WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WORKING CLASS? - with Barnaby Raine, Jonas Patrick Marvin and Annie Olaloku Teriba
postscriptShow Notes
Continuing our series on new ways of understanding British history, this episode concentrates on working class experience. What could a new class politics mean, beyond nostalgia for industry and empire? The conversation starts with Brexit's divisions and the changing experience of urban space in big cities and smaller towns. We then narrate the contradictions of the welfare state after 1945, the seismic counter-revolution against its radical workers and a new way of understanding the era from Thatcher to the present beyond ideas of decline. The last half hour asks, 'what is to be done?' How should we think about left horizons and strategies beyond twentieth century assumptions, including the pervasive celebration of work? Chapters : (00:00) Intro (02:35) Brexit (07:55)Gentrification Radical 1970s (15:54) Productivism (27:30) Social democracy: a global view (29:20) Disorganised abandonment (34:44) Britain in decline? (38:28) Capitalism makes us sick (42:13) Reindustrialise? (44:43) Shit politicians (47:15) Post-work socialism? (50:27) Strategies (53:01) Class politics now (55:33) Waiting for revolution? (1:08:10)
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