Raymond Williams: A Short Counter Revolution: Towards 2000, Revisited

Jim McGuigan

2015. g. janv. · SAGE

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Raymond Williams: A Short Counter-Revolution amply demonstrates the continuing relevance of Williams’s analysis, from the early 1980s, to our current situation. After thirty years of neoliberalism his insights still read as freshly and as incisively as they first did. Jim McGuigan’s new chapter explicitly extends the lines of continuity from then to now, in a persuasive and at times appropriately critical way. Williams’s concluding chapter, Resources for a Journey of Hope remains as inspiring, and as necessary, as ever.
- Simon Dentith, University of Reading

"It′s great that Towards 2000 is revisited. Jim McGuigan′s preface to this edition and his remarkable up-dating chapter A Short Counter Revolution draw upon a formidable range of references to illustrate why this work is as fresh and insightful today as it was 30 years ago."
- Derek Tatton,

′Culture,′ wrote Raymond Williams, ‘is one of the most complicated words in the English language.’ Ironically, the most important British writer on culture in the post-war period is also one of the most poorly digested among today’s readers.

Originally conceived as the sequel to his 1961 The Long Revolution, Williams′ 1983 title Towards 2000 has been unfairly classified as a period piece. With the permission of the Williams Estate, the book has been re-entitled A Short Counter-Revolution – Towards 2000 Revisited, with noted Williams expert Jim McGuigan adding a chapter that updates the original with a survey of developments since its publication, particularly concerning the impact of neoliberalism, a phenomenon sighted early by Raymond Williams and named ‘Plan X’.

In this new edition, Jim McGuigan makes a totally convincing case to read the book as a contemporary classic. It remains an indispensable guide to:

• Power and inequality
• Class politics
• Post-industrial society
• Globalization
• The crisis in democracy