Chapter 57 Chapter Ten Social Revolution 1945-1990 1

1 Whenever human beings encounter something new that they have never experienced before, although they can't understand it at all, let alone see why, they often search their brains to find a name for this unknown phenomenon.Just in the third quarter of this century, we can see that Western intellectuals are in such a predicament.Among all new nouns, the word "after" is indispensable, and it is usually derived from the synonymous word "post" derived from the Latin word.For several generations, all kinds of nouns used to define the spiritual realm of human life in the 20th century have been crowned with the word "post".The world, then, and all its relevant dimensions, become post-industrial, post-imperial, post-modern, post-structuralist, post-Marxist (post-Marxist), post-Gutenberg (post-Gutenberg), post this, post that, everything is post.These initial prefixes, like a funeral, formally acknowledge the death of a generation.However, people not only lack consensus on the nature of life after death, but even cannot be sure at all.Under such an atmosphere, the most dramatic, rapid, and common social change in human history has entered the depths of the consciousness of contemporary thinkers who have experienced it.The record of this transformational transformation is the subject of this chapter.

Looking at the biggest feature of this social transformation, it is its unprecedented high speed and universality.It is true that before this time the developed countries—in a practical sense the regions of Central and Western Europe and North America, and the wealthy few in other parts who were the pride of the world—had long lived in constant change, in their In this world, technology is constantly changing and culture is constantly updating.For such people, further global changes will only accelerate and intensify changes with which they are already familiar.Speaking of which, didn’t the New Yorkers in the mid-1930s already looked up at the skyscraper, the Empire State Building (Empire State Building, 1934), which towered over the world?The Empire State Building sat on the throne of the world's first floor until it was replaced in the 1970s-and the height of the challenger was only more than 30 meters.Therefore, what kind of qualitative change does the quantitative change in material growth cause to life?Not only will it take a long time for this problem to attract the attention of the world, let alone how to effectively measure the extent of it.And this kind of confusion is no exception even in the above-mentioned superior areas.But on a global level, the changes came suddenly, like an earthquake.Because in the 50s, 80% of humanity suddenly ended their life in the Middle Ages.A more accurate description is that in the 1960s, the world began to feel that the Middle Ages had indeed come to an end.

On many levels, those who have experienced these transformations themselves often cannot grasp the full significance of the changes.Because these experiences are only gradual and fragmentary changes for them, just as in personal life, no matter how great changes occur, when the changes occur, they are seldom regarded as affecting the whole life. big change.A countryman's decision to go to the city to seek work is no more permanent change in his mind than service to the army, or the effect of wartime economic life on men and women in England and Germany in both worlds. meaning?When they came to town, they did not intend to change their way of life forever, although in fact it did.Fans of the authorities, only when outsiders return to the scenes of the former life every once in a while can they feel the huge changes.Take Valencia, a large city on the east coast of Spain, as an example. The last time I saw this place was in the early 1950s, and by the early 1980s, what a huge change has taken place here!Consider a 1950s peasant hoodlum in Sicily, who returns to Palermo after serving decades in prison.I saw that the countryside back then had changed beyond recognition under the development of urban real estate, and it really felt like a world away. "The former vineyards are now all turned into magnificent buildings."The old man looked confused and shook his head at me in disbelief.The world is changing so fast that even the long river of history has to be measured in shorter intervals.In less than 10 years (1962-1971), the region of Cuzco (Cuzco, located in Peru), far away from the city, has become two worlds: 10 years ago, the Indians there used to wear traditional clothes, but 10 years later they all wore traditional clothes. Has changed to European-style clothes. In the late 1970s, vendors in a market in a small town in Mexico all used small Japanese-made computers to check out customers. Ten years ago, half of the locals had never heard of this thing.

Since 1950, the world has been living in such a rapid historical change.Readers, as long as they are not too old and have moved around to a certain extent, they can feel the unique experience in this book.Since the 1960s, young people in the West have discovered that traveling to the third world is not only feasible, but also a fashion.If you want to observe the transformation of the world at this time, you only need to keep your eyes open.However, as a historian, one cannot be satisfied with fragmentary impressions and sporadic experiences—no matter how significant these impressions are—he must record them thoroughly and clarify them one by one.

The most dramatic and profound social change in the second half of this century is the death of the traditional small-scale peasant economy. This change has forever severed our connection with the past.Since the Neolithic Age, the vast majority of human beings have lived on land or water. The livestock on the ground and the fish and shrimp in the water have provided human beings.Even in industrialized countries, even in the 20th century, farming and animal husbandry still accounted for a very high proportion of the number of employed people, except for the UK.I remember that in the author's student days, that is, in the 1930s, the phenomenon of the small peasant class was often used to refute Marx's prediction-he believed that small peasants would disappear from the earth.Even on the eve of World War II, the agricultural and fishery population was less than 20% of the total population of the country, except the United Kingdom, and there was only one Belgium in the world.Even the two economic powerhouses of the United States and Germany—the two most industrialized countries in the world at the time—the agricultural population, although steadily declining, still accounted for about a quarter of the total at this time.The proportions of France, Sweden, and Austria are between 35% and 40%.As for other backward agricultural regions—for example, European countries, Bulgaria and Romania—about 4 out of every 5 inhabitants still depend on the land for their livelihood.

Now look at the third quarter of the 20th century, and the situation has completely changed. In the early 1980s, less than 3 out of every 100 Britons or Belgians were still working in agriculture.Therefore, for an ordinary Briton, in his daily life, the chance of encountering a farmer who once farmed in India or Pakistan is far higher than the rate of encountering a farmer who used to farm in England.This situation is really not surprising.The number of farmers and herdsmen in the United States has also continued to decline to the same proportion.However, since the number of people working in agriculture in the United States has been decreasing rapidly for a long time, the ultra-low figure at this moment is naturally not surprising.In contrast, it is the most astonishing fact that American farmers, who account for such a small proportion of the working population, are able to produce an incalculable amount of food, which flows to the United States and the rest of the world.Back in the 1940s, no one could have imagined that by the early 1980s, no country west of the borders of the "Iron Curtain" would still have more than 10% of its population engaged in agriculture—only the Republic of Ireland, and Iberia Except for Spain and Portugal on the Asian Peninsula (the proportion of Ireland is only slightly higher than this figure).But even in Spain and Portugal, where the agricultural population was about half in 1950, it has dropped to 14.5% and 17.6% respectively 30 years later.The significance of this is self-evident.The number of farmers in Spain halved in the 20 years after 1950; Portugal followed the same path in the 20 years after 1960 (ILO, 1990, Table 2A; FAO, 1989).

All kinds of digital ratios are really staggering.Taking Japan as an example, the agricultural population dropped from 52.4% in 1947 to 9% in 1985.In other words, the period is equal to the length of time a young soldier returns from World War II to the time he retires from civilian employment.Look again at a little girl in Finland—this is a true life story I have heard—born a peasant daughter, and married a peasant daughter in her first marriage; but at the beginning of her middle years , but has been completely transformed into a cosmopolitan intellectual and political figure.Back in 1940, when her father died fighting against Russia in that cold winter, leaving orphans and widows with no one to rely on, 57% of the population in Finland still worked in agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry.By the time she was 45, the proportion had dropped to less than 10%.Contrasting the personal career and the country's direction, it is not surprising that the Finns started from farming and animal husbandry and ended up in a completely different living environment.

So in these countries that are rushing forward on the road of industrialization, Marx's prophecy seems to have finally come true; that is, the result of industrialization has indeed wiped out the small peasant class.But the truly astonishing developments have occurred in other countries that are obviously far behind, because their agricultural population is also showing an unprecedented downward trend-these countries are poor and backward, and the United Nations has to do everything possible to come up with various names. To whitewash their poor and backward state.Just when those leftist young people with "a bright future" kept citing Mao Zedong's strategy over and over again, celebrated the peasants with big events, and finally encircled and suppressed the success of the revolution of the city's die-hards who were content with the status quo. Abandoned their homes in the village and went to the city to make a living.In Latin America alone, the total number of farmers in Colombia (1951-1973), Mexico (1960-1980)—even Brazil—had been halved in two decades.The Dominican Republic (1960-1981), Venezuela (1961-1981), and Jamaica (1953-1981) were even worse, with a sudden drop of two-thirds.At the end of World War II in these countries, except Venezuela, the number of small farmers accounted for half of the total employed population, or even the vast majority.But soon in the early 1970s, except for the small countries in Central America and Haiti, there was no country in Latin America where small farmers did not become a minority.The situation in the Islamic world in the Western Hemisphere is similar. In 30 years, the farmers in Algeria dropped from 75% to 20%, and in Tunisia from 68% to 23%.Although the example of Morocco is not so dramatic, its agricultural population also lost its original majority status within 10 years (1971-1982).As for Syria and Iraq, half of the population was still working on the land in the mid-1950s; but in 20 years, the proportion of the former has been reduced by half, and that of the latter has fallen to less than a third.Iran dropped from about 55% in the mid-1950s to 29% in the mid-1980s.

Meanwhile, the agricultural regions of Europe, of course, had long since ceased to cultivate the land.By the 1980s, even in the oldest and oldest smallholder agricultural bases in eastern and southeastern Europe (Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece), the peasant population had decreased to less than one-third of the total employed population.Some proportions are even lower, such as Bulgaria is one of the notable examples (only 16.5% in 1985).In Europe and the Middle East, Turkey is the only country that still clings to its agricultural culture. Although Turkey's agricultural population is also declining, it still occupies an absolute majority in 1980.

As a result, there are only three major areas of the world that are still occupied by villages and fields: sub-Saharan Africa, the mainland of South and Southeast Asia, and China.It is only in these areas that one can find countries that have not been swept away by the declining trend of farming populations-places where, even in the decades of global changes, the populations engaged in growing crops and raising livestock have remained stable. Pretty stable ratio.Nepal is 90%, Liberia is around 70%, and Ghana is around 60%.Even India—which is a little surprising—had maintained a high ratio of 70% in the 25 years after independence; even in 1981, it only dropped slightly (66.4%).It is undeniable that until the end of the "age of extremes", these areas dominated by agriculture still account for half of the human population.But even in these areas, agriculture is on the verge of collapse under the pressure of economic development.Take India as an example. Its solid agricultural population backbone is now surrounded by the rapid loss of agricultural population in surrounding countries—farmers in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka no longer occupy a majority position.Similarly, since the 1980s, countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia have also embarked on the same path.As for emerging industrial regions in East Asia such as Taiwan and South Korea, they are certainly no exception—and in 1961, more than 60% of the population in Taiwan and South Korea still worked in the fields.What's more, some countries in southern Africa are dominated by agriculture, which belongs to the Bantu illusion under apartheid [Editor's note: Bantu is the general term for blacks in central and southern Africa].The local agriculture dominated by women is actually just the appearance of an economy that relies on a large number of immigrant male laborers; these male laborers work in white cities and southern mining areas, and their income is the backbone of economic activities in their hometowns .

So quietly, the population on most of the world's agricultural continents moved out in large numbers, and this phenomenon was even more serious on agricultural islands.But what is most striking about this phenomenon is that this great change in agriculture has come about only in part because of advances in agricultural technology, at least in areas that had previously been small-scale agriculture.As we saw in Chapter 9, developed countries have transformed themselves (except for one or two cases) into major suppliers of world food; The proportions are sometimes even reduced to ridiculous proportions.This phenomenon is purely due to the surge in production per unit of population caused by intensive capital.Among the most immediately visible factors are agricultural machinery owned by individual farmers in advanced and wealthy countries.The high number is not only the biggest evidence of its surge in productivity, but also the symbol of those bare-breasted and backless farmers driving the tillage machines in the propaganda pictures of the young Soviet republic.Unfortunately, the USSR itself failed miserably, utterly, in this regard.Another factor, though less obvious in appearance, but equally significant, is the rapid advances in agricultural chemistry, selective breeding, and biochemical science.Under various backgrounds, farmers not only no longer need a large number of helpers who were indispensable in the busy farming season before the development of science and technology, but even the number of farmers themselves and long-term workers has also decreased.With the help of progressive modern transportation, it is not necessary to keep these hired laborers in the country for many years, if necessary.Therefore, in Perthshire (Perthshire), the Scottish sheep farming industry in the 1970s, during the short shearing season, the most cost-effective way was to transport batches of professional shearing workers from New Zealand.The seasons of the northern and southern hemispheres are different, and the shearing seasons of Scotland and New Zealand happen to be staggered, so everyone is happy. As for other poor parts of the world, the agricultural revolution is also in full swing, although the development trend is more sporadic.Indeed, without the improvements in irrigation and the help of "scientific" agriculture imported by the so-called "Green Revolution"—although its long-term effects are still debated—food production in South and Southeast Asia would have been unable to supply the large and rapidly growing local population. s population.On the whole, the countries of the third world, as well as some countries that belonged to socialism before the second world or are still socialist countries, not only cannot be self-sufficient in food, but also cannot act as an agricultural country. It is generally believed that food production should be large More than enough, enough to be used for the role of export.Countries in this category can at most only engage in the specialized production of agricultural products for export to supply the needs of developed countries.As for the food needs of the people in this country, if it is not from the dumping of excess food production in North America; the only way is to continue to use the oldest and most labor-intensive way to push the plow in the mud of the field.Since the labor in the field still needs them, there is obviously no reason for them to leave such an agricultural environment.The only reason, I am afraid, is that the explosion and surge of the population has made the arable fields increasingly scarce.But in fact, in many areas where small farmers have migrated, such as Latin America, the proportion of land reclamation is often very small. In a large unexplored area, only a handful of villagers moved to reclamation, such as Colombia and Peru. are two examples.Places other than this often become bases for local guerrilla activities.On the contrary, in the land where agriculture is still flourishing in Asia, there is the most densely populated and cultivated area in the world; the population density per square mile ranges from 250 to more than 2,000 people (the average number of people in South America is only 41.5 people) ). The population of the land is empty, but the cities are beginning to be crowded with people. In the second half of the 20th century, the world experienced unprecedented urbanization. Since the mid-1980s, 42% of the world's population has lived in cities.If it were not for the fact that large populations in China and India still live in the countryside—the two countries account for three-quarters of Asia's rural population—the proportion of the urban population would have become the majority (Population, 1984, p. 214).But even in the heartland of the agricultural world, populations were beginning to flow from the countryside to the cities, with a particularly pronounced concentration towards the big cities. Between 1960 and 1980, Kenya’s urban population doubled. Although the proportion of the total urban population in 1980 was still only 14.2%, almost 6 of every 10 urban residents in the country lived in the capital Nairobi; Twenty years ago, the ratio was only 10:4.In Asia, metropolitan cities with a population of several million have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, and most of them are the capitals of the host countries.Metropolitan cities such as Seoul, Tehran, Karachi, the former capital of Pakistan, Jakarta, Manila, New Delhi, and Bangkok all had a population of more than 5 million in 1980, and some even reached 8.5 million.Based on this trend, it is estimated that in the second millennium AD, the number will increase to between 10 million and 13.5 million respectively.But back in 1950, except for Jakarta, none of the above cities had a population of more than 1.5 million (WorldResources, 1986). In the 1980s, the frenzy of population flocking to cities was in fact the most common in the third world: the four major cities of Cairo, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Shanghai all had populations exceeding eight figures.Paradoxically, developed countries, while still far more urbanized than poorer regions (with the exception of parts of Latin America and the Islamic world), are starting to depopulate their megacities.The cities of the developed world were at their peak in the early 20th century, long before city dwellers fled to the suburbs and began migrating to outlying communities.Today, these old urban centers have become silent empty cities at night, and the crowds of people who work, shop, and entertain during the day have left the city and returned home.When the population of Mexico City almost exploded by five times in the 30 years after 1950, the populations of New York, London, and Paris began to slowly leave their city registrations and gradually migrated to the outer suburbs of the cities. However, under a rather peculiar situation, the old and new worlds between urban and rural areas in the western region began to confluence and communicate with each other.The so-called standard "metropolis" in developed countries is now composed of a large urban area connected by agglomeration points.There is often a concentrated industrial and commercial or administrative center in the middle. If you look down from the sky, you can see the high-rise buildings here, row upon row, like a continuous mountain range—except in places such as Paris, where skyscrapers are not allowed to rise.The connection between the two places has seen a new revolution in public transport since the 1960s - perhaps seen as a major setback for the private car transport culture under the pressure of personal car ownership.Not since the first inner-city tram and underground rail systems were built in the late 1800s have urbanites seen anything like it—so many new subways, so many suburban mass transit systems, in so many cities— — From Vienna to San Francisco, from Seoul to Mexico, new systems are being built.At the same time, the phenomenon of the dispersion of urban centers to the surrounding suburbs is also continuing in various places. The emerging areas of communities and suburbs in various places have established their own shopping and entertainment facilities. , an indoor "shopping center" built in the surrounding areas of the city. In the third world, however, urban-rural connections are fragmented, despite the existence of mass transit systems (mostly obsolete and unreliable) and countless dilapidated privately owned vintage cars serving as coaches and "group ride" taxis , transporting crowds of people.The internal development of the cities of the third world, just looking at the crazy fact that the population soared to 10 million or even 20 million suddenly, naturally cannot escape the chaotic phenomenon of disorder.What's more, the various communities in these emerging cities originally started from patchwork and temporary huts. In all likelihood, they were illegal buildings built on open land.Residents in this type of city may have to spend several hours a day commuting between work and home (because fixed errands are hard to find, once you find them, you must hold on to them).At the same time, they were willing to spend similar lengths of time traveling long distances and making pilgrimages to a few rare public places for rare entertainment.For example, the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro, the old capital of Brazil, which can accommodate 200,000 spectators, is an example, where the citizens of Rio de Janeiro can worship together and watch football heroes from all over the world show their talents. .In fact, in the old and new worlds, the phenomenon of handover and fusion has continuously evolved into the connection of groups of large and small communities that are still apparently independent-but in Western countries, the independence and self-sufficiency of communities is often more for formal.Moreover, the affluent societies of the West have far more green space—at least in the suburbs—than the impoverished and crowded Eastern and Southern worlds.So in urban slums and illegal buildings, human beings live together with tenacious cockroaches and mice.Beyond the remaining ruins of the "inner city" of developed countries, there is a vast and uninhabited strange land between cities, and now it has become a wild world where weasels, foxes, raccoons and other creatures come and go.