The Iron Lady
Apr 9, 2013 1:42:33 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2013 1:42:33 GMT -5
Good morning to you all! Like all British newspapers today, 'The Guardian' leads today with some editorial comment on Margaret Thatcher: the lady and the land she leaves behind. Her legacy is public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed that together shackle the human spirit.
Whether you were for her or against her, Margaret Thatcher set the agenda for the past three and a half decades of British politics. All the debates that matter today in the public arena, whether in economics, social policy, politics, the law, the national culture or this country's relations with the rest of the world, still bear something of the imprint she left on them in her years in office between 1979 and 1990. More than 20 years after her party disposed of her when she had become an electoral liability, British public life is still defined to an extraordinary degree by the argument between those who wish to continue or refine what she started and those who want to mitigate or turn it back. Just as in life she shaped the past 30 years, so in death she may well continue to shape the next 30. These are claims that can be made about no other modern British prime minister. She was in many ways the most formidable peacetime leader this country has had since Gladstone.
The fact that Mrs Thatcher was Britain's first and so far only woman major party leader, chosen entirely on merit, and then Britain's first woman prime minister, were of course huge landmarks. But her gender, though fundamental to her story, was in the end secondary. It was at least as significant, in the evolution of the late 20th-century Tory party, that she came from a petit-bourgeois background, a shopkeeper's daughter, though the man she overthrew in 1975, Ted Heath, had similarly middling origins and John Major an even humbler start. There was something of the rebel and outsider about her, as well as much that was stultifyingly conventional. 'The Guardian' concludes thus:
The 2015 UK General Election will still be fought on Margaret Thatcher's legacy, as much as on anything else. The Conservatives will offer five more years of Thatcherite austerity, whilst Labour will offer the United Kingdom (UK) one nation politics. According to the great philosopher, Georg Hegel, the goal of the dialectic is absolute knowledge (and freedom) on one level, and the organic society on another, a situation in which the divisions in human nature are reconciled. Karl Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else. Marx said we should let the workers rule OK because then they will rule on behalf of the great mass of society, the working class. Bakunin said no. You shouldn't have any rulers, because if workers are rulers, they will cease to be workers and will be rulers. They will follow the interests of the rulers, not the interest interests of the working class.
This is a bit like Orwell's 'Animal Farm', Neil McGowan. The pigs took over, but no one could then tell the difference. Marx thought that this was all rubbish. Marx thought that people in a different society would be different people, would have different, less self-directed interests, and would work together for the benefit of all. If you look at the history of the twentieth century, Bakunin was right? The short answer may be that history is neither about individuals (Carlyle) nor about societies (Marx), but what Georg Hegel calls 'Geist'. It is the idea that a unified view of history is something mental or spiritual, and therefore the process of history is simply ourselves. Indeed, the great philosopher, David Hume, argued that the science of human nature depends upon the observation of our mind and our observation of other human beings. Fair's fair, Gerard? Perhaps human nature does not seem to change that much over time, Sydney Grew, despite the great advances in science and technology?
Whether you were for her or against her, Margaret Thatcher set the agenda for the past three and a half decades of British politics. All the debates that matter today in the public arena, whether in economics, social policy, politics, the law, the national culture or this country's relations with the rest of the world, still bear something of the imprint she left on them in her years in office between 1979 and 1990. More than 20 years after her party disposed of her when she had become an electoral liability, British public life is still defined to an extraordinary degree by the argument between those who wish to continue or refine what she started and those who want to mitigate or turn it back. Just as in life she shaped the past 30 years, so in death she may well continue to shape the next 30. These are claims that can be made about no other modern British prime minister. She was in many ways the most formidable peacetime leader this country has had since Gladstone.
The fact that Mrs Thatcher was Britain's first and so far only woman major party leader, chosen entirely on merit, and then Britain's first woman prime minister, were of course huge landmarks. But her gender, though fundamental to her story, was in the end secondary. It was at least as significant, in the evolution of the late 20th-century Tory party, that she came from a petit-bourgeois background, a shopkeeper's daughter, though the man she overthrew in 1975, Ted Heath, had similarly middling origins and John Major an even humbler start. There was something of the rebel and outsider about her, as well as much that was stultifyingly conventional. 'The Guardian' concludes thus:
" ... In the last analysis, though, her stock in trade was division. By instinct, inclination and effect she was a polariser. She glorified both individualism and the nation state, but lacked much feeling for the communities and bonds that knit them together. When she spoke, as she often did, about "our people", she did not mean the people of Britain; she meant people who thought like her and shared her prejudices. She abhorred disorder, decadence and bad behaviour but she was the empress ruler of a process of social and cultural atomism that has fostered all of them, and still does.
The governments that followed have struggled to put a kinder and more cohesive face on the forces she unleashed and to create stability and validity for the public realm that yet remains. New Labour offered a first response. The coalition is attempting a second draft in grimmer circumstances, and there will be others. There can certainly be no going back to the failed postwar past with which Margaret Thatcher had to wrestle. But there should be no going back to her own failed answer either. She was an exceptionally consequential leader, in many ways a very great woman. There should be no dancing on her grave but it is right there is no state funeral either. Her legacy is of public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed, which together shackle far more of the human spirit than they ever set free."
The governments that followed have struggled to put a kinder and more cohesive face on the forces she unleashed and to create stability and validity for the public realm that yet remains. New Labour offered a first response. The coalition is attempting a second draft in grimmer circumstances, and there will be others. There can certainly be no going back to the failed postwar past with which Margaret Thatcher had to wrestle. But there should be no going back to her own failed answer either. She was an exceptionally consequential leader, in many ways a very great woman. There should be no dancing on her grave but it is right there is no state funeral either. Her legacy is of public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed, which together shackle far more of the human spirit than they ever set free."
The 2015 UK General Election will still be fought on Margaret Thatcher's legacy, as much as on anything else. The Conservatives will offer five more years of Thatcherite austerity, whilst Labour will offer the United Kingdom (UK) one nation politics. According to the great philosopher, Georg Hegel, the goal of the dialectic is absolute knowledge (and freedom) on one level, and the organic society on another, a situation in which the divisions in human nature are reconciled. Karl Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else. Marx said we should let the workers rule OK because then they will rule on behalf of the great mass of society, the working class. Bakunin said no. You shouldn't have any rulers, because if workers are rulers, they will cease to be workers and will be rulers. They will follow the interests of the rulers, not the interest interests of the working class.
This is a bit like Orwell's 'Animal Farm', Neil McGowan. The pigs took over, but no one could then tell the difference. Marx thought that this was all rubbish. Marx thought that people in a different society would be different people, would have different, less self-directed interests, and would work together for the benefit of all. If you look at the history of the twentieth century, Bakunin was right? The short answer may be that history is neither about individuals (Carlyle) nor about societies (Marx), but what Georg Hegel calls 'Geist'. It is the idea that a unified view of history is something mental or spiritual, and therefore the process of history is simply ourselves. Indeed, the great philosopher, David Hume, argued that the science of human nature depends upon the observation of our mind and our observation of other human beings. Fair's fair, Gerard? Perhaps human nature does not seem to change that much over time, Sydney Grew, despite the great advances in science and technology?