To what extent Thatcherism was hegemonic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

To what extent Thatcherism was hegemonic - Essay ExampleIn what follows I neediness to explore his novel White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings as a text that uses the city as the localize of opposition, as the locale for a critique of dominant ideology (John Corner and Sylvia Harvey, 1991 p. 11.)As many commentators give observed, the period of Thatchers rule was one in which monetarist policies of enterprise and the manipulation of the nations history went hand in hand. This alliance transformed a number of elements of English national identity. Gone was the post-war optimism in which Britain embraced a far more than egalitarian form of social organisation. As John Corner and Sylvia Harvey assert of Thatcherism Freedom and independence profit not from civil rights but from choices exercised in the market (Perry Anderson, The Figures of Descent, 1992, p. 184.)The sovereignty that matters is not that of king or queen, the lord or the white man, but the sovereignty of the consumer with in the marketplace. Massive levels of personal debt and widespread unemployment mark this perceived sovereignty of the consumer. Indeed, as Raphael Samuels suggests, Thatchers rhetoric managed to effectively obfuscate the fact that her establishments policies led to a forceful rise in household debt, from 8 per cent at the beginning of her Prime Minister transfer to 14 per cent by its conclusion. In 1983 close to 30 per cent of the London population were living, or in danger of living, below the poverty line. The inner city areas in particular suffered from high unemployment and nonstandard housing amid the proliferation of the modern operations tower block public housing. Many commentators as necessary to slim the bloated government running costs and spiralling national production under Labour regarded the economical policies of Thatcherism. Yet as Perry Anderson has argued, Thatcherism economic record was based on luck as much as effective management. Thatcherism claimed t hat the Union movement was crippling British production, responsible for a downturn in productivity. Its draconian treatment of Unions in the miners impact of 1984/5 was therefore portrayed as an economic necessity (Jerry White, London in the Twentieth Century, 2002. p. 222.) Antonio Gramscis imagination of HegemonyHegemony was a concept previously used by Marxists such as Lenin to indicate the political leading of the working-class in a democratic revolution, but developed by Gramsci into an acute analysis to let off why the inevitable socialist revolution predicted by orthodox Marxism had not occurred by the early 20th century. Capitalism, it seemed, was until now more entrenched than ever. Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also ideologically, through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the bourgeoisie became the common sense values of all. so a consensus culture developed in which peop le in the working-class identified their own effectual with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting (Gramsci, Antonio (1971).The working class needed to develop a culture of its own, which would overthrow the notion that bourgeois values represented natural