Commercialization-era cultural change drove Labour’s 1950s revisionist debates

Evidence

The growing commercialization of mass culture, the birth of television, youth culture, and the rise of mass consumption were part and parcel of what came to be known as “the affluence debate.” The impact of these forces on the working class had particular resonance for the Labour Party, its electoral prospects, and what Anthony Crosland, in his prophetic book, called The Future of Socialism . Was the class basis of Labour’s support being eroded by sociocultural change? True, culture had played a somewhat residual role in Labour thinking. The roots of “Labourism” in the dense, defensive, subaltern, corporate structures of working-class culture had not been the subject of much serious reflection until exposed by the newer class attitudes and values emerging with the onset of commercialization. Hoggart’s book played directly into these anxieties. These fueled the Labour Party’s revisionist debates of the late 1950s, underpinned Mark Abrams’s Must Labour Lose? , with its negative assessment of Labour’s prospects in the wake of social change among its heartland class supporters, and was summed up in Gaitskell’s famous 1959 Labour Party Conference speech where he vividly inquired whether Labour as a political force could survive the coming of “the car, the telly, the washing machine and the fridge.” Tony Blair’s “New Labour” and the aspirational culture has long historical antecedents … — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 154 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: New Labour’s aspirational consumer strategies had roots in 1950s debates about affluence; Postwar affluence and mass culture threatened Labour’s class base; New Times linked postmodernism with radical economic and cultural analysis (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Postwar consumer affluence shook Labour’s class base and fueled revisionist debates #expands (0.95) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 154
• The affluence debate directly shaped Labour’s politics from Gaitskell to Blair. #corroborates (0.90)
• New Labour’s aspirational consumer strategies had roots in 1950s debates about affluence #expands (0.85)
• Postwar affluence marked a transition to post-industrial class structures, not classlessness #expands (0.75)
• Postwar affluence and mass culture threatened Labour’s class base #responds-to (0.70)
• New Labour operated within Thatcher’s neoliberal parameters. #expands (0.70)
• Capitalist development required the active re-education and moralization of working-class culture #responds-to (0.65)
• New Times linked postmodernism with radical economic and cultural analysis #expands (0.60)
• Statism without popular mobilization is intrinsic to Labour’s Fabian heritage #complicates (0.55)