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POLITICS AS CULTURE: STUART HALL

Even if working-class prosperity is a mixed affair … it is there: the fact has
bitten deep into the experience of working people … There has been an
absolute rise in living standards for the majority of workers, fuller wage-
packets, more overtime. A gradual filling out of the home with some of the
domestic consumer goods which transform it from a place of absolute
drudgery. For some, the important move out of the constrictive environment
of the working-class slum into the more open and convenient housing
estate or even the new industrial town. The scourge of TB and diseases of
undernourishment no longer haunting whole regions: the Health Service to
turn to if the children are ill. Above all, the sense of security – a little space
at least to turn around in. 3

Here the argument seems to be a modest version of the then influential
‘affluent worker’ thesis, put forward by Goldthorpe and others. The sug-
gestion seems to be that material changes in the conditions of life of the
English working class in the post-war period had changed their political
outlook. If the Left was to survive and be victorious, it had to understand
this new working-class lifestyle and adapt to it politically and ideologi-
cally. The reason why ideological flexibility is needed, therefore, has to
do with the effect of changes in material reality and is not simply due to
the inherent requirements of theory as such. This search for ideological
flexibility and freedom but within Marxism, I see as the well-spring of his
work. Although, therefore, Hall frequently and commonly uses words
such as ‘discourse’ and ‘discursive formation’, he has a far more materi-
alist notion of such concepts than Foucault or than many of his readers
may realize.
It would be hard to quarrel with this effort to de-Stalinize Marxism
though some will question whether this is either possible or useful. Hall
clearly thinks that it is essential. Throughout his entire work, this search
for a ‘Marxism without guarantees’ is the fundamental thread which
unites it all. This search for democracy and flexibility within Marxism is
necessary for anyone who considers themselves progressive in the world
today. This is because the body of ideas in Marxism has been and con-
tinues to be formative for all critiques of capitalism of any progressive
stripe, even when the corpus of Marxism is firmly rejected. To ignore
this quest therefore greatly weakens contemporary efforts at progressive
social, economic and political reform of whatever variety. Indeed, a classic
example of this weakness is risk society theory which has increased the
gap between a new brand of marketized social democracy and those who
see the need for more radical critiques of capitalism. Thus, the necessity
to dialogue with Marxism remains as urgent as ever. At issue is not
such a dialogue per se but whether the particular manner in which Hall

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