Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Alan Rudy Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 11:30 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] blog post: those who dare to tell the truth
On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 5:01 PM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/6/2010 3:59 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> I just happened to re-read Stuart Hall's classic, "The Great Moving Right
>> Show," written in 1979 during the early days of Thatcherism, yesterday.
He
>> writes of the use of "national interest" against the working class:
>>
>>> The expression of this representative relationship of class-to-party, in
>>> the present period, has depended decisively on the extensive set of
bargains
>>> negotiated between Labour and the trade union representatives of the
class.
>>> This "indissoluble link" is the practical basis for the claim to be the
>>> natural governing party of the crisis. This is the contract it delivers.
>>> But, once in government, social democracy is committed to finding
solutions
>>> to the crisis which are capable of winning support from key sections of
>>> capital, since its solutions are framed within those limits. But this
>>> requires that the indissoluble link be used, not to advance but to
>>> discipline the class and organizations it represents. This is only
possible
>>> if the link - class-to-party - is dismantled and if there can be
substituted
>>> for it an alternative articulation: government-to-people. The rhetorics
of
>>> "national interest", which is the principal ideological form in which a
>>> succession of defeats have been imposed on the working class by social
>>> democracy in power, are exactly the sites where this contradiction shows
>>> through-and is being constantly reworked. But government-to-people
dissects
>>> the field of struggle differently from class-to-party. It sets Labour,
at
>>> key moments of struggle-from the strikes of 1966 right through to the
>>> present 5 per cent norm-by definition "on the side of the nation"
against
>>> "sectional interests", "irresponsible trade union power", etc.
>>>
>>
> I don't buy this at all. I think it's exactly the opposite of the truth.
Is
> Hall saying the interests of the working class really were opposed to
those
> of "the nation"? Or is he saying the contrast drawn between the two was
> spurious, in which case why did Thatcher succeed?
>
> I think the real problem is that the trade unions in fact accepted, more
or
> less, this distinction between "their" interests and "the nation's"
> interests. The results were disastrous. This essay argues that there was
> another way. I especially endorse the last sentence:
>
> http://www.hegemonics.co.uk/docs/Incomes-Policy-Hegemony-1970s.pdf
>
> The Wages of Militancy:
> Incomes Policy, Hegemony and the Decline of the British Left
... SNIP ...
SA: Why does there have to be a contradiction between Purdy's quite interesting analysis and Williams'? Your reaction strikes me as utterly overwrought. Williams referred to an extensive set of bargains and negotiations, do you honestly think Williams wasn't aware that these negotiations had been going on for decades? With his history, his knowledge of that history? In any event, it is really very straightforward - to a sympathetic reader who knows that Williams was a founder of modern cultural studies and focused most of his work on ideology critique and unpacking discourses of many types - to read Williams' analysis as one focused on discursive shifts at the level of national politics rather than strategic shifts in the war of position at the level of regional and national trade unions. Perhaps he goes elsewhere (towards the specifics of union democracy and party politics) in the rest of the piece, I don't know, do you? If os, I apologize and my intervention can be attributed to my ignorance of "The Great Moving Right Show".
For that matter, Doug's whole point was to focus our attention on the use of a particular strategic ploy as a weapon against left movements NOT to critique the failures of any particular nation's labor, feminist, environmental, queer or identity movements ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk