Nostalgia For The 1950s

John writes:

In light of the Republican Party's latest assault on organized labor, I have to bring up the issue of nostalgia for the 1950s. Many conservatives seem to have a great deal of nostalgia for the 1950s based on the prevailing social conditions of the time. Families were more likely to stay together, the media was more family-friendly, religion was respected and more seriously practiced, etc. Progressives, on the other hand, often seem to view the 1950s as an age of repression and domination by white males. The focus of the Left is on the plight of blacks, women, Hispanics, and other "out" groups. Under the social liberal analysis, the 1950s were basically repressive. Both of these narratives, however, are lacking. While I agree with conservatives that the 1950s represented a more family-friendly era, conservatives fail to realize that this was largely due to the fact that the Left had more power in the economic sphere. Labor union membership was at its peak in the mid-1950s, at close to 40% of the American labor force. High wages allowed millions of Americans to enjoy a comfortable living on one breadwinner’s income, something that even well-educated professions sometimes find difficult to obtain today.

Additionally, the broad consensus among both Republicans and Democrats was to maintain the New Deal system developed under FDR. Even Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, while opposing over-centralization, admitted that any political party that tried to eliminate Social Security and other popular social and economic programs would be doomed, and that the best way to defeat communism was to address the legitimate demands of working people. How different from today’s radical Republicans who seek to privatize or gut federal and state programs for regular people.

As for the social liberal critique of the 1950s, it is important to recognize that while women and minorities did indeed suffer from discrimination and other unpleasant conditions, matters were improving. Indeed, even before 1950, President Truman officially ended racial segregation in the armed forces via Executive Order 9981 in 1948. On the topic of the role of women and feminism, I am more brazenly conservative. In many respects, the feminist movement has been a success for women in high-status careers such as medicine and law, but for most working women, the results have been exhaustion, both mental and physical, more alienation between mothers and children and wives and husbands, and generally more stress as the demands of the workplace intrude on home life to the detriment of family stability and the mental and physical health of the individuals within the family. Western, liberal feminism pits men and women against each other to the benefit of the capitalists and the detriment of pretty much everybody else. While it is probably true that many women did feel stifled and bored at home, and that large numbers of working-class women have always worked for money to supplement their husband’s income, even in the 1950s, the situation has become much worse as wages have stagnated and American families are now on a ferocious, endless treadmill of overwork and debt peonage.

Indeed, if there was any major downside to the 1950s and the post-war consensus generally, it was that the system was built too heavily upon consumerism. Advertising and public relations became more powerful and started to have a greater influence on society, including politics. Perhaps the great sin of the 1950s was the belief, prominent among both capitalists and communists, that economic abundance would solve all problems. Clearly, the modern world still has a great deal of problems to solve despite humanity’s tremendous productive powers. Furthermore, the 1950s may also have been a rather unhappy era for social nonconformists compared to today when neoliberalism has arguably supported the public proliferation of different lifestyles via its constant search for more marketing niches. But it is still interesting to note how both the mainstream Right and mainstream Left get it “wrong” when it comes to the 1950s and the post-war era in general. The post-war consensus was definitely not perfect, but on most issues it was probably far superior to today’s neoliberal consensus.