{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","uuid":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","normalized_title":"crowdsandparty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","isbns":["9781781686942","9781781686720","9781781687666"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Crowds%20and%20Party","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/search"},"page":{"printed_page":36,"pdf_page":35,"physical_index":35,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"86d179dc8c27a3339a275ff15c43ddb1ea512bcbd6f72c5be2bddec890b5e419"},"chapter":"CROWDS AND PARTY","content":"freedom.\n\nAt the end of the 1980s, Marxism Today, a CPGB magazine, made itself into a platform for debates on the British Left over Marxism, Thatcherism, the legacy of communism, and the future of socialism. At the heart of the debate was the question of “new times.” How could and should socialism adapt given the changes associated with post-Fordism and the political challenge of Thatcherism? For many writing in Marxism Today, the dissolution of the welfare state and the rise of information technology, and, later, the collapse of the Soviet bloc demanded the Left’s reconstruction. The question, then, was what this reconstructed Left would look like. For what became the dominant voice, it looked liberal, offering little more than capitalism with a human face.\n\nCharles Leadbeater’s proposal for a “progressive individualism” emphasized putting individual interests at the center of socialist strategy: “If the Left stands for one thing, it should be this: people taking more responsibility for all aspects of their lives.”<sup>29</sup> As a counter to Thatcher’s culture of “individual consumerism,” his Left would offer “individual citizenship.” The point of collective action would be fulfilling individual needs. Leadbeater formulates the idea in market terms, saying that the Left “has to renegotiate the contract between those who finance collective services, those who provide them, and those who consume them, to ensure they provide value for money, efficiency, flexibility and choice.”<sup>30</sup> This is a vision of social welfare as consumer good, a vision possible through the evacuation of collectivity and the suppression of class struggle. Leadbeater couples his call for the Left to reorient itself around individual rights and responsibilities with one for collective provision. Nonetheless his analysis repeats key elements of Thatcherism, from the attack on the welfare state for its inefficiency and paternalism to the assertion of the role of the market in meeting individual needs.\n\nLeadbeater’s language and values are neoliberal. Thatcherism establishes the place from which he sees the world. He says that Thatcherism encourages “aspirations for autonomy, choice, decentralization, greater responsibility.” The Left needs to accept these values and broaden them: “While Thatcherism confines individual choice within the market, the Left should stress the importance of wider social individuality, diversity and plurality in lifestyles which cannot be delivered by the market.”<sup>31</sup> The state should be both player and platform, guaranteeing rights and providing alternatives in a larger field of choices. So not only does the market have a role—competition efficiently coordinates “lots of decentralized economic decisions”—but the public sector needs to become consumer oriented, the benefits office having the same “standards of the high street.” The devolution of common good into individual benefit goes unmarked, the assumption that public services be treated like private consumer choices unexplored. Leadbetter, with Thatcher, just assumes the market as the model for social relations.<sup>32</sup> Not only do individuals need rights to consultation and participation in the workplace, but they have a responsibility to accept “reasonable offers of employment” as well as “reasonable measures of labor flexibility.”<sup>33</sup> To adapt to the new times, the Left has to look like, see as, the Right. Rather than championing working-class values of equality, solidarity, and collectivity, in Leadbeater’s version the Left stands for capitalist ones of efficiency, flexibility, and decentralization, held together by a celebration of the individual as a rational, disciplined, and autonomous agent with the power to remake his world.<sup>34</sup>\n\n36","previous_page":35,"next_page":37}