‘In time,every worker a capitalist’: Accumulation by legitimation and authoritarian neoliberalism in Thatcher’s Britain

Abstract

In this article, I show that current literature on authoritarian neoliberalism has not only overlooked the crucial role of legitimation in authoritarian neoliberal regimes, both pre- and post-2008, it has also failed to properly conceptualise it. While existing scholarship mainly pictures neoliberal governments as pursuing legitimation to ensure accumulation remains unopposed, I instead argue that neoliberal governments see legitimation as an instrument of, and precondition for, accumulation – as directly feeding into it. Indeed, my contribution shows that governments aim to transform citizens into neoliberal subjects that actively and willingly participate in neoliberal accumulation. I call this project, which relies on state-driven mass behavioural change, a strategy of ‘accumulation by legitimation’. The article illustrates this with the case of Thatcherism, analysing newly released governmental archival sources through a Marxist-Foucauldian framework. I unearth the Thatcher government’s propaganda campaign and employee involvement policy, which were a combined effort to influence the British people through governmental education, share ownership as well as communication and consultation in industry. The objective was to turn British workers into self-identifying capitalists that would willingly support the market order and accept its imperatives by themselves, such as the need to moderate their own wage demands. Thatcherites saw this as a prerequisite for their employment and counter-inflationary policies to work. This far-reaching strategy however faced significant obstacles, both from inside government and from British capital, illustrating key contradictions in neoliberalism. While neoliberal ideas endure, this sheds light on the incomplete and fragile character of neoliberal hegemony up to today.

Introduction

Since the Great Recession, there has been increasing debate around the proliferation of authoritarian statecraft around the globe, as governments seek to safeguard accumulation and discipline their citizens. Perhaps the most successful synthesis of this effort is the concept of ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ (Bruff, 2014; Tansel, 2017). This argues that the post-2008 crisis of legitimation has led governments to expand their authoritarian repertoire to impose neoliberal accumulation strategies, while largely moving away from attempts to seek legitimation (Bruff, 2014: 116–117). The concept’s periodization of authoritarianism has received some criticism (for example, Fabry, 2019: 166–167, Ryan, 2019: 120–122) notwithstanding the proponents’ nuanced account which accepts that neoliberalism is itself authoritarian, in turn reflecting recurrent tendencies within capitalism at large (Bruff and Tansel, 2019: 238–239).

Although it is intertwined with the coercion aspect, scholars not only have left the legitimation component of the debate still relatively unexplored, but have also not adequately conceptualized it. Indeed, questions first remain around legitimation and its purported change in importance, shape and role – if at all taking place. This consideration calls for a closer study of consent-building both pre-and post-Great Recession. In the contemporary context, some scholars (for example, Adaman and Akbulut, 2021; Kreitmeyr, 2019; Ward and Ward, 2021) have started questioning authoritarian neoliberalism’s legitimation claim, arguing that legitimation has remained central to the successful deployment of authoritarian accumulation by governments after 2008.

More crucially, the article’s main contribution is to challenge existing understandings of legitimation in (authoritarian) neoliberalism, through a more thorough examination of the above relationship. I do so by looking at Britain in the pre-2008 period, in particular the Thatcher government, well documented as pursuing an authoritarian accumulation programme which unfolded not at the expense of consent but supported by it (Hall, 1979, 1985). In this context, Thatcherism’s strategy of consent-building has so far been mainly described as a desire to garner political support for the Conservative Party, its authoritarian political economy and capitalism more widely (Gamble, 1988; Hall, 1979, 1985; Jessop et al., 1988). More widely, most accounts of legitimation in authoritarian neoliberal regimes largely see this in similar terms (for example, Adaman and Akbulut, 2021; Kreitmeyr, 2019; Ward and Ward, 2021).

However, I argue that authoritarian neoliberal governments such as Thatcher’s really perceive legitimation as directly contributing to accumulation, as it builds the social and economic conditions for their economic programmes to unfold successfully. The objective is to make the public not just passively accept, but ideally to actively and willingly participate in, a neoliberal accumulation strategy. This consent-building project, which relies on widespread behavioural change in line with market principles, is a strategy that I term ‘accumulation by legitimation’.

Indeed I find that upon arriving to power, the Conservatives asserted that part of the country’s crisis of unemployment and inflation resided with British workers’ attitudes. Therefore, the government embarked on a radical programme to remake those attitudes altogether. I show how using propaganda and employee involvement – limited industrial democracy and share ownership – the government sought to embed a sense of ownership in British society and increase workers’ access to economic information, through governmental ‘education’, communication at company level and shareholder status. This process was understood as having the power to directly influence workers, detaching them from previously held notions about pay and favouring their identification with their companies, their employers, neoliberal economics and capitalism at large. In turn, this would increase their motivation and productivity, and in particular lead them to actively moderate their wages by themselves. Confident that this mechanism would operate, Thatcherites thus perceived behavioural change and active consent as a precondition of the success of their aggressive counter-inflationary and employment strategy. However, as also I show, the profound interventionist character of this strategy faced stiff opposition, both from the ranks of British capital and from within government itself. These obstacles drastically limited the implementation of some key policies and the behavioural reach of the overall strategy, which is symptomatic of the core tensions at the heart of neoliberal – and more widely capitalist – governance.

In the remainder of the article, a first section builds upon the work of Stuart Hall and combines the governmentality literature’s insights on neoliberal governance and subjectivity with a Marxist approach to the state. I challenge existing accounts of legitimation and conceptualise legitimation not simply as politically essential for accumulation to unfold unopposed, but as a direct economic means to pursue an accumulation programme. I then make an empirical contribution by analysing newly declassified governmental papers from the National Archives, providing an account of the Thatcher government’s contested agenda of propaganda, limited industrial democracy and share ownership. I conclude by contrasting the enduring power of neoliberal ideas – entrenched by strategies such as the one described in this article – with the continued fragility of neoliberal hegemony, which opens up possibilities for resistance.

Accumulation, coercion and the role of legitimation in authoritarian neoliberalism

In recent years, the multifaceted shifts of neoliberal governance have increasingly been discussed under the label of authoritarian neoliberalism (Bruff, 2014). Bruff (2014: 115–117) observed that the crisis of accumulation and legitimation which crystallized in 2007–2008 left governments less able to stabilize neoliberalism’s ‘hegemonic aura’, instead increasingly falling back on various strategies of coercion. Those do not simply rely on force; they also actively seek to ‘pre-emptively’ insulate governance from popular demands. Altogether, as Tansel (2017: 2) described, these depoliticizing strategies simultaneously ‘discipline, marginalize and criminalize’ social groups while reducing the ‘avenues in which neoliberal policies can be challenged’, notably through the recomposition of judicial and administrative apparatuses.

This theorization of neoliberalism inherently involves a periodization claim, which some have criticized by highlighting the authoritarian character of many first-stage neoliberal regimes (Fabry, 2019: 166; Ryan, 2019: 119). Nevertheless, credence must be given to proponents of authoritarian neoliberalism, who have always emphasized that post-crisis authoritarian tendencies did not constitute a ‘wholesale break’ from pre-crisis governance strategies, but only a shift towards authoritarianism in quantitative and qualitative terms (Bruff, 2014: 117, Tansel, 2017: 3). This was more largely underpinned by an adequate conceptualization of the capitalist state as the inherently authoritarian custodian of accumulation (Bruff, 2014: 119, Tansel, 2017: 4, 10).

Still, the need remains to engage with authoritarian neoliberalism’s less examined legitimation claim, that is the argument that since the Great Recession, increasingly authoritarian statecraft has been less interested with ‘seeking consent for hegemonic projects’ (Bruff, 2014: 116; see also Davies’ (2016) ‘punitive neoliberalism’). It is clear that an aggressive, state-led reformulation of both governments’ role and of citizens’ expectations is under way (Bruff, 2014: 116–117), and that states have increasingly resorted to crude class war measures (Davies, 2016: 130–131; Tansel, 2017: 4). Nevertheless, it remains to be proven that this is mutually exclusive with a search for consent, and more particularly that quantitative and qualitative shifts have occurred at this level. From this consideration emerges the need for an analysis of the relationship between the manufacturing of consent and the deployment of coercive economic strategies, both then and now.

When it comes to the pre-2008 period, interrogating the concept of authoritarian neoliberalism has led some to emphasize that strategies of consent-building have a long-standing relationship with the authoritarian character of vanguard neoliberalism (Fabry, 2019: 169, Ward and Ward, 2021: 4). Indeed, alongside its raw authoritarianism, early-stage neoliberalism also felt an imperative to build widespread consent by making promises of a new world that would emerge out of the ashes of the postwar consensus (Hall, 1979, 1985; Peck and Theodore, 2019). Yet, many have argued that after 2008, neoliberalism equally sensed that consent-building was still needed, to help the reimposition of an accumulation programme that has failed to offer much beyond the ‘deterioration in [most people’s] living and working conditions’ (Bozkurt-Güngen, 2018: 220). Various scholars have thus stressed the enduring role of the “politics of support” to the successful deployment of a coercive neoliberal programme (Adaman and Akbulut, 2021; Kreitmeyr, 2019; Isleyen and Kreitmeyr, 2021; Lavery, 2018; Ward and Ward, 2021).

These important contributions thus first interrogate the claim that strategies of consent-building have receded quantitatively or qualitatively after 2008. In turn, this opens up avenues for a more detailed reconceptualization of the relationship between legitimation, accumulation and coercion in neoliberalism, which I contend may be done by examining governmental strategies from the pre-2008 period. Indeed, contemporary interplays between authoritarian accumulation and legitimation might not be entirely dissimilar from past ones, and much could be learned by studying those similar contexts of economic crisis and rising authoritarianism.

Indeed, the deployment of authoritarian accumulation in early neoliberalism did not necessary lead to the crowding-out of the need to build consent: on the contrary, authoritarianism was ‘pioneered by, harnessed to, and to some extent legitimated by a populist groundswell from below’ (Hall, 1985: 116 cited in Ward and Ward, 2021: 5). Hall’s ‘authoritarian populism’ encapsulated this analysis, whereby Thatcherism was presciently described as acutely concerned with mobilizing and re-articulating consent to allow the success of its attempt to dismantle the postwar institutions of organized labour, welfare and redistributive justice (Hall, 1979, 1985). This was the case even as Thatcherism relied on a deeply authoritarian form of governance, characterized by executive centralization, the bypassing of corporatist institutions, as well as the strengthening of the state’s repressive and judicial apparatuses (Gamble, 1988; Ryan, 2019).

The work of Hall and others (Gamble, 1988; Hall and Jacques, 1983; Jessop et al., 1988) provide a strong basis to understand neoliberal legitimation projects, essentially seeing them as preoccupied with consolidating political support for an authoritarian accumulation strategy by reorienting popular values, beliefs and attitudes. Here, Jessop et al.(1988: 144–145) note that Thatcherism often operated to the detriment of strict neoliberal economics, or of capital’s short-term interests, if this was thought necessary to change political perceptions towards the wider agenda. In that sense then, ‘restructuring for capital’ was as much concerned ‘with social and political recomposition’ as it was with direct economic results (Jessop et al., 1988: 144–145).

However, I contend that in many of these cases, Thatcherites may have seen ‘social and political recomposition’ not just as gaining support for their authoritarian accumulation strategy (which was destructive for some social groups), but also as preconditions for their accumulation strategy to function in the first place. This argument challenges the traditional view of the relationship between legitimation and (authoritarian) accumulation. Accumulation and legitimation are often seen as contradictory, as the former usually undermines the latter and vice-versa. Indeed, prioritizing accumulation squeezes the working class, for example, through wage suppression and reduced welfare provision, thereby leading to discontent – while on the other hand, responding to discontent by ceding to working-class demands erodes profitability and loosens the discipline of the international market (Copley and Moraitis, 2021: 32; Rogers, 2013: 6–7). Nevertheless, I argue that legitimation might not simply be the casualty of continued accumulation; rather governments may also regard legitimation as pursuing adjustment and flexible accumulation by other means. This, in other words, is a strategy of ‘accumulation by legitimation’.

To best explore this relationship, I remain subscribed to the broad Marxist view that maintaining accumulation is the task which the modern capitalist state historically emerged to perform (Burnham, 1996; Clarke, 1988), though I argue that Foucauldian literature offers intermediary categories that are best suited to conceptualize the neoliberal state’s desire to influence ideations and attitudes to this end. This is because despite the capacity of Marxist approaches in locating the reasons behind the emergence of neoliberalism – broadly, the deep crisis of capitalism which led governments, as custodians of accumulation, to coercively restore market discipline and capital’s profitability (Clarke, 1988) – they sometimes display a notable weakness in their approach to legitimation. As Masquelier (2021: 72) notes, this is Marxism’s sometimes ‘simplistic treatment of dominated classes as mere victims rather than agents, thereby failing to appreciate the range of historically distinctive and complex mechanisms through which neoliberalism can legitimate itself’.

It is here that governmentality-inspired accounts succeed, as they emphasize the place that citizens occupy in neoliberalism’s totalizing societal project – the attempt to remake entire societies in its image through financialization, competition, the flexibilization of labour markets, and the suppression of collective political demands (Brown, 2015; Dardot and Laval, 2014). To understand how this package could become hegemonic, here again Hall – who was influenced by Gramscian as well as Foucauldian insights – constitutes a crucial starting point.

As Hall and O’Shea (2013) presciently argued, since the 1980s the state’s intention has been to shape people’s common sense in order to secure a conservative and market-oriented way of thinking: a neoliberal common sense. Nonetheless, common sense also contains progressive elements, such as a desire for cooperation, equality, justice and compassion. This ‘healthy nucleus’ not only means that resistance to neoliberalism – which necessarily unfolds (partly) on the cultural and ideational terrain – is possible; it is ‘a basis on which the left could develop a popular strategy for radical change’ (Hall and O’Shea, 2013: 10).

Thus, as Hall noted, to secure hegemony and quash alternatives, neoliberalism must constantly battle in the realm of ideas (Bruff and Tansel, 2019: 237–238). It does so by embedding both liberal and authoritarian sentiments into the existing common sense, in an attempt to respond to people’s ‘ordinary aspirations’ and recurring fears (Hall, 1991: 123). The goal is to have neoliberal ideas so naturalized and ‘sedimented’ in the collective mind that – even without active support from most of the population – they end up effectively setting the ‘parameters’ and ‘taken-for-granteds’ which shape all political discussion (Hall et al., 2013: 17).

Foucauldian scholarship elaborates in more depth on how the state pursues this objective. In short, neoliberalism’s ambition is to reshape citizens into homo economicus, whose behaviour is regulated by, and for, the successful working of the market mechanism (Foucault, 2008). For this to happen, citizens must become entrepreneurs who invest in their own skills and resilience – their human capital – in face of stringent market imperatives (Brown, 2015). Neoliberal governments however do realize that citizens must be made to behave in this specific way, because market-compatible behaviour is not an entirely natural inclination (Dardot and Laval, 2014). The neoliberal state is thus central to the process: it attempts to directly govern through society, in order to create a depoliticized order of self-sufficient subjects who engage with the market individually as opposed to formulating collective political demands (Da Costa Vieira and Foster, 2022; Bonefeld, 2015, 2017). The state does so through interventions in social spheres that try to instil the social conditions necessary for competition, growth and order (Foucault, 2008).

Here however, I perceive the main intent of these interventions as the pursuit of accumulation while attempting to avoid a crisis of legitimation (Copley and Moraitis, 2021; Bonefeld, 2017), contrary to Foucauldian arguments that see the state’s chief priority as lying with the extension of its own power, and of market rationality, to ultimately increase its ability to govern (Foucault, 2008). Thus, while Foucauldian theories of governmentality are most helpful when used as a toolbox to analyse neoliberal subjectivity, only by remaining underpinned by a Marxist conceptualisation of the state – with its capitalist nature and objectives – can one reveal how legitimation and behavioural change directly feed into accumulation. Indeed, Foucauldians presciently note that neoliberal states want citizens that ‘end up conforming to certain norms of their own accord’ (Dardot and Laval, 2014: 11). But a Marxist argument leads one to highlight that more specifically, states want citizens to behave in a way that is first and foremost compatible with the premises of neoliberal accumulation. This is what lurks behind Foucauldian observations that efficient financial markets require competent and informed risk-takers; that ‘adequate’ pension provision necessitates responsible, self-sufficient investors (Avigur-Eshel and Mandelkern, 2021; Finlayson, 2009; Langley, 2006) and more importantly here, that competitive labour markets (built on decentralised and weakened collective bargaining) require workers engaging with their employers as individual entrepreneurs that refrain from wage bargaining (Amable, 2011; Masquelier, 2021). The resulting synthesis of this Foucauldian toolbox attached to a Marxist framework ascribes a deeply macroeconomic motivation to governmentality-inspired observations that ‘the realization of some neoliberal reforms depends on changing the public’s behaviour’ (Avigur-Eshel and Mandelkern, 2021: 344).

That is why I contend that neoliberal governments may see legitimation based on behavioural change as a quasi-instrument of economic policy and accumulation. In this sense, the neoliberal citizen is both the target of market policy and the precondition to the smooth operation of the market mechanism and of neoliberal agendas – a subject that simultaneously accepts the imperatives of, and contributes to, strategies of flexible accumulation.

Importantly here though, as neoliberal governments push some citizens (often offering incentives) to opt in the market project and accept its economic discipline, an issue immediately arises: this drives a gap with a whole other section of the population who is unable or unwilling to join the project. In response, governments have typically subjected them to state, penal as well as additional economic discipline, which in the British case led to a so-called ‘two-nations’ project which infamously started with Thatcher (Nunn and Tepe, 2022: 1312). This illustrates Hall’s observation that hegemony is ‘not a formation which incorporates everybody’ (Hall, 1991: 127) – and therein may lie a main weakness of those projects. Indeed their reliance on rising authoritarianism may not simply strengthen the state but equally weaken it by eroding its legitimacy, in turn generating new waves of popular resistance against it (Bruff, 2014: 120; Ryan, 2019: 118).

For the state, this makes the success of the opt-in side of the neoliberal strategy even more crucial. One main facet of this strategy, of interest for this article, is called ‘popular capitalism’. Popular capitalism – also called the ‘property-owning democracy’ by British Conservatives and neoliberals, who have perhaps been its strongest proponents – consists of policies that expand private ownership of shares, homes and pensions. This seeks to expose citizens to the property ethic, the risk-taking of financial markets and the self-sufficiency of navigating the market mechanism individually (Francis, 2012). The ultimate goal is reshape the behaviour of neoliberal subjects, in order to change them from welfare-dependent proletarians to responsible investors and productive capitalists who support the market order and are full participants within it (Bonefeld, 2015; Francis, 2012). Illustrating the wide spectrum of consent, this programme reflects a deep concern with winning active consent for neoliberalism in some sections of the population, as governments realize that others will only show limited and passive support (Hall et al., 2013: 18) – while the consent of those that are de facto excluded from neoliberalism’s hegemonic project might not be won at all (Hall, 2011: 727–728). This is why I perceive popular capitalism as integral to the legitimation attempt to shore up the Thatcher government’s authoritarian accumulation programme – although this agenda faced its own limits and contradictions, as I will set out later on.

Studying the Thatcherites’ consent-build programme helps us to uncover a specific form of legitimation project, which aims for accumulation by legitimation. The relevance of analysing this period lies with the observation that this kind of accumulation by legitimation project may be continuing since 2008 (with different degrees of success and resistance from below). Indeed in the UK, the 2010–2015 government led by David Cameron also advanced popular capitalism as a programme of accumulation by legitimation, notably through the continued development of share ownership, mutuals and co-operatives, to simultaneously justify and fill the void left by welfare retrenchment and wage suppression (Bonefeld 2015; Da Costa Vieira and Foster, 2022). But similar undertakings can also be seen elsewhere. For instance, Emmanuel Macron’s ‘start-up nation’ project is an attempt to mobilize the French nation in the development of a competitive innovation hub (Dolez et al., 2022); the Israeli state’s programme of financial education seeks to have households participate in the embedding of competitive financial markets (Avigur-Eshel and Mandelkern, 2021) and the entrepreneurship and youth empowerment agendas of the Jordanian and Moroccan rulers aim to enlist social entrepreneurs to fill the gaps left by the dislocations of neoliberal accumulation (Isleyen and Kreitmeyr, 2021; Kreitmeyr, 2019).

The above post-2008 strategies all rely in some way on the active participation of citizens in a neoliberal accumulation project, going beyond simply building support for a particular authoritarian regime and its economic policies. As I will demonstrate, under Thatcher the Conservatives’ agenda similarly sought to recruit citizens into their economic programme as the precondition for the success of their neoliberal accumulation strategy.

For this, I rely on archival methods, namely the documentary analysis of primary British governmental sources. Governmental archives are the repository of the state’s institutional memory and conscience. As such, these archival records are constituted of documents received and generated in the course of policy discussion and implementation by the core executive (ministers and the Cabinet) and the high-level officials and advisers who make up the state’s policy networks (Kavanagh, 1991; Lowe, 1997). This wealth of evidence allows researchers to develop a plausible interpretation of events by engaging with the questions of the ‘who’, ‘what’, and especially the ‘why’ that research should focus on (Burnham et al., 2008: 187–208). Held at the National Archives in London, the sources used in this article are governmental policy documents originating from two of the most powerful parts of the British state, the Treasury (T) and the Prime Minister’s Office (PREM), who were responsible for the policy area under study. Most such documents were circulated confidentially for internal use at the time, then held as such under the 30-year rule, and finally only declassified in the last few years. As I will now show, this empirical data, which I collected over the course of several fieldwork visits in 2019–2021, reveals the Thatcher governments’ intention to remake workers into capitalists through propaganda as well as exposure to financial and industrial employee involvement.

‘A permanent change in attitude’: State propaganda as industrial relations policy

It is well documented that the Conservatives acceded to power in May 1979 with a clear diagnostic of the causes behind the crisis of British capitalism as well as the remedies to it (see Gamble, 1988; Riddell 1991). The 1970s had seen a generalized crisis of global stagflation, caused by a wide array of structural and contingent factors, which hit Britain particularly hard. The two oil shocks, the collapse of Bretton Woods and the weakened position of the United States combined to exacerbate the continued decline of British capital. British industry simultaneously faced increased international competition, its own backwardness (due partly to imperial preference), as well as rising wage, managerial and welfare costs driven by the consolidation of Keynesian institutions and working-class power (Clarke 1988; Gamble, 1988; Holloway, 1996).

Upon arriving to power then, the Thatcher administration observed that Britain was declining, which notably manifested in ‘lacklustre industrial performance’. ¹ The government worried that in face of growing international competition, the economy was increasingly characterized by high inflation and high wage costs; that pay increases had far outstripped productivity rises; and that the profit share had been steadily eroded by the wage share, in turn leading to declining investment and unemployment. ²

To manage unemployment and inflation, the Thatcher government fought the working class on pay increases through tough negotiations and cash limits, while deregulating the labour market to increase wage and employment flexibility (Riddell, 1991; Roberts, 1989). Thatcherites also repudiated incomes policy, ‘which deals only with a symptom of the disease’ – inflation – rather settling on the control of the money supply (initially). In terms of industrial relations, briefings on the government’s economic strategy made clear that the intention of monetarism was to exert ‘major influence on expectations across the economy as a whole’, by making wage bargainers responsible for unemployment via the indirect constraints of monetary and fiscal policy. ³

Despite what would be the short-lived reign of money supply targeting, it is the enduring depoliticizing character of this framework which is crucial. Indeed money supply targeting, and later on, exchange-rate management, allowed an arm’s length governance of industrial relations which shifted responsibility on negotiators (Buller and Flinders, 2006; Evans, 2000). This operationalizing principle matters here, because the government saw this indirect governing relationship as key to pursue their underlying goal: behavioural change. What made the government optimistic about the likelihood of this change was the belief in rational expectations theory, the neoliberal hypothesis that individuals are rational economic actors capable of adjusting their expectations both rationally and quickly. In the case of inflation, the Thatcher government’s policy counted on the fact that drastic monetarist policies, as well as credible communication about their counter-inflationary intent, would shock workers (and employers) into lowering their inflationary expectations, and in turn their wage demands (and price-setting patterns) (Best, 2020: 602–603).

But even more profoundly, economic strategy documents show that the government blamed economic decline and inflation first and foremost on a problem of ‘working attitudes’. ⁴ At its core, the government’s objective was a totalizing, hegemonic one: to ‘change, and change radically, the framework of expectations that forms the key to individual behaviour’. ⁵ It was this assumption – that those expectations and general attitudes could be changed – which led the Cabinet to task arch-Thatcherite Keith Joseph (then Secretary of State for Industry), along with other ministers, to start a propaganda campaign to influence wages downward. ⁶

The sensitive nature of the campaign explains why the government made sure to never unveil the campaign officially to the public, ⁷ which explains the lack of examination of this topic in the literature so far. Governmental propaganda in peacetime however has a long history in Britain (for example, Tomlinson, 2005). As Tomlinson (2017) demonstrated, throughout the 20th century British governments have increasingly tried to use propaganda to manage popular understanding of economic issues ranging from productivity to inflation, in order to make the electorate ‘respond well’ to, and contribute to the success of, government policies. Similarly here, the government was aware that perceptions around pay constituted ‘deeply ingrained social attitudes’, and that care would need to be taken in ‘striking the right tone and volume of a campaign’ if it were to be effective. ⁸ It thus became rapidly clear to ministers that a large-scale effort was needed, and that this would take a two-pronged approach – a short-term effort first, and a more longer-term campaign second.

Thus, first, what became the ‘quick campaign’ would deal with the urgent need to influence the course of the next pay rounds, by lowering industry negotiators’ expectations around wages through appeals to the constraining parameters set by the economic crisis and contractionary monetary policy. ⁹ Concomitantly, the intention was to eliminate the general belief that money wages should increase each year (and that this would be in line with some concept of a ‘going rate’). Keith Joseph noted that in place of excessive pay settlements, the government wished to substitute an understanding within the population that ‘pay must be based on what employers can afford and on the value of the goods or services each employee produces’ because otherwise this would lead to unemployment and inflation. ¹⁰

Secondly, the so-called ‘longer-term’ campaign would be aimed at the British public as a whole, to try and improve the population’s ‘economic understanding’. ¹¹ Beyond pay, Keith Joseph argued, the objective was to ‘create a wider understanding of the facts of economic life and of the reasons for the Government’s choice of policies’, in order to change attitudes in the long run. ¹² In other words, the intention was for British citizens to embrace beliefs that are in line with neoliberal economic theory – a key condition to the pursuit of neoliberal hegemony, as it then allows the naturalisation of neoliberal policies (Hall et al., 2013: 18).

Both campaigns were agreed with a long-term, ‘all-out commitment within government’ involving a wide range of government departments, helped by John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss (Thatcher’s most prominent economic advisers at the time, who helped the Conservative Party craft its anti-union and wider economic strategy in Opposition), altogether supported by Central Office of Information resources. ¹³ The two-pronged propaganda effort rapidly started and unfolded throughout late 1979 and 1980. Meeting to discuss strategies, ministers agreed that the government should consistently communicate its message both to the British public, in particular through televised addresses, and to industry negotiators, for instance through meetings with and speeches to both industrialists and trade unionists. ¹⁴ The administration would also enlist the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and its sympathetic industry commentators, supplementing this with advertising, press briefings and mail. However, Keith Joseph cautioned against a ‘too heavy assault’ that would ignore how deeply entrenched pre-existing attitudes were. ¹⁵

The propaganda campaign operated in a background where the government persevered in its effort to curtail inflation while trying to avoid the worst consequences of a procyclical counter-inflationary policy on employment. Thus, although after almost a year of propaganda Margaret Thatcher noted that there was some evidence that attitudes had started to change, a ‘major effort’ remained necessary to educate the public about both the national position and what needed to be done ‘to change our economic fortunes’. ¹⁶ Trade unions in particular had to be made responsible for eroding profitability and for increasing unemployment by seeking unreasonable wage increases, while management had to realize the consequences of their weakness in ceding to union demands. ¹⁷ Ultimately, as Angus Maude (then Paymaster General) discussed with the Cabinet, the government’s goal was to restore ‘a fair balance between the rights and duties of everyone in industry’. ¹⁸ For unions this meant learning to live ‘in the real world’ and moving away from a ‘trench warfare mentality’, instead shifting to a spirit of cooperation. Maude reemphasized the need for new attitudes to pay, whereby wage settlements would be firmly related to productivity as well as companies’ performance and prospects. ¹⁹

Crucially, as John Hoskyns summarized, the government believed it could create a direct causal mechanism whereby if enough numbers could be educated, both in the ranks of capital and labour, they would then begin to pressure their respective industry negotiators to reach what would effectively amount to ‘voluntary pay restraint within the union movement’. ²⁰ In other words, there was a clear desire to shift the balance of class forces in order to restore profitability and stable accumulation, and Thatcherites regarded the success of those economic objectives as directly depending on the state changing beliefs in a way that would lead to voluntary wage restraint. The government’s definitive framework – put together by John Vereker (a civil servant working under Hoskyns) to assemble the views of the major government departments, the state and party research apparatuses, and the CBI – was abundantly clear on this point. Indeed, Vereker presented the framework to Benjamin Ingham, Thatcher’s Chief Press Secretary, making the governments’ profoundly behavioural view of the inflation, unemployment and wage issue evident:

The achievement of [the government’s] objective [of reducing inflation] on a lasting basis requires changes in attitudes. In the short term, a reduction in the rate of inflation attributable to wage-push may be achieved by acceptance on the part of wage bargainers that the general economic climate-and notably unemployment and the constraints on public spending-makes pay settlements that keep pace with past inflation beyond real. But unless that acceptance is based on a permanent change in attitude - involving the understanding and acceptance of the relationship between pay and productivity - the ending of the recession, a resumption of growth in output, and the re-emergence of a market for labour will result in a pay explosion similar to those which have followed past incomes policies … ²¹

Towards the end of 1980, Treasury officials noted a welcome development, which was that in line with this framework, the government’s propaganda campaign appeared to have been relatively successful in reducing pay expectations in both the private and public sector. ²² Survey evidence had shown that desired changes were taking place regarding attitudes to pay, with workers understanding its link with productivity, the recessionary context and its impact on their company’s ability to afford wages. Still, the government’s framework had noted that more sustained changes in industrial relations attitudes required further governmental action. ²³ After some discussions amongst Margaret Thatcher and ministers, it was decided that although the ‘quick campaign’ had fulfilled its aims, the longer-term effort would continue. In particular, ministers collectively identified a need to pursue ‘employee involvement’, notably by improving communication between employees and employers. ²⁴

Ownership and involvement as legitimation and accumulation

Where did this specific focus on employee involvement come from? Employee involvement, often called industrial democracy in British politics, designates a spectrum ranging from industrial consultation and communication arrangements to partial or total workers’ control (Williamson, 2016). Traditional accounts of the Thatcher governments (Gamble, 1988; Riddell, 1991; Roberts, 1989 inter alia) have emphasized the authoritarian character of Thatcherism’s industrial relations strategy, characterized by the dismantling of corporatist institutions and taming of the trade unions to restore market discipline and profitability. As such, it is believed that the Conservatives ‘did nothing to fester better industrial relations’ and unequivocally opposed any form of employee involvement (Hetzner, 2003: 104). Many argue that this originated in the Party’s time in Opposition, when the infamous 1977 Bullock report on industrial democracy was published. The report had advocated for a (voluntary) ‘2x + y model’ with two thirds management and one third worker directors on company boards. This caused a national outcry, especially coming from the ranks of British capital, who were deeply anxious that this would increase access to information and decision-making powers for workers in a way which would threaten managerial control, hinder productivity and competitiveness, and deter foreign investment. As a result, Conservatives staunchly opposed Bullock (Williamson, 2016).

Nonetheless, newly released archival documents tell a more nuanced and complex story. Not only did the Conservatives came to support widespread consultation and communication in industry, in fact their view of industrial democracy, which they called ‘employee involvement’, went beyond consultation and communication to also encompass share ownership. This is noteworthy as extant literature has mostly seen share ownership (also called “employee ownership”) as somewhat separate from industrial democracy. With Thatcherism, existing scholarship often discusses share ownership under the umbrella of the well-known “popular capitalism” agenda. The Thatcher government promoted share ownership through various tax incentives, as well as an integral part of the privatization drive, whereby shares in nationalized industries were sold to the public at a preferential rate (see Baddon et al., 1989; Francis, 2012). This was because Thatcherites perceived home, shares and pensions ownership as favouring British people’s propensity to work efficiently, save, and invest, thus adopting self-sufficiency and financial responsibility as core values. This was an attempt to turn British citizens – at least some, while others faced repression and discipline – into neoliberal subjects, small capitalists more likely to vote for the Conservatives and to embrace the market system (Francis, 2012; Letwin, 1992; Riddell, 1991). Hence, the literature conceived of Thatcherite share ownership policy as existing within the so-called ‘property-owning democracy’ agenda.

However, in the government’s view ownership, and by extension popular capitalism, actually existed alongside communication and consultation, forming two sides of the same coin ‘employee involvement’. Geoffrey Howe, then Chancellor, clearly signalled that ‘employee involvement’ was essentially an industrial relations endeavour which combined

two different aspects … first is the need to inform employees about the workings of and prospects for their company and also of the wider questions of how the market works … the second aspect consists of involving workers more fully in … the ownership of the business. ²⁵

Importantly, for the government ownership did not mean workers’ control (as in the radical definition) but only (non-voting) share ownership, the conservative interpretation of the term. ²⁶

The connection between ownership and limited industrial democracy was established as early as 1980, when the Conservatives asserted that employee involvement in industry fell within the effort to build a ‘property-owning democracy’. ²⁷ Simply put, the government believed that involvement would create wider industrial and economic change on the assumption that ‘ownership is a key variable in creating unity between managers and managed’. ²⁸ This would act to reverse ‘entrenched adversarial attitudes which are at the root of our poor industrial relations’. ²⁹ Critically, the combination of financial and industrial involvement was identified as a vital precondition ‘in gaining full-hearted acceptance by the working population of the market economy’, as Nigel Lawson (then Financial Secretary of the Treasury) put it in discussion with colleagues. ³⁰

As noted earlier, this was critical: an understanding and willing acceptance of market imperatives had been the objectives of the propaganda effort, as it was identified as the prerequisite to the wider accumulation programme’s success. This illustrated the government’s realization that the new settlement they were trying to build had to be deeply embedded socially as a new common sense (Hall et al., 2013: 13) – one which had a profound macroeconomic purpose. And indeed, in its definitive policy framework the government argued involvement would generate

a common sense of purpose between management and worker; a sense of responsibility for the success of the enterprise; a sense of the failure of past performance; a sense of pride in achievement; and a sense of having to work hard to survive in a competitive world.

Although the government acknowledged that ‘engendering such attitudes is a long term process’, its conclusion was clear: ‘without them … the economic strategy will not be achieved’. ³¹

It was the lived experience of involvement which would induce support for the market order and thereby change attitudes in line with the government’s policies. Since ownership was ‘an important facet of employee involvement’ in many companies, Tom King (then Secretary of State for Employment) noted, the government’s view was that it could play ‘an important role in improving competitiveness by making employees more interested in their firm’s financial performance’. ³² The Conservatives indeed hoped that increasing participation in general would change attitudes so as to improve ‘satisfaction, productivity and profitability’, as well as reducing industrial conflict and improving pay flexibility. ³³

Spreading ownership in particular was increasingly thought to favour access to information and identification with shareholder mentality. ³⁴ A key component of the new industrial common sense–and survey evidence showed that this made employees more concerned with their companies’ fortunes. Crucially, the government expected that this would thereby push them to moderate their own wage demands during negotiations. ³⁵ The administration believed this would happen based on available studies which had been collated by the Treasury earlier on. Indeed business leaders had consistently noted that employee involvement measures had led to improved morale and productivity as well as a reduction in the number of disputes. For example, in one survey 75% of executives and 66% of managers had indicated that employee involvement had led to ‘greater realism in pay bargaining’. ³⁶

It was thus not simply that Thatcherism saw legitimation as politically necessary (Gamble, 1988; Jessop et al., 1988 inter alia) – or as a prominent American Senator discussed with Margaret Thatcher, that the ranks of the nation’s capitalists should be enlarged in order to ‘help us win elections’. ³⁷ Rather, Thatcherism’s search for legitimation operated through popular capitalism as part of a wider employee involvement effort, intended to reprogram workers into capitalists who would act in the interests of their firm in a way that was compatible with and actively supported the government’s economic strategy.

As the Conservatives agreed on the wide-ranging potential benefits of employee involvement to the economic strategy, the question rapidly arose as to how this policy could be furthered. In discussions around the future of the propaganda effort, ministers noted that the continued need to educate British workers about the link between pay, profits and productivity could perhaps be best achieved through promoting employee involvement by enlisting employers. ³⁸

Employee involvement and the contradictions of neoliberal interventionism

Nigel Lawson spearheaded this conversation as early as April 1980, discussing how the government could act in this field, in addition to actions being taken on ownership. Unsurprisingly, ‘Bullock style “industrial democracy”, or even … broad representation of any kind’ was immediately rejected. ³⁹ Yet, ministers now believed that beyond continued explanation and exhortation, legislation making improved communication in industry mandatory might be needed. ⁴⁰ Indeed the problem was that too many firms were still failing to communicate adequately with their employees. This was thought to hinder a productive exchange of information, which based on evidence was key in directly leading to employees dampening their wage demands. ⁴¹ On the other hand, in an attempt to reassure British capital after the fears around Bullock, the Conservative Manifesto had pledged that employee involvement would only be pursued voluntarily.

While this was the administration’s starting position, a debate – which was to last for years, and would jeopardise the pursuit of neoliberal hegemony – rapidly emerged between ministers. In particular, Nigel Lawson, Keith Joseph, Michael Heseltine (Secretary of State for Environment), John Hoskyns and Geoffrey Howe increasingly pressed for stronger intervention through legislation. ⁴² Their position can be understood from the fact that jointly with the CBI, the government was closely monitoring the voluntary development of employee involvement in industry, and progress appeared to be disappointingly slow despite repeated exhortation. ⁴³ Proponents of interventionism stressed the need for more employee involvement as it was expected to bring improved productivity, competitiveness and pay flexibility, and deplored the lack of improvement made by employers on this front. Keith Joseph thus despaired that ‘the impetus sparked off by fears of Bullock has been lost’. ⁴⁴

The issue, as Keith Joseph noted, was that the British tradition of voluntarism – whereby the state had selectively remained outside of the realm of industrial relations, mostly leaving its management to collective bargainers (Hyman, 2003) – and the extent of managerial control which British capital was used to meant that it would be difficult to persuade the government’s ‘supporters’ of the need for such an intrusive approach. Advocates of voluntarism (this included Thatcher, at least on this topic) argued that the above would pose problems not just in terms of fears around workers’ control in general, but more specifically around industrial secrecy. Indeed employers were anxious that consultation and communication would lead workers to access critical commercial information (for example on lay-offs and plant closures) which was not meant to be shared with them. ⁴⁵ Thus, a picture of a central contradiction of neoliberalism’s hegemonic quest was already forming: as the everyday reality of governing plays out, governments are faced with economic and political obstacles – sometimes even coming from their traditional allies – to the pursuit of neoliberal hegemony, which often prevent the full implementation of measures which would advance neoliberal common sense and structures.

And indeed, despite voluntarists (including CBI officials) initially warming up to legislation as they recognised that industry’s take-up rates of employee involvement schemes were unsatisfactory, ⁴⁶ from 1982 onwards the government also found itself under pressure in the European context, with the so-called Fifth Directive and Vredeling Directive making their progress through Community machinery. If passed, the Fifth Directive would potentially make the establishment of representation systems akin to German codetermination mandatory at Community level, while the Vredeling Directive would guarantee employees improved rights to access information, including critical decisions concerning profitability and lay-offs. ⁴⁷ These developments increasingly strengthened the voluntarists, who reiterated their preoccupations – now echoing the CBI’s worries – notably around the Manifesto pledge; the need to preserve capital’s control over secrecy; the desire to avoid over-regulation and avoiding trade unions getting additional rights or stronger consultation machinery. ⁴⁸

From 1982 to 1984, ministers thus tried to find a compromise between their differing views, although this was unsuccessful. ⁴⁹ Furthermore, the government refocused its efforts on avoiding the implementation of the two European directives. The government’s position was that the wide array of share ownership policies it had implemented since 1980 was further evidence – which it presented in Europe – of its commitment to employee involvement. ⁵⁰ Thus, as the time arrived for the UK to assume – and use its position of – EC presidency in early 1986, the government’s definitive course of action was to ‘steer the Commission’ towards the Conservatives’ view, that is an integral rejection of the Directives, which Thatcherites considered as running parallel with the ideas of substantive industrial democracy which had translated into the Bullock report. ⁵¹

As years passed, in part thanks to vehement opposition from international capital and the British government, the two European directives crumbled upon the weight of their potential legal requirements and more largely their industrial and political implications in terms of workers’ control (Montgomery, 1989; Nelson 1988). As for the Conservatives, their choice eventually was to stick to publicity and exhortation aimed at British capital, and to write a voluntary code of practice, published in the form of a booklet on 23 October 1989. The booklet sought to highlight the advantageous legislation which had been given to employee ownership, and to publicize good involvement practices across industry, effectively trying to push more employers to adopt employee involvement by following the example set out by leading companies. ⁵² Further, the government explicitly restated its case in the document, rejecting codetermination and similar practices as having harmful effects on ‘management decision-making’; with the potential to increase costs; maintain inefficient working pattern; ‘demoralize management’; and harm secrecy. ⁵³ The government’s voluntarist strategy of legitimation was best summarized in a speech given by the Financial Secretary of the Treasury, Peter Lilley, at an annual conference on share ownership, which sought to reassure British capital ⁵⁴ :

Make no mistake — it is capitalism which we are building. Not socialism. Not corporatism. Not workers’ control. Capitalism — without apologies — and, in time, every worker a capitalist.

Despite being preceded by a paternalist propaganda effort, the choice of a voluntarist route in the employee involvement agenda highlighted several obstacles to the pursuit of neoliberal hegemony through behavioural change. The limitations of British neoliberals’ intent to govern through society for direct economic goals firstly derived from one of the many contradictions within Thatcherism (see Davies et al., 2018) and neoliberalism more largely. Indeed this was a case of the tension between the neoliberal freedom of choice both labour’s and capital’s and neoliberal governments’ preoccupation with economic actors “making the right choice” (Avigur-Eshel and Mandelkern, 2021: 345–346). This translated into a contradiction between the desire to give freedom to market actors on one hand, and the preoccupation with firms’ reluctance to accept constraining reforms on the other (even as those might have arguably benefited them).

Certainly, that ‘voluntarists’ won out against ‘interventionists’ was also partly due to, and justified by an implicit recognition of, the truism that in capitalism it is often easier for governments to impose the costs and, in this case, the rationale of economic adjustment on labour rather than on those whose production, investment and confidence the state relies on (Block, 1977). This reality made Thatcherites reluctant to go as far as they would have wished in their strong state project to change attitudes for macroeconomic aims.

Conclusion

In this article, I have showed the limitations of extant theorizations of the interplay of legitimation and accumulation in authoritarian neoliberalism. Going against the classic understanding of legitimation as ‘the politics of support’, I have pointed out that neoliberal governments may engage in strategies of ‘accumulation by legitimation’. In short, I argued that such strategies, in this case under Thatcherism, perceive a specific operationalization of legitimation as a prerequisite of a successful neoliberal economic programme. The paper showed that the Thatcher administration sought to recruit British citizens in a strategy of harmonious and classless industrial relations, wage suppression and labour market flexibility for the return of profitability. That the words ‘in time, every worker a capitalist’ encapsulated the state’s agenda very much illustrates Tomlinson’s (2005: 555) comment that we should not underestimate ‘the profundity’ of the behavioural change which ‘has been attempted in the name of economic management’ namely, that governments have sought to enlist willing citizens in the actual conduct of macroeconomic policy.

This, and more largely the governmental pursuit of neoliberal hegemony, should be taken seriously. Indeed, while Thatcherism’s success in influencing attitudes both in industrial relations and in general was initially debated (for example, Gamble, 1988: 213–216, Letwin, 1992: 309–311), in the long run it seems to have been quite successful. It is true that neoliberalism may not require active consent but rather survives through passive, or even ‘disaffected’ consent (Hall, 2011: 723) where depoliticization creates a generalised feeling of ‘no alternative’ in the population. Still, Farrall et al. (2022) show that since Thatcher, neoliberalism has durably shaped British attitudes, as demonstrated by their survey findings which show young, post-Thatcher generations embracing Thatcherite values quite deeply. Neoliberal ideas took hold progressively starting with Thatcher, and each generation after the other since then has become more right-authoritarian (Grasso et al., 2019). Nunn and Tepe (2022: 1316–1317) presciently suggest that more perniciously, neoliberal policies and ideology have created incentives (like asset ownership), arrangements (such as weakened trade unions) and behaviours (for instance, relying on private tutoring) which expand neoliberal hegemony, in turn leading people to both hold reinforced neoliberal values and to opt into yet more market discipline.

In sum, whether programmes like those of popular capitalism succeed in generating active consent or not, they end up consolidating neoliberal hegemony regardless, at least in part. This is why Nunn and Tepe (2022: 1316–1317) correctly note that neoliberalism owes its longevity to the fact that hegemony does not need universal active consent to operate.

Still, here we should remember Hall’s (1991) focus on the ‘healthy nucleus’ of common sense, which has arguably survived decades of neoliberal assault (Hall and O’Shea, 2013: 14–23). In turn, this focus on both legitimation strategies and the contested terrain on which they operate opens new possible routes for the research agenda of authoritarian neoliberalism, in line with Bruff and Tansel’s (2019) exhortations. If one accepts that legitimation strategies are still central to neoliberal governance post-2008, and that hegemony must constantly be ‘worked on’ (Hall, 2011: 727–728), new questions arise: have these strategies mutated compared to the pre-2008 period? Is it the case that since 2008, as Peck and Theodore (2019: 261–262) suggest in passing, legitimation may have taken a more aggressive and distorted form? What are the limitations of this, and the emerging possibilities for resistance and alternatives?