The culture war behind the crisis of mainstream politics

[flamingdem]

http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/culture-war-crisis-mainstream-politics/831

As the local election results are still coming in, some commentators are calling it a “political earthquake”. But the facts are more complex. Whatever seismic metaphor we use, I think its tectonic causes are cultural and – unlike mere politics – irreversible.

During the 20-year heyday of globalisation, both major parties, Labour and Conservative, became social alliances.

The Conservatives are an alliance of urban, liberally minded free-marketeers and a large group that is socially conservative, anti-Europe and anti-immigration. Labour from its birth has been an alliance of the urban salariat and the organised working class, both of which have been since the 1980s oriented globally.

Both parties, and therefore the system, were adept at containing class antagonisms. What we’re finding out is how hard it is for them to contain a culture war.

- See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/culture-war-crisis-mainstream-politics/831#sthash.Ldh6LKog.jnkFPMCY.dpuf

[LeftishBrit]

1. I don't think there's more of a 'culture war' than there ever was

Last edited Sun May 25, 2014, 05:35 PM - Edit history (1)

I think that there were always plenty of culture wars.

I think that the real problem is that the social and economic disaster that was Thatcherism has never been reversed. The postwar consensus about the welfare state and the desirability of full employment - not to mention the desirability of a diverse industrial base and not putting all our eggs into the financial-sector basket - was wrecked and too many nowadays, even on the supposed left, take it for granted that Thatcherite ideas were correct; that there was truly no alternative. (It is interesting that the opposition to this view was most succinctly expressed in recent weeks, not by a left-winger, but by the old Tory Tapsell, finally, on his retirement from politics, being honest enough to say that Keynesianism was a good thing and that Thatcher destroyed British industry.)

If no one is presenting an alternative, in terms of fundamental economic policy, then many may see little reason to vote; or may vote for whoever seems to offer a quick fix.

Also, as I've said many times, while it is excellent that the UK is far less influenced by the theocratic religious right than the USA is, that is not ALL that it takes to be socially liberal; and social and economic leftism cannot really be divorced. The attempt to divorce them leads to the rise, on the one hand, of the 'social liberal but economic conservative', aka libertarian for the rich and authoritarian for the poor; and on the other hand, of the xenophobes persuading people that their economic future is being destroyed not by neo-Thatcherism but by the invasion of those dreadful immigrants and foreigners.


Having said all this: someone needs to tell the media that, much as they may regret and try to disguise the fact, UKIP have NOT won. UKIP have in fact come a poor third.

[non sociopath skin]

2. Wise words, LB

And we need many, many more like them.

The gloves need to come off.

The Skin