The 1980s felt like left-wing advance to participants, not defeat

Evidence

In retrospect, it can look as if the whole of the 1980s was a series of defeats for the left. One value of Total State Machine is to remind us that it didn’t feel that way at the time. Rather, like John Akomfrah’s video installation The Unfinished Conversation (2013), the Total State Machine book invokes a forgotten 1980s, in which style culture was synchronised with the rise of an anti-authoritarian left that confidently laid claim to a new modernity, set to dispense with capital, patriarchy and racism as so many historical relics; a 1980s in which radical chic and designer socialism weren’t dirty words but real possibilities. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1363

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in historical memory and retrospective framing, where the received narrative of a period differs from its lived experience. — connects to: Blairism normalized the 1980s defeat rather than overcoming it; The left’s defeat may have been a slow disintegration rather than a battle — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 276; Left-wing radicalization, not right-wing opposition, made Labour unelectable for two decades — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 424 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1363

Broader Connections

• Blairism normalized the 1980s defeat rather than overcoming it #contradicts (0.85)
• Left-wing radicalization, not right-wing opposition, made Labour unelectable for two decades #contradicts (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 424
• The left’s defeat may have been a slow disintegration rather than a battle #complicates (0.75) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 276