The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy

This book provides the first book-length study of the political and economic ideas of the British left’s Alternative Economic Strategy in the 1970s and early 1980s. Discussing the AES’s approaches to capitalism, the nation state and the working class, it argues that existing academic accounts have significantly overstated the radicalism of the strategy. Perhaps more notable, especially in the light of its stated ‘revolutionary’ aims, was the extent of its moderation – its continuities with post-war Labour revisionism, its marked reluctance to look beyond the market economy, the degree of its preoccupation with Britain’s global-economic status, and its inability to break with Labourist  politics of class co-operation in the national interest. While the book argues that the AES was the last ‘class politics’ socialist initiative in mainstream British politics, it also explores the ways in which its ideas perhaps prepared the way for New Labour in the 1990s, and its relationship with 'Corbynism' since 2015.

• 1970s Britain
• marketplace for ideas
• Labour party
• socialist strategy
• Marxism
• Labourism
• Communism
• British domestic politics
• Alternative Economic Strategy
• Stuart Holland
• crisis of Keynesianism
• state shareholding
• multinational companies
• protectionism
• European Economic Community
• left-wing nationalism
• Bullock inquiry
• industrial democracy
• New Labour
• Jeremy Corbyn

“This book is a key intervention regarding the way socialist renewal has been discussed and the way we need to map associated debates with a careful eye to the many voices that contribute to it.” (Miguel Martínez Lucio, Labour History Review, Vol. 86 (1), 2021)

“Baris Tufekci has written a powerful, critical account of the development of Labour’s Alternative Economic Strategy in the 1970s and 1980s through the ideas of its leading proponents. This is an important study, highlighting the ambition and the limitations of the strategy and showing how its abandonment shaped Labour politics from Blair to Corbyn.” (Andrew Gamble, Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK)

“In this illuminating and scholarly book, Baris Tufekci explores the alternative economic strategy, an important staging post in British-left economic ideas. His argument that the AES was not as radical as commonly believed is a valuable counterweight to the conventional view that it was little more than a prospectus for mass nationalisation. The book is particularly timely given the re-emergence of interest in socialist economic policies.” (Tom Quinn, Senior Lecturer, Department of Government, University of Essex, UK)

“Baris Tufekci's highly perceptive analysis investigates the political and economic ideas that underpinned the development of the Labour party's strategy in the 1970s and 1980s. The relevance of the book's arguments to contemporary left-wing politics in Britain is compelling.” (Patrick Diamond, Associate Professor, Queen Mary University of London, UK)

“The Alternative Economic Strategy became a major rallying point in the late 1970s and early 1980s for a very broad coalition of trade unionists, New Leftists, Labour radicals and communists, and had a significant impact upon the Labour party's policy thinking. This new study of its key ideas argues that it may not have been quite as much of a departure from Keynesian thinking and Labourite revisionism as is usually suggested. This is a key text for anyone who wants to understand the AES and the intellectual foundations of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.” (Michael Kenny, Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge, UK)

• Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

  Baris Tufekci

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