Abstract
The writing on the relationship of Thatcherism to the Conservative tradition and its character as Tory statecraft provides one angle of vision on Thatcherism as a political project, its challenge to the social-democratic state and the new basis for the hegemony it sought to establish. Another came from Marxist writing on British politics, and in particular from those influenced by the Gramscian concept of hegemony. The debate between Gramscian Marxists and their critics became one of the central intellectual debates of the 1980s.
Those half-formed spectres which once hovered on the edge of British politics … have now been fully politicised and installed in the vanguard as a viable basis for hegemony by the Conservatives. As the span of Labour’s fragile base is eroded, this is the historical ‘bloc’ poised to inherit the next phase of the crisis. It is a conjuncture many would prefer to miss.
Hall et al., Policing the Crisis (1978), p. 316
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Notes and references
Perry Anderson ‘Origins of the present crisis’, New Left Review, 23 (1964) pp. 26–53;
Tom Nairn, ‘The Twilight of the British State’, in The Breakup of Britain (London: NLB, 1981), and
‘The Future of Britain’s Crisis’, New Left Review, 113/4 (1979), pp. 43–70. See also
Perry Anderson, English Questions (London: Verso, 1992).
Tom Nairn, ‘Enoch Powell: the New Right’, New Left Review, 61 (1970), pp. 3–27.
Robin Blackburn, ‘The Heath Government: A New Course for British Capitalism’, New Left Review, 70 (1971), pp. 3–26.
Andrew Glyn and Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze (London: Penguin, 1972).
See Colin Leys, Politics in Britain (London: Verso, 1989); and
Stuart Hall et al. Policing the Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1978).
David Purdy, ‘British Capitalism since the war’, Marxism Today, 20:9 (1976), pp. 270–7 and 20:10 (1976), pp. 310–18.
Stuart Hall, ‘Popular democratic versus authoritarian populism’, in A. Hunt (ed.), Marxism and Democracy (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980).
Stuart Hall and Bill Schwarz, ‘State and Society 1880–1930’, in M. Langan and B. Schwarz, Crises in the British State 1880–1930 (London: Hutchinson, 1985), pp. 7–32.
See S. Beer, Modern British Politics (London: Faber and Faber, 1965) and
Britain Against Itself (New York: Norton, 1982);
Keith Middlemas Politics in Industrial Society (London: Andre Deutsch, 1979). See also
Bill Schwarz’s assessment of Middlemas’ work ‘Conservatives and Corporatism’, New Left Review, 166 (1987), pp. 107–28.
Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: NLB, 1978); and
Bob Jessop, Nicos Poulantzas (London: Macmillan, 1985).
Dominic Strinati, ‘State intervention, the Economy, and the Crisis’, in A. Stewart (ed.), Contemporary Britain (London: RKP, 1983); and
Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis.
Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis; The Great Moving Right Show’, Marxism Today (1979), pp. 107–28) — revised version printed in S. Hall and M. Jacques (eds), The Politics of Thatcherism (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1983);
‘Popular democratic versus authoritarian populism’, in Hunt, Marxism and Democracy Most of Hall’s key writings on Thatcherism are collected in A Hard Road to Renewal (London: Verso, 1988).
M. Jacques and F. Mulhern (eds), The Forward March of Labour Halted? (London: Verso, 1981). Eric Hobsbawm’s article was first published in Marxism Today (September 1978).
See especially Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Labour’s Lost Millions’, Marxism Today (October 1983).
Eric Hobsbawm’s essays on labour are collected in Politics for a Rational Left (London: Verso, 1989).
See Gavin Kitching, Rethinking Socialism (London: Methuen, 1983);
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985). Strong criticism of these positions has come from Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Retreat from Class (London: Verso, 1986) and Ralph Miliband, ‘The New Revisionism in Britain’, New Left Review, 150 (1985), pp. 5–26. See also Ben Fine et al., Class Politics: An Answer to its Critics (London: Central Books, 1985).
See Patrick Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left (London: Macmillan, 1987).
Tony Benn, ‘Who Dares Wins’, Marxism Today, 29:1 (January 1985), pp. 12–14. See also the reply by Stuart Hall.
Patrick Hutber, The Decline and fall of the Middle Class and how it can fight back (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977).
Roger King and N. Nugent, Respectable Rebels (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1979).
Bob Jessop, Kevin Bonnett, Simon Bromley and Tom Ling, ‘Authoritarian Populism, Two Nations, and Thatcherism’, New Left Review, 147 (1984), pp. 32–60.
Andrew Glyn and John Harrison, The British Economic Disaster (London: Pluto, 1980).
See E. A. Brett, The World Economy since the War (London: Macmillan, 1985).
See John Ross, Thatcher and Friends (London: Pluto, 1983; also
‘Does Thatcherism have a Future’, International, 7:2 (March 1982), pp. 4–10.
See H. Beynon (ed.), Digging Deeper (London: Verso, 1985).
See Geoffrey Ingham, Capitalism Divided? (London: Macmillan, 1984); and
F. Longstreth, ‘The City, Industry, and the State’, in C. Crouch (ed.), State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979).
Ross’ inclusion of construction as a sector that benefited from the policies of the Thatcher government has been questioned by Overbeek in his book, Global Capitalism and National Decline (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989).
Colin Leys, ‘Thatcherism and British Manufacturing: A Question of hegemony’, New Left Review, 151 (1985), pp. 5–25; Henk Overbeek, Global Capitalism and National Decline, Bob Jessop, The mid-life crisis of Thatcherism and the birth-pangs of post-Fordism’, New Socialist, 36 (March 86).
See the analysis in Charles Leadbeater and John Lloyd, In Search of Work (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987).
Ben Fine and Laurence Harris, The Peculiarities of the British Economy (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985).
See Tessa ten Tusscher, ‘Patriarchy, Capitalism and the New Right,’ in J. Evans et al. (eds), Feminism and Political Theory (London: Sage, 1986) and
John Solomos, Race and Racism in Contemporary Britain (London: Macmillan, 1989).
See Miriam David, ‘Moral and Maternal: the Family in the Right’, Gill Seidel, ‘Culture, Nation, and ‘Race’ in the British and French New Right’, and David Edgar, ‘The Free or the Good’, in Ruth Levitas (ed.), The Ideology of the New Right (Cambridge: Polity, 1986). See also Lynne Segal, ‘The Heat in the Kitchen’, in Hall and Jacques (eds), The Politics of Thatcherism.
Bea Campbell, Iron Ladies (London: Virago, 1987).
Peter Riddell, The Thatcher Government (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 59.
Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference? (London: Macmillan, 1984). See also Dennis Kavanagh, Thatcherism and British Politics.
Christopher Hollis, ‘The Merits and Defects of Marx’, in G. Woodcock (ed.), A Hundred Years of Revolution (London: Porcupine Press, 1948), p. 87.
See Grahame Thompson, The Conservatives’ Economic Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1986);
Maurice Mullard, The Politics of Public Expenditure (London: Croom Helm, 1987);
Paul Mosley, The Making of Economic Policy (London: Wheatsheaf, 1984); and
Jim Tomlinson Monetarism: Is there an Alternative? (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
Bob Jessop et al. ‘Authoritarian Populism, Two Nations, and Thatcherism’, New Left Review, 147; ‘Thatcherism and the Politics of hegemony: a reply to Stuart Hall’, New Left Review, 153 (1985), pp. 87–101;
‘Popular Capitalism, Flexible Accumulation, and Left Strategy’, New Left Review, 165 (1987), pp. 104–22. See also
Fiona Atkins, ‘Thatcherism, populist authoritarianism, and the search for a new left political strategy’, Capital and Class, 28 (1986), pp. 25–48.
Bob Jessop ‘The Transformation of the State in Post-War Britain’, in R. Scase The State in Western Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1980).
See Bob Jessop, The Capitalist State (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982), pp. 244–5.
See Bill Jordan, The State (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).
Stuart Hall, ‘Authoritarian Populism: a reply to Jessop et al.’, New Left Review, 151 (1985), pp. 115–24.
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© 1994 Andrew Gamble
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Gamble, A. (1994). The struggle for hegemony. In: The Free Economy and the Strong State. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23387-8_7
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