Thanks to @evansmithist
Living Marxism: from contrarians to conservatives & Royalists
The Guardian once printed that I was the Editor of Living Marxism, the glossy magazine, the Revolutionary Communist Party ran in the 1980s. Prudently they printed a correction the next day. I was not then and nor had I ever been the Editor of LM or a member of the RCP. I was of course a socialist beard and remain so.
Not so the RCP (they were never big on beards).In the 1980s they pitched up often as contrarians calling for a ballot in the miners strike and wanting to debate rather than no platform fascists.
LM and the RCP disappeared. While it may be pushing it to suggest that Spiked OnLine is a successor it does have some of the people and strikes quite a few of the same positions. Except over the decades a move has taken place from contrarianism(though that remains on display) to conservatism and indeed arguably Conservatism.
Lady (Claire) Fox who sits in the Lords was briefly a Farage-ist MEP and today Frank Furedi the RCP’s lead theoretician has tweeted in support of the Royal Family.
Elizabeth II gave Britons a connection to a past they could be proud of. She affirmed values that our cultural and political elites have long since trashed and abandoned. She will be sorely missed
There are of course a number of well-worn theories to account for those who start on the left and later appear on the right. The conservatism of age is one, another is that they were only joking in the 1980s. I don’t think either works. Rather you don’t get newspaper columns or a seat in the Lords as a revolutionary Marxist. There is money and influence to be had by making right-wing points while still claiming to have some vague and unspecified affiliation to the left.
More basically though if the Living Marxists did have hope of changing the world for the better 40 years ago, they have in fact succeeded not in doing that but in changing themselves instead. Marx and Engels would have understood. They would not have approved
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