Neither pragmatic adaptation nor misguided accommodation: Modernisation as domination in the Chilean and British Left

Abstract

This article contests prevailing academic conceptions of the modernisation of parliamentary Left parties. According to these accounts, ‘modernisation’ is viewed either as a pragmatic adaptation to international socioeconomic change, or as a misguided accommodation of ascendant neoliberal values, norms and practices. In both of these accounts, Left parties are perceived as passively reacting to the structures that contextualise their actions. Developing a neo-Gramscian perspective and using the Chilean Socialist Party and the British Labour Party as examples, we argue that modernisation can be more adequately conceptualised as the process by which Left parties operate within the contemporary neoliberal historical bloc, actively contributing to the (re)production of neoliberal hegemony.