Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, SocialismCollected essays and talks from one of Britain’s great thinkers, ranging across political and cultural theory Raymond Williams possessed unique authority as Britain’s foremost cultural theorist and public intellectual. Informed by an unparalleled range of reference and the resources of deep personal experience, his life’s work represents a patient, exemplary commitment to the building of a socialist future. This book brings together important early writings including “Culture is Ordinary,” “The British Left,” “Welsh Culture” and “Why Do I Demonstrate?” with major essays and talks of the last decade. It includes work on such central themes as the nature of a democratic culture, the value of community, Green socialism, the nuclear threat, and the relation between the state and the arts. Here too, collected for the first time, are the important later political essays which undertake a thorough revaluation of the principles fundamental to the idea of socialist democracy, and confirm Williams as a shrewd and imaginative political theorist. In a sober yet constructive assessment of the possibilities for socialist advance, Williams—in the face of much recent intellectual fashion—powerfully reasserts his lifelong commitment to “making hope practical, rather than despair convincing.” This valuable collection confirms Raymond Williams as a thinker of rare versatility and one of the outstanding intellectuals of our century. |
Contents
Communications and Community | |
The Idea of a Common Culture | |
The Arts Council | |
Why Do I Demonstrate? | |
Youre a Marxist Arent You? | |
Commitment and Alignment | |
An Alternative Politics | |
Problems of the Coming Period | |
Socialists and Coalitionists | |
The Politics of Nuclear Disarmament | |
Socialism and Ecology | |
Between Country and City | |
Decentralism and the Politics of Place | |
The Forward March of Labour Halted? | |
Freedom as Duty | |
Welsh Culture | |
The Social Significance of 1926 | |
The Importance of Community | |
Key Words in the Miners Strike | |
The British Left | |
Ideas and the Labour Movement | |
Democracy and Parliament | |
Walking Backwards into the Future | |
Hesitations before Socialism | |
Towards Many Socialisms | |
The Practice of Possibility | |
Select Bibliography | |
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active actual alliance alternative areas argument Arts Council Britain British campaign capitalism capitalist central centre commitment complex consciousness contemporary course crisis crucial culture decisions defeat democratic direct disarmament diverse dominant ecology economic effects elected electoral European nuclear disarmament experience fact forms genuine happened human idea important industrial institutions intellectual interest kind Labour government labour movement Labour Party Left Left Review living long revolution look major Marxist mean military modern necessary nuclear war nuclear weapons organization parliament parliamentary democracy particular Plaid Cymru political popular position practice priority problem production public ownership question radical Raymond Williams relations representative representative democracy selfmanagement sense significant simple situation social order socialist specific struggle Terry Eagleton things trade unions tradition vote Wales Welsh whole Williams’s workingclass writers