The Vanishing Peasantry: Agriculture’s Dramatic Decline
The most profound social transformation of the 20th century’s second half was the near-total disappearance of traditional peasant agriculture across most of the world. For millennia, the vast majority of humanity had lived off the land, but between 1950-1980, this fundamental relationship with the earth was severed with astonishing speed.
In developed nations, agricultural employment plummeted from 25-40% of populations to under 10%, with Britain and Belgium leading at just 3%. Even more remarkably, this rural exodus spread globally – Latin America saw farming populations halve in 20 years; North Africa’s fell from 75% to 20% in three decades. Only parts of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and China resisted this trend initially, though market pressures eventually reached them too.
This revolution stemmed from multiple forces: mechanization allowing fewer farmers to produce more; chemical fertilizers and high-yield crops of the “Green Revolution”; and most crucially, the pull of urban opportunities. As one Sicilian prisoner released after decades marveled: “The vineyards are all gone – replaced by buildings!” The peasantry, long considered impervious to Marx’s predictions of proletarianization, was vanishing before everyone’s eyes.
The Urban Explosion: Cities Swell as Villages Empty
This agricultural revolution fueled an unprecedented urbanization wave. By the mid-1980s, 42% of humanity lived in cities – a figure that would have been higher without China and India’s massive rural populations. Third World cities ballooned at staggering rates: Seoul, Jakarta, Manila and others grew from under 1.5 million in 1950 to over 5 million by 1980, heading toward 10-13.5 million by 2000.
Urbanization patterns diverged between developed and developing worlds. Western cities saw suburbanization and “edge cities,” while Third World metropolises expanded chaotically through sprawling shantytowns. Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã stadium, holding 200,000 spectators, symbolized how scarce public spaces became magnets for urban masses.
Transportation revolutions accompanied this growth – new metro systems from Vienna to Mexico City, though developing nations relied more on rickety private buses. The “post-Fordist” urban landscape emerged: in places like Italy’s Emilia-Romagna, industry dispersed across small towns rather than concentrating in giant factory cities like Detroit or Turin.
The Student Revolution: Education’s Massification
Equally transformative was higher education’s democratization. Where universities once served tiny elites, postwar expansion created a massive new social group. France’s student population exploded from under 100,000 in 1945 to 651,000 by 1970. Similar growth occurred across Europe, with Finland’s student body growing sevenfold in two decades.
This created a politically volatile demographic. The 1968 global student protests, while failing to spark revolution, demonstrated youth’s new power as a distinct social force. Students formed the first truly transnational community, rapidly exchanging ideas across borders. Their activism often stemmed from generational alienation – unlike their parents who remembered Depression hardships, postwar youth knew only prosperity and expected more.
Paradoxically, these privileged groups often embraced leftist radicalism. As access to education broadened, campus life became a crucible for questioning social norms. Though most students focused pragmatically on career advancement, activist minorities dominated campus culture through protests, graffiti and demonstrations.
The Working Class in Transition: From Solidarity to Fragmentation
Industrial workers remained numerically stable during the “Golden Age” (about one-third of employment in advanced economies), but their cohesion weakened. Traditional industries like coal mining and steel collapsed, while new sectors adopted different labor patterns. The term “rust belt” entered vocabularies as manufacturing shifted to newly industrializing countries.
Three factors eroded working-class identity:
1. Rising living standards made workers less distinguishable from middle classes in consumption patterns
2. Suburbanization dispersed traditional working-class communities
3. Immigration created ethnically segmented labor markets with competing interests
The “two-thirds society” emerged – a majority enjoying relative prosperity while a minority sank into welfare dependency. Skilled workers often politically defected to conservative parties resentful of supporting this “underclass” through taxes.
Women’s Liberation: The Quiet Revolution
Married women’s mass entry into paid work marked perhaps the most significant social change. U.S. working wives jumped from 14% in 1940 to over 50% by 1980. Education fueled this shift – women went from 15-30% of students postwar to parity or majority in many nations by 1980.
Feminism’s second wave emerged from these transformations. While communist states theoretically promoted gender equality, Western feminists achieved concrete gains in workplace access and legal rights. However, tensions persisted between “equality” and “difference” feminism – whether to emphasize sameness with men or special protections for women’s distinct needs.
Political representation slowly followed: 16 countries had female leaders by 1990, though many inherited power through familial connections. The real revolution occurred in daily life – dual-career marriages, commuting relationships, and renegotiated domestic roles became normalized among middle classes.
The Cultural Earthquake: Foundations of Modernity
These intersecting transformations created today’s social landscape:
– The end of humanity’s agricultural epoch
– Education as mass expectation rather than elite privilege
– Urbanism as default human condition
– Women’s equality as normative ideal
– Identity politics supplementing class consciousness
This “Great Acceleration” of social change left contemporaries disoriented, spawning endless “post-” prefixed terms (post-industrial, post-modern etc.). As rural migrants became urbanites, students became knowledge workers, and housewives became professionals, the very categories of social analysis had to be reinvented. The 20th century’s second half thus represents history’s most dramatic social metamorphosis – the birth pangs of our modern world.