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Compelling Communication
- Writing, Public Speaking and Storytelling for Professional Success
- Simon Hall
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- May 2024
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- 30 May 2024
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Do your communication skills let you down? Do you struggle to explain and influence, persuade and inspire? Are you failing to fulfil your potential because of your inability to wield words in the ways you'd like? This book has the solution. Written by a University of Cambridge Communication Course lead, journalist and former BBC broadcaster, it covers everything from the essentials of effective communication to the most advanced skills. Whether you want to write a razor sharp briefing, shine in an important presentation, hone your online presence, or just get yourself noticed and picked out for promotion, all you need to know is here. From writing and public speaking, to the beautiful and stirring art of storytelling, and even using smartphone photography to help convey your message, this invaluable book will empower you to become a truly compelling communicator.
Hypothermia Management, an Evaluation of a Novel Lightweight System.
- Philippa Caine, Tatiana Zhelezniakova, Mark Taylor, Colin Smart, Simon Pennells, John Hall
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- Prehospital and Disaster Medicine / Volume 38 / Issue S1 / May 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 July 2023, p. s183
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- May 2023
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Introduction:
Accidental hypothermia remains an important contributory factor to the mortality of trauma patients in both civilian and military environments. As a component of the ‘lethal triad’ it poses a significant problem in patients at risk of hemorrhage from traumatic injuries. Systems used to mitigate hypothermia in the prehospital environment must strike a balance between weight: size ratio and optimal performance.
Method:This study compared three hypothermia mitigation systems; two leading products and the novel Xtract™SR Heatsaver, over a three-day trial period. Seven subjects were placed in a closed system, held at around 0°C, to promote the onset of mild hypothermia. Individuals with a tympanic temperature recording of < or = 35°C were placed into one of the three systems. Recordings of aural temperature and a numerical perceived comfort score were made every 15-20 minutes to assess rate of rewarming and subject’s perceptions of the process. An additional study was carried out by an experienced consultant in military and civilian emergency medicine, on day three of the trial, to determine the ease of clinical assessment of individuals placed inside the Xtract™SR Heatsaver prototype.
Results:On all three days, subjects placed in the Xtract™SR Heatsaver recovered from their hypothermic state faster than those placed in the other systems. Clinical assessment could easily be performed on a patient placed in the Xtract™SR Heatsaver system.
Conclusion:Results demonstrate that the new Xtract™SR Heatsaver system is superior with regards to reducing heat loss, increasing patient comfort and allowing for clinical assessment. The study also highlights the importance of the use of adjuncts such as heat cell blankets and insulation matts alongside hypothermia mitigation systems deployed in the prehospital environment. Furthermore, data gathered provides scope for future research into nuances surrounding the effects and onset of hypothermia.
Frontmatter
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp i-iv
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6 - The New Left
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 202-234
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Summary
Leftist politics changed at a fundamental level as the post-war era unfolded. In the previous chapter we explored some of the contextual factors that shaped these changes, but to develop a more detailed understanding of precisely how the left changed, we need to look more closely at the development of what became known as ‘The New Left’. In this chapter, we look at its two major intellectual constituencies: the New Left in Britain, which grew from the Marxist humanist tradition; and the New Left in Germany and the United States, which established what became known as ‘critical theory’.
Our analysis here moves away from the practical world of politics and economic planning to explore a range of intellectual matters. This is simply because it is in the realm of ideas that the roots of change are to be found. It would be a mistake to conclude that the intellectuals associated with the left during the post-war period had little or no influence upon the shape, content and approach of the left’s trade unions and political parties. The influence of the left’s intellectuals upon the practical world of politics is subtle, indirect and rather vague, but there can be little doubt that the intellectuals we discuss in this chapter and the next informed the left’s post-war remodelling. By identifying new goals and concerns, and developing new forms of critique, they encouraged the gradual evolution of the left’s political culture, which in turn prompted changes in the practical sphere of leftist politics.
The New Left in post-war Britain
The New Left in Britain had its roots in humanist Marxism. Humanist Marxists are generally committed to those aspects of Marx’s work that focused upon the negative effects of capitalism upon the individual. The phrase also implies an idealistic faith in the inherent rationality and decency of the individual, despite the corruptive influence of capitalist enterprise.
In the early part of his career, Marx was more concerned with the inner life of workers. His writing had a romantic air that fell away quite sharply as he became more concerned with the ‘economic shit’ that was to preoccupy him as he endeavoured to bring Capital – his life’s work – to a satisfactory conclusion.
7 - Postmodernism, neoliberalism and the left
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 235-251
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Summary
As the 1970s progressed, the economic liberalism of Milton Friedman and his colleagues in the Chicago School moved closer to overcoming the Keynesian orthodoxy. Many notable figures in the left’s mainstream political parties were happy to see the back of what they had come to believe was an economic model that created coddling dependencies and curtailed the dynamism and creativity of the entrepreneurial class. And as neoliberalism rose to the heights of government and transformed itself into a new economic and political orthodoxy, the dominant cultural wing of the left continued its flight into abstraction.
Intellectual life took what became known as its ‘cultural turn’. All eyes seemed to turn to the cultural field. The intellectual frameworks of the past were believed to be unsuited for a world that seemed to be becoming ever more complex and changeable. The foundations of Western thought appeared to be rooted in assumptions that no longer reflected the lives of a population that had freed itself from the myths that weighted so heavily upon the lives of their parents and grandparents. Older generations, it was claimed, had led rather predictable, static lives, but the same would not be true for those growing up in the neoliberal era. The lives of the young would be creative, unpredictable and hypermobile. The young were more likely to switch nations, social classes, political allegiances, homes, identities, jobs, and so on. They had also freed themselves from the collective identities of the past. They would be autonomous individuals rather than members of sprawling social groups.
The intimacies of personal life were also changing. Romantic relationships had become brittle and were increasingly liable to break apart under the slightest strain. Friendships would also be constantly appraised for their utility, and enduring personal connections would be a much less significant feature of the lives of young people. Perhaps more important was the supposed shift in ethics. The young would appraise their own lives and judge the lives of others differently. They would be more calculative and ends-driven than their parents and grandparents.
9 - The politics of nostalgia
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 267-283
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Summary
Many left liberals in academia, politics and the mass media are certain that the populist revival among the working class in the post-crash era has been driven by a regressive nostalgia for a time when they were wealthier, more secure, more valued and more firmly established in the social hierarchy. Some of these commentators have even gone as far as to claim that members of the white working class who have lent their support to populist movements are nostalgic for a time in which they were accorded higher status than individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds. In such analyses, the continued march of progressive multiculturalism has stripped white working-class voters of their unearned racial privileges, so these voters have abandoned the left and voted for a nationalist right that promises to restore them.
The 2016 Brexit vote is a useful case in point. While for most contemporary leftists the result of the referendum came as a shock, those sections of the left that remain in regular contact with working-class voters beyond the larger cities understood that it was entirely predictable. Some academics immediately denied the existence of clear evidence indicating that the majority of the working-class voters preferred to leave the EU. Others were happy to simply decry Leave voters as hateful xenophobes. Without further thought, many on the liberal left cut the Gordian knot, split the working class along ethnic lines and portrayed anyone amongst the white working class reluctant to immediately offer unequivocal support for all progressive cultural causes as the embodiment of absolute evil. These responses were simplistic, hurtful and divisive. However, they should have come as no surprise.
White working-class Leave voters were, apparently, nostalgic for Empire. This narrative continues to be the most popular academic explanation for the British people’s majority decision to leave the EU. It tends to be promulgated by academics who believe themselves to be socialists, and who look favourably upon the neoliberal EU as if it were a bastion of progressive politics, the source of all positive social protections, and our sole defence against a slide into destitution and right-wing authoritarianism.
Index
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 332-343
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4 - Beginnings
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 127-180
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Summary
The roots of the left are to be found in the early industrial age. Demands for equality, political representation, rights at work and better care for the poor can be traced further back in recorded history, but it was during this epoch that the left grew in confidence and popularity, taking on many of the characteristics and policies that became synonymous with leftist politics.
The dawning of the industrial age transformed our societies in ways that are difficult to fully appreciate today. Western nations urbanised swiftly during the nineteenth century as the established features of the agrarian economy fell away. Towns and cities that hosted new sites of industrial production grew rapidly as workers from around the country, and sometimes further afield, moved in search of work. Many traditional aspects of pre-industrial culture and identity were lost entirely while others quickly adapted to fit in with the new world.
In both Britain and the United States, industrial production was for some time largely unregulated. Industrial workers were often subjected to extreme danger and exploitation. This is not to say that ordinary men and women lived lives of boundless freedom and fulfilment before the dawning of the industrial age. Child labour, for instance, was entrenched in small-scale manufacturing sites and throughout much of the agricultural system before large-scale factories became a common feature of industrial towns and cities. Industrialism did, however, change the nature and our expectations of work.
The literature on Western industrialism is too voluminous to summarise here. What we want to do is bring into relief the sources of agitation and piecemeal reform that qualitatively improved workers’ lives and opened doors through which they could step and exercise at least some influence on politics and economic life. When in the nineteenth century improvements did come, they derived from the agitation of evangelical Christians as much as the activities of trade unions and other sections of the organised left. The power of trade unions grew gradually throughout the nineteenth century, but they were not all animated by the relatively new and growing philosophy of socialism.
Notes
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 317-331
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3 - Wrong turns
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2022, pp 106-126
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Summary
The rise of post-crash populism has been far more significant to the political right than the left. The vast majority of left populist movements that arose after the 2008 financial crisis have now petered out. Sanders failed, Corbyn failed, while Podemos in Spain and SYRIZA in Greece seem spent forces. Many of Europe’s old, centre-left parties continue to haemorrhage support. Only the political right has gained electoral mileage from the aftermath of the global financial crisis, which reinforces the point that where the left still exists in an organised form it has grown accustomed to electoral failure and has lost touch with the very communities its parties and key institutions were initially formed to protect.
The right has shifted and evolved a great deal in a relatively short period of time. Numerous right-wing populist movements that arose after the global financial crisis continue to exert considerable influence. While the appearance of new and renewed forms of nationalism and racism are part of this picture, they are not the sole causes of the right’s success. The right has fared particularly well by doing what the liberalised left refuses to do. While left-liberal commentators tediously repeat the Rawlsian plea to ignore the material realm and remain true to liberal ideals, the right has adapted its approach by closely observing shifting economic trends and learning from the strategies of its opponents.
Some elements of the new right have adopted the language of the counterculture and depict the left as an authoritarian establishment set to deprive the people of their freedoms. They present their own ideas as edgy and subversive and pour scorn on the edicts of the stuffy, sanctimonious and censorious leftist establishment. Again, up is down, left is right.
The new right is not yet achieving electoral success, but it has succeeded in two important ways: first, it has swayed many swing voters over to established right-wing parties; and, second, it has injected new life into the elements of cultural conservatism that, despite more than 40 years of global neoliberalism, linger throughout civil society.
Introduction
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 1-8
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Summary
We have taken no pleasure in writing this book. For years we debated whether it was worth writing at all. The political dimension of our adult lives has been filled with frustration, sadness and occasional anger as we watched the British left endure serial defeats and celebrate its own fragmentation. However, until quite recently we were pulled back from dark desolation by the hope that someday soon the left’s comedy of errors would come to an end as a new generation of political and intellectual leaders emerged to drive it forward with vision and purpose.
It was not to be. Since 1979, the British left seems to have grown comfortable with electoral failure. The Labour governments of Blair and Brown achieved success only by conforming to the core demands of neoliberalism’s global economic project. In the United States, Obama’s presidency carried considerable symbolic importance, but he achieved absolutely nothing in terms of overcoming the economic orthodoxies that pushed so many Americans into poverty and insecurity. This pattern was replicated across all developed and developing nations. In or out of government, ostensibly leftwing parties busied themselves advocating neoliberal economic policies that harmed the very people they were supposed to defend. The left won elections only when it accepted the rules of the global market. Even formerly Maoist China joined the club.
The left has clearly undergone fundamental change. It no longer offers a genuine alternative to the existing order of things, whether reformist or revolutionary. Now, as we move further into the twenty-first century, the left seems to have discarded its traditional identity as a mass movement intent on achieving political power. It displays little interest in protecting – let alone improving – the prosperity and security of multi-ethnic working populations. Centre-left political projects of the past – such as Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s or the British Labour Party’s programme of economic restructuring after 1945 – achieved electoral success on the back of a compelling range of policy initiatives made comprehensible to their electorates. Electorates continue to yearn for the genuine kind of economic change that would provide a platform of material security.
The Death of the Left
- Why We Must Begin from the Beginning Again
- Simon Winlow, Steve Hall
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- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 17 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2022
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Winlow and Hall argue that the only way to resurrect leftist politics is to begin from the beginning again. They identify the root causes of its maladies, describe how new cultural obsessions displaced core unifying principles, and outline how a new reincarnation of the left can win in the twenty-first century.
Acknowledgements
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 17 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2022, pp vi-viii
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2 - Democracy, without the people? The rise and fall of left populism
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 52-105
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Summary
During the period of austerity that followed the financial crash, new antagonisms rooted in shifting material reality began to emerge, while older antagonisms rooted in class and culture evolved and became gradually more acute. The ongoing fragmentation of society during these years became normalised. Some on the left continued to persevere with accounts of unity, but increasingly they seemed to be talking about temporary truces and concessions between irreconcilable fragments rather than the incorporation of all groups of working people in a grand project of solidarity. The traditional focus of left-wing social and political analysis – the class system and its foundation in economic exploitation and political exclusion – receded further into the background.
Action was moving at speed from universalism to particularism; from things all people share to things specific to distinct cultural groups. Old-fashioned ideas around collective life and shared identities, goals, ideals and beliefs were discarded. Those who clung to such ideas were mercilessly mocked for their inability to understand or appreciate the scale of human diversity and the true course of progress. Those at the centre could never understand those on the margins. Those born with white skin could never understand those born with black skin. A heterosexual man could never understand the plight of a homosexual woman. Only those who had fully lived and experienced a marginalised identity should be allowed to ‘speak their truth’.
The entire idea of community – the product of material functions, practical alliances, sentimental attachments, histories of trust and shared interests, and once a crucial foundation stone of the left – became contentious. Community was reframed as ‘imaginary’ rather than material and practical. People who long ago agreed that they had little choice but to get on together were persuaded that they had every reason not to.
The politics of anti-racism was transformed. Since the 1960s, anti-racism had sought to overcome segregation and break down barriers through education and the enforcement of equality through legislation. All races needed to acknowledge that racial distinctions were illusory. The colour of one’s skin did not and should never matter. All impediments to integration should be removed and forms of overt and covert discrimination should be mercilessly eliminated.
5 - Changes
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 181-201
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Summary
During much of the twentieth century, the left in the United States and Great Britain grew, evolved, splintered and shrank while being partly overshadowed by events in Russia. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most transformative events of the modern age. There could be no going back. The established movement of history was knocked off track and began to move in a radically different direction. World politics was transformed. For radical leftists, these events were initially invigorating and held huge promise. However, for the majority on the left, events in what was to become the Soviet Union tarnished their project terribly.
The revolution in Russia was followed by a painful civil war from which the Bolsheviks emerged as the strongest faction. Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, took charge of a country in chaos. He quickly took the country out of the First World War and set to work attempting to restore order. Occasionally, he responded sensibly and to good effect. His New Economic Policy (NEP) programme had a social democratic feel to it, which led many sympathetic observers in the West to form the view that, under Lenin’s careful leadership, the new Soviet could strike a balance between market activity and state regulation that would see an end to the desperate poverty of the peasantry and the terrible conditions experienced by Russia’s new and growing urban proletariat. With any luck, these sympathetic observers mused, the Russian Revolution could act as a model for the working class around the world.
For Lenin, however, the NEP was always just a shortterm fix. He was a communist down to his marrow. He was entirely committed to the total transformation of Russia and the surrounding states, and he was sure that for the nation to move forward the profit motive had to be overcome. He was not a man for half measures, and he launched what was to become known as his Red Terror, which set out to eliminate the Bolsheviks’ diverse political opponents.
It is inevitable and entirely proper that the activities of the Cheka, Lenin’s new secret police service, strike us as repellent. However, it is vital to consider the context in which this repression occurred.
Contents
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp v-v
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8 - Identity politics
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 252-266
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Summary
In Chapter 7, we noted that postmodernism accelerated existing processes that were already liberalising the left and moving it further away from its traditional values, policies and sources of support. In advocating a creative individualism free from the intrusions of the state and the judgements of the social order, it also paved the way for contemporary identity politics. However, the truth of the matter is that post-structuralism played a more active role in determining the shape and content of twenty-first-century identity politics. Postmodernism and post-structuralism are often conflated, but to shed light on the intellectual foundations of identity politics, we need to briefly disentangle these two terms.
Post-structuralism denied the existence of the underlying binary linguistic structures that had been the basis of structuralism. The structuralist Saussure had argued that the relationship between the external ‘referent’ – the thing being observed and represented – and the sign we construct to represent it is arbitrary, and therefore susceptible to the structures of social convention. Post-structuralists went one step further to claim that the relationship between the sign and the ‘signified’ – our personal mental representation of the sign itself – is also arbitrary. What we had thought of as structured meaning tied to the referent’s properties and qualities was actually fluid, open and ambiguous, and able to be constantly deconstructed with no apparent end in sight. Therefore, social convention and the rigid divisions between its binary categories – man/woman, true/false and so on – could be constantly questioned and disrupted.
If there was no end in sight, there was a means in sight. Derrida, the left’s most noted post-structuralist, suggested that a ‘democracy to come’ would end Western domination and carry on forever in a fluid, open-ended discussion as we abandon modernity along with our binary social structures and selves to explore the great diversity of ‘otherness’ that flickers in an endless process of becoming. Unsurprisingly, the modernist binary category bourgeois/proletarian was one of the first to be chucked into post-structuralism’s mincing machine.
Postmodernism was, in effect, a quasi-religious movement, a secular polytheism. As we saw in Chapter 7, it replaced traditional deities with graven images based on the self and its pleasures.
10 - A return to economics
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 284-313
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Summary
The return of populism after the 2008 global financial crisis was, given the left’s abandonment of interventionist economic policy and alienation of its traditional voters, inevitable. However, as we have been at pains to stress, the dominant narratives that accompanied the return of populism were remarkably onesided and tended to ignore the long history of Western populist responses to technocratic arrogance and economic injustice. The American economist Michael Hudson has drawn upon a substantial body of anthropological work that reveals remarkably different attitudes to populism. In eras stretching from Ancient Rome to post-bellum America, populists were regarded as heroic representatives of the populace, a body of people living in a specific territory they regarded as home. Populism was the principal source of solidarity and political energy in struggles against extractive landholding elites in the Ancient World across the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Large-scale economies became increasingly based on credit, which allowed accelerated expansion because labour and materials could be bought before sales. Defying laws and norms clearly laid down by Judaic and Pagan religions, powerful landholders used their substantial assets to become major creditors, irresponsibly indebting farmers and eventually acquiring more assets as the debt burden became impossible to pay. Drawing upon the stabilising activities of the initial palace economies, state authorities offered an alternative source of currency issue as credit which could be bound by powerful laws and decrees that ensured indebtedness would not bankrupt too many families. Most effective were periodic jubilees, which would wipe slates clean, relieve debt, reverse foreclosures, restore property and reboot economic activity.
The fundamental political struggle in the Ancient World was rooted in economics and property ownership. Put simply, state authorities functioned to prevent landholding creditors using private loans to become oligarchs. Small subsistence farmers were actually pledging their livelihoods as collateral and therefore risked the permanent loss of everything they had worked for and on which their lives depended. Private landholding families who acted as creditors wanted to abandon restrictive laws and debt jubilees to make the forfeiture of property as payment for debt permanent.
11 - Futures
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 314-316
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Summary
It is still possible that the left will rise to the historical challenges that define the present. However, our rather dour conclusion is that it will not. All indications suggest that the mainstream left maintains a deep but often disavowed commitment to the present status quo. Across the West, it will be either the centrists or the mainstream right who will set the course for deglobalisation and the energy transition. The primacy of neoliberal thinking will continue, and everyday people will continue to suffer as a result. The influence of the liberal left may continue to be felt in some aspects of our cultural life and in a number of key institutions, but even here little is guaranteed. It seems likely that key figures in the vaguely composed field of ‘identity politics’ will move seamlessly into the sub-dominant elite tasked with administering the social system on behalf of the corporate and banking elites that are the true locus of entrenched privilege and power. In the absence of an informed, serious and ambitious left, animosity and conflict on the cultural field will continue to grow. The left today displays no desire to build a new economy in which all citizens are included by right, no drive to dispense with the diverse insecurities which weigh so heavily upon our present way of life, and no capacity to bond all citizens together in a project of political renewal and mutual betterment.
In the recent 2022 French presidential election, a deeply dispiriting battle took place between Macron’s unabashed neoliberal centrism and Le Pen’s updated right-wing nationalism. Macron’s victory, of course, failed to yield any sense that a majority of the French population are behind his depressingly familiar policy programme. Instead, the core message of the election was that the majority are not yet ready to countenance Le Pen as president. In the United States, Biden’s popularity has nosedived, and the prospect of another divisive election between Trump and whichever dispiritingly cautious neoliberal candidate emerges from within the Democratic Party draws nearer. In Britain, hope springs eternal as Labour has taken a slight lead in the polls.
1 - The mortgage on the left’s future foreclosed
- Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Steve Hall, Teesside University
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- Book:
- The Death of the Left
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- Bristol University Press
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- 17 June 2023
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- 15 November 2022, pp 9-51
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Summary
The 2008 global financial crisis was an event of huge significance. We continue to live in its aftermath. It should have heralded the end of an epoch. The dogma, corruption, disinformation, errors and misunderstandings that structured neoliberalism’s financialised market system were revealed in grim detail. However, the best the mainstream left could do in response was to offer a moralising critique of corporate bankers’ untrammelled greed and the connivance and laxity of the sector’s regulators. Key figures on the left nodded along with the neoliberal right’s claim that the system had broken down, or that it had been in some way corrupted. None were willing to acknowledge that these malfunctions and corrupt practices were simply surface effects of deep flaws in the system’s core.
The truth of the matter is that a crisis had been building since the serial financial shocks of the 1980s, and – given that pretty much every politician believed that the positive outcomes of ‘the markets’ far outweigh the negative – in many respects it was inevitable. What we needed was a new system of democratically regulated money creation and investment. We needed democratic state institutions that controlled the animal spirits of the market and forced financiers to play within strictly policed rules. We needed a fully inclusive economy replete with secure, well-paid and socially useful jobs. And, of course, we needed politicians who were not totally committed to the rigid doctrines of the financial sector. The left’s popular message should have been this: the way we organise our economy is deeply flawed; we need to rebuild on firm foundations; the economy we build should be guided by the best available understanding of how our monetary system works and driven forward by an unyielding commitment to the common good.
Some on the margins of the left did make such arguments, but it was their willingness to make them that saw them marginalised in the first place. Bowing and quaking before the unforgiving goddess TINA (‘there is no alternative’), the left had abandoned the economic engine room and handed it to financial technocrats decades before the 2008 crisis.