DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM - THE CASE OF ENGLAND By Paul T. Homan After the electoral defeat of the British Labour Party in 1951, the socialist intellectuals of the party began a process of what they called "rethinking Socialism." The problem was sharply stated by Kingsley Martin: "If there is something like an intellectual crisis in the Labour Party now, and if the Party had no positive policy for the 1951 election, that was largely because the leaders of both the Parliamentary Party and the trade union movement did not know where they were going after they had once established the principles of the Welfare State. . . ." (p. 1) The reassessment during recent years has been partly by individuals, partly organized on a group basis, especially by the group which calls itself Socialist Union and issues the monthly journal Socialist Commentary. One outcome has been a spate of pamphlets and, during the past year, two outstanding books by C. A. R. Crosland and John Strachey. The purpose of the present article is to review a select list of these documents and to set down a few reflections based on them.
The occasion for this reassessment arose out of the very success of the Labour Party program during the party's period in office. It had nationalized all the industries it had set out to nationalize (coal, electricity, gas, the transport industries, steel and The Bank of England) it had reenforced the position of the trade unions and tied their activities into national political objectives; it had initiated a large housing program; it had established a system of social welfare service as comprehensive and costly as the British economy could reasonably support; it had initiated a full employment policy based on financial controls; and through tax measures it had scaled sharply downward the personal income derived from property and high salaries. The Welfare State, as it came to be called, was a monumental accomplishment for a five-year tenure of power. It put into effect what Kingsley Martin called "a new list of Rights of Man," and he predicted that "No constitutional government in the future will dare directly withdraw these rights." This prediction is borne out by the ensuing behavior of the Conservative government, which with only slight modifications carried forward the social program.
The new question is whether the Welfare State and reformist measures, built on a private enterprise base, are all that is wanted; or whether socialism in the traditional sense is to be sought through progressive enlargement of the nationalized area. The intellectuals of the British left are deeply divided on the correct answer to this question. But there is little evidence that the Labour Party intends to move towards socialization of the means of production.
On the other hand, thinkers of the left are proposing rather far-reaching innovations in the way of social and economic change, and are still calling themselves socialists. In reviewing the recent writing within this field, I am left with three strong impressions: first, that the persistence of ideological stereotypes of capitalism and socialism muddies the discussion of ends and means—assuming that the ends in view are something definable in terms of public policies and potentially attainable in the calculable future; second, that the older socialists are frustrated in the attempt to formulate programs which give any considerable scope to their traditional socialist principles; and third, that action programs are tending to take a reformist turn which can be called socialist in principle only if the term takes on a much diluted and extended meaning.
The really impressive item in the programmatic literature is Crosland's The Future of Socialism. Mr. Crosland, a former member of the economics faculty at Oxford and former member of Parliament, engages in economic analysis marked by a high degree of competency. His critical thought is uncluttered by traditional socialist cliches, and his thought on policy by old political commitments. His purpose is at bottom to crystallize a working program for a party of the left comprising three qualities: expediency in the sense of promoting economic progress, morality in the sense of promoting social justice, and practicability in the sense of winning elections. In carrying out the task, he avoids three common defects of much socialist thinking; emotionally overwrought criticism of capitalism, the Utopian fallacy, and Marxist dogma. He takes a fresh new look at contemporary problems and possible solutions.