New Labour conceded the impossibility of leftist hegemony rather than attempting it

Evidence

The Labour Party’s acquiescence in capitalist realism cannot of course be construed as a simple error: it was a consequence of the disintegration of the left’s old power base in the face of the post-Fordist restructuring of capitalism. The features of this — globalisation; the displacement of manufacturing by computerisation; the casualisation of labour; the intensification of consumer culture — are now so familiar that they, too, have receded into a takenfor-granted background. This is what constitutes the background for the ostensibly post-political and uncontestable “reality” that capitalist realism relies upon. The warnings made by Stuart Hall and the others writing in Marxism Today at the end of the 1980s turned out to be absolutely correct: the left would face obsolescence if it remained complacently attached to the assumptions of the disappearing Fordist world and failed to hegemonise the new world of post-Fordism. But the New Labour project, far from being an attempt to achieve this new hegemony, was based precisely on conceding the impossibility of a leftist hegemonisation of post-Fordism: all that could be hoped for was a mitigated version of the neoliberal settlement. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1485

Categorization

• XREF: Hegemony is a Gramsci-derived concept; connects with the reader’s knowledge of Marx-reading work (Essential Essays, Black Marxism) on proletarian obsolescence in post-Fordism. — connects to: British labour lacked a hegemonic challenge to state power; The British labour movement embedded itself within the state rather than challenging it hegemonically — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1215; A statist Labour Party let the radical Right claim the people’s side — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1121 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• British labour integrated into state structures without a hegemonic challenge #corroborates (0.88)
• The British labour movement embedded itself within the state rather than challenging it hegemonically #corroborates (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1215
• British labour lacked a hegemonic challenge to state power #corroborates (0.82)
• A statist Labour Party let the radical Right claim the people’s side #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1121
• Statism without popular mobilization is intrinsic to Labour’s Fabian heritage #expands (0.78)
• Labour’s ‘national interest’ rhetoric relocates it against the working class it represents. #complicates (0.75)
• The left historically centered emancipation, not statism #corroborates (0.72) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 96