ABSTRACT
In his excellent book The New Reckoning, David Marquand identifies the following 'cruel paradox': '[o]ne of the reasons why social cohesion and mutual trust 100m so large in the new discourse of the 1990s is that the creative destruction associated with untamed capitalism has done so much to undermine them' (1997, p. 30). The paradox becomes more acute as it becomes obvious that the very forces that unleashed the destruction of 'social cohesion and mutual trust' are the ones that have also been the most vigorous in appropriating the discourse of community in their defence. In Britain, as elsewhere, Conservatism's successful move from reactionary ideology to progressive force owes much of its success to its appropriation of the twin ideals of community and active citizenship. The appropriation is remarkable not as to its extent but in that it occurred at all, uprooting the ideals from their natural habitat in the discourse of the left and thus, as Glasman (1996) notes in a similar context, undermining the very rationality of Marxism and social democracy.
