Search results
Social democracy has made a political comeback in recent years, especially under the influence of the ‘Third Way’. Not everyone is convinced, however, that ‘Third Way’ social democracy is the best means of reviving the Left's project. This book considers this dissent and offers an alternative approach. Bringing together a range of social and political theories, it engages with some contemporary debates regarding the present direction and future of the Left. Drawing upon egalitarian, feminist and environmental ideas, the book proposes that the social democratic tradition can be renewed but only if the dominance of conservative ideas is challenged more effectively. It explores a number of issues with this aim in mind, including justice, the state, democracy, new technologies, future generations and the advances in genetics.
political opinion, including books, pamphlets, periodicals, speeches, private papers and party documents. The historical significance of the thought of particular individuals can only be understood when compared with that of their contemporaries, and it is in any case misleading to see political ideology as the product of isolated theorists when it usually emerges from the collaborative efforts of groups aiming to influence public policy and public opinion. Accordingly, I will examine the egalitarian ideas produced by a series of intellectually productive and politically
chief patron of Penguin’s vision, Richard Hoggart. 23 It is tempting to regard Penguin’s trajectory as evidence of social democracy’s retreat and Thatcherite advance. After all, it seemed to reflect the broader success of market values and the demise of those egalitarian ideas that Lane embodied. But such a reading of Penguin’s development would conceal the complexity of Penguin’s journey. The arguments made by Mayer and his critics cut across the boundary that separated these ideological traditions. Nor is it appropriate to read the eclipse of left-culturism as a
, the only true eighteenth century revolution in the Western hemisphere).15 The egalitarian ideas present in American Christianity, even the free-will theology of the Baptists, did not therefore lead inevitably to its adoption as a form of resistance any more than belief in the self-evident nature of human equality led Thomas Jefferson to emancipate his slaves. That Christianity did form the basis of black resistance in America needs to be understood as resulting primarily from two unique aspects of American slavery. First, although North American slavery was brutal
by the 1970s, his instinctive centrism led him to be marginalised within his own party. A number of New Right intellectuals went as far as to identify him as a fellow traveller who had contributed to the advance of egalitarian ideas. One of them was Rhodes Boyson, who, in October 1975, wrote a letter to Penguin that criticised the publisher’s editorial policies. Commenting on Penguin’s failure to publish Caroline Cox’s The Rape of Reason , a book that documented alleged attempts by left-wing groups to infiltrate a polytechnic institution, he argued that ‘Penguin
the EA’s activities were particularly important for explaining why it was attacked: a backlash from powerful interests against its legal work; a reaction from politicians and public officials against its support for complaints against the state; and a fear of its plans to conduct inquiries. The budget cut occurred within the wider context of a culture that was traditionally resistant to equality and has more recently been infected by a globally powerful neo-liberalism. These anti-egalitarian ideas, deeply embedded in the capitalist economy, are endorsed by
. Marx and Engels had emphasised their importance, and Lenin described them as ‘the centres of the economic, political and spiritual life of the nation … and the main motor of progress’.3 It was specifically the organisation of urban life and urban 1 Attwood_01_Intro.indd 1 06/10/2009 15:26 gender and housing in soviet russia housing which was supposed to bring about a transformation in daily life. As David Smith explains, it was meant to ‘promote collective sentiments, as well as giving practical material expression to egalitarian ideas’.4 These included the
had ‘always been obscurely acknowledged in government appeals to Dunkirk spirits and ghostly “teams” rowing in unison: the tribute of patrician vice to a missing nationalist virtue’ (1977: 299). Every initiative was still-born because the British state had experienced a form of arrested development precisely because of its frustration of the egalitarian idea of the people. France, the ‘Other’ of Linda Colley’s Britons (1992), had become the embodiment of this alien principle and its alienness had helped to secure the old corruption of a monarchical constitution
as Labour: 22,899 days to 12,096. Even if we exclude the periods of coalition, the Tory advantage (16,475 days to 12,096) is pronounced. British politics might have been dominated by collectivist and egalitarian ideas – but it was dominated by Conservative governments. Figure 4.1 Government
and unnatural love. The struggle in the eighteenth century between the fraternal and the conjugal parallels the struggle between hierarchal and egalitarian ideas of social organization. If, as Catherine Gallagher asserts, healthy individuals equalled healthy social bodies, then rivalry, and particularly incest, showed the decay 104 Siblinghood and social relations in Georgian England of families and social bodies. Classification of siblings as equals did not match with gender and age hierarchies, nor did they sit comfortably with masculine notions of