Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man. Chapter 11. Part Four. Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism by Dave Jaffe.

   Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism by Dave Jaffe. Part Four.




         As the new groups of the 1970's appeared and protested, a big cultural shift took place too. Many young people turned away from mainstream religion. Like what poet Gary Snyder in the 1950's and painter Mark Tobey had done, they turned toward Buddhism and other eastern religions. Also many young people mimicked the life of the underclass. Casual dress, casual sex and casual drug use were embraced by many youth.
   Yet in the 1970's, the economy started to underperform and show signs of crisis. On the heels of two massive oil price hikes by many oil producing states and U.S. President Richard Nixon's desertion of the by now old Bretton Woods currency agreement, inflation rose as jobless totals did too. This supposedly broke the then reigning Keynesian consensus that as prices went up, jobless totals fell and vice versa. Now inflation took off and many people also lost their jobs.
    In reaction to this new reality, right wing ideas took hold across the western world, especially in English speaking countries. "There is no alternative," the very right wing Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in the 1980's. Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister in British history. Yet she also imposed a harsh regime of austerity in Britain. She cut the rights of blue collar workers and smashed unions like coal miners who opposed her in the 1980's. She cut many government benefits to the bone. She sold off dozens of government-owned firms and gave big tax cuts to the rich.
     In the U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidents gave the rich massive tax cuts. Meanwhile they slashed social programs to the poor and launched massive military buildups. When Bill Clinton became the Democratic President from 1992 to 2000, he rarely restored the Republican cuts. . In fact, he abolished one of the oldest welfare programs in the U.S., namely the Aid To Dependent Children program. He also put in place a really tough imprisonment program that soon tripled the number of prisoners in federal penitentiaries.
      In Canada in the mid-1990's, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his Finance Minister Paul Martine launched a  massive program of government cutbacks. They fired over 45,000 government workers, slashed federal transfer payments to the provinces by a whopping40 per cent, cut unemployment benefits by nearly half and scrapped the Canada Assistance Act that had assured five rights to welfare applicants.
     "I have been for the little guy," Chretien said in effect in 2018. Yet there were few signs of this when he served as Prime Minister. His tough cutbacks came on top of hard right wing provincial cuts by premiers like Mike Harris of Ontario, Bill Bennett of British Columbia, Ralph Klein of Alberta, Brian Peckford of Newfoundland and Frank McKenna of New Brunswick.
     In Australia, the Labour Prime Minister Bob Hawke made few attempts to restore the cuts by the Australian Liberal and Country parties. Austerity for the poor and the poorest half of most western countries became the order of the day.