Chapter 52 Chapter 9 The Golden Age 2

2 At first, the astonishing explosive growth of the golden age seemed like a mere repetition of past growth, only this time on a much larger scale. Before 1945, the United States experienced this kind of vigorous growth; today, it takes the United States as a model of capitalist industrial society, and then spreads this fire to all parts of the world.On a certain level, this phenomenon is indeed an international trend.For example, the age of the automobile had already arrived in North America, but it did not appear in Europe until after the Great War, and it did not appear in the socialist world and the middle class in Latin America in a relatively moderate manner until later.At the same time, for the vast majority of the earth's people, trucks and buses have become the main means of transportation for the masses under the low price of gas.If the prosperity of western affluent societies can be measured by the growth rate of private automobiles—taking Italy as an example, the number of automobiles surged from 750,000 in 1938 to 15 million in 1975 (Rostow, 1978, p. 212; UN Statistical Yearbook , 1982, Table 175, p.960)—then the size of the economic development of many third world countries can be obtained by observing the increasing speed of the number of trucks.

The great prosperity of the world economy, so as far as the United States is concerned, it is continuing the previous growth trend, and as far as other countries and regions are concerned, it is catching up all the way.The mass production model proposed by Henry Ford, across oceans and seas, has become the only rule faithfully followed by the emerging automobile industry.In the United States, Fordian dogma extended to other production and manufacturing industries, ranging from housing construction to junk food (the rise of McDonald's can be regarded as a great example of postwar success).In the past, products that were only produced and served by a small number of special classes have now begun to be produced and sold in large quantities, and launched to the broad mass market. The tourism industry that brings large-scale crowds to the Sunshine Coast is an example.Before the Great War, the maximum number of tourists from North America to Central America and the Caribbean per year did not exceed 150,000; however, in the 20 years from 1950 to 1970, this number soared from 300,000 to 7 million (US Historical Staristics, I, p.403).As for the number of tourists traveling to Europe, it is naturally even more alarming.Taking Spain alone as an example, the country had no large-scale tourism industry until the late 1950s; but by the late 1980s, it welcomed more than 54 million tourists per year (Stat. Jahrbuch 1990, p. 262).What used to be considered luxuries are now commonplace, standard comforts of life – at least in rich countries; refrigerators, domestic washing machines, telephones, etc. In 1971, there were 270 million telephones in the world, mainly in North America and Western Europe, and its expansion trend increased at an accelerated rate; 10 years later, it had doubled.In developed market economy areas, there is more than one telephone for every two people on average (UNWorld Situation, 1985, Table 19, p. 63).In short, the inhabitants of these countries now enjoy all the benefits that their fathers had only the very rich—except, of course, that the providers of these "services" have replaced servants by machines.

What's more, what impresses us most about this period is that the biggest driving force for economic prosperity in it mostly came from various breakthroughs and revolutions in science and technology.Technology has not only improved many old products, but also led to the emergence of a large number of new products, many of which were unheard of and even unimaginable before the war.Some revolutionary products, such as the synthetic substance named "plastic", were developed between the two wars.Some have entered the stage of commercial production, such as nylon (nylon, 1935), polystyrene (polystyrene), polyethylene (polythene) and so on.Other products, such as television and the technology of magnetic tapes, were just out of the experimental stage.In addition, the need for high technology during the war led to the development of many revolutionary processes for civilian use in the future, such as radar, jet engines, and various important concepts and technologies that laid the foundation for postwar electronics and information technology.The development in this aspect was the strongest in the United Kingdom (later continued by the United States), which was far better than the Germans who were focused on scientific research.Without these research foundations laid during the war, the invention of the transistor in 1947 and the successful invention of the first civilian computer in 1946 would have been delayed for many years.Perhaps it is lucky that nuclear energy, which was first developed by humans in wartime but used for destructive purposes, has always remained outside the scope of the civilian economy as a whole.The single biggest utility, and only marginally in terms of global electricity production (at least until the golden age) - in 1975 nuclear power accounted for about 5% of global electricity generation.However, the time and purpose of various inventions and innovations came out, whether they were based on scientific research between the two wars or after World War II, or based on technology or commercial development between the two wars, or even from the period of the Great Leap Forward after 1945—such as The invention of the integrated circuit in the 1950s, laser technology in the 1960s, and various technological inventions derived from space rockets-for the purposes of our discussion, the distinction is not really important.But there is one difference, that is, the prosperity of the golden age relies more heavily on various advanced and even incomprehensible scientific research than in any previous period.Advanced and professional scientific research and technology can often find practical use in the application field within a few years.Two hundred years of industrial development, even including agriculture, has finally begun to move decisively beyond the technological categories set for us by the nineteenth century (see Chapter 18).

To an observer, there are at least three things worth noting during this period of tech earthquake.First, it completely changed the face of daily life for the inhabitants of rich countries (and, to a lesser extent, poor countries as well).Thanks to transistors and small but long-lasting batteries, radio broadcasts can now be heard in even the most remote villages.Then there was the "Green Revolution", which brought about a huge change in rice and wheat farming (a pair of plastic shoes on everyone's feet, instead of the previous bare feet).This first point can be proved to be true by any European reader who takes stock of the various possessions that surround him.The rich treasures in the refrigerator and freezer are full of unprecedented novelties (in fact, even the refrigerator and freezer itself was an original item that few families owned before 1945); all kinds of food processed by freezing, and mass production in the factory environment poultry products, meat with accelerants and various other chemicals added to alter the taste, some even made from "imitation of the best meat without bones" (Considine, 1982, pp. 1164ff), and The fresh products transported by air around half of the earth were absolutely impossible before this era.

Compared to 1950, all kinds of natural or traditional substances - such as wood, traditionally treated metal products, natural fibers or fillers, even ceramics - all kinds of materials are in our kitchens, household appliances, personal clothing The proportion of them is indeed showing a trend of rapid decline.However, under the hype and promotion of operators (often systematically exaggerated), the large output of personal hygiene and beauty products and the variety of names often make us ignore how much truth there is in them. sexual innovation.The renovation and changes of technology have made consumers realize that only novelty is the best means of promotion.This appeal to novelty has been used in everything from synthetic cleaners (which took shape in the 1950s as a "generation product") to portable computers on your lap.The assumption is that "new" is "good". "New" does not only mean a higher level, "new" simply means a "revolutionary" breakthrough.

Aside from this false novelty claim, other products that represented genuinely new technological breakthroughs abounded: televisions, plastic records (introduced in 1948), large-disc cassettes (introduced in 1960), magnetic A CD, and a portable small transistor radio that replaced the big and bulky ones of the past, etc.——The author's first portable radio was given to a Japanese friend in the late 1960s.In addition, there are digital watches, pocket calculators (powered by batteries first, and then solar energy), and later various household appliances, photographic equipment, and video products.The biggest phenomenon and significance shared by all kinds of new inventions is that the size of these new products is constantly shrinking, and they are more and more convenient to carry around, so the scope and market of their research and development and sales are also expanding.However, the symbol of the technological revolution has greater significance in other products that seem to have remained unchanged on the surface.For example, the dinghy for personal leisure has been completely renewed from head to toe since World War II.Every piece of equipment on board, whether mast or hull, sail or rigging, guidance or navigational implements, was radically different from that of interwar ships.The only thing that hasn't changed is its shape and function.

Second, the more complex the technology involved in various invention breakthroughs, the more complex the process from discovery or invention to commercial production is, and the procedures that must be experienced in the process are more elaborate and costly.Research and development (R&D) then became a driving force for economic development, and because of this, the lead of “advanced market economies” over other regions was strengthened (as we will see in Chapter 16, technology The flowering of innovation did not occur in countries with socialist economies). In these "developed countries" in the 1970s, there were more than a thousand scientists and engineers per one million people devoted themselves to the cause of research and development.But with the same population, there are only 250 scientific and technical personnel in Brazil, 130 in India, 60 in Pakistan, and a negligible 30 in Kenya and Nigeria (UNESCO, 1985, Table 5.18).What's more, since innovation has become a continuous process, the development cost of new products has become a huge and indispensable part of the production cost.And this cost is increasing day by day.That is to say, as far as the extreme arms industry is concerned, the mere cost of money is no longer a consideration for the project.Newly developed equipment often has to be completely destroyed before it can be applied to practical purposes, because a more advanced invention has already been released (and naturally more expensive).This kind of continuous innovation has great benefits for manufacturers.As for other large-scale market-oriented industries, such as chemical pharmaceuticals, the emergence of a new drug that is really urgently needed by the public, under the protection of patents, can often make huge profits for the manufacturer without competition. profits.Such a huge profit is interpreted by the manufacturer as an absolutely indispensable capital for further research.For other businesses that are less likely to obtain monopoly protection, they can only make a fortune as soon as possible, because once similar products enter the competition, the price will plummet.

Third, the vast majority of new technological products are capital-intensive, and have a major feature of reducing or even replacing labor (of course, for those scientists and technicians with high-level technology, the artificial labor they contribute is not limited to this ).The biggest feature of the golden age is that it needs to continuously invest a lot of capital; at the same time, it does not need manpower less and less, and the role of people in it is only the consumer.However, the speed of the economic sprint is too great, and the entire generation has not been aware of this development phenomenon.On the contrary, the economic growth is so violent that for a while, even in industrial countries, the proportion of the industrial working class population to the total employed population not only remains unchanged, but sometimes even shows an upward trend.In advanced countries other than the United States, the labor force accumulated in the pre-war depression and post-war demobilization quickly dried up under the huge demand, and countries had no choice but to continuously absorb new batches of labor from the influx of immigrants from their own countryside and from abroad. employed population.Even married women, who until then had been kept out of the job market, were starting to join, and numbers were increasing.Nevertheless, the highest ideal pursued by the golden age-although it is gradually realized-is to produce in an "unmanned" way, and even provide labor: automated robots assemble cars on the production line; The silent computer controls energy production; the speeding train is driven by no one.In such an economic activity, human beings have only one important purpose: to act as consumers of products and services.But here lies the crux of the problem.In the golden age, all this seemed to be in the distant future, and everything was so unreal, as if the Victorian scientists had warned everyone that the future universe would be under "entropy" (entropy), entering The death of perpetual darkness in general.

In fact, just the opposite.All those nightmares that plagued capitalism in times of great upheaval seem to have been solved, and they will disappear without a hitch.The terrible but inescapable cycle of booms and busts, the economic cycle that diabolically tore human society apart between the two world wars, is now gone, reduced to a series of gently fluctuating water marks. in the world.All this, of course, is thanks to the wisdom of the world, who began to cleverly operate the theory of general economic management-at least those Keynesian experts who are now government think tanks are convinced of this.A large number of unemployment, in the developed countries in the 1960s, I really don't know where to find it?Just look at the unemployed population in Europe, which only accounts for 1.5% of the total labor force; in Japan, it is only 1.3% (Van der Wee, 1987, p. 77); only in North America, the massive unemployment has not been completely erased.poverty?Of course, the vast majority of humanity is still impoverished, but in the old heartland of the industrial working population, what is the meaning of that verse in the "Internationale": "Arise, hungry and cold slaves"?The laborers in these industrial areas will soon be able to buy their own cars, and they will have paid vacations every year, so they can enjoy themselves on the Spanish coast.Even if life is hard and unfortunately the economy is in trouble, isn’t there a national welfare that is becoming more generous and all-encompassing day by day, taking over their needs and providing all kinds of benefits that were unimaginable before even dreaming? Protection, sickness, accidents, disasters, even old age, the worst fears of the poor, are now covered by the welfare system.Their income not only increases year by year, but increases almost automatically.Who said no?Don't their incomes go up forever?The various products and services provided by the production system make the luxury enjoyment that was previously considered a luxury become a normal and inevitable daily consumption item.The extent and breadth of consumption is expanding year by year.What's more, from a material point of view, what is there for human beings to be dissatisfied with?The only thing left to do is to extend to all mankind the advantages already enjoyed by the subjects of these happy nations, to those unhappy subjects who apparently still constitute the great majority of the world.They have not even entered the stage of "development" or "modernity" yet.

So, what problems in the world have yet to be solved?A very bright and distinguished British social and political scientist once said in 1956: The thinking of traditional sociologists is often dominated by economic issues.Some of these economic problems come from capitalism, some from poverty, some from mass unemployment, some from filth, some from instability, and some even from the possible total collapse of the entire system. ... But today capitalism, after a great deal of reform, has been so transformed that it is no longer recognizable for what it really was.Barring occasional mini-depressions, and some temporary balance-of-the-books crises, the goal of full employment should be attainable, at least enough to maintain some tolerable level of stability.The implementation of automation is believed to be able to gradually stabilize and solve the current problem of insufficient production.Looking forward, if our current productivity continues, within 50 years, the total production of our country will be as high as three times the current one. (Crosland 1957, p. 517)