective exhibit, and it’s one that will cause a great deal of interest. I might say that this morning I, very early in the morning, went down to visit a market, where the farmers from various outskirts of the city bring in their items to sell. I can only say that there was a great deal of interest among these people, who were workers and farmers, etc ... I would imagine that the exhibition from that standpoint would, therefore, be a considerable success. As far as Mr Khrushchev’s comments just now, they are in the tradition we learned to expect from him of speaking extemporaneously and frankly whenever he has an opportunity. I can only say that if this competition which you have described so effectively, in which you plan to outstrip us, particularly in the production of consumer goods ... If this competition is to do the best for both of our peoples and for people everywhere, there must be a free exchange of ideas. There are some instances where you may be ahead of us--for example in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space. There may be some instances, for example, color television, where we’re ahead of you. But in order for both of us benefit ...
     

If you want to know more about this, click here: (1) Kitchen Debate - (2) Transcript

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Taking Different Paths

As you probably know, from last decades of eighteen hundreds to the first quarter of the twentieth century world economies were led by free trade and gold standard, in which social and economic progress settled. Meanwhile, imperialism and rivalries didn´t stop. As a result, the world was doomed to world war (thirty years of warfare, actually) and countries started to adapt their resources to the new context. Certainly, was the aftermath of the first world war what explains the end of the victorian boom, an era characterized by the economic interdependence all over the planet, and also by the idea that goods were manufactured in order to consume them wherever you live and work. One example of those was fordism, that spread the assembly line and mass production everywhere.

Why, finally, main economies left the previous model of economic globalization? Maybe, at this point we must study the post-war conditions. In this way, we can read the following in Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: 'Its causes went back to the Great War, which had left European nations in deep debt as they struggled to rebuild their economies and pay off war debts. To restore stability, Europeans borrowed heavily from the United States. When wobbly governments and small investors defaulted on their loans, the U.S. Federal Reserve reacted by raising interest rates. Starting in central Europe, financial institutions began to collapse. As banks fell, other lenders scrambled to call in their loans. Companies, governments, and private borrowers were soon floating in a sea of debt. The panic then spread to the world’s stock markets, which led to the Wall Street crash of 1929, which spurred more bank closures' (p. 719).

The situation was untenable and the United States enforced penalties to import and export assets, signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, and also taking the first step towards protectionism. In response, trading partners cut links and international relations started to break down. We can also read some words in the textbook concerning that worry: 'After the United States enacted protective tariffs, other governments abandoned free trade in favor of protectionism. Manufacturers cut back production, laid off millions of workers, and often went out of business' (p.720). In Europe, actually, the crisis started when an austrian bank, the Kredit-Anstalt Bank, collapsed. In consequence, diplomacy tried to arrange the issue. It failed, anyway. One example to solve it was the Paris Conference of 1931.

Patterns of Recovery

Liberal economies were, hence, put in question, claiming that the market place hadn't a self-equilibrating structure. Here, we must quote figures like John Maynard Keynes, who despite believing in the free market, also argued that it should be controlled by the state. Therefore, following these ideas, countries like the United States applied its policies to stimulate the economy. In this particular case, it was called New Deal. However, there were other kind of responses. Sometimes diametrically opposite. These replications relied on popular support to carry out its strategies, which it could be divided in hard-core command economies and medium-core command economies. In this way, the state became the representative of the common will. Let me analyze them briefly.

Collectivized Agriculture - Soviet Propaganda: 'Let's Achieve a Victorious Harvest'

On the one hand, the most relavant example of hard-core command economy was the Soviet Union, country in which the collective way gained immense importance. What did collective way mean? Roughly, collectivist policies tried to accumulate resources in the hands of the state. That's to say, everything you produce must be property of those who run the country's destiny. Private property and other individual rights were largely beaten in the name of the state. This sort of planned economy was very effective to mobilize people and technology, especially in war time. Nonetheless, it demanded much sacrificies (of all types) and the need of produce new tools caused the population, in the end, remain exhausted. In reality, things were not so easy: 'The realities behind the images (like in the poster above) of smiling farmers were low productivity, enormous waste and often broken-down machinery' (p. 724).

On the other hand, medium-core command economies like Japan and Germany did not take over the organization of production. The state was above everything, that's true, but it left some freedom for the commercial activity (always for the general interest), which was supervised but the state officials. The aim was to create loyalty and capacity to consume, but needing reliance on peripheries to satisfy their needs (great resources), so they kept the persistance in the way of empire because of primary staples for industrial recovery. Although Japan broke down, Germany, the Third Reich, was the best example of this kind of policy. Both of them were great militarized and led societies.

In conclusion, this financial crisis took countries to make decisions like to leave the gold standard and retreat into protectionism. Liberal democracies relied on the state as a key agent to stimulate economy. However, others, like the Soviet Union and Germany pushed for policies in which peoples support, expansionism and popular will played crucial roles, not only in the recovery but also in the nationalist and popular machinery.

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Dmitri Shostakovich: Leningrad

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