ABSTRACT
This chapter first considers the domestic circumstances of Western societies during the 1950-1960s and how they fostered an interlude during which exceptionally optimistic views became widespread among elites and educated publics. It then considers how and why the interlude gave way to the era of growing uncertainty, disillusionment, and political turbulence that Western societies have since experienced. The division of Western societies into insider and outsider camps is a principal consequence of the shrinkage of clearly needed work and the consequent spread of surplus labor in post-industrial conditions. The currency of the related ideas in elite and educated circles during the 1950-1960s marked those decades as a kind of halcyon interlude in Western politics. A recent industrial relations skirmish in France over whether employers should be allowed by law to terminate new and young employees before a legally mandated two-year probationary period of work is completed exemplified the conflicts swirling around the formalization of insiders' relations with elites.
