During the 1950s and 1960s progressive and radical movements were gaining traction around the world. In the Global North, labour unions were winning their fight for fairer wages and public services. In the Global South, newly independent governments were throwing off colonial arrangements and using tariffs, land reform and industrial policy to build national economic sovereignty.
These movements were fighting for a fairer and more just economy, and it was working. But it posed a threat to capital, particularly in the ‘core’ states of the Global North, as it constrained their access to the cheap labour and captive markets they had enjoyed under colonialism.
