| Title | : | The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0860919153 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780860919155 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 283 |
| Publication | : | First published December 1, 1988 |
Collected here for the first time with a new introduction, these essays show how Thatcher has exploited discontent with Labour's record in office and with aspects of the welfare state to devise a potent authoritarian, populist ideology. Hall's critical approach is elaborated here in essays on the formation of the SDP, inner city riots, the Falklands War and the signficance of Antonio Gramsci. He suggests that Thatcherism is skillfully employing the restless and individualistic dynamic of consumer capitalism to promote a swingeing programme of 'regressive modernization'.
The Hard Road to Renewal is as concerned with elaborating a new politics for the Left as it is with the project of the Right. Hall insists that the Left can no longer trade on inherited politics and tradition. Socialists today must be as radical as modernity itself. Valuable pointers to a new politics are identified in the experience of feminism, the campaigns of the GLC and the world-wide response to Band Aid.
The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left Reviews
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Definitely a key book for understanding how and why Margaret Thatcher managed to become an hegemonical force and transform society. And also very useful for applying its lessons to today's political order. It is quite surprising -but also demotivational- how little have ideological battles changed in the last fifty years.
However, the fact that the book is a collection of individual articles in a period of ten years, makes it very annoying to read, because the same exact ideas are repeated over and over with different words all across the book. For example, that identities are not given, but politically constructed over time, or that winning elections is not about effective public policies but rather about frames and narratives, are reapeated literally more than 50 times across the whole book. Many times even inside the same article. There's no need for 450 pages, it could be perfectly summarised in less than 100 pages, in my opinion.
So in terms of content, quite interesting book, but in terms of structure and narration style, it could have been written much much better. Still, worth to read, specially if you efficiently select the best articles inside of it, so that you don't read the same contents over and over again. -
Simultaneously inspiring and depressing to read this collection of essays from the 1980s, in which the great Stuart Hall diagnoses the defeat of the left in the face of emergent neoliberalism while at the same time proposing credible strategic responses to this crisis.
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9
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El libro es un compendio de artículos escritos entre finales de los 70 y, principalmente, la década de los 80, analizando lo que representó el thatcherismo y el giro que imprimió en la sociedad británica aprovechándose de cualquier resquicio para introducir sus postulados ideológicos, y la crisis de la izquierda durante esos años de impotencia viendo cómo los tories acumulaban una victoria tras otra -y no solo electoral-.
Entiendo por qué este autor es recomendado por gente de IU o de Podemos. Si bien está muy influido por Gramsci, es muy crítico con el leninismo y la experiencia del socialismo real. Además de esto, sus admoniciones a la izquierda tienen como objetivo conseguir que sea nada menos que el Partido Laborista quien tome una orientación socialista, cosa que me parece más improbable aún que pensar en una revolución proletaria en Gran Bretaña. Tampoco es que Hall se pare mucho en definir qué entiende por socialismo, máxime cuando considera que el Servicio Nacional de Salud británico se construyó contra el capital por el hecho de ser público, obviando que en el marco del modo de producción capitalista y de un Estado burgués, la propiedad pública sigue estando subsumida a las lógicas del capital.
No obstante, plantea debates interesantes especialmente para abandonar cierto economismo existente en el bastantes marxistas y comprender que, como bien dicen tanto Gramsci como él, la lucha por la liberación del proletariado debe entenderse como una guerra de posiciones con varios frentes, no pudiendo desdeñarse los aspectos políticos, culturales e ideológicos. -
Hall's collection of essays on Thatcherism and the British Labour Party, written in the 1980s, is still exceptionally prescient today for understanding the challenges of neoliberalism & Trumpism, and to explain the failures of both the social-democratic and socialist left to rise to these challenges. I really found his arguments compelling, and believe that he really shines a light on many of the major political questions in 2021. This is also one of the best books that explains, in plain language, the role of ideology in modern electoral politics.
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Absolutamente brillantes la mayoría de las reflexiones de Stuart Hall respecto a la sociedad (especialmente la inglesa) de la época en la que el neoliberalismo conquista la hegemonía.
La clave de todo está en que se vea posible en el imaginario colectivo. -
Hall has an amazing way of seeing straight to the core of the issue - issues that have lead us to where we are today. Recommended to make sense of the current political climate and beyond
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A truly superb collection of essays from the late seventies and eighties which I read as part of theme centred around 'hegemony' (see here:
https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...).
Some further thoughts on how Hall's book is relevant to the situation of the modern UK Labour Party are here:
https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
