№ 5 - 2001
Ananyeva Ye.V.
On Modern Ways of Reformism, or On Reformism as Modern Way. Brinain’s Experience (M.Thatcher’s “Politics of Convictions” and T.Blair’s “Permanent Revisionism”)

The article presents an extended review of a monograph, by Al.Gromyko, on “Political Reformism in Great Britain (the 1970s to the 1990s)” (Moscow, 2001) which, in the words of the monographer, has for its object, “with Great Britain as example”, “the study of the experience of political reformism for the solution of problems of modern societal development”. The book, the reviewer notes, presents the first ever specialized monographic analysis of the evolution of theoretical and practical approaches of Britain’s both right and left political forces to the solution of the country’s modernization problems involved in the transition from industrial to postindustrial society. Reviewing the material of the book, Ye.V.Ananyeva in many points originally, in her own way elucidates a number of problematic moments of the theme. Special attention is given to the new political consensus - between neoconservatism as embodied in the “thatcherism”, and the “new Labour” as personified by T.Blair (“blatcherism”) - substituted for the previous, postwar political consensus (“butskellism”). Apropos to the monographer’s analysis of the “new Labourites’” attempts to find their own ideological platform, the reviewer, on her part, introduces material throwing additional light on the subjects discused, expounding and analyzing, in particular, the philosophical conception of “reflexive Modernity” by A.Giddens, a notable scholar, T.Blair’s “guru” and, besides, one of the designers of the “third way” ideological conception adopted by the Labour Party.