The way I see it, the contemporary political and administrative establishment is quite decisively a product of the left, but in the sense of being a product of the left's defeat.
In personnel terms, in Britain, certainly, and I suspect also in America and Europe, many of today's most influential figures are recruited from the left. (I've just read British Chancellor Gordon Brown's biography, to learn that in the seventies he was the author of a Gramscian-marxist collection of essays on Scotland called the Red Papers)
More than that the politics of the left have contributed decisively to contemporary establishment thinking. Schematically, the left in defeat adapted to the existence of the market and are today its most effective apologists - like eurocommunists Charles Leadbeater (Living on Thin Air) and Geoff Mulgan.
On top of that the left contributed the two central planks of contemporary bourgeois politics multi-culturalism and humanitarian imperialism. In the name of the former they are reforming all the major social institutions, and with the latter, the world order.
Railing against the Reagan-Thatcher axis of the 1980s makes no sense today, when we are ruled by the Blair-Clinton axis.
In message <Pine.GSO.3.94.990915165236.3573T-100000 at rhenium>, Mr P.A.
Van Heusden <pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk> writes
>(Rush argues that 'the left' in the US has learnt from Gramsci and won
>cultural hegemony)
>
>My simple response to this is 'I wish it were so'.
>
>And unfortunately my misgivings are born out by the second paragraph. We
>are presented a picture of 'left-wing multicultural elites' having sold
>out to the ruling class.
>
>While there are some (small) elements of truth in this portrayal, I think
>what is more important is the way this picture of the situation leaves out
>the way the 'left' was resoundingly defeated (through the defeat of both
>the 1960s inspired social movements, and working class struggle). It is of
>course much more advantagous for the right-wing 'back to basics' agenda to
>portray the 'left' as fundamentally undefeated and playing an active part
>in 'the establishment'.
>
>Peter
-- Jim heartfield