Stuart Hall

"Hall, in particular, spends a lot of time in his 1983 lecture wrestling with the so-called “base and superstructure” problem, the notion (to be crude where crudeness is unpardonable) that all ideas and value systems are determined by economics. Hall’s position on this problem is an activist’s. The left’s dismissal of cultural expressions that do not serve the cause of equality as false consciousness is embarrassing, he suggests—or, worse, counterproductive: “I wonder how it is that all the people I know are absolutely convinced that they are not in false consciousness, but can tell at the drop of a hat that everybody else is.” From a pragmatic perspective, it should be assumed that all worldviews have some truth in them. This is the premise of his analysis of Thatcherism, which was careful not just to wag a finger at the working-class sentiments that helped enable the Iron Lady’s rise. It is also why he believed it was so critical to understand them. Thatcherism was not only authoritarian populism; it was a creative right-wing adaptation of the narratives working-class people told themselves about the decline of industrial labor in the late 1970s. Rather than caricature them, the left had to learn from working people—especially when what they’re saying isn’t politically correct. Again, culture could help lead the way to power."

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