The Origins of Neoliberal Authoritarianism
This essay intervenes in contemporary debates around neoliberalism and its relationship to both authoritarianism and social democracy. It does so by reconstructing the debate on Thatcherism that took place between Stuart Hall and Bob Jessop in the 1980s. Both authors provide materialist analyses of Thatcherism that point to important continuities, at the level of both political economy and authoritarian political technique, between her hegemonic project and late-stage social democracy. I argue that this provides an antidote to the social democratic nostalgia that is the potential product of the ways that neoliberalism is frequently theorised in the contemporary literature. While both thinkers highlight these continuities, they are more obviousin Jessop’s institutional approach to hegemony than in Hall’s analysis of Thatcher’s ideology.