> Doug wrote:
>
>> Another old quote from Stuart Hall: "Politics does not reflect
>> majorities, it constructs them."
>
> This is excellent. It emphasizes the active subjective element. But
> we need to add a dash of Carrolian stick bending here: It is true, but
> the construction of majorities is constrained by the existing
> historical conditions -- inter alia by the pre-existing deep-rooted
> ideological biases of the majorities. In this sense (not passive but
> active and dynamic sense, not of adapting but of reshaping), politics
> does reflect majorities.
> ___________________________________
>
Those "ideological biases" need not be deep-rooted; but it helps that
they're deeply-felt. And often they have to be pushed to front of our
sense; we have to be cajoled into feeling them deeply. One huge
challenge, always, is to then thread them, interlock them (I almost
want to say "mash them" in) with other "biases" and interests that are
not naturally or obviously compatible, the interests of a class that
is predominant or aspires to predominance. Thatcherism excelled at
this, as Hall showed so clearly. But crucially, the ingredients of
this ideological compound are not created anew. They are assembled
from the realities, values, traditions, anxieties and aspirations that
arise from the specific experiences and histories of a society and its
various strata.
David Coates in the mid-1990s put it like this: "Thatcherism took many of the central values and aspirations held by us all (values of liberty and individual rights, aspirations for prosperity and progress), tied them to a series of operating principles (in her case, overwhelmingly the principle of the unfettered market), and then steadily, resolutely and with great self-confidence, applied that operat ing principle, in the pursuit of those values and aspirations, to policy area after policy area." It can look like a "hijacking", but it's actually a tough and rarely achieved engineering job.
Hein