perry anderson--critique of wilsonism

8/9/2019 Perry Anderson--Critique of Wilsonism

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Perry Anderson

The relatively stable equilibrium, which defined British politics and society for a

decade, has now broken down. The crisis of the traditional English hegemonic

class, under whose rule British capitalism has in recent years so visibly declined,

threatens the long supremacy of the Conservative Party. It would be too

much to say that socialists were prepared for this, poised for their own participa-

ation in coming events. Since its severe defeat at Blackpool in 1961, the Left hastaken no major initiatives and launched no great debates. The rapid succession of

crises and upheavals which began with the death of Gaitskell and culminated

with the resignation of Macmillan, unfolded without any independent interven-

tion by the Left. In two years, there has been a memorable bonfire of values in

Britain. The Left did not light it. Will it benefit from it?

Critique of Wilsonism

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In a previous number of this review, I attempted a general explanationof the nature of the crisis in British society today.1 In this article, writtenbefore the election, I shall try to answer some questions left open atthe end of that analysis. What has been the Labour Partys response tothe present crisis? What is the character of the Labour leadership andprogramme? Independently of the result of the election, these questionsneed to be examined by socialists.

Only time will show whether the purely narcotic effects of theprosperity of the fifties have worn off. If this proves to be the case, oneof the two great post-war barriers to the advance of socialism in Englandwill have been breached. Affluence will have lost its magic, and becomerelative andjudged.

Meanwhile, the second barrier to socialism in Western Europe, thetraditional pattern of the Cold War, has been dissolving. Decoloniza-tion in the Third World, the Sino-Soviet conflict, the emergence of

Gaullism, the Russo-American entente, have shattered the old bi-partitesystem of world relations. The new configuration of the Cold War,whatever its repercussions elsewhere, has probably been favourable tothe working-class parties of the West. The Soviet Union has lost muchof its terrors for Western Europe. France has triumphantly defiedAmerica. The classical, simple polarizations no longer operate. Thereis, at last, a geo-political space for European socialism. Wilsonism em-merged as a precise response to the new situation: the slow crisis ofEnglish capitalism and the transformation of the Cold War. In manyways, it has been a creative response, which has made the Labour Partyinto the dynamic left-wing of European Social-Democracy. But it alsobears the ominous hallmarks of its lineage, traditional Labourism. Adialectical judgement is necessary to grasp and relate both aspects.

Wilsonism is, first and foremost, a strategy rather than a simple pro-gramme. This is its strength and its novelty. Perhaps for the first timein its history, the Labour Party now possesses a coherent analysis ofBritish society today, a long-term assessment of its future, and anagressive political strategy based on both. The contrast with Gaitskell-

ism is arresting.1. The New Strategy

The difference between the two can roughly be summed up as follows.Gaitskell, fanatically anti-communist and dedicated to the Westernalliance, was fundamentally defensive before the evolution of lateindustrial capitalism. He and his advisers believed that it was under-mining Labours electoral support both by providing a high standardof living for the working-class and by eroding the actual numbers of

the working class. Obsessed by the two great themes of the theories ofembourgeoisement of the time, the spread of durable consumer goodsand the net shift from manual to white-collar occupations in the popu-lation, Gaitskells response was one of retreat. The only future hecould imagine was an indefinite repetition of the present. British

1 Origins of the Present Crisis,New Left Review 23, JanuaryFebruary 1964.

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capitalism was becoming increasingly classless: the Labour Partymust follow it, abandoning its own class connotations. Britain was be-coming increasingly consumption-oriented: the Labour Party mustcater to the new preocupations and not disquiet them by talk ofradical reforms. Thus, for Gaitskell and his friends, society became anundifferentiated, quantified aggregate of electors: the Labour Partystask was to win an arithmetical majority of them, by appealing to them

predominantly as consumers. To do this, it had to become what Cros-land called a national party: Jay argued that the very term Labourshould be jettisoned from the Partys name.

Wilsons approach is very different. He shows a relatively acutestructural perception of British society. He is convinced that thepresent crisis of the governing class allows the Labour Party to splitthe Conservative bloc, detaching from it specific, crucial groups in thepopulation. First and foremost among these is the technical intelli-gentsia:2 scientists, technicians, engineers, architects, managers, and

professional workers, employed in both private and public corpora-tions. Far from long-term occupational changes undermining Laboursstrength by making less workers, Wilson is confident that they canincrease it by creating more producers. Thus his immediate target ofwinning the technical intelligentsia away from the Conservative bloc byplaying on its antagonism to a demoralized aristocracy, is married toa long-term aim of including this pivotal, expanding sector of thepopulation within the Labour alliance. Untouched by anti-communistphobias, benefiting by the debacle of the Conservative economy,

Wilson makes few concessions to consumer ideology. Instead, he con-tinually attacks social imbalance in Britain, the real impoverishment ofcollective needs and the artificial inflation of private ones, and appealsto his audience asproducers to change this, in the name of a new Britain.Finally, he offers an altogether new rationale for the degree of socialintervention which this implies: instead of a calm, continuous future ofascending material well-being and contentment, he insists on the ex-plosive technological and social upheavals of automation ahead.

2. The New Rhetoric

The decisive superiority of this strategy over the vacuities of revision-ism is evident.3 It allows Wilson to use a distinctive and cogentrhetoric, that has become integral to his whole political style. The crisisof the British economy is naturally the starting-point of Wilsons

2 The term is borrowed here from its usage in Eastern Europe, simply as a convenientshort-hand. This stratum does not have any of the traditional characteristics of ahomogeneous, self-conscious intelligentsia.3It would be a mistake, of course, to attribute Wilsonism exclusively to Wilson. Thepartial left-turn of the party pre-dates his accession to the leadership by about a year.

Morgan Phillips document, Labour in the Sixties, a trailer for Signposts for the Sixties,was the first indication of the new direction of official thinking. The CommonMarket episode, in which Gaitskell played on left-wing as well as nationalist senti-ment, and for the first time flouted the weight of orthodox opinion, suggests that hehad at last realized the unviability of an extreme Right leadership. It is largely for thesake of exposition that the constructs Gaitskellism and Wilsonism are opposed sosharply in this analysis. It is more a question of different periods, than of differentmen. Butby chanceeach period found the man who perfectly expressed it.

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analysis, the theme of speech after speech since his election as leader ofthe Party in March 1962: Why do we give such a high priority to ex-panding production? The answer is that all else in our programme andour vision for the new Britain depend on what we turn out from ourfactories, mines and farms: our laboratories and drawing offices. On ournational production effort depends our standing in the world. Theresponsibility for Britains economic decline and all the evils which have

attended it, is placed on the archaic aristocracy which dominates theConservative Party and British industry alike. The tone is radical, thetargets apparently comprehensive: The high command of too largea sector of Britains industry is manned either dynastically, or on thebasis of a family, school or social network . . . The highest places in aConservative Government are reserved for the products of a small,unrepresentative group of schools, almost for the product of a singleschool . . . Tory society is a closed society, in which birth and wealthhave priority, in which the master-and-servant, landlord-and-peasantmentality is predominant. Wilson has a fairly clear perception of thespecific quality and vulnerability of the governing class in Britain: hisattacks are carefully calculated to isolate and discredit it. The counter-point to them is the constant appeal to technicians and scientists andproduction men to rally to the Labour Party, which alone believes thatBritains future depends on the thrusting ability and even iconoclasm ofmillions of products of our grammar schools, comprehensive schools,secondary moderns and the rest who are today held down not only withinthe Government Party but over a wide sector of industry. Wilson con-tinually invokes the opposition between an amateur aristocracy and

skilled, scientifically trained specialists. This rhetorical device is so in-sistent that the manual working-class itself, the overwhelming basis ofthe Labour Partys support, recedes almost entirely from Wilsonsspeeches. He can even say with pride: Great interest has been shownby our people in these ideas. We are told that we have replaced thecloth-cap with the white laboratory coat as the symbol of BritishLabour.

A second set of contrasts complements this primary one. Wilson de-nounces, not only incompetent and amateur sectors of industry, but

speculative and parasitical ones as well. Throughout the fifties, in fact,Wilson was always notable for his biting attacks on property promotion,gambling interests, the stock-market and advertising (Bank Rate Tri-bunal, etc). This theme recurs again and again today: Nothing soperverts our national life as Conservative attempts to identify theBritish standard of independence, ingenuity and venture with the self-interest of the share-pushers, take-over bidders, land- and property-speculators, ad-mass extravagancies and tax-dodgers. This indictmentis extended to the role of the City and finance capital in the economyas a whole. The great merger movement, the wave of take-over bids

instead of leading to rationalization of production has left too manyindustries in the hands of financiers rather than managers . . . The keyto a strong pound lies not in Britains finances but in the nationsindustry. Finance must be the index, not the determinant of economicstrength . . . Against this world of profligacy and facility, he juxta-poses the dedicated, responsible work of a manager, a designer, acraftsman, an architect, an engineer, a nuclear physicist, a doctor, a

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nurse or a social worker. The creation of the one has been a societyin which in our large industrial towns, about one-third of the house-holds have no bathrooms and about one-quarter have no piped hotwater. Nearly half our hospitals survive as ancient monuments,whispering their last carbolic tribute to the age of Queen Victoria.Over half our primary schools in which the children of the new Britainare being educated were built in the 19th century . . . New building,

which is geared to private profit and the speculative gains of theproperty developer, will, in the end, produce an asphalt and concretewilderness . . . In place of this, Wilson calls for a social environmenttransformed by the generous, purposeful efforts of the whole community,mobilizing all the skills of the new social groups to whom he addresseshimself: We shall not succeed in this great task unless we can call intoaction all our people architects and planners, local authority repre-sentatives and traffic engineers, sociologists and town planners, to buildthe cities of the future in which people live a satisfying life and realizeto the full the talents and potentialities within them. It is in appealslike these, to a long British tradition of social responsibility and publicservice, that much of Wilsons strength lies.

He explicitly calls for a responsible Britain based on public service, nota commercialized society in which everything has its price. This stresson public service allows him to advocate public intervention much moreconfidently than Gaitskell ever did. The transition, however, isusually confined to the future. Advanced capitalist countries are main-taining full employment today only by virtue of vast arms orders, andpanic would be the order of the day in Wall Street and other StockMarkets the day peace breaks out . . . The economic consequences ofdisarmament cannot be dealt with except on a basis of socialist plan-ning. He speaks with the same accents of the oncoming of automation,which for a year now has been the single theme with which he has mostpersonally identified himself: The growth of automation is likely, inBritain no less than in America, to create a vast problem of techno-logical employment. If Keynes were alive today, the one law he wouldbe propounding above all others, is the observed fact that each newcyclical peak in an advanced industrial economy is marked by a higher

rate of structural unemployment than its predecessor . . . Since techno-logical progress left to the mechanism of private industry and privateproperty can lead only to high profits for a few, a high rate of employ-ment for a few, and to mass redundancies for the many, if there hadnever been a case for socialism before, automation would have createdit. This idea is his ideological trump-card within the Labour Party.

This, then, is the strategy and language of Wilsonism. Its distinctiveblend of attack on social imbalance, hostility to traditional hierarchy,cult of science, and ethic of useful work is neatly summed up in Wilsons

official credo for the Party: Our proposals show the way towards amore balanced, satisfied society in which human dignity is accepted asthe ultimate aim of economic activity. The feverish creation of wants,the urgency to manipulate consumer demand which has dominated oureconomy will give way to a balanced enjoyment of life in which incomewill no longer depend on the artificial stimulation of dissatisfaction, ofclass differentiation and conspicuous status symbols. Production for

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use, for widening the potentialities of man will enable us to get fullenjoyment from our increased leisure.

3. The New Programme

How are these ideals translated into practical programmes? TheLabour Party is committed to definite policies over a wide range of

issues; over others, its positions remain deliberately sybilline andobscure. The main outlines of its platform can be resumed as follows:

To renovate the British economy, the Party proposes to swing the taxstructure against inefficient and under-investing firms. Heavy deprecia-tion allowances will encourage export firms, import-substitution,producer goods industries for the overseas market, and the installationof automative equipment. Government planning through NEDC and aMinister of Production will be increased, involving industry-wide co-

ordination of investment; but its final character remains unspecified. Acomprehensive incomes policy is, however, a fixed commitment.Effective regional development programmes are also promised. AMinister of Training will co-ordinate all apprenticeship and retrainingschemes. State contracts for scientific research and development will begranted to private industry, universities, guilds of scientists, etc. Boththe DSIR and NRDC will be expanded.

These are measures designed to create efficiency in British industry.There remain the proposals for public ownership. These are sparse and

cryptic. The only serious concrete commitment is to renationalizesteel. An integrated transport system is also planned, involving limitedmeasures of renationalization. Restrictions on manufacturing self-supplywill be lifted from the public sector. Beyond this, a number of warrantsfor possible socialization are included. These are: where an industry iswholly or mainly dependent on State orders (aircraft, pharmaceuticals),where an industry is dependent on a public subsidy, and where an in-dustry is threatened by an irresponsible take-over bid or constitutes adangerous monopoly. Finally, the Labour Party promises to set upState enterprises in the new science-based industries where the State

already provides the bulk of investment capital. Maximum emphasishas been given to this last idea, which constitutes, in a recognizablesense, the chef doeuvre of official policy on public ownership. Theforms of social ownership, it is stressed, are to be flexible and diverse:not merely traditional nationalization, but state participation withprivate capital in joint ventures, public enterprises competing withprivate firms, municipal enterprises, and co-operative enterprises.

The welfare programme of a Labour Government hinges effectively

on its Pensions scheme. This promises a flat-rate pension indexed to thecost-of-living, plus graduated pension rights based on contributionsand average life earnings. An Income Guarantee will ensure a minimumincome to all retired people, superseding applications to NationalAssistance in cases where old people needed supplements to theirpensions (currently about 25 per cent). The actual amounts of benefitsand ways of calculating the cost-of-living remain undisclosed.

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Labours housing programme depends essentially on its plans forurban land. Here it promises to set up a Crown Land Commission tobuy the free-hold of any land authorized for development. It wouldthen lease it to private or municipal developers, securing for the com-munity any rise in land values, and ensuring adequate urban planning.Repeal of the Rent Act, easier borrowing rates for local authorities,more New Towns, greater powers for local councils, and selected

physical controls to ensure priority for slum clearance and urban re-clamation, are among other measures proposed. The announcedtargets for a housing programme are vague and indistinguishable fromConservative promises (400,000 new houses a year).

The Partys plans for education call for smaller classes and more teachersin primary schools, and the abolition of the 11-plus and generalizationof the comprehensive system for secondary schools. The leaving ageis to be raised to 16. A crash programme of university expansion isscheduled, coupled with an upgrading of colleges of advanced tech-

nology and a University of the Air. Labours programme also calls forthe abolition of fee-paying in universities and college entrance examina-tions to Oxford and Cambridge. Finally, it proposes to integrate thepublic schools into the State system, possibly turning them into sixth-form schools or secondary boarding schools: the form and timing ofintegration to be decided by an Educational Trust.

Lastly, the Foreign Policy of a Labour Government remains almostentirely obscure. The Party is committed to the abandonment of theindependent nuclear deterrent. It has long-standing proposals fornuclear disengagement in Europe, and opposes with a degree ofdetermination that is as yet unspecified the establishment of a multi-lateral force. It has pledged its support to Malaysia. Beyond that, itaffirms its entire loyalty to the Western Alliance. It advocates greaterinternational liquidity, more Commonwealth trade and easy loans tounder-developed countries. It has not stated its policies towards BritishGuiana, Aden, the Gulf Protectorates, Rhodesia, or South Africa.

4. Dangers and Decoys

This is the political programme which is Labours response to the crisisof Conservative hegemony. The rupture of the old equilibrum offers theLabour Party a tremendous chance. But it also offers perilous traps. Forthe specific nature of the crisis of British capitalism provides at every point bothcreative opportunities and false solutions for the Labour Movement. It is a crisis ofthe traditional English hegemonic class, the product of centuries of slowsocial accretion and adaptation. In the contemporary world of immenselyenlarged and integrated industrial organizations and intensified inter-national capitalist competition, this class has suddenly appeared dilet-

tante and decadent. The consciousness that Britain, under its rule, hasbecome an economic backwater in the capitalist world, has seemed todiscredit it. Its failures have played into the hands of the Labour Party.Nothing is easier than for Wilson to denounce the incapacity and archa-ism of Home and the governing class whom he symbolizes: untilrecently, a considerable section of the Conservative press did the same.The temptation is to do so from the implicit standpoint of capitalist

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efficiency and rationality the simplest and shortest way to win aconsensus against the government. The very failures of the Conservativergime invite a response which imprisons the Labour Party within bourgeoislimits. How far has it been able to avoid this pitfall? This is, in effect,the substance of the question so often asked on the Left: would a Wilsongovernment mean technocracy?

The answer requires a hard, careful look at the programme outlinedabove. The first thing hat is immediately apparent about it is the priorityit gives to economic growth as such, to restoring Britains lostdynamic. Wilson has repeatedly said that everything else in Laboursprogramme depends on this. Labour spokesmen have declared that thePartys social objectives will have to wait until this commandingeconomic aim is achieved. Yet to achieve it requires, above all, theco-operation and good-will of private interests whom a serious imple-mentation of Labours social programme would precisely threaten. As

John Hughes has pointed out: Labour cannot be satisfied in its demo-

cratic and social egalitarian objectives unless it makes significant ad-vances in organizing social control over the economy; to a large extentthis must be at the expense of the present power of massed capital. Yetat the same time the state must work with the private sector, mustsystematically co-operate with profit-making industry in managingcurrent output and the pattern of future development. Must thissecond need impose such constraints, such compromises to winbusiness confidence, that it puts in jeopardy the social objectives of theLabour movement?.4 At this stage, obviously, no dogmatic predictionwould be tenable. But it is clear that in a two-sector economy in whichthe private sector is overwhelmingly predominant, priority to economicgrowth creates a built-in pressure towards accommodation withprivate capital. Big business has the power at any moment to make theLabour Government the hostage of its own promises. If it fails to de-liver a fast growth-rate, it has declared in advance that it will fail inevery other field. Thus the economic crisis that has been Laboursgreatest windfall could end by becoming its coup de grace as well.

To what extent does it risk this by its promised encroachments on theprivate sector? Wilsons language often sounds aggressively anti-

capitalist, in a way that Gaitskells never did. His acerbity, however,has precise and revealing limits. It is directed in the first instanceagainstanachronistic forms of enterprise ramshackle industries, nepo-tistic companies, family concerns, in general any sectors dominated byincompetent or amateur managements; and in the second instanceagainst parasitical forms of enterprise landlords, stockbrokers,property tycoons, tax consultants, gambling syndicates and advertisingcompanies.5 The panorama of English capitalism today swarms withboth of these phenomena. An attack on them can thus momentarily

seem like an attack on capitalism itself. The appearance is deceptive.Wilson is, in fact, attacking either pre-capitalist or para-capitalist activities,both of which are marginal to the main structure of capitalism today. There is,

4 An Economic Policy for Labour,New Left Review 24, MarchApril 1964.5 A third category is foreign, especially American enterprise. Wilson is particularlyfond of patriotic attacks on take-over bids involving foreign capital (Chrysler-Rootes deal, etc).

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in other words, a large element of demagogy in his radicalism. It mustbe seen in the light of the suggestive distinction which Wilson madein a speech early this year, between the Bourbons of the economicestablishment and serious-minded industrialists. Retarded or unpro-ductive elements are rejected; capable, dynamic capitalists are implicitlyendorsed.

Wilsons trenchant criticisms of English capitalism which mark himoff from his predecessor thus conceal a consistent displacement ofattention from essential to the inessential. What is, then, the characterof his case for socialism? Again, by comparison with Gaitskells, itappears audacious and comprehensive. Indeed, Wilsons analysis attimes has a quasi-Marxist flavour about it. He argues that, whatever thesuccess of Keynesian capitalism in preventing mass unemploymentunder present technological conditions, we are rapidly entering a newera in which a huge qualitative leap forward in technology, automation,will require a qualitatively new and decisive scale of social control overthe economy, which will represent precisely the difference betweenKeynesian capitalism and socialism. A new mode of production willdemand, inevitably, new relations of production. The simplicity andforce of this thesis is unquestionable. The Party militants who heard itat Scarborough in 1963 responded to it with delight and enthusiasm.Probably more than anything else, it served to clinch their confidencein the new leader. Were they wrong? The theme of automation inWilsons speeches is certainly bold and imaginative by the standards ofthe past. The general drift of his argument is irreproachable. But it is,

in a sense, its very sweep which is suspect. Is it an illusion to think thatWilson always sounds most socialist when he is talking of the indeter-minate, distant future? For and this is the crux of the matter automation is not a significant issue on the political agenda in Britainnow, nor will it be for the entire lifetime of the next Labour Govern-ment. This is in no way to belittle its importance in the long-run. ButWilsons use of it he is always at his most eloquent on the subject is certainly more complex than it appears. It is both an objectively validlong-term perspective for the Labour Party and a tactical short-termdevice for lulling its Left. The boundless promise of the future operates

as a distraction from the limited compromises of the present. ThusWilson achieves a certain mirage effect when he talks of socialism, no lessthan when he attacks capitalism. In both cases, he bases himself on realand important issues; but in each case, they also serve to deflectattention from the nub of social tensions and contradictions today.

5. Public Ownership

How far is this analysis born out by Labours actual programme? A

large number of its proposals are clearly anodyne. Designed to achievea rapid rate of growth, they do not injure the interests of the privatesector as such, and will meet little, if any, opposition from it. The testof the Partys determination lies, necessarily, in its proposals for publicownership. The casualness with which these have so far been greetedby socialists is inexcusable. Each needs, on the contrary, to be carefullyscrutinized.

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The specific commitments require, perhaps, least comment. The re-nationalizations of steel and road transport, important as these are, donot represent a genuine advance: they merely restore a position lostfourteen years ago. The proposals for new measures of public owner-ship, by contrast, are wide-ranging but vague. Signposts for the Sixtiesdeclares that there is a case for socialism where an industry is de-pendent for its existence either on state subsidies or state purchases;

and where an industry is controlled by a monopoly. It promises to setup public companies in the new industries based on science, where theState already provides 60 per cent of the research funds. These ideasvary in relevance and importance. Socialization of deficitary sectorslike the aircraft industry, which is dependent on state contracts, wouldnot in itself mark any advance beyond Labours conceptions of 1945.Serious use of public enterprise to replace subsidized private enterprisein the depressed regions could, on the other hand, be a major stepforward. Monopoly power is in one form or another so widespread inthe British economy today that Labours ability to isolate and challengeit in any significant way seems very doubtful. All these proposals how-ever, are overshadowed by or dependent on the promises to create new,socially owned industries based on science: it is on them that Laboursprogramme for the extension of the public sector in the main rests. Thisis the core of its new policies. It is time to ask what the objectivecontent and prospects of this conception are.

The attraction of the idea, as is evident, lies in its reversal of thedirection of traditional nationalizations: the community is now to be-

come the owner, not of bankrupt or archaic industries, but of the mostmodern and dynamic sectors of the economy. The official picture, how-ever, omits one vital fact. The most technologically advanced sectors today areoften the most expensive and least immediately profitable: they are not the exist-ing growth sectors, with huge plants and markets and declining unit-costs. Thereis a world of difference between, say, the computer and chemical in-dustries that is, a firm like ICT (International Computers and Tabu-lators) and ICI. The really profitable and expansionist sectors of theBritish economy are the big industries producing for the mass consumermarket cars, domestic appliances, synthetic fibres, televisions, etc.

The typical enterprise in these markets is the immense, internationallyaffiliated corporation, ramified into a complex hierarchy of productdivisions and subsidiaries: Ford, Unilever, General Electric, ICI,Phillips, etc.6 There is no chance whatever of a Labour Governmentpioneering publicly owned firms in these sectors: they would bewiped out immediately. What, then, are the prospects for public enter-prise in science-based industries working on more advanced techno-logical frontiers? Two such industries that spring to mind are theelectronics industry and its derivative, the computer industry. Elec-tronics is now the main motor of all technological progress. Preciselybecause of this, it is an enormously costly and risky field, which re-quires colossal investment programmes and in which research and de-

6 This sector is likely to provide the socio-economic base for an eventual Conservativecome-back, after the election, if the Labour Party wins: MacLeod, Maudling orHeath are the logical candidates to succeed Home in this perspectivethe emer-gence of a powerful, coherent neo-capitalism. Britain still notably lacks this.

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velopment failures are constant. It is no accident that it is also one of thefields in which international integration and concentration is proceed-ing fastest. The symbol of this streamlined, spear-head sector is doubt-less the computer. Wilson himself never fails to invoke the immensepotentialities of the new computers, which command faculties ofmemory and judgement far beyond the capacity of any human being orgroup of human beings who have ever lived. He has also frequently

attacked the poor performance of the British computer industry: Incomputers . . . the import-export ratio worsened dangerously over thepast decade . . . It would look as if this was an ideal field for the newscience-based public enterprise of Labour promises. The reality, however,is quite different. After a sequence of failures and mergers, there is nowonly one major British computer firm left International Computersand Tabulators (ICT). Yet it commands only 40 per cent of the Britishmarket, and this share is itself increasingly threatened. The rest of themarket has been captured by the American colossus IBM (swollen by theastronomic military contracts of the US Defence Department). IBMSposition is now so strong that ICTs existence as an independent firm ismore and more doubtful. Its total research budget is some 5 milliona year; IBMs is 60 million a year. In face of this discrepancy, whatchance would a new State computer firm have?7

Of course, the chances of competitive public enterprise are better insome sectors machine-tools, petro-chemicals than this. But evenhere the problematic character of these new forms of public enterpriseremains. A sprinkling of state firms across the vast terrain of the

private sector will simply blur the boundaries between the two types ofownership. On the other hand, an attempt to occupy in force a givenbranch of technology could well achieve, not the reverse, but the com-plement of the traditional kind of nationalization: instead of the com-munity subsidizing unprofitable industries of the past, it would besubsidizing as yet equally unprofitable industries of the future.The Atomic Energy Commission of the last Labour Government hasset a precedent for this. Historically, Western European capitalism has, ever

since the late 19th century, always permitted (indeed sometimes itself carriedthrough) precisely these two types of nationalization, both of which amount in

effect to a socialization of losses which leaves the system of accumulation ofcapital within the society fundamentally untouched. If a Labour Governmentis content with public enterprise of this kind, it will not have altered inany way the classic function of the public sector in contemporarycapitalism. For the range of difficulties facing its present proposalsall come back to one fundamental fact. Socialism cannot simply bebuilt in the space vacated by capitalism: it requires a genuine confronta-tion and conquest of it.

6. Land and Housing

How far does the rest of the Labour programme accord with this

7 The experience of the French governmentfar more committed to nationalistaims than a Labour Government is likely to beis trying to save the model Frenchcomputer firm Machines Bull from General Electric in early 1964 is instructive. Thefull force of de Gaulles intervention was only able to save part of the firm.

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preliminary description? The partys policy on urban land is certainlyone of the most crucial planks in its platform. It reflects a wide agree-ment in the Party that, in Croslands words, Market forces . . . workruinously in the field of land-use and buildings. For land is not anordinary commodity, to be bought and sold like toothpaste or detergent.

Its use, especially in our overcrowded island, affects large numbers of

people besides the user; and the ratio of social to private cost or gainis uniquely high.8 To combat the multiple evils of choked traffic sys-tems, rocketing land prices, otiose office-blocks, and above all, millionsof shameful slum-dwellings, the Party now proposes to take into publicownership all freehold land scheduled for development. Will thismeasure really break the speculators stranglehold? Every socialistmust hope that it will. But the new policy leaves the gravest doubts.For everything hinges on the exact terms on which land scheduled fordevelopment is purchased by the Crown Land Commission. If theprice is set low (by present standards), it is extremely likely that many

owners will postpone any development of their land, hoping for thereturn of a Conservative Government, and the repeal of the system by which time their property will have accrued enormously in value.For the period of a Labour Government meanwhile, there could be afreeze-up of the land-market making Labours plans for urban re-newal impossible. Alternatively, if the price is set high, making it worth-while for property-owners to sell, it will become prohibitively expen-sive for the Commission to buy enough land thus equally limiting areal drive for the reconstruction and humanization of British cities. Inactual fact, the decision seems only too likely to go this way. George

Brown has already declared, in his inimitable way, that the property-owners will have their bit of gravy.

If this is to be the framework for the renovation of urban Britain, whowill do the building? It is clear that a Labour Government would imposephysical controls, in the form of building licenses, to ensure thathumane housing priorities are respected. However, it should not beforgotten that Wilson has often criticized the British building industryfor its notoriously inefficient and antiquated techniques in particular,its failure to adopt the pre-fabricated units which are essential for mass

housing drives today. This criticism, coupled with barbarity of thewhole pattern of urban construction over the last decade, might seemto offer an opening for the competitive public enterprise which Sign-

posts for the Sixties advocates. In practice, Wilson has already suggestedwho will do the building, and secure the profit: To encourage newmethods, there is a lot to be said for handing over the building pro-gramme of a complete new town to one or more big contractors whoare prepared to use non-traditional methods, because such methods arepriced out of the market if restricted to contracts based on penny-numbers.

7. Pensions

Turning to Labours welfare policies, the pensions scheme outlined inNew Frontiers for Social Security is in many ways a thoughtful and wel-come document. It represents a definite breakthrough in the whole

8 The Conservative Enemy, p. 138.

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direction of Labours welfare thinking. At the same time, it is noticeablethat the critical issue of private pensions schemes, which entrenchdouble standards in social security and create vast, burgeoning centresof economic power, is evaded. The florescence of these schemes datesfrom the Conservative decision to allow employers to contract theiremployees out of the public system. Labours present platform neithercalls for the abrogation of this principle, nor even for the right of con-

tracting out to be transferred from the employer to the employee whoactually receives the pension. Labours programme, in other words, isacceptable and progressive in terms of its own announced objectives:but as soon as these involve a confrontation with the power and privi-leges of the private sector, the programme evaporates: silence descends.

8. Education

How true is this of Labours plans for education? The resolution toabolish the 11-plus and institute generalized comprehensive schools is

impeccable. The quantitative goals for primary, secondary and highereducation are all necessary minima. The abolition of both university feesand college entrance examinations to Oxford and Cambridge will un-doubtedly be beneficial. All these measures constitute a very respectableprogramme for the expansion and democratization of British education.But the lynchpin of the whole system of hierarchical discrimination andinequality in our education is, of course, the private sector in secondaryeducation the public schools. These are the real fastnesses of classascendancy in our social and cultural life. No reform of our educationalsystem which does not attack and dismantle them can be consideredserious for a moment. What are Labours intentions? Signposts for the

Sixties declares that: The nation should now take the decision to endthe social inequalities and educational anomalies arising from the ex-istence of a highly influential and privileged private sector of education,outside the State system. This statement is, however, less clear-cutthan it appears. The concrete measures envisaged by the Party aredescribed as follows: We propose, therefore, to establish under theMinister of Education, an Educational Trust. After full consultation asto the method and timing, with the local authorities and the schools

themselves, the Trust will recommend the form of integration that willenable each of them to make its best educational contribution . . . Itwould be wrong at this stage to lay down a detailed blue-print for thefuture role of the public schools . . .

The commitment to move against the public schools, to integratethem in some way in the State system, is a long step forward comparedwith the Labour Party programme of 1959. Here, if anywhere, Laboursplatform seems to have acquired a radical cutting-edge. Having saidthis, however, important qualifications remain. Labour leaders recog-

nize in private that the actual content of the Educational Trusts re-commendations will depend on the composition of the Trust, theappointment of whose members will be a conscious decision by aLabour Government and one which will directly reflect the degreeof its political determination. The pressures brought to bear against aniconoclastic selection will be enormous. They will have all the morepurchase in that there are powerful elements in the Labour Party itself

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which have long advocated a solution after the pattern of the mixed-economy: that is to say, the introduction of a quantitatively pegged in-take (perhaps 50 per cent) of non-fee-paying pupils into the publicschools, without any change in the structure and ideology of the schools.Such a solution would, of course, merely inoculate the public schoolsagainst serious reform while preserving their essential elite characterintact. It must be fought absolutely. Until there is no longer any chance

of Labour adopting a plan of this kind, final judgement must be re-served on its educational policy.

9. Planning

In urban renovation, in housing, in health, in welfare, and in education,the Labour Party has promised dramatically improved social provision.This is not to speak of the plans for new kinds of public ownership, ifthese are realized. So far each of these programmes for remedying socialimbalance in Britain has been examined separately. The limited

character of their direct challenge to private interests is in each caseclear. It is possible, however, the sum of these programmes may posea powerful indirect challenge to British capitalism by the level of socialexpenditure that they demand and the instruments of social control thatthey imply. This brings us to the whole problem of planning. Does theLabour Partys conception of national planning to some extent com-pensate for the lacunae in its social policies?

It is clear, in the first place, that planning under a Labour Governmentwould not be mandatory. Wilsons definition follows classic liberal lines:

Planning at least in the sense of indicative, democratic planning (whatis undemocratic about a mandatory plan?). Instead, the plan willattempt to impose a kind of social code on industry, which will, it isclaimed, extend the frontiers of social control in new and imaginativeways. These will probably include joint industrial councils, with TradeUnion and civil servant participation; a limited number of physicalcontrols; a certain amount of taxation based on social cost and benefitanalysis; a high level of export incentives; and a constant stream ofgovernmental rhetoric and persuasion in favour of greater efficiency

and patriotic initiatives. Proposals for compulsory efficiency audits andpublic advertisement of company posts have also been made by radicalultras on the Labour Right, but these are unlikely to be adopted. In all,the degree of public scrutiny and accountability in British industry wouldbe increased by a Labour Government: but so far there is little evidencethat its planning will do more than institutionalize the presence andpowers which a Labour Government would have anyway, by the simplevirtue of its existence.

The immediate objectives of the plan are crystal-clear. In the earlier

stages of our national plan, capital, investment and exports would haveto be given priority . . . In planning his first budgets, therefore, aLabour Chancellor would make sure that all his measures were sub-ordinated to this central purpose. Where, then, are the resources forLabours relatively ambitious social programme to come from? Tax-ation under a Labour Government would certainly be more redistribu-tive than it is today: both a capital gains tax and a determined attempt

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to block tax evasion are promised. A wealth tax is also a possibility.However the real focus of power and profit in a capitalist society is notpersonal but corporate wealth. It is here that Labours radicalism willbe put to the test, in what will almost certainly be the most importantsingle issue in the early years of a Labour Government. The LabourParty is committed to a socially just incomes policy, which will ensurea planned growth of incomes: this involves first and foremost, of

course, wage-restraint by the unions. The realization of a national wagespolicy, if it were successful, would mark a historic moment in the de-velopment of the Trade Union movement: the first time that it has everformally abrogated its freedom of action to the State. The dangers ofsuch an incorporation in the machinery of the State are immense. Whatwill the unions be offered in return? Labour leaders have promisedtime and time again that an incomes policy would include a restraint onprofits as well as wages. But they have never once clearly suggested howthis was to be achieved. Statutory limitations on dividends has beenrefused by Wilson; discrimination against distributed profits is scarcelya substituteit merely leads to a massive build-up of corporate re-serves for the future. Thus, there is no sign at present that the LabourParty either knows how or is really resolved to control the level ofprofits in the economysomething which every other indicative planin Europe, whether French, Dutch, Italian, Belgian or Swedishhasfailed to do. Indeed, Callaghan publicly admitted as much at the lastLabour Party Conference. Thus at the very apex of its whole politicalprogramme no less than in its specific social policies, the LabourPartys inner will and intentions remain crucially uncertain.

10. Foreign Policy

Labours foreign policy, finally, needs to be considered in the light ofits home policy. For the continuity between the two is very close. Thereis the same iridescent melange of radicalism and conformity: the sameambience of equivocation and ambiguity. The context however, isaltogether graver and heavier with consequences. In it, the samequalities acquire a new significance. What is caution and moderation athome can easily become, by a logic characteristic of social-democracy,

complicity and brutality abroad: temporization with capitalism,collusion with imperialism. The stakes are higher. The responsibilities,correspondingly greater.

The Labour Party today stands for the abandonment of the independentnuclear deterrent. This represents perhaps the greatest single changefrom its platform of 1959: it marks a signal vindication of the uni-lateralist Left. A vindication, but not in itself a victory. The decision tojettison the British deterrent probably owes more to the strategic optionsof the American Government than to the pressure of the British Left.

It nevertheless meets an evident necessity of peace, and will be wel-comed all over the world. It will be the first time since 1945 that agovernment has on its own initiative, without any counterpart, intro-duced a major measure of disarmament.

Having said this, however, one fundamental qualification needs to bemade. Just as Labours domestic stance coincides with a mutation in British

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capitalism and partly reflects its requirements, so its new deterrence policy grewout of a mutation in the pattern of international capitalism and reflects itsrequirements. There is, in effect, a close homology between Laboursattacks on archaism and dilettantism in British industry, and its attackson illusions of grandeur in British defence policy. Both are made in thename of modernism and rationality. Both freely invoke American ex-ample or American advice. In the latter case, the preferences of the

Pentagon have played a direct role in shaping Labour policy.

Thus Labours most important initial step in international affairs wouldalso be, in a sense, its least adventurous. It is, rather, the proposals fordisengagement in Europe and the refusal of the multilateral forcewhich will be truer indications of the real nature of Labours foreignpolicy. For these run counter to Washingtons policies, not with it.In both cases, Labours official positions are irreproachable. But a largequestion mark hangs over each. Would a Labour Government, facedwith determined American opposition, persist in its positions, or would

it quietly drop them? Againthe pattern is by now familiarit is notWilson, but one of his lieutenants, Gordon Walker, who has indiscreetlyremarked abroad that if it was unable to persuade the USA to the con-trary, the Labour Party would finally rally to the multilateral force.Such statements do not necessarily determine policy. But they are anunmistakable warning.

In general, the Labour Partys policies towards the arms race and theSoviet Union are now very similiar to those of the Kennedy-Johnsonadministrations; they are covered by the Russo-American entente. Theone significant difference concerns West Germany, where the LabourParty (and Wilson) has always historically shown a greater sensitivityto Russian and East European fears than Washington. But Labourscapacity to carry out a genuinely independent and progressive foreignpolicy will be at stake over a much wider front than this. The two keyareas, which will determine the character of its foreign policy far morethan the problems of disengagement in Europe, are the world-widesystems of British and American imperialism. This is where its majorresponsibilities lie. It is relatively easy for Labour to seek peaceful co-

existence in Europe under the umbrella of the Soviet-American dtente.But outside Europe, in Vietnam, in Laos, in the Congo, in Cuba, inBrazilAmerican military and political forces today are fighting ablind, pitiless struggle against the rising tide of national and socialemancipation. Will a Labour Government, by its silence or support,abet them? At this moment, it seems only too likely. So far, no Labourspokesman has condemned the war in Vietnam, the blockade againstCuba, the repression in the Congo. Loyalty to the American alliance, oractual conviction of the need to defend the free world, has overbornevery other consideration.

The weight of Atlantic conformism is made all the heavier, and moredangerous, by the vulnerability of British imperialism today, which hascreated a chain of mutual favours and dependences between it andAmerican imperialism, from Singapore to Georgetown. The Left couldentertain no worse illusion that to believe that only curios and cast-offsof Empire now remain. Nothing could be further from the truth. As

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complacent apologists in London have repeatedly pointed out, themost valuable gems in the imperial treasure have all, in one way oranother been preserved. Oil in the Persian Gulf, tin and rubber inMalaya, gold and diamonds in South Africathese were always thegreat dollar-earners of the Sterling Area. Every one remains an opulentprovince of British capitalism today. The struggle for an authentic,concrete independence in these territories will be bitterly hard. The list

of colonial possessions and imperial bases does not even end there.Guyana, Rhodesia, Aden, Oman, Fiji, Cyprus and many others: twentyyears after the Declaration of Casablanca and the United NationsCharter none are yet free. The importance all these areas will have inthe next five years cannot be over-estimated. Already, the LabourParty inherits two full-scale colonial wars, in Arabia and Borneo, andthe equivalent of a military occupation in Guyana. A police rgime isentrenched in Rhodesia, where an explosion can be expected anymoment. The impending conflict in South Africa will shake the world.

What will Labours polices on these momentous issues be? Very littleinformation has so far emerged. What there has, however, could hardlybe worse. Chauvinistic calls for greater military build-ups in Borneo andAden have been coupled with a refusal to envisage any effectivemeasures against South Africa. Wilsons conception of the latter-dayrole of the Empire in defending the freedom of our way of life iscrudely explicit: Quite apart from the danger zones of Laos and Viet-nam, the Middle East and Malaysia, there are many tenuously heldareas where bush-fires might quickly flare up into searing, scorching

crises. Should trouble occur it is easier for Britain to build up a small,even a token force which is there, than for the US to enter an areapreviously evacuated by the West. There are, indeed, many areastenuously held by imperialism today; it will take more than theLabour Party to save them.

Side by side with this continuing jingoism, there has been an almostcomplete absence of specific commitments on colonial issues. Labourspolicy towards Guyana, Rhodesia or Aden remains quite unknown.However, the drift of thinking in circles which were at least at one time

close to Wilson is quite clear. In recent months, the New Statesman hasmade itself the standard-bearer of neo-colonial solutions to a wholerange of problems, advocating partition in South Africa, recommendingconcessions to America in Guyana, urging prolonged delays indemocratizing Rhodesia, andabove allattacking Indonesia interms almost identical to those of the hysteria against Egypt in 1956.It is clear that from the first days of a Labour Administration, the Leftwill have to maintain an unremitting vigilance.

Against all this, there stand Labours promised aid programmes to the

Third Worldin the first instance the underdeveloped Common-wealth countries. There is little to suggest so far that the amount of thisaid will increase dramatically under a Labour government; it may behoped, however, that in future the per capita level of British aid will atleast match that of France. The main emphasis of Wilsons speecheshas rather been on the need to repair the disastrous inequalities ofworld trade, which regularly wipe out any beneficial effects which aid

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programmes have had on the economies of under-developed countries.This attention is in itself welcome: it at least represents an advance overthe characteristic preoccupations of the Kennedy Administration. Theremedies proposedcommodity stabilization agreements, comple-mentary planning, selective liberalization of tariffs, switch to capitalgoods exports in the developed countriesare well-intentioned as faras they go. But they do not go to the root of the problem. Under-

development, as has often been pointed out in this review, is not asimple state of poverty (as Labour leaders like to call it) amenable totechnical amelioration. It is a total social and historical phenomenonaculture and a social structure as much as an economy or demographywhich is only intelligible in relation to the imperial system which sus-tains it. It can only be overcome by a profound revolutionary explosionand mobilization in the under-developed countrydirected pre-cisely against the imperial power dominating the country, and its de-pendents within it. Thus Labours moralizing and technicist approachto aid for the Third World is ultimately not in contradiction with itswillingess to use brute military force to preserve key British imperialzones. The two policies are, in a sense, complementary: they both pro-ceed from a fundamental inability to recognize the greatest drama ofour time: thepolitical resurgence and reappropriation of history by thehitherto obliterated nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

To sum up: it is clear that the Labour Party has hitherto made noindependent response to the new international conjuncture. This failurecontrasts with its swift adaptation to the new domestic situation. Un-

doubtedly a certain provincialism, the traditionally narrow Anglo-Saxon culture and horizons of the Labour leadership, has played itspart in this. But more important, the dimensions of the Cold War andthe American supremacy are far vaster than those of British capitalism:to resist them is far harder. Absorbed by its gains at home, the LabourParty has largely neglected the outside world. It will not be able to doso for long.

11. The Political Character of Wilsonism

Finally, then, how should the Labour programme be judged as a whole?What does Wilsonism represent politically? An answer is now possible.Wilsonism is a precise translation of the dual impact of the semi-successes of the

Left in the fifties and the crisis of British capitalism in the sixties on traditionalLabourism.9 No more and no less. Neither pure platform of moderniza-tion nor all-out attack on social poverty, its ambiguities and evasionsall stem from these origins. In every field at home Labours presentprogramme is radical, within limits which are always short of a seriousconfrontation of the power structure of British society. This is thesecret of Wilsons success as a party leader and a national politician. Itis also the reason why socialists must take their distances from theLabour programme and criticize if from a fully independent per-spective. Anything less is an abandonment of autonomy and principle.

9 Mediated by the distinctive personality of Wilson. In a forthcoming article, I shalldiscuss the record of the Left in the fifties the rupture of British capitalism in thesixties is analyzed in Origins of the Present Crisis.

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At the same time, it is useless to blame Wilson or the Labour Partyfor their deep-rooted evasions. The hallmark of Labourism has alwaysbeen its complete inability to face problems of power. For all its surfacenovelty, the present programme in this respect merely continues thePartys oldest traditions. The Left did not succeed in transformingthese in the fifties: it is paying the price today. For the weakness of the

Labour Partys programme for socialization is an objective reflection of the

weakness of the Lefts case for it. An inconclusive case for public owner-ship was made in the early sixties by the Left: it finds a faithful reflection,in all its uncertainty, in Signposts for the Sixties. If today, the chances ofsubstantial inroads on the private sector seem small, the Left haslargely itself to blame. The limitations of Wilsonism mark the boundar-ies of its own efficacy.

At the same time, the very vices of Wilsonism offer the possibility oftranscending it. Its characteristic mixture of trenchant, cutting rhetoricand ambiguous, imprecise proposal does not in itself block any advance

to the Left. Evasion, after all, is not the same as refusal. Once again,the contrast with Gaitskell is notable. Gaitskell always prefaced hispositions with an absolute ideological statement which precluded anyevolution beyond them. Termination of the private sector in educationwas unconscionable; the Pilkington Report showed contempt forthe man in the street; nationalization was no longer essential tosocialism; renunciation of the British deterrent was immoral. Wilsonsprocedure is the exact opposite. He never commits himself to right-wing credos: he always frames his proposals so as to leave himself themaximum freedom of maneouvre. Under his leadership, the whole Labour

programme has become open-ended. It is not at any point socialist; butnor is it, unlike its predecessor, inherently incapable of debouchingonto socialism. It is thus neither a barrier nor a tramplin for the Left:it is simply a political space in which it can work. However, this is onlytrue on one conditionthat the Left is not lulled or disarmed by verbalradicalism from Wilson or any other Labour leader. The great merit,and danger, of Wilsonism is its openness. Anything can be read into it.Hopeful interpretations and comfortable inactivity have alreadyappeared on the Left: nothing could be more self-defeating. For

it is only a rigorous lucidity and decisive energy that can make areality of the radical appearances of Labours programme. The finalcharacter of a fourth Labour Government will be determined by thebalance of forces within the Labour movement. It is on this that every-thing else depends. What should be the role of the Left?

12. The New Leadership

The internal situation of the Labour Movement today is dominatedby two related phenomena: the personal supremacy of Wilson and the

continuing disarray of the Left. A recognition of this must be thestarting-point for considering the problems and opportunities of arenovated Left. For the first time in its history, the Labour Party isnow lead by a man who by any standards is a consummately adroit andaggressive politician. The long reign of mediocrity is over. MacDonald,Henderson, Attlee, Gaitskellwhether honourable or contemptible,the leaders of the Labour Party have always had in common political

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timidity, tactical incapacity and miserable intellectual vacuity. All themost crippling limitations of the British Labour movement have beenincarnated in the lamentable succession of its official spokesmen. Now,suddenly this is over. The Labour Party has at last, after 50 years offailing, produced a dynamic and capable leader. The whole party isstill disorientated with the surprise of the event. Wilsons dexterity andflair as a politician enabled him to build up an almost unchallenged

authority within the party within a year of his accession to the leader-ship. He has kept the initiative ever since. The best description of hisstyle of leadership is his own: The Labour Party is like a vehicle. Ifyou drive at great speed, all the people in it are either so exhilarated orso sick that you have no problems. But when you stop, they all get outand argue about which way to go.10

It is this tempo which has enabled Wilson, not only to secure hisauthority in the Labour Party, but to attack the Conservative Govern-ment as well. As a Prime Minister, it could help him to achieve that

self-renewing momentum, which is crucial to a working-class govern-ment in a capitalist environment, and which has so far eluded everyLabour Administration, each time with disastrous results. In this sense,it may have a wider significance. For personally, Wilsons own historyincapsulates the destiny of a whole generation in the class among whichhe grew up.11 The rise of a certain number of gifted working-classchildren through the State educational system to the prestige univer-sities, and thereafter to rewarding technical and professional careershas been a phenomenon of the last 30 years. Wilson speaks with all theculture and confidence of this experience. His technical fluency, hislack of social deference, his very verbal style, with its penchant for theaerodynamic image and polysyllabic epithet, are the marks of it. Fromthis point of view, whatever his faults, Wilson as a leader may in theend represent a certain moment in the auto-emancipation of the workingclass movement in England.

But equally his leadership could have a very different significance: itsmeaning is still open: it will only be decided by the future. For themoment, it is important to point out the negative effects of Wilsonspolitical skills. In the first place, his personal dominance has tended to

obscure the rest of the Labour leadership, thereby giving the Labourparty a more Left-wing look than it really has. For the fact is that the topechelon of the Party remains as overwhelmingly Right-wing today as itwas yesterday. Its calibre, too, remains the same: in their differentmodalities, from vulgarity to gentility, Wilsons major lieutenants em-body the quintessence of traditional Labour mediocrity. The forces ofinertia and reaction in the Party are still very strong. Wilsons leadershiphas created the illusion that they are not.

10 Time, October 11, 1963. All other quotations from Wilson in this article come from

speeches made this year, or from The Relevance of British Socialism.11 Not of which he was himself a member. Occupationally, Wilsons background islower-middle classhis father is a pharmacist. But the urban area in which he grewup during the Depression was overwhelmingly working-class: in such an environ-ment the sociological distance between individual lower-middle class families andthe majority of working-class families around them, although discernible, is not sovery great. The regional culturean important element in Wilsons make-upis,of course, common to both.

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14. Social Priorities and Democratic Mobilization

The first task of the Left, of course, is to fight over the whole range ofdomestic and foreign issues for a maximum implementation of Laboursexisting programme. The room for different applications of Laboursmandate is, as has been seen, so wide that this will be the immediateobligation of the Left if and when a Labour Government is formed. This

means an attackall along the line, on every issue. In public ownership, inland, in housing, in transport, in pensions, in education and in foreignpolicy, unrelenting pressure must be exerted to ensure that the radicaland not the right-wing interpretation is adopted: in every field, thisinvolves a critical contest with national or international capitalism.This will require a tremendous effort in itself. But the Left cannot restthere. In addition to all this, it must press for the creation of new demo-cratic institutions to carry out Labours social programme. Officially,at least, this promises to reorient the whole industrial environmentaway from the inhuman mechanisms of profit and towards human needs,

Without the participation and control of the people concerned, this pro-gramme will inevitably end in paternalism, if it is carried out at all. Forthere to be a genuine advance towards socialism, the stifling urbanlimbo of contemporary England must be recovered by the people wholive and die in it, not merely ameliorated for them. The only way toensure this is the creation of local democratic institutions, above allregionally, for the operation and renovation of the economic andsocial services of each area. In particular, democratically-elected Re-gional Assemblies are a key objective. Wilson has called for the virtuesof political irreverence and iconoclasm, and declared that: We wanta Britain in which everyone, not a small clique or class, feel themselvesto be part of a process of new policy-making, of taking national deci-sions, where every home, every club, every pub is its own Parliament inminiaturethrashing out the issues of the day. We want a Britainwhere the ideas and efforts of its citizens are more important to theGovernment than day-to-day ups and downs in public opinion pollsor on the stock exchange. For this rhetoric to become a reality, con-crete steps will have to be taken. Only the Left could force a LabourGovernment to do so. The whole texture of British political life,

which is now essentially reduced to remote, ritualized debates in anational Parliament, mediated by the anonymity of press and televisionto millions of atomized spectators, will have to be immeasurably en-riched and transformed. A dense network of intermediary agencies andinstitutions is an absolute necessity for this. It alone can create a concretecivic democracy in place of an abstract and formal one.

The struggle of the Left for an authentic democracy within the LabourParty must, then, rejoin a struggle for democracy within British societyas a whole. The same leverage can serve it for both. Party unity

would be even more to a Labour Government than to the party leadertoday. It must be made to pay a price for ita radical implementationof its social programme and, inseparably, a wide devolution of democ-racy to carry it out.

15. Workers Control

The most explosive single political issue under a Labour Government

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is likely to be its incomes policy. This is the crunch on which all itsother plans and programmes depend. It is the one time-bomb which noamount of dexterity or evasion can painlessly defuse. What shouldsocialist attitudes be towards a Labour Governments incomes policy?Numerous voices on the Left have suggested that the unions should beprepared to accept an incomes policy which guarantees them a realwage increase of perhaps 20 per cent over 45 years, plus the increase in

their real income from he benefits of Labours social programme. Thislooks like a perfectly defensible policy. It overlooks, however, onefundamental fact. Trade Union freedom of action is not simply aneconomic asset, a way of achieving a higher standard of living, whichcan therefore be bartered for a guaranteed rise in real wages. It is a

political asset in its own right, of priceless value. For however limitedthe official credo of Trade Union leaders has been, the reality is that inBritain, as in every other Western European country, the socio-politicalidentity of the working-class is first and foremost incarnated in its Trade Unions.The very existence of a Trade Union de facto asserts the unbridge-able difference between capital and labour within a capitalist society;it embodies the refusal of the working-class to become in-corporated into that society on its own terms. Thus the integration ofthe Trade Unions into the State machinery in the long-run threatensto extinguish working-class consciousness and autonomy within aframework of neo-capitalism. As such, it must be resisted, no matterwhat apparently favourable economic bargain is offered as a counter-part. The two things on exchange are not of the same order.

Does this mean that the unions should a priori refuse any discussionof incomes policy? By no means. To advocate such a policy would inany case be utopian, since all the major unions are committed to dis-cussions with a Labour Government. What it does mean is that theyshould demand as a priority, not greater wage increases, but measuresof workers control. For workers control is the only negotiable exchange for

an incomes policy: it alone offers a genuine counterpartpowers and notpence. The sacrifice of Trade Union autonomy to the State which isinvolved in an incomes policy could only be compensated by the gain inreturn of decisively increased autonomy and control for the workers in

the plant. There is no space here to discuss the successive modes ofworkers control that could be envisaged. It is, however, abundantlyclear by nowfrom a wide range of international experiencethatworkers control is not a utopian myth, but is an eminently practicablepolitical goal, above all in a country with as skilled and mature a work-ing-class as Britain. A crucial first step could be, as Tony Topham hasrecently suggested, the institutionalized right of shop stewards andTrade Union officials to have access to company books, and thus toadminister the provisions of the incomes policy regulating profits.12

Control over work-speeds, introduction of new equipment, hiring and

firing, welfare and recreation, are other preliminary objectives. Theseaims should be made an urgent, immediate target of the Left. They arehere and now on the agenda of British socialism.

Once again, it must be stressed that the Left has a real chance of

12 Shop Stewards and Workers Control,New Left Review 25 MayJune 1964.

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achieving these aims because they can be grounded in an independent,imperative necessity for a Labour Government. It has been seen howthe entire political future of a Labour Government is at stake in itsprogramme for economic growth. Nothing could bring this programmeto a complete halt faster than a refusal by the unions to accept any formof wage restraint. The potential political leverage of the unions will thus beenormous, if it is used lucidly and unflinchingly. The unions are, in fact, the

one force on the Left that a Labour Government cannot, under anycircumstances, trifle with. This force must be applied creatively, notsimply to pursue traditional claims, but to make a historic entry into awhole new area of demandsthe achievement by the industrial work-ing-class of control over the conditions and ends of their work.

16. Culture

The Labour Party at present has no official programme of any serious-ness in the field of culture and communications. Wilsons speeches

have made no reference to them: a single paragraph in The Relevance ofBritish Socialism discusses the subject, finishing with a call for morestadia and cindertracks. It might seem, then, that pressure from theLeft for a coherent cultural policy would have little or no purchase on thepreoccupations of a Labour Government, and as such be vain. Inreality, the picture is likely to look very different if a LabourGovernment is elected. For this will have demonstrated that we arenow at a point when it is no longer viableeven in terms of short-runself-interestfor a Government in Britain to offer a purely materially-oriented administration. But even apart from this, two highly

successful and internationally renowned examples have alreadyshown how politically effective a governments cultural policy can be.It is clear that a significant part of Kennedys immense prestige andpopularity in the United States and in the West generally was due tohis carefully created image as a contemporary Maecenas, a patron ofthe arts who was surrounded by the most distinguished thinkers andmen of letters in America. The glamour of the New Frontier owedmuch to this. A second and less factitious success has been that of theGaullist rgime in France. De Gaulles unique national and inter-national position, due in the first instance to his defiance of America,also rests on a very skilful exploitation of the traditional clat andauthority of French culture. Within France, the cultural policy of thergime has not been limited simply by the simulacrum of a polished courtaround the Head of State, but has taken the form of an extensive pro-gramme of civic renovation, theatrical subventions, establishment ofcultural centres in working-class areas, etc. The inspiration here tooremains visibly paternalist: culture has become an instrument of theneo-capitalist state. The lesson will not be lost. A Labour Government,mindful of the ruinous defeats ultimately inflicted on the Attlee

Administration because of its austeritythe bleak narrowness ofoutlook that always characterized itand well aware of the precedentof the New Frontier, would almost certainly attempt some kind ofcultural presence. Left to itself, it is all too likely that this would be aBritish version of the American and French experienceworthier,duller, and more bien-pensant, no doubtbut in essence the same. Thisprospect must be resolutely combatted. At the same time, however, the

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necessity of a cultural policy for a Labour Government offers a greatopportunity to the Left. Its solid, substantial work over the last decadein the field of communications and culture has put it in a very strongposition to reject a paternalist programme in favour of genuinelysocialist solutions.

The principles and broad outlines of these solutions, in the cinema, in

the press, in publishing, in advertising, in the theatre, in television, havealready been eloquently presented, notably by Raymond Williams. Thefundamental conception that the means of communication should beheld in trust by the community for the producers themselves mustconstitute the basis for any Left programme. Specific, immediateobjectives, which are entirely feasible within the life-time of a LabourGovernment, should include: the creation of publicly owned cinemastudios and distribution circuits, a chain of public bookshops linked topublic libraries in all major towns, institution of a serious, independentPress Council, the establishment of a nation-wide network of QualityCentres for the scientific comparison and evaluation of competingcommercial products, implementation of the Pilkington recommenda-tions on television. The fullest freedom for producers to create, andthe fullest free availability of works for the community to experience,must be the aims of a socialist policy for culture. They divide it abso-lutely from the capitalist organization of culture, in which the marketalone is free, the mencreators or consumersimmured.

The struggle for a liberated culture today is not in any sense a secondary

or supplementary one. It is inseparable from the notion of socialismitself. The culture of a society is its consciousness of itself. In theadvanced capitalist countries of our time, consciousness is the conditionof any meaningful social change. There are few areas where capitalismwill resist as tenaciously and ferociously as in the fields of communi-cations. A profound battle will have to be fought to overcome it.

Public ownership, social priorities, civic democracy, workers control,a liberated cultureall these involve conflict, an inescapable confronta-tion with capitalism, and a lasting defeat of it. The chances of the Left

are now tangible. It will take the utmost courage and imagination toseize them.

September 21st,1964

perry anderson--critique of wilsonism

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