The reasons, I think, are not hard to find. First of all, it has been demonstrated by experience how far social objectives can be achieved without expropriating private owners and without displacing the strong private motives which have beneficial economic effects. Second, the close view of what is involved in operating nationalized industries makes socialist politicians chary of undertaking much more of the same, and makes them skeptical of this route toward the attainment of their ideals. Finally, socialist thinking is under the shadow of Labour Party politics. Elections are won by votes; and voters have to be moved by appeal to some felt interest or incentive. There appear to be no British majorities to be won by promising an active program of subversion.
At least in the short run then, the only feasible programs in pursuit of economic well-being, and of economic justice too, appear to be reformist in character, to be carried out through an improved version of the present system and through other policies consistent with its continued existence. The more successful these improvements and policies, the less, one would think, anyone will want to practice subversion. What, then, is "the road to socialism"? Only, as far as one can see, through some unpredictable train of social disaster. But the Marxist imperatives on this point are no longer acceptable. As a thoughtful British socialist said: "The basis of present British Labour policy is not Marxian or Webbian, but Keynesian. And so it will remain unless the West has another slump, in which case it may again become what you call subversive." One is tempted to conclude that the paths of economic destiny of Great Britain and the United States are not so very different—being basically the building of a welfare state on a predominantly capitalistic economic foundation. This might indeed turn out to be the case. But even if it did, the parallelism would probably not be very close. The history of the MO countries has been very different, their sociological structure is different, and there is a striking difference of popular attitudes rooted in these two facts. Moreover, within the economic structure the United States retains a much more vigorous constituent of competition. Since the social rationale of private enterprise is heavily dependent on the reality of competition, it is not surprising that the British have a diminished confidence in the effects of private enterprise. But one cannot even speculate upon how nearly parallel the two courses may run without considering possible lines of social and economic change in the United States, a field into which I cannot now enter. In any case, it may, I think, be inferred from the body of current thinking reviewed above that socialism as a goal is waning in Great Britain, and that the British left is in process of reorienting its whole line of policy toward new combinations of public and private endeavor--not to be blue-printed in advance, but arrived at pragmatically as circumstances and popular attitudes warrant. This approach has, indeed, long been influential in the trade union segment of the Labour Party. It is now sweeping the field among the younger intellectual leaders.
The day of the prophetic Utopian vision, equally with the day of the Marxist imperative, appears to be over.