Hoggart’s book about class entered the Labour Party’s affluence debate and electoral politics

Evidence

The publication of The Uses of Literacy had an enormous impact: in part for the intrinsic interest, quality, and originality of its argument, in part because of its bearing on wider discussions about the pace and direction of postwar social change. 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. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 154

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how cultural arguments become economic-political ones — Labourism’s roots in working-class culture foreshadows Hall’s later ‘authoritarian populism’ analysis.