Conservatism In The 1950s Essay

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In the 1950s, the conservatives experienced a schism; Conservatives were divided into “libertarian conservatives” and “new conservatives”. Libertarian conservatives reclaimed the idea of freedom as “individual autonomy, limited government, and unregulated capitalism,” which was favored by businessmen seeking to capitalize on an economy free from government regulation, high taxes, and labor unions (Foner 1004). On the other hand, “new” conservatives opposed “‘big government’ in America, at least so long as it was controlled by liberals who, conservatives believed, tolerated or encouraged immorality”(Foner 1005). New conservatism identified freedom with morality and intellect-the major weapons to combat Communism in the Free World. Many people …show more content…

The 1950s exemplify a “new social contract” with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and the coalition of the AFL and CIO as one organization representing 35 percent of all nonagricultural workers (Foner 1008). According to Foner, “Unions signed long-term agreements that left decisions regarding capital investment, plant location, and output in management’s hands, and they agreed to try to prevent unauthorized ‘wildcat’ strikes”(1008). Management was given control over their employees and business/company in exchange for a secure labor force to keep things running. Employers granted their employees “wage increases and fringe benefits such as private pension plans, health insurance, and automatic adjustments”(Foner 1008). Employees, though not all, enjoyed larger economic security and benefits that would enable them to live up to the “American standard of living,” which only continued to rise. The “new social contract” brought some benefits to nonunion workers, but failed to benefit the majority. Eventually, the social contract was weakened as companies shifted to the South in search of more complacent and less-unionized …show more content…

According to Foner, the term, “Third-World”, “was invented to describe developing countries aligned with neither of the two Cold War powers and desirous of finding their own model of development between Soviet centralized economic planning and free market capitalism”(1011). The rival superpowers strived to assert their dominance in these non-aligned nations and sway them to their ideology/agenda. Both, the USSR and the US, put their imperialistic needs as a top priority, and thus seeked to involve these nations in the Cold War politically, militarily, and economically. The US was afraid of the USSR creating “power vacuums” in decolonized nations that were newly granted their independence. According to Foner, “The Soviet Union strongly supported the dissolution of Europe’s overseas empires, and communists participated in movements for colonial independence”(1012). The superpowers were eager to dissolve Europe’s empires in places, such as Southeast Asia, in order to puppeteer these nations. America responded with a policy of containment and viewed any opposition to the government as a threat to American interest, thus causing them to act upon subversion. The ideological conflicts in the Cold War carried on into the Third World as the US and USSR competed for

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