Ralph Miliband Puns

https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1985/xx/beyondsd.htm

>In seeking to explain the reasons for their opposition to the policies advocated by the Left, social democratic leaders themselves have often advanced the view that whatever the merits of these policies might be, extreme caution must be exercised in proposing anything which ‘the electorate’ could find ‘extreme’ and therefore unacceptable. On this view, the reluctance of social democratic leaders to endorse, let alone initiate, radical policies, is not due to their own predilections, but to their realism, and to their understanding of the fact that to move too far ahead of ‘public opinion’ and advocate policies for which ‘the public’ is not ready is to court electoral disaster and political paralysis.
>
>This raises some very large and important points. It is undoubtedly true that ‘the electorate’ in the capitalist-democratic regimes of advanced capitalist countries does not support parties which advocate, or which appear to stand for, the revolutionary overthrow of the political system; and ‘the electorate’ here includes the overwhelming mass of the working class as well as other classes. This rejection by the working class and ‘lower income groups’ in general of parties committed or seemingly committed to the overthrow of the political and social order is a fact of major political importance, to say the least.
>
>However, this does not at all mean that organised labour, the working class and the subordinate population of advanced capitalist countries (which constitutes the vast majority of their population) is also opposed to far-reaching changes and radical reforms. Social democratic parties have themselves been driven on many occasions to proclaim their transformative ambitions in their electoral manifestos, and to speak of their firm determination to create ‘a new social order’; and have nevertheless scored remarkable electoral victories with such programmes. Popular commitment to radical transformative purposes may not, generally speaking, be very deep; but there has at any rate been very little evidence of popular revulsion from such purposes.
>
>**The notion that very large parts of ‘the electorate’, and notably the working class, is bound to reject radical programmes is a convenient alibi, but little else. The real point, which is crucial, is that such

https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1990/xx/counterheg.htm

The first part summarises the rest of the essay well, and also makes it clear what relevance this has to Labour today, so I'll copy that bit here

>Hegemony, in Gramsci’s meaning of the term, involves both coercion and consent. As consent, it means the capacity of dominant classes to persuade subordinate ones to accept, adopt and ‘interiorise’ the values and norms which dominant classes themselves have adopted and believe to be right and proper. This might be described as the strong meaning of hegemony-as-consent. A weaker version is the capacity of dominant classes to persuade subordinate classes that, whatever they might think of the prevailing social order, and however alienated they might be from it, any alternative would be catastrophically worse, and that in any case there was nothing much that they could do to bring about any such alternative. Weaker though this second version might be, it is not much less effective than the first one in consolidating the social order. In either version, however, hegemony is not something that can ever be taken to be finally and irreversibly won: on the contrary, it is something that needs to be constantly nurtured, defended and reformulated.

>The dominant classes of capitalist-democratic regimes understand this very well, and do not take hegemony for granted. The whole history of these regimes, since the achievement of an extended suffrage, the creation of national working class movements, and serious political competition between bourgeois and labour or socialist parties, has been marked by a determined ‘engineering of consent’ on the part of conservative forces, and by their fierce striving to win the hearts and minds of their subordinate populations. The sources of these struggles have been extremely varied, and their forms have ranged from the most sophisticated and subtle to the most stridently demagogic. The purpose, however, is always the popular ratification of the prevailing social order, and the rejection by the working class (and everybody else) of any notion that there could be a radical and viable alternative to that order. This purpose, it should be added, is also served by real concessions to pressure from below, notably in the realm of welfare services: it would be a great mistake to take hegemony-as-consent to be purely a matter of mystification.

>Be that as it may, the main reason why the struggle for hegemony-as-consent

In this essay, we seek to answer two closely related questions: first, why socialists in advanced capitalist countries should want to move beyond social democracy; and secondly, what are the requirements and implications of such a move. Until not so long ago, the first of these questions would have seemed rather indecent: of course all serious socialists wanted to move beyond social democracy. Today, no such intention or desire can be taken for granted. For even where there is sharp criticism of the limitations and derelictions of social democracy, there is also an implicit acceptance of it, based upon a despairing uncertainty about what else is possible. So both questions do need to be probed.

An answer to the first of them – why socialists should want to move beyond social democracy – requires a brief recapitulation of its nature and record. An initial distinction needs to be made for this purpose between social democracy before 1914, and social democracy after World War I and particularly since 1945. In its earlier formative phase, social democracy unambiguously stood for the wholesale transformation of the social order, from capitalism to socialism, on the basis of the social appropriation of the main means of production, distribution and exchange, a far reaching democratisation of the political system, and a drastic levelling out of social inequality. This was to be achieved by way of a long series of economic, social and political reforms, to be brought about by way of a parliamentary majority reflecting a preponderance of electoral and popular support. There were many differences between socialists as to the precise nature of the reforms to be realised, and the strategy to be employed in their advancement and there were also revolutionary socialists in the ranks of social democracy, of whom Rosa Luxemburg was the most notable representative, who proposed a strategy of mass struggle far removed from the electoralism and parliamentarism of the predominant current. Still, ‘reformists’ could still very plausibly argue that they too were fully committed to the socialist project. As Jean Jaurès once said about the French Socialist Party, ‘precisely because it is a party of revolution ... the Socialist Party is the most actively reformist’. [1]

What gave ‘reformism’ its pejorative connotations and made it all but synonymous with class collaboration

Unscientific straw poll, with slightly leading title, but interested in trying to work out whether it's backfired as much as I personally think it has.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1990/xx/counterheg.htm

Whole thing is worth reading to expand on the start that I'm copying over here and the ending below

>Hegemony, in Gramsci’s meaning of the term, involves both coercion and consent. As consent, it means the capacity of dominant classes to persuade subordinate ones to accept, adopt and ‘interiorise’ the values and norms which dominant classes themselves have adopted and believe to be right and proper. This might be described as the strong meaning of hegemony-as-consent. A weaker version is the capacity of dominant classes to persuade subordinate classes that, whatever they might think of the prevailing social order, and however alienated they might be from it, any alternative would be catastrophically worse, and that in any case there was nothing much that they could do to bring about any such alternative. Weaker though this second version might be, it is not much less effective than the first one in consolidating the social order. In either version, however, hegemony is not something that can ever be taken to be finally and irreversibly won: on the contrary, it is something that needs to be constantly nurtured, defended and reformulated.
>
>The dominant classes of capitalist-democratic regimes understand this very well, and do not take hegemony for granted. The whole history of these regimes, since the achievement of an extended suffrage, the creation of national working class movements, and serious political competition between bourgeois and labour or socialist parties, has been marked by a determined ‘engineering of consent’ on the part of conservative forces, and by their fierce striving to win the hearts and minds of their subordinate populations. The sources of these struggles have been extremely varied, and their forms have ranged from the most sophisticated and subtle to the most stridently demagogic. The purpose, however, is always the popular ratification of the prevailing social order, and the rejection by the working class (and everybody else) of any notion that there could be a radical and viable alternative to that order. This purpose, it should be added, is also served by real concessions to pressure from below, notably in the realm of welfare services: it would be a great mistake to take hegemony-as-consent to be purely a matter of mystification.
>
>Be that