It goes without saying that the world in 1960 was a very different place then the one that we live in today. But, nonetheless, we should analyze the situation to see how the world was, or appeared at least, to the people, especially young people, of all shades of political opinion who experienced this time and formulated their critique and ideological outlook in these times--an outlook which outlived the times themselves. Perhaps the most significant fact was that the "world" was split into two: a capitalist Western and a communist East bloc; soon it would be three, that of the anti-Soviet socialist nations with China on the center and the newly independent ex-colonial nations, which became combined into what was called the Third World. The distinctions between the three worlds were sometimes quite arbitrary as H.W. Edwards notes that when social services were added into the average Soviet worker's wage package it was easily on par with West Germany in the 60s and seventh in the world when it came to wages. But there was a general truth in the description a core set of developed countries and their outshoots constituted the "West" these were the old developed nations that had departed from their colonial/non-Western counterparts long ago, and a set of newly developed nations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union--which were in general not as wealthy but performed relatively well in contrast to the regimes that came before them and for what they were. Describing the "Second World" as it exists today is difficult, not only because a real socialist bloc no longer exists but precisely because few nations on a similar par with "middle-of-the-road" status exist today. The world today is largely divided quite simply into rich and poor nations according to radical economist Zak Cope mainstream economists have dubbed this phenomenon as that of "the missing middle". China, Malaysia, Thailand, and some parts of Latin America are perhaps the best examples of a "Second World" standard of living which exists today-- and only the first maintains nominal socialist trappings (unless Cuba is included in the latter). The lack of a true "middle" in the categorization of countries in world economy and politics does not mean that economic development has failed to occur, far from it.
In short, the world in 1960 was a poorer one on the whole but also one that was more equitable when one looks at the big picture. Most people in the developed nations lived with the expectation that on the whole their pay would increase along with productivity, a fact bolstered by the continuous, if at times erratic, rise in income for most core-nation workers after the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The new Keynesian religion in the West held that pay for workers should rise along with rises in productivity (but importantly not in parity or ahead of productivity) and preferably ahead of inflation but in no respect should the pay of workers be allowed to decline as it did in many nations in the 1930s. As Keynes explained the decline in demand stemming from worker's pay had prolonged the Depression; he also admonished the capitalist class, particularly the rentier portion, who sat on their money during the Depression and argued that only the state was a powerful enough entity to pull the economy out of a depressionary tailspin via deficit spending and investment. As Marxist economist Sam Williams argues, many, perhaps the majority, of capitalists were skeptical of this argument: their day-to-day practical experience had taught them that one of the best ways, if not the best way, to make money was to skimp on the payroll. Rather the two best arguments for the Keynesian point-of-view came on May 2nd 1945 and October 4th 1957 respectively. The Soviet victory over Germany (and later Japanese forces in Manchuria) and its subsequent occupation showed the ruling classes of Western nations that they were not indefatigable. A second rude-awakening came when Sputnik was launched into space puncturing the illusion that even if socialist forces could prevail militarily, there was no way that they could prevail technologically. It becomes understandable then why opposition to increases in workers income and standard of living declined even if it never disappeared. As mentioned before, rising incomes for workers were not new to the post-WWII period (which has subsequently been dubbed the "Golden Years" of capitalism) but this was the first time that worker compensation grew faster then that of capital's compensation. To put it simply, the poor were getting "rich" at a faster rate then the rich stayed/got rich for the first time.
But this wasn't all: the gap between the rich and the poor had also declined in comparison to where it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As had been noted in the previous article, the richest man in the world in that time was John D. Rockefeller who was worth approximately 300 billion dollars according to most estimates; in 1957 it was oilman J. Paul Getty who was worth approximately the same dollar sum as John D. (1 billion dollars) but by that time that time it was worth between 8-10 billion dollars in today's currency. Just barely even enough to make today's top 100 but not enough to make the top 90 much less the top 8. Of course, as always, the accuracy of such lists can be disputed for instance JFK was way richer then Trump if you consider that the wealth he would've inherited, and likely one of the richest, if not the most richest man in the world himself. What's interesting is that according to wikipedia after the 1957 list of the richest Americans was published there were immediate disputes about its accuracy, Oklahoma oilman James A. Chapman protested: "I don't like my name in print at all, but when I do, I like it accurate. Why I could buy and sell that Paul Getty." That greater wealth then reported could've existed is not surprising considering that we've dealt with the issue of the Japanese fortune quietly pocketed after WWII that was allegedly worth 1 trillion dollars and the issue of anonymous/secret wealth today. Honestly, it was hard to even find decent information on the subject of who were the richest people of that era especially outside of the US. But in any case all available economic data suggests that the first three decades after WWII were more equitable then any era previously or after. It seems that even if the power and wealth of the robber-barons did not wholly disappear then in some respect they were "tamed" in comparison to the period before and after. Even the gap in pay between workers in the rich nations and workers in the new post-colonial nations is alleged to have declined according to some sources. So, the question is what the hell happened in this period?
In truth, the newfound economic equality was not wholly a phenomenon of the post-War period or even largely intentional--it began with WWI and the Depressions that followed it and became even more substantial after the greatest leveler of all, the Second World War, arrived. One historian has even argued that disaster--war, depression, violent revolt/revolution, and disease have been the major ways that inequality has declined throughout history. An interesting question is why didn't workers respond the same way to the newfound "equality" between the rich and the poor resulting WWI and the Great Depression? Simply put because it was the "equality" of the barracks or the poorhouse, it was ironically, the same "equality" that capitalists told the workers they'd receive under socialism--the socialization of poverty. But even then, things got worse and worse for workers in this period especially during the depression and whereas for the rich the result was that they might have to move into a smaller mansion or keep a slightly smaller housekeeping staff--although many took substantial haircuts to their overall fortunes, they were able to take advantage of hard times where possible, such as the deflation and lax labor markets resulting from the Great Depression. No wonder it has passed into the collective consciousness as a period of class struggle where workers were chomping at the bit for some--even any kind of change. However, the prosperity that came after the war goes beyond any sort of barracks or poor-house type of equality and the oft-cited Thomas Picketty has put forward an explanation for how this could happen. According to Picketty, the wealth and income of those at the bottom only grows faster then those at the top when economic growth is faster then the return on capital. Like the catastrophe thesis that also makes an almost stupidly obvious kind of sense--since most people are wage-workers there has to be a high level of economic growth that will tighten up the labor market and drive wages up faster then the profit on capital. While that seems like a situation that most would agree is good for everybody it is also precisely what most employers don't want. Nor is it something they could even sustain if they wanted to as it would inevitably lead to the absorption of their profits, which, since capitalism is a system of production for profit would cause it to grind to a complete halt or collapse. In the United States, for instance, real GDP growth was between 4-5% from 1945 until the 1970s whereas interest rates were below that or right at that level up or only slightly higher then the national rate of growth all the way up until 1967. On the other hand for business as a whole the rate of profit had recovered from its low rate during the Great Depression and business was glad to invest, to get while the getting was good. As Duménil and Lévy put it the ruling class was willing to accept a smaller portion of the national income as long as the economy and thus their returns also continued grow rapidly; the stagflation "crisis" of the 1970s quickly put an end to such charitableness. Although it was undoubtedly a real crisis that harmed workers what undoubtedly worried the ruling class was that profits had fallen and inflation had grown beyond acceptable bounds--it now threatened to inflate away the percentage of the national pie going to the top 1% along with their wealth.
But, then again, the world that followed the Depression was not completely unintentional shaped by mere chance, by the magic guiding hand of economy. Nicholas Shaxson writes: “When war broke out, however, a lot of countries needed to raise a lot of money fast, and income taxes rose dramatically. In the United States, the top rate of tax for individuals rose from 15 percent in 1916 to 77 percent in 1918. The nation introduced the corporate income tax only after the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, and it rose to 12 percent in 1918, by which time corporation taxes amounted to half of all federal tax revenues.” Both income and corporate taxes in the United States were really a response to progressive and workers agitation. Shaxson notes that before this point taxes really weren't perceived to be worth worrying about for most in the ruling class, so the same incentive towards the creation of tax havens did not exist. The United States government, like most governments, saw little reason to give up the new powers, taxation, and wealth gained during the war. Social-democratic/reformist governments across the industrialized world during the interwar period sought and in many cases attained anti-monopoly/rentier measures, greater welfare supports, state-nationalization/ownership of certain industries but the real change came with WWII. Most people ascribed international finance capitalism and unregulated capitalism as having some role in precipitating the Depression and the Second World War and as a consequence the economic world order was designed to inhibit reckless banking practices and free capital controls across borders. For this reason, bankers were actually kept away and deliberately marginalized from the negotiations at Bretton Woods. The power of Wall Street and London may have diminished in the post-world order but it was replaced by the power of Washington. The US government expanded the role it had assumed as creditor to the European allies in WWI but on an even greater scale through the banking institutions and "aid" plans that it had designed during the war. As Michael Hudson noted in his book Super-Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance the capital exported to the developing world via the US government and its agencies was greater then the private capital and profits repatriated from the developing world. In Western Europe, from Britain to France to Italy there were experiments with new kinds of economic organization occurring through the state and greater provision of services and welfare. Instead of being paralyzed these nations grew faster and got richer contrary to the predictions of conservative economists prior to the war.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain a new order had emerged and economic activity took place almost entirely through the state. The death of Stalin brought about a conservative orientation in Soviet politics, the Western press had welcomed Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956 and had noted that the Soviet Union had become more open to market-based ideas of socialism and even private property and capital in some areas of the economy they hardly welcomed his announcement that the Soviet Union would outcompete the West both economically and geopolitically. In 1961 Albania's Enver Hoxha broke with Khrushchev not only over his denouncement of Stalin but also the conservative and anti-Marxist direction he saw that they were heading; China also soon followed. A dissident current within Leninism joined, if uncomfortably, the newly budding New Left in their critique of the Soviet Union as a nation where capitalism had been restored and a new reactionary or "authoritarian" spirit had taken root. It was a view shared by liberals and nationalists in the "marginalized" nations in both Western/Eastern Europe and Japan. Soon a dissident view emerged within the Cold War frame of reference critical of both America and the Soviet Union as state-capitalist powers vying for dominance as the global super-power practicing neocolonialism in developing nations while marginalizing and ripping off their allies. The supposed opposites were held to ironically be the same thing, even their historical, cultural and psychological make-up were similar: they were both settler-nations that had built up large empires, one a Euro-American power while the other was Eurasian and this was critical when it came to their reception by the newly independent colonial leaders and anti-colonial movements in the global south. The distinction between the nation that had elected itself to be the representative of capitalism and the nation that had claimed the mantle of communism was null, they were both representations of white power and the European colonial instinct. Or so it was claimed. That itself wasn't a new idea, the Japanese fascists had also promoted the idea that communism was just another ploy by the white race to control the world but in the Cold War context that idea gained a new currency.
But the dichotomy only made much sense if one believed that America and the Soviet Union were the only real powers in the world and that the East bloc and the West bloc were converging with each other--a common claim and idea of economic literature in the time. America and its allies were moving more towards socialism and "planning" whereas the Soviet Union and its allies were moving more towards capitalism and would perhaps follow America in constructing a "peoples" capitalism or what comes to the same thing--market socialism. In the Third Worldist view they were both parasites exploiting and feeding off of the new Third World. One uses the wealth it extracts from the darker nations to build a better free enterprise "market society" whereas the other uses it to build its own form of socialism but one only for whites. All of those positions were but a collection of clichés and half-truths so no wonder they congealed into the post-modern attitudes, philosophy, and outlook that took root in the late 70s and 1980s. Even as the world was in the midst of changing it often went unnoticed in 1976 for instance Fortune published an article titled "The Last Billionaires" as according to their estimates there were only two billionaires left in the world after the death of J. Paul Getty and they eulogized the class thus: "We may never see their like again." but things did not turn out that way.
By the late 60s the Left and the youth culture had turned against the state as the primary enemy and it seemed that the post-WWII rise of the state across the industrial world and even in ex-colonial nations was the expression of the teology of history, the highest phase of capitalist development as Engels put it: "The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially capitalist machine; it is the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective body of all capitalists. The more productive forces it takes over, the more it becomes the real collective body of all the capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme." For certain philosophers like Michel Focault the state was the outgrowth of society's need to repress to exert power and for Adorno, likewise, the state and its totalitarian impulses were the result of the Enlightenment's desire to order the world--bureaucratic administration thus was its logical conclusion. 1980 was the turning point as banks began to surpass governments in their power to organize economies and raw economics seemed to overpower the post-war 1960s order built around politics. As it turned out the Cold War inspired dichotomies and attitudes that formed the post-modern world outlook did not dissolve with its proclamation of war against all meta-narratives and binaries.
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