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Left and Rights citizenship' has been largely ism's drive towards unrestricted private absent from political dis- accumulation, its attack on public ex- cussion and debate for more penditure, collectivism and the 'de- than two decades. Only in pendency culture' made it the natural relation to questions of race and immig- enemy of citizenship in its modern, wel- ration did it carry a deep political fare-state form. As the prime minister charge. Were the boundaries of citizen- put it: 'There is no such thing as society, ship to be redrawn with the end of only individual men and women and their empire? Could there be more than one families.' class of citizenship for people of diffe- However, this unswerving commitment rent ethnic backgrounds? The debate, to individualism and the competitive crowned by the intervention of Enoch ethic has awakened, in its turn, the spec- Powell in the late 1960s, marked a high tre of Hobbes' 'war of all against all': the point in the political currency of this breakdown of a sense of community and dimension of citizenship. Elsewhere, the interdependence, the weakening of the concept seemed rather out-of-date. Sud- social fabric and the loosening of the denly, however, citizenship is once more hounds of social violence - so often fea- on the lips of politicians, academics and tures of a society dedicated exclusively to commentators of all political comple- competitive self-interest. Thatcherism xions. Why this renewed concern? What has therefore rediscovered the need for Left And is at stake in this debate about citizen- some concept to help integrate and 'bind' ship between Right and Left? society and has come up with the idea of A number of different factors seem to the 'active citizen', who engages in 'doing be responsible for the return of citizen- good' but in a purely private capacity. In Rights ship to the political agenda. Some derive this discourse, citizenship is detached from the experience of Thatcherism it- from its modern roots in institutional self: the dismantling of the welfare state, reform, in the welfare state and com- Citizenship has become the flavour of the growing centralisation of power, the munity struggles, and rearticulated with erosion of local democracy, of free the more Victorian concepts of charity, the month. It has re-entered the speech, trade-union and other civil philanthropy and self-help. In more political debate with a vengeance. rights. recent versions, the 'active citizen' is Some have a wider, more 'global', decked out in the pious homilies of Mrs Thatcher uses it: so does the Left. context: the growth of regional national- Thatcherism's version of the New Stuart Hall and David Held argue ism in Scotland and elsewhere; the Testament. prospects for greater European integra- Clearly, we need a framework for think- that the concept of citizenship must tion; the weakening of the old East-West ing about citizenship and its place in the lie at the very centre of a new frontiers under the Gorbachev offensive; agenda of the Left which sets it in the the growing pace of international in- context of recent developments. Far from socialist politics terdependence and globalisation - all, in simply returning us to the old language one way or another, exposing and eroding of citizenship, such an exercise requires the sovereignty of the nation-state, the us to confront new questions and to entity to which, until now, the modern rethink the concept itself in the light of a language of citizenship primarily refer- new historical situation. red. Does 'citizenship' belong, naturally and These changes have been accompanied exclusively, to the Left? It has been part by shifts in attitude towards the idea of of what can broadly be identified as a citizenship on both the Right and the variety of progressive historical move- Left. It used to be fashionable in some ments - from older ideas of a just moral sections of the Left to dismiss the ques- order to Paine's Rights Of Man and Chart- tion of 'rights' as, largely, a bourgeois ism. Nevertheless, it seems to be the case fraud. But the experience of Thatcherism that citizenship belongs exclusively to in the West and of Stalinism in the East neither Right nor Left, nor indeed to has gradually shifted the Left's thinking centre-ground. Like all the key contested on this question. The shift on the Right is political concepts of our time, it can be more complex and uncertain. Thatcher- appropriated within very different poli- 16 MARXISM TODAY JUNE 1989 tical discourses and articulated to very citizenship', absorbing a wide variety of universal status - the citizen. In the year different political positions - as its re- different struggles against different of the anniversary of the French Revolu- cuperation by the new Right clearly forms of exclusion under their rubric. tion, it is worth recalling that its three shows. The concept can only mean some- Certainly, class has constituted, histor- cardinal principles - liberty, equality thing decisive for the Left if we are ically, one of the most powerful and and fraternity - formed a matrix within prepared to do some theoretical and poli- ramified of barriers to membership and which the citizens of the new Republic tical work around it, actively integrating participation by the majority. But this claimed universal recognition on the basis of a common equality. This lan- 'The law in it within a whole set of related political has also set up a tension within the idea ideas. of citizenship itself. Fbr, as the politics of guage of theoretical universality and its majestic While there is no 'essence' to citizen- citizenship has been absorbed into class equality is what distinguished this mo- equality ship, it does have a long and rich history politics, so the citizenship idea has lost ment - the moment of the 'Rights of Man' with which any new conception must something of its specific force. - from earlier phases in the long march gives every of citizenship. But in the light of the man (prince come to terms. From the ancient world to owever, this exclusive refer- the present day, citizenship has entailed ence to class is one of the expansion and diversity of claims dis- and pauper a discussion of, and a struggle over, the things which is changing cussed above, the question must be posed alike) an meaning and scope of membership of the with the renewed interest in as to whether the variety and range of equal right to community in which one lives. Who be- citizenship. In reality, attempts to res- entitlements can be adequately express- longs and what does 'belonging' mean in trict membership and participation take ed through or represented by a single, sleep under a practice? Membership, here, is not con- many different forms, involving diffe- universal status like 'citizenship'. Is bridge or eat ditional: it is a matter of right and entitle- rent practices of exclusion and affecting there now an irreconcilable tension be- at the Ritz' ment. But it is two-sided, reciprocal: different groups. This should be enough tween the thrust to equality and univer- rights in, but also responsibilities to convince us that questions of citizen- sality entailed in the very idea of the towards, the community. These rights ship, though bound to place the issues of 'citizen', and the variety of particular have to be defined and specified, because class at their centre, cannot simply be and specific needs, of diverse sites and otherwise their loss cannot be chal- absorbed into class politics, or thought of practices which constitute the modern lenged, and may even go undetected. But exclusively in class terms, and in relation political subject? formal definition alone will not suffice. to capitalist relations of production. We will come back to this question of Rights can be mere paper claims unless A contemporary 'politics of citizenship' 'difference' later - it is, in some ways, the they can be practically enacted and real- must take into account the role which the joker in the citizenship pack. However, ised, through actual participation in the social movements have played in expand- what the previous discussion makes community. These then are citizenship's ing the claims to rights and entitlements clear is that contemporary claims to three leading notions: membership; to new areas. It must address not only citizenship are interrelated with a range rights and duties in reciprocity; real issues of class and inequality, but also of other political questions. What we participation in practice. questions of membership posed by think about this range of political ques- feminism, the black and ethnic move- tions will inevitably affect what we think The issues around membership - who ments, ecology (including the moral about citizenship itself. does and who does not belong - is where claims of the animal species and of the politics of citizenship begins. It is Nature itself) and vulnerable minorities, What does the language of citizenship impossible to chart the history of the like children. But it must also come to rights really mean in contemporary soci- concept very far without coming sharply terms with the problems posed by 'dif- ety? And who are the subjects of such up against successive attempts to res- ference' in a deeper sense: for example, rights? Citizenship rights are entitle- trict citizenship to certain groups and to the diverse communities to which we ments. Such entitlements are public and exclude others. In different historical belong, the complex interplay of identity social (hence Mrs Thatcher's difficulties periods, different groups have led, and and identification in modern society, and with them). They are 'of right' and can profited from, this 'politics of closure': the differentiated ways in which people only be abrogated by the state under property-owners, men, white people, the now participate in social life.
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