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Mustafa Riad
Socialism defined
An ideology arguing that citizens are best served by policies focused on meeting the basic needs of the entire society rather than on serving the needs of individuals as individuals.
Socialism
Term socialism coined in 1827 by British socialist Robert Owen to describe his view of a cooperative new society.
Socialisms emergence
Liberal political parties in 19th century Europe
failed to address the desperate needs of working people. Classical liberalism views poverty as an individual choice or failure, not the result of social structures. Also suspicious of big government. Socialism provides a different conception of individual responsibility & of government.
Socialism in England
In England, socialism became a political movement in 1884, with the creation of the Fabian Society that provided the basis for the Labour Party.
Fabianism
A British socialist intellectual movement founded in the mid1880s. Purpose advance socialism by working through the political system, not through revolution.. Famous Fabian Society members:G.B. Shaw and H.G. Wells.
Socialisms principles
Egalitarianism or equality. Humankind will be unified and cooperative, once wealth is owned and used for the common good. Capitalism exploits the very people who create societys wealth. Moralism. Division of rich & poor is evil; capitalism is fundamentally unjust. Instead, the ideal future emphasizes peace, social justice and true liberty for all.
the Scotsman, Keir Hardie. The growth of labor unions gave voice to
socialism in Britain. By 1906, it won 26 seats in Commons. Had to form a political coalition with the Liberal Party. By the 1920s, Labour would replace the Liberals as on of the two major British political parties.
Persistence of Capitalism
Explained by the Italian philosopher and political theorist: Antonio Gramsci (18911937) by the idea of hegemony.
Persistence of Capitalism
Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also ideolgically, through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the bourgeoisie became the common sense values of all. Thus a consensus culture developed in which people in the workingclass identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
Thatcherism
Thatcher came to power after the economic crisis in the mid-1970s, which was largely blamed on the big state and over-mighty trade unions. Thatcherism thus claimed that a smaller state, freer markets and weaker trade unions would be the cure for Britain's economic decline.
Cultural Materialism
Raymond Williams: we cannot separate art from other kinds of social practice, in such a way as to make them subject to quite special and distinct laws
Cultural Materialism
This attention to social process has far-reaching consequences. To begin with it leads us beyond idealist literary criticism that preoccupied with supposedly universal truths which find their counterpart in mans essential nature; the criticism in which history is seen as inessential or a constraint transcended in the affirmation of a transhistorical human conditon. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield