[csaa-forum] Cultural studies and left politics: the state of play

[Jason Jacobs]

Dear Terry et al, 

Just to correct - or really nuance one point in Terry's last post. While 
the cultural studies crew in the UK certainly did take Thatcherism 
seriously they actually mystified rather than clarified its popular 
appeal. First was Stuart Hall's nonsensical idea that Thatcher and her 
crowd appealed to a sensibility of popular authoritarianism, that somehow 
- using some strange mystical power - the masses were basically hypnotised 
by a market-driven law n' order agenda. (Note that Thatcher and her 
cronies never dared go as far as the current New Labour in its 
authoritarianism.) This was simply wrong - Thatcher won three terms 
because the opposition was so weak and clearly the mass of people would 
have been worse off under its policies. Voters realised this and voted for 
the lesser of two evils. The Labour party in the 80s refused to swallow 
this and blamed everyone else, especially the media, for their own 
failures. 
Secondly, Marxism Today launched its equally nonsensical 'post-Fordist' 
ideology (Jacques, Hall, Hebdige et al) which was really an apologetic 
acceptance of the market and Thatcher's 'there is no alternative.' Forget 
the fact that only a minority of Western manufacturing was ever 'Fordist' 
or that the emerging Asian economies - funded by Western investment - were 
using precisely the manufacturing techniques that the MT crew were saying 
were obsolete - what was revealed was the isolation of the left, 
projecting their own small worlds onto the real one. The success of New 
Labour depended on its major players having successfully internalised the 
failure of the left over the past 30 years and turning to so-called 
'managerial' small-scale (read politically empty) approaches to society 
and its problems. Even so the Blair 'landslide' of 1997 disguised the fact 
that Blair did not win as many votes as the grey John Major in 1992. With 
no vision for the future its leaders increasingly turned to the 
international stage in order to project their moral authority. Note that 
yesterday both Blair and chancellor Brown talked about Africa and solving 
its problems. Well the West has been meddling in Africa for 200 years and 
I think it's time the African nations did without the moral wand of Europe 
or America. 


I guess my point is that the post-war left - in its many national and 
international inflections - has been characterised by a marked inability 
to see its own shortcomings. Inspiring the electorate with new ideas for a 
better society (hang on, I'm just fetching my kum-by-ah guitar) would be a 
start. But that seems to have been left in the too hard basket for now. 

Jason 

(who's getting lunch for  three kids and not in his office at all)

Dr Jason Jacobs
Senior Lecturer
School of Arts, Media and Culture
Griffith University
Nathan Campus
Queensland 4111
Australia
Phone: (07) 3875 5164
Fax: (07) 3875 7730
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