The end 1945
NEW YORK - May 8, 1945, when World War II officially ended in Europe, much of the world was in ruins. But if the human ability to destroy knows few limits, the ability to start over is so remarkable. Such this is why mankind has managed to survive until now.
Certainly, millions of people in the end of the war were too hungry and tired to do anything beyond stay alive. At the same time, a wave of idealism swept the wreckage, a collective sense of determination to build more equitable, peaceful and safer world.
That is why great war hero, Winston Churchill, was dismissed in the summer of 1945, even before Japan surrendered. The men and women had not risked their lives simply to return to the old days of privileges class and social deprivation. They wanted better housing, education and free medical care for all.
Similar demands were heard throughout Europe, where the anti-Nazi and anti-fascist resistance was often led by leftists and even communists and conservatives in prewar were frequently contaminated by collaboration with fascist regimes. There was talk of revolution in countries France, Italy and Greece. This did not happen, because neither the Western allies, and the Soviet Union supported. Stalin was content to settle for an empire in Eastern Europe.
But even Charles de Gaulle, leader of the resistance of the right, had to accept Communists in his first post-war government, and agreed to nationalize industries and banks. The shift to the left, social democratic welfare states, occurred in Western Europe. It was part of the 1945 consensus.
A different kind of revolution took place in the former European colonies in Asia, where native peoples had no desire to be ruled again by the Western powers, which had been so ignominiously defeated by Japan. Vietnamese, Indonesians, Filipinos , Burmese, Indians and Malays wanted freedom, too.
These aspirations are often expressed in the United Nations, founded in 1945. The UN, as the dream of European unity, was also part of the 1945 consensus. For a short time, many prominent people - Albert Einstein, for example - believed Only a world government would be able to ensure world peace.
This dream quickly faded when the Cold War divided the world into two hostile blocs. But somehow the 1945 consensus, in the West, was strengthened by the policy of the Cold War. Communism, still wrapped in the leaf of laurel antifascism, had a great intellectual and emotional appeal, not only in the so-called Third World, but also in Western Europe. The Social Democracy, with its promise of greater equality and opportunity for all, served as an ideological antidote. Most the Social Democrats were indeed fiercely anti-communist.
Today, 70 years later, most of the 1945 agreement no longer survives. Few people can muster great enthusiasm by the UN. The European dream is in crisis. And the social democratic welfare state of war is eroding more and every day.
The rot began during the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The neoliberals attacked the expense of social welfare programs and the vested interests of the trade unions. Citizens, it was thought, had to become more self sufficient assistance programs social government were doing everything soft and dependent world. In the famous words of Thatcher, there was no such thing as "society", only families and individuals who should be taking care of themselves.
But the consensus 1945 suffered a much greater blow just when we all rejoice in the collapse of the Soviet empire, the other great tyranny of the twentieth century. In 1989, it looked as if the dark legacy of the Second World War, the enslavement of Europe This was over. And in many ways, it was. But much more collapsed with the Soviet model. The social democracy has lost its raison d'être as an antidote to communism. All forms of leftist ideology - indeed, everything that smacked of collective idealism - came to be seen as misguided utopianism that could only lead to the Gulag.
Neoliberalism filled the void, creating vast wealth for some, but at the expense of the ideal of equality that had emerged from the Second World War. The extraordinary reception of Thomas Piketty capital in the XXI century shows how they felt deeply the consequences of the fall of the left.
In recent years, other ideologies have also emerged to fill the human need for collective ideals. The rise of right-wing populism reflects aspirations of pure national communities that keep immigrants and minorities was revived. And, against all logic, US neoconservatives have transformed the internationalism of the old left, trying to impose a democratic world order by military force.
The answer to these alarming events is not nostalgia. We can not return to the past. Too much has changed. However, a new aspiration towards social and economic equality and international solidarity is very necessary. It can not be the same as 1945 consensus, but would do well, on this anniversary, to remember why that consensus was forged in the first place.
Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College.
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