From New Right, Thatcherism to Critical theory and progression; the link - neoliberalism.

There is no society – Foucault, Thatcher and the rejection of the state.  

“And you know there is no such thing as society” Margaret Thatcher, 31st October 1987. 

In Margaret Thatcher’s famous or indeed infamous Woman's Own article interview, she was to cement through euphemism an eerily prescient formula for the new bourgeoisies of contemporary globalised economic and social progressive and critical politics – the postmodern alchemy of neoliberalism and culture. Economic doctrine and not cultural mantra was to be her forte, but her legacy of the destruction of the Keynesian consensus, the removal of the barriers of economic production and representation, and the selling of the patriotic socialist heart of industrial society, was a manna for a revitalised and to be globalised bourgeoisie.  

The paradox is clear and can be identified through the embrace of the “Intellectual consecration of neoliberalism by the Left”. 1 Driven by the prophet of postmodernism’s, Michel Foucault, bio politics ensured a move away from the traditions of class-based Marxism, and economic socialist realities, to cultural and economic fluidity, freedoms and choice – the essence of bio power, the challenge of convention and above all the challenge to the existing role and importance of the state; “Foucault did not critique neoliberalism during this period; rather, he strategically endorsed it”2 

And therein lies the paradoxical link between the postmodern, cultural purveyor of individual autonomy and New Right Thatcherite; a rejection of humanism; a rejection of the state mechanism as a force of societal emancipation; a rejection of, in the words of Aristotle and/or Arendt the zoon politikon or political animal; the rejection of society; and above all, a fascination and embrace of neoliberalism as a force to drive hegemonic societal, cultural and economic change. In essence – a symbiotic link between New Right Thatcherite economic ideology and bio powers march towards progressive cultural and individual autonomy.  

I argue a new form of progression, a cultural dynamic which has been grasped squarely by the contemporary bourgeoisies, is driven by the ambiguities of the ménage between “muscular” neo liberal economic freedoms and the cultural pursuit of Foucault’s bio power – the states control of individuals. Wherever you look, industrial liberation, David Zeglen argues, on economic liberation, sporting, education and media liberation on an economic neoliberal front, this has aided and abetted the subsequent rise of bourgeoisie progressive agendas. Thatcher’s infamy in the assertion of no society and the obedience to Hayek and Friedman’s Austrian and Chicago obedience to market enslavement, banished the role of the state and challenged, as Hayek does with penal and economic reforms, the role of the state. 3  

Ideologies and theories are, I argue, though forged in different spheres between middle English, lower middle class conservative antipathy against the traditions of aristocracy – Thatcherism – and the post war continents revaluation of normative values and institutions, both resonate with neoliberal mantra. Fou Foucault, “he saw neoliberal governmentality as a way of subverting the disciplinary and biopolitical elements of welfare state liberalism 4 - as did Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism. Indeed, the economic doctrine that has borne fruit from Chicago, the EU, via Chile, is a bedfellow, or has grown on parallel lines with the reorganisation of politics as a cultural dynamic; in response to Daniel Zamora and Michael C. Behrent assertions that neoliberalism offered a pathway to bio power cultural hegemony, David Zeglen, again argues in a piece offering a heartfelt support for Foucault’s indifference to neoliberal doctrine as an antidote to societal change on a hegemonic platform, that though,  

“American cultural studies will no doubt recognize that the field, since at least the 1990s, is in fact closely tied with a postmodern politics of identity that has found a comfortable compatibility with neoliberalism”. 5 

A comfortable compatibility. Thatcher's rejection of the state, her assertion of a redirection of the state mechanism on a hegemonic basis from industrial ate liberalism and Keynesian demand economics, is based through an adoption of Friedman's mantra a problematic government machine, a corrosive state mechanism and individual bureaucratic indifference – all a nice fit - a comfortable compatibility with progressive adherence to identity, individuality, rejection of class politics and economic liberty.  

This series of works will continue with an examination of critical theory.