Social democracy and labourism

Alex Law, Kenny MacAskill

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

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Abstract

The chapter asks whether labourism continues to have any relevance for social democratic Scotland in the greatly changed context of a reconstituted working-class and a highly constrained union movement contending with the crisis-ridden rapids of neo-liberalism. As the local fraction of ‘the planetary neoliberal vulgate’ identified two decades ago by Bourdieu and Wacquant (2001), Scotland is governed by a highly educated, socially unrepresentative professional managerial class (PMC) which has banished all talk of ʻcapitalismʼ, ʻclassʼ and ʻexploitationʼ as obsolete. This takes on additional significance for a small, inter-connected polity like Scotland where neo-liberal prescriptions are advanced alongside social democratic verities in the form of competitive nationalism. An independent Scottish state, it was (and is) hoped, would undo the iniquities inflicted on society and economy by neo-liberalism. Yet the competitive nationalism advanced in some quarters of the Independence movement suggests otherwise.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationA new Scotland
Subtitle of host publicationbuilding an equal, fair and sustainable society
EditorsGregor Gall
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherPluto Press
Chapter21
Pages258-269
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9780745345086, 9780745345109
ISBN (Print)9780745345062, 9780745345079
Publication statusPublished - 20 May 2022

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