five - America and Europe in post-war social democracy

Summary

The United States has more social equality, and less sense of class, than Great Britain…Sweden in other ways comes much nearer to a socialist’s idea of the ‘good’ society with a higher priority to social welfare and the social services. (Anthony Crosland, 19561)

Every visitor [to the United States] is struck not only by the lack of glaring objective contrasts between the living standards of different social classes, but also by the general consciousness of equal living standards – the feeling that everything is within reach, and nothing wholly unattainable. This is one of the basic causes of the greater social equality, and the absence of deep class feeling. (Anthony Crosland, 19562)

Introduction: Crosland’s legacy, Europe and America

This book’s central theme is Crosland’s influence and legacy as a revisionist theoretician in the post-war Labour party. Social democrats navigating a rapidly changing economic and political landscape latched onto Crosland as the revisionist par excellence. As his obituary in The Times stated, Crosland’s impact was ‘greater than the offices he held’. This chapter will step beyond domestic policy to assess the influence of European socialism and American liberalism on the development of Crosland’s political thought. It will examine the fractious debate about Britain’s role in the world, the political unification of Europe, and the possibilities of a socialist foreign policy in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Labour party viewed Britain’s global role after 1945 in terms of the implicit division between American and European models of democratic capitalism. The dilemma of ‘America versus Europe’ was apparent throughout the twentieth century, referring to the manner in which ideological change on the British Left was inspired by ideas about the market economy, the welfare state and global security derived from continental Europe and the United States. Crosland’s prospectus for the future of British social democracy was constructed by assimilating political concepts from America and the European continent.

The chapter begins with consideration of Crosland’s admiration for America and the impact of the United States on his view of democratic socialism, especially the emphasis accorded to personal freedom and mass consumption in an age of affluence. Crosland’s revisionism was also inspired by regular contact with European socialist parties, in particular the Swedish SAP (‘the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Sweden’) and the German SPD (‘Social Democratic Party of Germany’).