were cnd in the 1980s the equivalent of the appeasers in the 30s

[audiotech]

Rat and three rotting vegetables anyone?

 

[Azrael]

Children of a certain age delight in learning things by heart.

It serves them well if this is harnessed at an early age to become familiar with the numbers.

And with technical skills like literacy and arithmetic, that's good. When it's used to fill children with patriotic myths, as Mr Hitchens wants, it's not so good.

While they might preserve existing conditions and institutions (although only when it suits them), the vast majority of those who call themsleves conservatives have long been trapped in an ultimately self-defeating game where, far from limiting change, they fuel the very market forces that bring about change of the most drastic kind. Although it's clear from the start what the effect will be on the social conservatism they purport to hold dear, they then go around ranting about the very damage that market forces have done to its social base. Economically they win, but conservatism in any meaningful sense of the term is utterly destroyed.

True, which is why I criticise the monetarists and other market fundamentalists at least as strongly as I do anything the left gets upto. They're not conservative in any meaningful sense, and they're as dogmatic as any 19th century liberal. Moreso, if anything.

Maybe so, but the vast majority of workers in Victorian England worked twelve hour days and upwards, and lived crammed into disease-ridden slums with few personal possessions. In any case, consumerism in the sense we're talking about here means more than consuming food and drink (which again was poor fare for the vast majority.) In short, there was a consumer market in Victorian England but most people were excluded from it.

The navvies comment was flippant. Which data are you basing your info about Victorian consumerism, and poverty, on? If consumerism was limited, it still leaves a substantial middle class who should, according to your thesis, have been lobbying for the sort of social changes we saw in the middle 20th century.

It doesn't compel people to do anything. But, as I said, having more freedom from drudgery did change people's perceptions and horizons, which encouraged those with an interest in such things to push for reforms geared towards what they saw as a more liberal society. Generally they recieved, rightly or wrongly, a positive response (although it varied form one issue to another.)

It's a mighty big assumption to think that freedom from drudgery prompts an interest in liberal reform. Perhaps the liberated worker looks at society and decides he or she likes many things about it as they are?

Support for change certainly was varied. There was strong support for hanging when it was abolished, and I don't think abortion reform was too popular either. The most justified of the sixties reforms, the decriminalization of homosexuality and the abolition of the stupid old blackmailer's charter, was likewise not what you could call loved by the public. And Wilson campaigned on the duplicitous ticket of "grammar schools for everyone", not hail wormwood comp.

FFS what a load of romantic crap. Working and social conditions for the Navvies were appalling, infact I wish them on you They lived in insanitary vermin infested camps which had more in common with the Wild West than civilisation. Consumption in modern terms was unknown. Shops in the form they are today did not exist. I do not know what the Navvies did for veg, but I suspect it involved some theft as they also poached prolifically. In London veg was street sold by a large community of costermongers, who liked to fight the police

Never said they had an easy life. They didn't, obviously.

You desperately need to read Engels (and many other things) on the condition of the working class, loads of evidence from Manchester... http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/

Read quite a bit of Marx's dogsbody on Manchester, as it happens. Not what you'd call an impartial source, although it's a good read, and much of it is doubtless true. What matters is its extent, and moreover, if the theory about increased opportunity equaling a desire for reform holds true.

 

[audiotech]

How anyone can write 'impartially' about Manchester's Victorian hovels and its people scavenging for food escapes me?

 

[Azrael]

Impartial doesn't imply lack of compassion. It simply means not viewing the world through the prism of a solution. Henry Mayhew produced equally good work about the London poor.

 

[audiotech]

'One solution? The poor law.' doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

 

[The Black Hand]

Read quite a bit of Marx's dogsbody on Manchester, as it happens. Not what you'd call an impartial source

Impartiality is a bourgeois & liberal illusion. Academics long ago thought this must be recognised in any research. There is basically a political research continuum, at one end stands the far right, at the other the far left and most anarchists (others are sprinkled along the continuum). The middle area populated by right left and centre social democracy, inc left and right labour party. As far as capitalism is concerned, the vast majority of research is tainted by unrecognised and outright bourgeois illusions.

 

[The Black Hand]

Rat and three rotting vegetables anyone?

Is that your 'Young ones' Vic impression?

 

[Azrael]

Impartiality is a bourgeois & liberal illusion.

And "bourgeois" is a Marxist illusion.

Since I'm neither a utopian or an idealist, I don't think researches have to be ideology-free zones to count as reasonably impartial. Engles was very far from impartial, although I don't doubt that his observations were accurate, as far as they go.

To be honest, I've got a soft spot for Engles, if only because freeloading old beardy nabbed all the credit.

 

[LLETSA]

The navvies comment was flippant. Which data are you basing your info about Victorian consumerism, and poverty, on? If consumerism was limited, it still leaves a substantial middle class who should, according to your thesis, have been lobbying for the sort of social changes we saw in the middle 20th century.

Any data you care to look at will tell you that a substantial majority of the population of Victorian England didn't have the income to participate in any sort of consumer market. Which is what I argued-not that there wasn't a middle class able to do so. Middle class consumerism in Victorian England didn't lead to the change of attiudes on the scale of post-WW2 society because other factors were also at work during the latter period, including mass education and the penetration of society by the mass media (bringing images of other possibilities straight into people's homes etc), the rise of labour movements encouraging greater expectations etc etc. All of this is more than obvious.

 

[LLETSA]

Support for change certainly was varied. There was strong support for hanging when it was abolished, and I don't think abortion reform was too popular either. The most justified of the sixties reforms, the decriminalization of homosexuality and the abolition of the stupid old blackmailer's charter, was likewise not what you could call loved by the public. And Wilson campaigned on the duplicitous ticket of "grammar schools for everyone", not hail wormwood comp.

Much of this may be true. The point, however, is that there was enough of a change in attitudes to see these changes forced through. Again: obvious.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Since I'm neither a utopian or an idealist, I don't think researches have to be ideology-free zones to count as reasonably impartial.

This is just you choosing to understand impartiality in a way that excludes the influence of ideology; while I can see that it suits your purpose in this thread, it is not an approach to impartiality that I recognise as being commonly used in the humanities or social sciences. And that is probably as close as your going to get to me agreeing with TBH.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[The Black Hand]

This is just you choosing to understand impartiality in a way that excludes the influence of ideology; while I can see that it suits your purpose in this thread, it is not an approach to impartiality that I recognise as being commonly used in the humanities or social sciences. And that is probably as close as your going to get to me agreeing with TBH.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

You've agreed with me before and said the same thing