Work on the second half of the twentieth century

Abstract

This article examines the work on the second half of the twentieth century. In the years following the Second World War, there was an economic expansion, in which the capitalist stability existed only in the center of the system, since a wave of revolutions and wars continued to sweep the peripheral nations. In Eastern Europe, bound to the “socialist blocâ€, workers’ rebellions against the ruling bureaucracy reached East Berlin (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Poland (1956, 1971). Revolutionary developments of the working class still took place in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of the Cuban revolution of 1959-1961. In Western Europe, the proletariat also starred in revolutionary situations, since the French May 1968, through the hot Italian autumn (1969), to the Portuguese revolution (1974). In the US, there were numerous conflicts between labor and capital starting from the 1950s. Detachable are, above all, in addition to dozens of strikes, the emergence of new labor militancy, the working base’s pressure in favor of changes on the collective bargaining policy and the increase in racial and gender awareness. The goal, then, is to provide a picture of the working reality that was constituted on the last decades.

JEL-Code | F16; J82; R23.