Arguing Affluence: New Left Contributions to the Socialist Debate 1957-63

Davis, Madeleine

doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwr033

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…In his response to Farrant and McPhail's 2011 article, Jackson focuses on the development of Hayek's thought in the 1940s and highlights the importance of avoiding oversimplified accounts of the ways in which neo‐liberalism established itself as an ideological statement. In terms of other work exploring postwar political ideological change, Davis's article on New Left thinking in the late 1950s and early 1960s is highly recommended. Here the emphasis is on the originality of New Left thought, including debates about ‘affluence’, criticisms of capitalism, and the cultural and ideological implications of postwar social change.…”

Section: Post‐1945mentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature published in 2012

Costen

Davis

Paul

et al. 2014

The Economic History Review

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Section: Post‐1945mentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature published in 2012

Costen

Davis

Paul

et al. 2014

The Economic History Review

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“…28 The debate on the so-called affluent society had developed in the 1960s and had produced a harsh left-wing critique. 29 The overcoming of the affluent society's empty promises -'apparently free of poverty' whose focus was 'excess consumption rather than the fulfilment of need' 30 however assumed a different politically charged status, globally thanks to the confrontation with the debate prompted by the publication of The Limits of Growth and Barry Commoner's response to it; 31 in Britain thanks to The Ecologist.…”

Section: Introduction: the Green Alternativementioning

confidence: 99%

From ‘Old’ to ‘New’ Politics: The Politicization of the Environment in Left-Wing British Intellectual Discourse (1970s–1980s)

Maccaferri

2022

European History Quarterly

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This article reconstructs the encounter between environmentalism and the intellectual discourse of the Left in Britain. It shows how environmentalism struggled to converse with British socialism and Marxism and why the final politicization of the environment took a quite long path to transition. Through the analysis of the discussions in The Ecologist, New Left Review, and Marxism Today the article documents their contributions to the ‘greening’ of wider political discourse, and the important place they had in rethinking the role of left-wing politics in the difficult years of the 1980s. While the concept of crisis played a central role in the assimilation of environmental argument and ecology into the complex ideological configuration of socialism and Marxism, it was however an external factor – Thatcherism – that forced the Left’s intellectuals to come to terms with the changing of the political and imposed the idea that the preservation of the environment was a ‘socialist principle’. The article contributes to two primary lines of historical inquiry: the field of modern British environmental history and the politics of the Labour Party’s reformulation during the 1980s.

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“… 5. Recent efforts to revisit and reframe the affluent worker debates include Fielding (2001), Smith Wilson (2006), Davis (2012) and Middleton (2014). …”

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confidence: 99%

The short happy life of the affluent working class: Consumption, debt and Embourgeoisement in the Age of Credit

Day

2019

Capital & Class

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This article reconsiders the debate over the alleged embourgeoisement of the British working classes after Second World War. ‘Bourgeois affluence and proletarian apathy’ examines why members of the New Left concluded that a ‘bourgeois’ proletariat was incapable of revolutionary activity. ‘Washing machines and proletarian persistence’ takes up the midcentury social scientific literature with an eye for the ways in which empirical research falsified key elements of that thesis. ‘Visible consumption and invisible debt’ draws attention to the ways in which both liberal advocates for and Marxist critics of embourgeoisement overemphasized spending and underemphasized debt. Finally, I close by calling attention to some of the anecdotal and empirical evidence that suggests household indebtedness perpetuates working-class dependence upon capital.

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Arguing Affluence: New Left Contributions to the Socialist Debate 1957-63

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Review of periodical literature published in 2012

Review of periodical literature published in 2012

From ‘Old’ to ‘New’ Politics: The Politicization of the Environment in Left-Wing British Intellectual Discourse (1970s–1980s)

The short happy life of the affluent working class: Consumption, debt and Embourgeoisement in the Age of Credit

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