nine - Conclusion: a future for socialism?

Summary

British society – slow-moving, rigid, class-ridden – has proved much harder to change than we supposed. Looking back with hindsight, the early revisionist writings were too complacent in tone; they proposed the right reforms, but under-rated the difficulty of achieving them in a British context. (Anthony Crosland)

Mr Callaghan just isn’t in your class. He does not have the first class intelligence for the job, he does not have a really sure grasp of economics, as you have, he does not represent any fresh radical outlook which you can offer. We need someone like you. (Letter from Mr Kevin Kavanagh)

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful business of thinking. (John Kenneth Galbraith, American economist)

Great changes are not caused by ideas alone; but they are not affected without ideas. (Leonard Hobhouse)

Introduction

This book sought to trace the impact of Crosland’s revisionist analysis on the Labour party since the publication of The Future of Socialism in 1956. It examined, in particular, his emphasis on equality in contradistinction to state ownership; the legacy of Crosland’s liberal progressivism in a traditionalist party of sectional interests and ambiguously socialist aspirations; the influence of continental Europe and the United States on Crosland’s reformulation of social democracy; and his view of electoral strategy in an affluent Britain characterised by rising consumption and individualism. The theme throughout is Crosland’s inheritance and the debate about ideas in the party and across the British Left over the last 60 years. The Crosland effect was a reflection of his personality and character, his charisma and profound intelligence, alongside his ability to speak audaciously to the mood and circumstances of the times. His impact was a reflection of Crosland’s outstanding political and intellectual qualities, but also a consequence of the existential crisis afflicting Labour in the late 1950s. This turmoil gave him the opportunity to play a decisive role in remaking the party. Improbably for a post-war socialist raised in the Exclusive Brethren and the Fabian tradition, Crosland was a ‘bon viveur’ who relished hedonism and the pursuit of the good life. In The Future of Socialism, he envisaged a civilised, tolerant and enlightened Britain in which people could conceivably enjoy living. Kenneth O. Morgan has written that ‘Crosland is surely to be commended for setting his face against the Puritanism which disfigures so much of the labour movement’.