Thatcher's Legacy (Prof. Johann Dvořak)

Prof. Dr. Johann Dvořák (*1946) is currently teaching Political Science at the University of Vienna. In the past, he performed as a professor at the Universities of Graz and Linz as well. His focus lays upon the genesis of the modern state and the politics of modern societies. At this point I would like to thank Prof. Dvořák for his time and commitment to our interview. It was a great pleasure.

It was a hazy afternoon in the city centre of Vienna when I entered an old, traditional Viennese coffee house, which was just as busy as the streets of the First District. Professor Johann Dvořák had already received a business colleague before our appointment and still had a bustling evening in the City Hall ahead. Nevertheless, he answered my questions with great personal and professional passion, took his time to present illustrating examples and showed a high scientific responsibility by balancing out his opinions. Well, after taking a bite of cake, he answered the first question…

The Laurel: In „State, Globalisation, Migration“, published by Hermann Mückler and yourself, you devote a large part of your essay on the development of the modern state to the era of the so called neoconservatism. What is neoconservatism in your eyes?

Dvořák: Firstly, we have to acknowledge that neoconservatism is both, an ideology and a policy. There are various manifestations of this ideology in very different forms of policies. A key characteristic of those policies, executed by conservative parties, is that they often (un)consciously disguise neoconservatism as their basic ideology. A main factor of this mindset is the crisis as a cultural category. In contrast to the optimism of the late 60s and early 70s that a better life for everybody would be possible, if the responsible authorities only continued to extend a necessary welfare state, neoconservatives in the 80s rather believed in permanent deprivation. Thus, they are very keen on reducing government debts, symbolising the ultimate evil in their eyes. They do not perceive the state as a servant to the citizens, who has to increase his expenses when necessary. However, neoconservatism is not an attempt to revive an older form of conservatism, such as the policies of former PM Benjamin Disraeli, who actually tried to unite the bourgeoisie and the working class as Brits, but an expression for the disposition to destroy old values in the pursuit of their, partly, blurred vision of the future.

The Laurel: You talk a lot about former PM Baroness Margaret Thatcher in your essay. How did she manage to make neoconservatism her legacy?

Dvořák: It is definitely correct to define neoconservatism as an ideology pushed through by PM Thatcher in the 1980s. The missing ability of the Labour Party to handle the inflation crisis and the simple, but resolute strategies of Thatcher suggested to the evenly baffled Tories contributed to her rise to the top. She intended to reduce the amount of money available on the market, which caused a dangerous drop of the spending capacity of the working class in Britain. Combined with the disassembly of the welfare state, this had dramatic effects, which caused Britain to experience a period of violent riots. Furthermore, a severe attack on the workers’ unions was executed by the Tories across the 80s and 90s. Despite the expectation that the Social Democrats of this time would have opposed these actions, they seemed to have accepted the inevitable hegemony of capitalism, at the latest from the collapse of the USSR in 1989. Thatcher was so very successful because she tackled the situations with strict party organisation, active propaganda and many common-sense ideas, which appealed to many voters, as she presented herself as the daughter of a middle-class monger. Neoconservatism made many people believe that even the state could not influence politics profoundly. This led to a naturalisation of an undemocratic thinking process and dismantled core aspects of modern democracy. Lastly, she carried away the ultimate victory in the Falkland Crisis. With her daring tour of duty and a triumph that could not have been more of a chance than military expertise, she won the ideological fight and installed neoconservatism in most British minds. She became the Iron Lady.

The Laurel: When you mention her triumph in an ideological conflict, what consequences did this have for politics?

Dvořák: As I mentioned before, there was a huge decrease in expenses on social support, which intensified the difference between rich and poor even more drastically. Social solidarity was de facto destroyed. Thatcher also planned to unite the Tories as her political cadre under a strong ideology and did the same to most of the British clerks. Before national politicians could blame Thatcher for this, the starting European unification got influenced so strongly by neoconservatism that Thatcher’s blueprint of a privatised economy became reality almost without her contributing to it. The European Community implemented the privatisation of former state infrastructures. This weakened the large and powerful workers’ unions of those former state companies dramatically. Simultaneously, national politicians seemed to be completely innocent, since European decision-making processes are hardly transparent to most citizens and get blamed for developments national officials are believed not to have had their hands in.

The Laurel: Especially in times of a weak Euro, an almost bankrupt Greek State and an amorphous crisis constantly frightening citizens all over the EU, ideas of an urgent state debts reduction and the necessity of cutting budgets, especially in social support structures, are having a major comeback. Are these ideological remains of neoconservatism or rather new phenomena?

Dvořák: To be most possibly clear, yes, I do believe that those are in some way remains of Thatcher’s neoconservatism, although neither Schäuble nor Merkel might have ever tried to copy Thatcher in her politics. The European Union has been stating budget and debt limits since the early beginnings and does not get tired to continue with it. Seemingly natural borders of possible expenses are constructed at cost of the socially deprived. In Germany more than in any other member state of the EU, policies are focussed on individuals only, not on social groups, except for families. But instead of a true privatisation of all politically affected areas, like Thatcher and the German politicians proclaimed, the direction of development is: nationalisation. This is a main mistake neoconservatives are making, it is a false perception of their own ideology. Just like in Great Britain during the 80s today’s Germany is focussed on the viability of key companies and not on an increase of their workers’ salaries. Of course, those companies get more profit out of production with workers that only receive minimum salaries. On the other side, their spending capability is decreased to a minimum as well. Every common literature on economics will tell you how counterproductive this strategy will turn out on the long run.

The Laurel: The world is currently experiencing a heavy right-wing revolution, a turn in ideology from liberalism to nationalism. How do you assess this development and where do you see the ideological future of the western world?

Dvořák: I am not really content with the display of the current change of politics in the media. The world might be grim, but it was grim before. The current problem that so many voters turn away their faces from democracy as a civic identity is caused by the failure of modern democracies in the first place. Democracy is not widely understood, not widely lived anymore. This is no phenomenon of „the others“. This is a homemade issue. We must not simply accept those developments in our home countries on the one side and condemn the same in other countries on the other. If there will be a change in this perception, I can see a future without strong nationalist forces in our parliaments.