His constructive thinking runs in two main directions. One is toward introducing a strong element of worker control into the structure—a shadowy remnant of the guild socialism so popular in the 1920's and now almost extinct in Great Britain. He has, however, no real notion of how this could be done. He also has no faith that nationalization would give rise to higher wages than those available from private industry. The reward to workers from the reorganization of control would presumably be a sense of participation.
His other, and principal, proposal is for constitutional reform designed to "enlarge freedom and stimulate an active democracy." On the economic side, this would entail a standing Parliamentary committee responsible for each nationalized industry; but his thought reaches further into fundamental reform of party structure and Parliamentary procedure.
He regards such reform "at least as important as the extension of public ownership and redistribution of wealth." "Indeed, unless the two march in step, we shall merely create a new Leviathan" (p. 24).
Without further elaboration, it is difficult to assess this political thinking. But the economic proposal of direct supervisory control over nationalized industries by Parliamentary committees raises an issue of the most fundamental importance. Heretofore, nationalization has proceeded on the principle, so vigorously propounded by Herbert Morrison, that industrial management must be thoroughly insulated from direct political contacts. This was based on the presumption that making the course of industrial operations an immediate and perpetual occasion for political oversight, and therefore controversy, would be the surest blockade to efficient industrial management. This leads into the deeper question, whether comprehensive socialization is amenable to democratic controls, or whether it implies an essentially totalitarian structure of control. Crossman does not pose this question, but it crops up in the thought of Gaitskill, Crosland and others, and is, I judge, one of the reasons for their coolness toward an ambitious program of nationalization.
As against the moderation and reservations of people like Crosland and Gaitskill, Professor G. D. H. Cole, in his World Socialism Restated, continues his persistent advocacy of socialism in its traditional meaning.
"I want to make an end of the entire system of capitalism" (p. 7). There is no need to repeat the general argument, since it is familiar. Even the old cliches crop up baldly. "American capitalism can sustain high production and employment only by giving an appreciable part of its products away
. . ." (p. 17). Cole is the unreserved enemy of those moderate tendencies which I have reviewed above. ". . . The Labour Party has, I think, to choose between adopting a much more drastic Socialist policy and failing to act effectively even as a reformist party . . ." (p. 23). His attitude toward international socialism is equally unbending. The British socialists should support socialist tendencies and "anticolonial" movements, wherever found and whatever their political corollaries. This places him in total opposition, for example, to the American alliance. He is ambivalent toward the totalitarian tendencies of contemporary socialist states. He praises democracy, rejects the communist philosophy and deplores "the ruthlessness, the cruelty, and the centralised authoritarianism which are basic characteristics of Communist practice" (p. 14). At the same time, he enters excuses for the use of whatever methods are necessary to break down exploitive political and economic institutions (e.g., pp. 10-12).
Having adopted this intransigent posture, Cole is quite unwilling to make his peace with those practical, everyday methods by which other well-intentioned people hope to effect some marginal improvement in the human state. He appears to have given up hope that the Labour Party will be an effective instrument of progress toward true socialism in the calculable future. The elect, it appears, should isolate themselves into international enclaves of the true devotees—a sort of monastic order of the faithful awaiting the apocalyptic day.
To conclude this survey, we turn to Mr. Strachey's Contemporary Capitalism. It needs to be set apart from the documents reviewed above, since it is an entirely different sort of book. In the 1930's Strachey was convinced that the advent of communism was both inevitable and desirable—views defended in The Nature of Capitalist Crises and The Coming Struggle for Power. (I recall thinking, when first reading The Coming Struggle for Power, how convenient it was to possess a machine by which one could get clear answers to troublesome questions simply by turning the handle.) By 1940, he had discarded these views, due perhaps primarily to the influence of Keynes. From 1945 to 1950 he was a responsible member of the Labour government. Afterwards, he strongly defended the accomplishments of that government as a long step toward achieving socialist goals. He placed great faith in control over the central financial mechanism of the economy.