Looking for a Dream, Surviving a Time of Nightmares: Eric Hobsbawm, Marxism Today and the Resignification of Antifascism During Thatcher’s Time

Abstract

In 1979 Margaret Thatcher came to power in the United Kingdom inaugurating the rise of neoliberalism. In the pages of Marxism Today an intense debate took place about the strategy of the Labour Party to defeat Thatcher and Thatcherism. The author aims to show how the famous communist historian Eric Hobsbawm appealed to his own memories of the French Popular Front and the antifascist movement to give ideological content to the fight against Thatcherism on two points. First, Thatcherism as a new international threat similar to fascism in the 1930s. Second, by appealing emotionally to his own experiences during the 1930s in order to show readers how antifascism could work to unite the diverse progressive forces ranged against Thatcher. By doing so, Hobsbawm and the contributors to Marxism Today would reshape antifascism based on two ideals: the unity of the majority, in particular, the unity of the working class, against the forces of reaction. Second, the strength of unity to articulate policies for the emancipation of the working class.