1. Towards the end of "Political Commitment", Hall writes that "the only political strategy which has the least hope of transforming such a system is that which makes a totalising confrontation with its every feature and part" (102). Yet, just over 15 years later, Hall writes in "The Empire Strikes Back" that "the Labour Party, the labour movement and the left have no national paper... No powerful journal of opinion, no political education, no organic intellectual base from which to engage popular consciousness, no alternative reading of popular history to offer, no grip on the symbolism of popular democratic struggle" (206). Is one of these necessary for the establishment of the other or are political strategies and cultural elements mutually constitutive processes? In other writings does Hall elaborate on the role of corporate media in limiting/suppressing such a "totalising confrontation"?
2. Britain finds itself in a similar NHS crisis today as it did at the time of Hall's writing of "Political Commitment" in 1966. In fact, there has been greater privatization, and greater dissatisfaction from patients and healthcare workers. After Jeremy Corbyn's resignation from Labour Party leadership, it is again helmed by New Labour, Third-Way centrists. Would Hall argue that this represents another "fatal miss" by the left to join frustrations of both the public and healthcare workers to critique and wrest power from the Tories? Does this unresolved, repeated dynamic indicate deeper, organic origins of the crisis? If so, how could a “new balance of forces” be constructed today?
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