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The Thatcher Era in Perspective
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15181 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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4 / 1989 |
5,242 Words |
| Author
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Alfred Sherman
Alfred Sherman was an adviser to the Thatcher government. |
As Reagan's term of office comes to a close, his tenure will be subjected to critical review by opponents and supporters alike, the latter the more critical precisely because they had hoped for so much more and because the discrepancies between the ideal and the performance give them no rest. Because President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher were so closely identified in the public mind as defenders of private enterprise no assessment of the political fruits of the postwar capitalist renaissance can avoid equating Reagan's eight years and Mrs. Thatcher's first ten.
It study of the similarities is to explain more than it obscures, the differences need prior delineation. The standpoint from which the era is to be assessed needs to be made explicit if presuppositions are not to be smuggled in, however inadvertently. For example, I eschew the words success and failure because they suggest the possibility of success, if only one starts with the right policies.
In many catastrophic situations, however, there may be no right policies and little hope of success. The modern West is currently in crisis and there is no reason to take its continued existence as a given. It seems to suffer serious spiritual maladies, which are reproduced in its politics, economics, and behavior. The Marxists have by and large set the agenda for our discussion of social issues. Crime, drug-addiction, rape, child abuse, and all other ills are treated as though they were offshoots of economic and social "deprivation"--unemployment, bad housing, and so forth--and amenable to cure by government measures affecting institutions and material circumstances. This approach, however, is not thought through. If it were, the poverty of the materialist explanation would
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