Module VII·Article III·~2 min read
1968: The Cultural Revolution of the West
The Cold War and Decolonization
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The Year That Changed Culture
1968 is a symbol of an era, although its revolutions were cultural, not political. In May, Parisian students staged an uprising that almost toppled de Gaulle’s government. In the United States, the civil rights movement reached its peak—and lost Martin Luther King. In Prague, the “Prague Spring” demonstrated the possibility of “socialism with a human face”—and was crushed by Soviet tanks. In Berlin, students protested against the Vietnam War and the right-wing government.
What united these disparate movements? The protest of a generation raised in postwar prosperity against conformity, bureaucracy, racism, war, and cultural repression. “It is forbidden to forbid” was the main slogan of Paris.
Civil Rights Movement in the USA
Martin Luther King (1929–1968) and the civil rights movement combined Christian ethics of nonviolence with political struggle for the rights of Black people. “I have a dream” (1963) is one of the strongest speeches in history: rhetoric akin to biblical tradition and American foundational documents.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—legal victories. But King’s assassination in 1968, racial riots in cities, the rise of the “Black Panthers”—signs that legal equality is far from social equality.
Second-Wave Feminism
1968 accelerated second-wave feminism: Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” (1963) described “the problem that has no name”—the dissatisfaction of educated women with the role of the housewife. “The personal is political”: feminism of the 1960s–70s insisted that gender oppression occurs in the private sphere (family, sexuality, body), not only in public institutions.
Decriminalization of contraception (USA, 1965), legalization of abortion (Roe v. Wade, 1973), the fight against sexual violence—concrete political achievements. Theoretically: Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millett (“Sexual Politics”), Germaine Greer (“The Female Eunuch”).
Cultural Legacy of 1968
The generation of 1968 entered institutions. By the 1980s, former radicals were in academia, media, politics. Paradoxically, the cultural revolution of 1968 rather strengthened individualism (“personal freedom”) than collectivism. Reagan and Thatcher, victorious in the 1980s, relied precisely on this individualism—against state paternalism from both the left and the right.
“The long sixties” (1958–1973)—a period when the Western cultural consensus was destroyed and never put back together. This legacy—polarization, multiculturalism, identity politics—defines today’s cultural wars.
Question for reflection: “1968” showed that cultural changes often precede political ones. What cultural shifts in your industry anticipate political and regulatory changes?
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