ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some similarities of underlying causes, of the division in society that fueled the confrontations and of the organizational imperatives that structured the course of collective actions. It provides a brief narrative and analysis of the main activists, SMOs, goals, confrontations, successes and failures of the social movements in the United States in the late 1960s. The chapter makes only comparisons with the events in China, Czechoslovakia, and France. It detects similarity of underlying causes and evidence for any direct or indirect lines of influence which bear on the hypothesis of a globalization of social conflicts and mass participation in opposition movements peaking in 1968. The chapter provides fewer details on 1968 in the United States since we are all more familiar with own recent history. The radicalism and spirit of participatory democracy survived in Western countries among the German Greens and several other social movements targeting environmental degradation, the nuclear arms race, and culture issues.
