The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality

by Thomas Borstelmann

The 1970s looks at an iconic decade when the cultural left and economic right came to the fore in American society and the world at large. While many have seen the 1970s as simply a period of failures epitomized by Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, global unrest, and disillusionment with military efforts in Vietnam, Thomas Borstelmann creates a new framework for understanding the period and its legacy. He demonstrates how the 1970s increased social inclusiveness and, at the same time, encouraged commitments to the free market and wariness of government. As a result, American culture and much of the rest of the world became more--and less--equal.


Borstelmann explores how the 1970s forged the contours of contemporary America. Military, political, and economic crises undercut citizens' confidence in government. Free market enthusiasm led to lower taxes, a volunteer army, individual 401(k) retirement plans, free agency in sports, deregulated airlines, and expansions in gambling and pornography. At the same time, the movement for civil rights grew, promoting changes for women, gays, immigrants, and the disabled. And developments were not limited to the United States. Many countries gave up colonial and racial hierarchies to develop a new formal commitment to human rights, while economic deregulation spread to other parts of the world, from Chile and the United Kingdom to China.


Placing a tempestuous political culture within a global perspective, The 1970s shows that the decade wrought irrevocable transformations upon American society and the broader world that continue to resonate today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, 20th Century, American, Politics

416 pages, Hardcover

First published November 20, 2011

Reviews

[Justin Michael James Dell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borstelmann does a prodigious job of sketching the milieux of 1970s America, capturing the derangement that set into American culture following the national traumas of the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal. In a nutshell, these hallmarks of national shame robbed Washington of its moral capital, sapped Americans' faith in their political leaders, and generally capsized the entire 'Big Government' superstructure that had been in place in the United States from the time of the Great Depression through to the 1960s. From this point on, individuals looked to themselves for solutions to their problems, Bostelmann contends, and the popular reaction of the individual American against Washington, as a putatively corrupt and power-hungry monster inimical to their liberty, has its provenance in this period. Perhaps this makes the 1970s the discursive watershed period in post-war American political culture.

A dialectic runs through Bosrtelmann's narrative: American society became more egalitarian even as it became more economically stratified. To start with the first thesis, the author contends that it was the 1970s, not the 1960s, in which the rights of various minority groups, and those of the majority - women - began to be recognized. I say 'recognized', not 'realized', because Borstelmann means that subaltern classes in America achieved "equality" with the dominant classes in a discursive sense, not substantively. That is to say, women were now no longer considered "unable" to do men's work, even though they were not paid the same wage as a man for doing the same job as he. To take another example, American Blacks might still be at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, but it was no longer socially acceptable for Americans to be openly racist towards them. Homosexuals began to 'come out' about their sexual orientation with less consequence. The discourse had changed. On the matter of the second thesis - economic stratification - Borstelmann points to the sea change in American economic ideology from a generally Keynesian habit of deficit spending and social spending to a neoliberal faith in the inexorable laws of supply & demand and free market economics. This shift was precipitated by the proliferation of ideas from the Chicago School of Economics and its spokespersons like Friedrich von Hayek and Ayn Rand, and from the dismal state of the U.S. economy in the 1970s and the widespread despair it caused the American public. The shift in U.S. economic thinking from Keynesian economics to neoliberalism in the late 1970s paved the way for the eventual triumph of free market economics in the 1980s. Of course, what this meant was that government redistribution of wealth - the hallmark of the Great Society in the 1960s - was abandoned and wealth accumulated in fewer and fewer hands.

Here we have the synthesis of the two theses of the dialectic: the faith that Americans placed in the virtue of the individual's pursuit of profit and pleasure - without government interference - corresponded to a social libertarian ideal that the particulars of an individual, such as their race, or how they lived, such as being homosexual, was an individual matter and no concern to the collective (society). The individual, was the individual, was the individual. Men (and women) were more free, yes, but they were freer to get richer or poorer as they deserved, according to the indomitable will of free market forces.

As Borstelmann points out, however, this was not without its negative consequences. One of the consequences of increased social egalitarianism, as far as rights were concerned, meant that it was much more difficult for society to frown upon any behaviour deemed distasteful. Postmodernism vitiated the ability of society to collectively shame an individual. Thus, Borstelmann claims that society became "coarser" in the 1970s. Films depicted obscene acts in a way that would have been unthinkable a decade before. Pornography proliferated. Public profanity and sexual innuendo became the norm. Abortion became flagrant and common. This in turn led to the rise of reaction: religious fundamentalism, which sought to roll back the social freedoms that had been attained.

Economic individualism meant that the collective good took a back seat. People no longer need care about the poverty of others. The rich got richer. The runaway drive at economic growth and individual comfort led to the contamination of the environment, poisoning the water and polluting the air in a way that belied the libertarian refrain that people could do with their property as they pleased without harming the interests (or the health!) of others. Thus, the 1970s saw the rise of other reaction: environmentalism.

In a way, the newfound social and economic freedom of 1970s America was a recipe for anomie.

On a critical note, Borstelmann subtitles his book, "A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality". Although the text does touch on the rest of the world, this monograph is essentially an America-centric analysis. Indeed, the world did mimic the United States in many ways, such as a general economic shift toward neoliberalism (free market enterprise). However, I'm skeptical that there was any corresponding shift toward social liberalism or human rights in the rest of the world. If anything, social conformity and conservatism in the Third World - especially the Islamic world - became more entrenched after the 1970s.

[Ed Wagemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Borstelmann's The 1970s is an important and insightful examination of one of the most confusing decades in Americn history. The confusion from this period stemmed from numerous angles and Borstelmann incredibly tackles them all from corruption in the government (Watergate, etc) to changing social values (skyrockeing divorce rates, gay rights, women's lib, minority rights, a rise in religious cult and counter-culture communes) to the U.S's failed foreign policies (military loss inVietnam, the loss of the Panama Canal, debociled rescue attempts of the Mayaguez in May of 1975 and of the Iran hostages in 1979 plus the creation of governments that were hostile to the U.S. in a growing number of countries from Cambodia, Angolia, Iran and Nicaragua) to economic crisis (inflation, unemployment, stagnation, oil crisises, energy blackouts, etc).

America as a collective identity was no longer certain of who we were in the 1970s. Prior to the civil rights advancements of the 60s the social order in the U.S. was fairly cut and dry. The economy was robust. Our military superiority was clear and our moral compass was intact. We knew who are enemies were--those Godless commie rats in Russia and China. But all that had become topsy turvy. And that is when something interesting started to happen. Americans became apathetic about politics, about the government about the ethics of big business, and they started concentrating on themselves as individuals. Borstelmann again does an excellent job of illustrating this. The problem with this apathy is that without the public keeping their eye on the government and big business there came a great opportunity for the mechanism to be put in place for the economic inequality that runs rappant today. Eventually the Reagan Administration promoted and instituted many of these mechanisms during the 1980s which in turn has led to the corporate globalization that has been putting stress on the American people ever since.

But here's something that Liberals/Progressives don't want people to think about: Liberal/Progressive ideology is PRO-globalization. At the core of Liberal/Progressive thought is the idea of equality among everyone. This idea has led to Free Trade agreements. It has led to nation building experimentation and financial support for third world nations. It has led to other countries starting to catch up to the standard of living that is widespread in the U.S. For most the the 20th century the overwhelming majority of the world's citizens held a gripe against the USA that is pretty similar to the gripe that the Americans who are protesting at Occupy Wall Street have against Big Corporations. The irony is that it is the Liberals/Progressives OWN policies of globalization that has allowed the rest of the world to start "catching up" with us economically. So of course Liberals/Progressives don't want you to know that, because no American is going to vote for a policy that "shares the American wealth" with the rest of the world.

Borstelmann studies this issue as well, as the subtitle of his book suggest; A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality. This idea that racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious equality has actually led to economic inequality is fascinating. As Borstelmann tackles this conflict and shows how it happened, it starts to seem that it was inevitable and in fact pretty much part of a natural part of evolution. And understanding this natural force is important in finding ways to move forward. Inequality is not something people generally stand for. Again, look at the Occupy Wall Street folks. A huge obstacle in getting rid of economic inequality is illustrated in the false assumptions found in a quote by Milton Friedman that Borstelmann includes at the beginning of his book:

The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want.

That simply isn't true. Today the market gives people what the Big Corporations think they ought to want. Big corporations through predatorial business practices that have skewed the playing field so that their products are so extremely more accessible than the small business ma and pa products that people are no longer given a fair choice. I mean do people really want the crappy tasting McDonaldland/DisneyWorld chain store fast-food that will give them a lifetime of health problems? Of course not, but the corporate consumer culture has made it that 9 times out of 10 that is the average working American's only choice. That is NOT giving the people what they want. That is giving the people what the Big Corporations want them to want.

But if this corporate consumer culture is ever going to be changed then understanding how this all got started, back in the 1970s is a very important first step. And Thomas Borstelmann's brilliant book is a good place to start that education.
For this and numerous other reasons I give The 1970s a solid 5 out of 5 WagemannHeads.

[Emmanuel-francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 1970s in the American imagination stands out as a time of decline. It ain’t Kennedy and the moon-landing, definitely ain’t Reagan and winning the Cold War or the booming 90s. Instead, between losing in Vietnam, Watergate, President rhymes with dud, President Carter preaching /gasp/ reduced consumption, the oil price hikes, stagflation, rising divorce and drugs rates etc, it just might be as a Doonesbury strip put it, ‘a kidney-stone of a decade’.

All true, but not quite as you think, suggests Professor Thomas Borstelmann, a professor out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He suggests that an excessive focus on the woes of the decade misses both what makes the era important and the continued effects of changes within that decade on the current events either riling or amusing you.

A better title for the book, in my opinion, should have been something correctly hyperbolic, like 1973-1979: Six Years that Changed the World! This is because this book is many things, but it barely qualifies as global and it doesn’t even cover the decade. The book is exercised by the impact of global events on the American psyche, as such, the history of other countries in that period, figure, not in their own right, but in as much as they are connected with the American tale. The book is narrowly focused on events from 1973-79, although a final, rather unnecessary chapter examines the impact of the events in those years on current events. The book was published in 2012, but the shadows linger, casting a wry light on current events. Quick guess: What decade do you think that events in Iran had such important ramifications for American politics?

Professor Borstelmann may not have gotten the book title he wanted, but he communicates his core thesis perfectly. The 70s saw a process of dual liberalisation in the social and economic spheres. Americans became race and gender egalitarians at the expense of increasing economic inequality. That process spread worldwide in an atmosphere of increased concern for human rights and the transformative effect of faster communications. All made in America or at least, spearheaded from America. You may have noticed one of the leading institutions in that transformation being body-slammed WWE style by the American President.

The dual liberalisations also introduced into American politics the politicised question of government size and reach. The expansion and protection of those new rights require expansive government, but so also does the policing of any attempts to roll back those rights. Republican or Democrat, the government grows regardless. Those liberalisations had been at the expense of a much coarser culture. Americans despaired at that, especially with its effects on their representatives. In 1975, only 13 per cent of Americans had ‘a great deal of confidence’ in the President and Congress. By 1978, nearly 90 million bottles of valium were being prescribed annually. To deal with societal despair from the erosion of American exceptionalism in Vietnam, the Americans were imperial in Angola, Chile and others, but they further despaired at the amorality of the actions taken by their representatives, and decided to plump for outsiders to ‘drain the swamp’. Since President Carter, only Presidents Bush I and Obama have not been ‘Beltway outsiders’. To think the McCains and Clintons of the world thought pointing out the inexperience of their opponents was a bad thing…

The big winners of America’s newly money rules, prejudice stinks consensus were racial and social minorities, especially blacks and women, who in comparison to earlier eras were increasingly welcomed into the corridors of power. The market revolution cannot be divorced from the process; in the words of William Wiedner, ‘We don’t care how tall you are, how short you are, how fat you are, what colour you are. Green is the most important colour’. Abroad, the big winners were China and Israel, with the former’s turn to capitalism painting dollar signs over the eyes of American business. Israel was the beneficiary of the exclusion of anti-semitism from social acceptability, as well as the growing consciousness of the Holocaust, an outgrowth of the close-run Israeli victory in 1976.

The rise of environmentalism and religious fundamentalism were the anti-thesis to the 70s thesis that leaves us in the flux of now. Environmentalism, over this period, morphed from an earlier bipartisan concern with cleaner forests, air and water into a movement that combined those concerns with a broader critique of increased consumption, if not capitalism itself. The Republican response was, well, drill, baby, drill! They spurned the pious evangelical, Jimmy Carter with his talk of reduced consumption for the optimistic, non-church attending divorce, Ronald Reagan. An apt symbol for this change can be seen in President Reagan taking off the White House solar panels installed by President Carter. As Americans got more stridently ideological, the conformity of their leaders to those ideological standards became less important than political victory.

I liked this book. While it is by no means perfect, it tells its story with verve and does an excellent job in giving a much-needed perspective to the exaggerations of the present. The 70s were as coarse, if much less dangerous than today. Congressmen didn’t just dance, they danced with Argentinian Firecrackers. The Soviets seemed to be expanding. Inflation was king. A sitting president was impeached, resigned and was replaced by an unelected President who gave him a blanket pardon and so on. Greater familiarity with its thesis and collection of facts would do the American body politic good, with attendant mental benefits for the rest of us.

[Julian Pritchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was enjoyable. It's a single volume history of the 1970s, focusing on economics, social movements like feminism and anti-war activism, gay rights, environmentalism, foreign policy, the Cold War, and religion. I was a bit confused by the title, because it's too U.S.-centric to really be a global history, but not focused enough on U.S. history to be a national history.

Oddly, Bostelmann doesn't talk much about the history of the Black Panthers or other radical groups, and doesn't focus much on racism, or the U.S. governments efforts to surveil and disrupt radical organizations, which I would think would be a key issue for histories of the 1970s. To his credit, he does discuss Watergate and the Church Committee report that exposed U.S. covert intervention around in the world, undermining faith in America's role as a democratic republic with a model that it seeks to export globally, and creating a more cynical and pessimistic tone in American life as reflected in Hollywood, popular music, and increasingly atomized lifestyles.

In this work, Borstelmann largely analyzes the economic conditions of increasing inequality and neoliberalism that started in the 1970s as the New Deal Order (in Gary Gerstle's terms) came to an end and Americans consumed ever-increasing quantities of oil, disrupted by the OPEC embargo after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. His analysis of the China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and wars in Southern Africa were good, as were his descriptions of Chile and Nicaragua, though it would have been good to have more about Latin America in the 1970s. You would need a longer book to really cover the true complexity of international relations in the 1970s, and this is a fairly short book about an entire decade.

The book concludes with a chapter about how the 70s were a transformative decade leading to continued inequality, austerity, and neoliberalism into the 2010s, culminating in the disastrous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (clearly a parallel to Vietnam for Borstelmann), the rise of right-wing think tanks and networks of funding, and the lack of regulation that led to the 2007-8 financial crisis, and the right-wing backlash against President Obama. Overall an enjoyable and succinct, though somewhat uneven history of the 1970s, with a particular focus on changing values and religion.

[Jan Dorr Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illustrates how transformative the 1970s were and how the decade shaped American culture and politics. Borstelmann demonstrates how the changes manifested in the decade and steered the world into the current era of hyper-individualism. At times a bit boring, the chapters are super long. But if there is one real flaw in this book it is that the author attempts to cover such an extraordinarily wide range of topics, some so briefly, that the reader would either need to have already posses certain knowledge for context on particular topics or lived through the experience themselves. Overall enjoyed this very informative book despite its flaws.

[Lincoln Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 star kind of read. Subject is obviously huge, do not know how to avoid this issue but - book gets very formulaic and tries to write a paragraph about everything that happened in the decade.

[Jeffrey A Grenz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Lot of Information in a Compact Book

I thought Mr. Bortelsmann's book did a good job summarizing the broad socioeconomic trends of the past four decades, i.e., the demolition of the USA's quasi welfare state and government regulated economy in favor of the "invisible hand" of free markets and increasing income inequality.

The "American" character has historically bristled under the hubris of government regulation and intervention into our personal lives and our pocketbooks: why allow a bureaucrat do for us what we can do for ourselves?

The author argues that deregulation and privatization begun under Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980's were popularly supported, explicit rejections of the welfare state whose time came to fruition during the dysfunctional 1970's. I came of age during that fraught decade of Vietnam, Watergate and Nixon's resignation, the oil crisis, terrorism perpetrated by the PLO, left wing radicals, and right wing dictators, the re-escalation of the cold war, the opening of Sino-American relations, world decolonization, the Iranian-Islamic revolution and subsequent hostage crisis, our embrace of Israeli Zionism, the continuing civil rights struggle, the next wave of feminism, the beginning of the LGBTQ rights movement, and the broadening of environmental awareness resulting in a more strident conservation movement. And of course it marked the beginnings of the technology-information-globalization explosion which led to America's deindustrialization and the growth of the underclass. We started a "war on drugs" that continues to this day, resulting in untold costs through mass incarceration and disenfranchisement and the rabid growth of a prison industry, as well as the inventive new form of taxation known as asset forfeiture, though these ills didn't actually manifest until the 1990's.
It was a confusing time. It was, in many ways, a dispiriting time, leading President Carter to famously chastise Americans for our "malaise." Had he been less a preacher and more a leader, the Reagan revolution might have never come about, though in truth, it was probably inevitable.
Vietnam led us to question our military might as well as the wisdom of utilizing hot war means to attain cold war ends.

The author examines, however briefly, all the events and trends I have mentioned (and more) and follows their threads through the ensuing decades in an attempt to explain how we arrived in our present circumstances: the bursting of the housing bubble which led to the financial crisis of 2008; the tax-payer bailout of our miscreant banks (and GM) with no tangible consequences for their malfeasance; rising income inequality coupled with wage stagnation and the decimation of the middle class. On the other hand, we have become a more egalitarian meritocracy with success based increasingly less on personal identity than on talent, intelligence, hard work and (increasingly unaffordable) education. We have returned to the 1920's in terms of free market ideals with the concomitant income inequality that era entailed. It remains to be seen whether we will reap another Great Depression whirlwind through our laissez faire treatment of markets. The banks may be too big to fail, but America, I fear, is not.

I read this book on the eve of the oddest, most disturbing presidential race in our history. One candidate is, by experience, eminently qualified; the other, by experience, sensibility and temperament, completely unqualified. Both are unpopular with the public. It will be interesting to see where this country goes in the next four years. And, as the ancient Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times" conveys, our future may not be as bright as was our past.

This has become less a review than an essay. I should say that what the author undertook to achieve was largely achieved; a broad overview of trends in America's socioeconomic/cultural status which began in the 1970s . I found the work at all times interesting, well written, highly readable.

[Patrick F · Rating 5 out of 5]

For readers who want to get a better understanding of 2016, starting here with The 1970s is a good start. Released in 2012, written by the Elwood N. and Katherine Thompson Distinguished Professor of Modern World History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Thomas Berstelmann, this book is illuminating regarding the historical process that led us to such seemingly unrelated events such as the rise of Third Way politics; #BlackLivesMatter; Trump 2016; and Occupy Wall Street and, subsequently, the spread of the meme and category of "the 1%."

This book has a huge amount of data. In fact, basically, sentence after sentence is date point after date point. However, the book is imminently readable and there is a narrative that emerges. Borstelmann does a fantastic job painting contemporary life in the second decade of the 21st century to movements; politics; magazines and books; and market-driven lifestyles of the 1970s. Everything we are now living through began in the 1970s including the rise of A.I. and the dialectic of those pushing back against modernity - from Islamic movements to the Christian right. One could argue that the book could have been shortened a bit; perhaps it is 50 or so pages too long. There is a good amount of repetition throughout but I personally don't consider this a 'con' but it is worth pointing out. (Publishers like to publish large books for many reasons; this probably was one reason for not reducing the number of pages. I digress.)

Personally, I find that to really understand the Now one must engage with the Past. This recent work of modern history is a worthwhile read for anyone wanting more understanding.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Borstelmann argues that two fundamental changes happened in the 1970s: society became more egalitarian at the same time that total faith in the free market made society less equal. Racial, gender, and ethnic hierarchies were replaced by divisions based on wealth. The book reads as though Borsetlmann wrote a history of the United States in the 1970s and then realized that he may have discovered a microcosm. The resulting commentary on global trends comes across as an afterthought, which is what it may well have been. Borstelmann may be right that his argument holds for the world and not just the United States, but he does not do enough to prove it. 

[Bill Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting catalogue of things I vaguely remember happening when I was younger and the deep roots that a lot of today has in that decade, from public profanity (f bombs were really shocking in the 60s, not so much by the end of the 70s), to the birth of mainstream porn (Jackie O attending a screening of "Deep "Throat"), to the economic malaise of the middle class (the 1970s saw a slowing of wage growth and the beginnings of free trade).

[Tim Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author connects the dots from the 70s the sociocultural economic and political attitudes prevalent in the US today, persuasive in his argument that the 70s were a pivotal decade. His history of the decade goes a bit fast and could use more detail. I wish somebody would write a more in-depth study of the 70s -- haven't encountered one yet.