Perry Anderson

Critique of Wilsonism

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 participaation in coming events. Since its severe defeat at Blackpool in 1961, the Left has
taken 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 intervention 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?
3

In a previous number of this review, I attempted a general explanation

of the nature of the crisis in British society today.1 In this article, written
before the election, I shall try to answer some questions left open at
the end of that analysis. What has been the Labour Partys response to
the present crisis? What is the character of the Labour leadership and
programme? Independently of the result of the election, these questions
need to be examined by socialists.
Only time will show whether the purely narcotic effects of the
prosperity of the fifties have worn off. If this proves to be the case, one
of the two great post-war barriers to the advance of socialism in England
will have been breached. Affluence will have lost its magic, and become
relative and judged.
Meanwhile, the second barrier to socialism in Western Europe, the
traditional pattern of the Cold War, has been dissolving. Decolonization in the Third World, the Sino-Soviet conflict, the emergence of
Gaullism, the Russo-American entente, have shattered the old bi-partite
system of world relations. The new configuration of the Cold War,
whatever its repercussions elsewhere, has probably been favourable to
the working-class parties of the West. The Soviet Union has lost much
of its terrors for Western Europe. France has triumphantly defied
America. The classical, simple polarizations no longer operate. There
is, at last, a geo-political space for European socialism. Wilsonism emmerged as a precise response to the new situation: the slow crisis of
English capitalism and the transformation of the Cold War. In many
ways, it has been a creative response, which has made the Labour Party
into the dynamic left-wing of European Social-Democracy. But it also
bears the ominous hallmarks of its lineage, traditional Labourism. A
dialectical judgement is necessary to grasp and relate both aspects.
Wilsonism is, first and foremost, a strategy rather than a simple programme. This is its strength and its novelty. Perhaps for the first time
in its history, the Labour Party now possesses a coherent analysis of
British society today, a long-term assessment of its future, and an
agressive political strategy based on both. The contrast with Gaitskellism 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 Western
alliance, was fundamentally defensive before the evolution of late
industrial capitalism. He and his advisers believed that it was undermining Labours electoral support both by providing a high standard
of living for the working-class and by eroding the actual numbers of
the working class. Obsessed by the two great themes of the theories of
embourgeoisement of the time, the spread of durable consumer goods
and the net shift from manual to white-collar occupations in the population, Gaitskells response was one of retreat. The only future he
could imagine was an indefinite repetition of the present. British
1

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

capitalism was becoming increasingly classless: the Labour Party

must follow it, abandoning its own class connotations. Britain was becoming increasingly consumption-oriented: the Labour Party must
cater to the new preocupations and not disquiet them by talk of
radical reforms. Thus, for Gaitskell and his friends, society became an
undifferentiated, quantified aggregate of electors: the Labour Partys
task was to win an arithmetical majority of them, by appealing to them
predominantly as consumers. To do this, it had to become what Crosland called a national party: Jay argued that the very term Labour
should be jettisoned from the Partys name.
Wilsons approach is very different. He shows a relatively acute
structural perception of British society. He is convinced that the
present crisis of the governing class allows the Labour Party to split
the Conservative bloc, detaching from it specific, crucial groups in the
population. First and foremost among these is the technical intelligentsia:2 scientists, technicians, engineers, architects, managers, and
professional workers, employed in both private and public corporations. Far from long-term occupational changes undermining Labours
strength by making less workers, Wilson is confident that they can
increase it by creating more producers. Thus his immediate target of
winning the technical intelligentsia away from the Conservative bloc by
playing on its antagonism to a demoralized aristocracy, is married to
a long-term aim of including this pivotal, expanding sector of the
population within the Labour alliance. Untouched by anti-communist
phobias, benefiting by the debacle of the Conservative economy,
Wilson makes few concessions to consumer ideology. Instead, he continually attacks social imbalance in Britain, the real impoverishment of
collective needs and the artificial inflation of private ones, and appeals
to his audience as producers to change this, in the name of a new Britain.
Finally, he offers an altogether new rationale for the degree of social
intervention which this implies: instead of a calm, continuous future of
ascending material well-being and contentment, he insists on the explosive technological and social upheavals of automation ahead.
2. The New Rhetoric

The decisive superiority of this strategy over the vacuities of revisionism is evident.3 It allows Wilson to use a distinctive and cogent
rhetoric, that has become integral to his whole political style. The crisis
of 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 convenient
short-hand. This stratum does not have any of the traditional characteristics of a
homogeneous, self-conscious intelligentsia.
3It would be a mistake, of course, to attribute Wilsonism exclusively to Wilson. The
partial 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 Common
Market episode, in which Gaitskell played on left-wing as well as nationalist sentiment, and for the first time flouted the weight of orthodox opinion, suggests that he
had at last realized the unviability of an extreme Right leadership. It is largely for the
sake of exposition that the constructs Gaitskellism and Wilsonism are opposed so
sharply in this analysis. It is more a question of different periods, than of different
men. Butby chanceeach period found the man who perfectly expressed it.

analysis, the theme of speech after speech since his election as leader of
the Party in March 1962: Why do we give such a high priority to expanding production? The answer is that all else in our programme and
our vision for the new Britain depend on what we turn out from our
factories, mines and farms: our laboratories and drawing offices. On our
national production effort depends our standing in the world. The
responsibility for Britains economic decline and all the evils which have
attended it, is placed on the archaic aristocracy which dominates the
Conservative Party and British industry alike. The tone is radical, the
targets apparently comprehensive: The high command of too large
a sector of Britains industry is manned either dynastically, or on the
basis of a family, school or social network . . . The highest places in a
Conservative Government are reserved for the products of a small,
unrepresentative group of schools, almost for the product of a single
school . . . Tory society is a closed society, in which birth and wealth
have priority, in which the master-and-servant, landlord-and-peasant
mentality is predominant. Wilson has a fairly clear perception of the
specific quality and vulnerability of the governing class in Britain: his
attacks are carefully calculated to isolate and discredit it. The counterpoint to them is the constant appeal to technicians and scientists and
production men to rally to the Labour Party, which alone believes that
Britains future depends on the thrusting ability and even iconoclasm of
millions of products of our grammar schools, comprehensive schools,
secondary moderns and the rest who are today held down not only within
the Government Party but over a wide sector of industry. Wilson continually invokes the opposition between an amateur aristocracy and
skilled, scientifically trained specialists. This rhetorical device is so insistent that the manual working-class itself, the overwhelming basis of
the Labour Partys support, recedes almost entirely from Wilsons
speeches. He can even say with pride: Great interest has been shown
by our people in these ideas. We are told that we have replaced the
cloth-cap with the white laboratory coat as the symbol of British
Labour.
A second set of contrasts complements this primary one. Wilson denounces, 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 Tribunal, etc). This theme recurs again and again today: Nothing so
perverts our national life as Conservative attempts to identify the
British standard of independence, ingenuity and venture with the selfinterest of the share-pushers, take-over bidders, land- and propertyspeculators, ad-mass extravagancies and tax-dodgers. This indictment
is extended to the role of the City and finance capital in the economy
as a whole. The great merger movement, the wave of take-over bids
instead of leading to rationalization of production has left too many
industries in the hands of financiers rather than managers . . . The key
to a strong pound lies not in Britains finances but in the nations
industry. Finance must be the index, not the determinant of economic
strength . . . Against this world of profligacy and facility, he juxtaposes the dedicated, responsible work of a manager, a designer, a
craftsman, an architect, an engineer, a nuclear physicist, a doctor, a
6

nurse or a social worker. The creation of the one has been a society
in which in our large industrial towns, about one-third of the households have no bathrooms and about one-quarter have no piped hot
water. 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 Britain
are being educated were built in the 19th century . . . New building,
which is geared to private profit and the speculative gains of the
property developer, will, in the end, produce an asphalt and concrete
wilderness . . . In place of this, Wilson calls for a social environment
transformed by the generous, purposeful efforts of the whole community,
mobilizing all the skills of the new social groups to whom he addresses
himself: We shall not succeed in this great task unless we can call into
action all our people architects and planners, local authority representatives and traffic engineers, sociologists and town planners, to build
the cities of the future in which people live a satisfying life and realize
to the full the talents and potentialities within them. It is in appeals
like these, to a long British tradition of social responsibility and public
service, that much of Wilsons strength lies.
He explicitly calls for a responsible Britain based on public service, not
a commercialized society in which everything has its price. This stress
on public service allows him to advocate public intervention much more
confidently than Gaitskell ever did. The transition, however, is
usually confined to the future. Advanced capitalist countries are maintaining full employment today only by virtue of vast arms orders, and
panic would be the order of the day in Wall Street and other Stock
Markets the day peace breaks out . . . The economic consequences of
disarmament cannot be dealt with except on a basis of socialist planning. 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 most
personally identified himself: The growth of automation is likely, in
Britain no less than in America, to create a vast problem of technological employment. If Keynes were alive today, the one law he would
be propounding above all others, is the observed fact that each new
cyclical peak in an advanced industrial economy is marked by a higher
rate of structural unemployment than its predecessor . . . Since technological progress left to the mechanism of private industry and private
property can lead only to high profits for a few, a high rate of employment for a few, and to mass redundancies for the many, if there had
never been a case for socialism before, automation would have created
it. This idea is his ideological trump-card within the Labour Party.
This, then, is the strategy and language of Wilsonism. Its distinctive
blend 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 a
more balanced, satisfied society in which human dignity is accepted as
the ultimate aim of economic activity. The feverish creation of wants,
the urgency to manipulate consumer demand which has dominated our
economy will give way to a balanced enjoyment of life in which income
will no longer depend on the artificial stimulation of dissatisfaction, of
class differentiation and conspicuous status symbols. Production for
7

use, for widening the potentialities of man will enable us to get full
enjoyment from our increased leisure.
3. The New Programme

How are these ideals translated into practical programmes? The

Labour Party is committed to definite policies over a wide range of
issues; over others, its positions remain deliberately sybilline and
obscure. The main outlines of its platform can be resumed as follows:
To renovate the British economy, the Party proposes to swing the tax
structure against inefficient and under-investing firms. Heavy depreciation allowances will encourage export firms, import-substitution,
producer goods industries for the overseas market, and the installation
of automative equipment. Government planning through NEDC and a
Minister of Production will be increased, involving industry-wide coordination of investment; but its final character remains unspecified. A
comprehensive incomes policy is, however, a fixed commitment.
Effective regional development programmes are also promised. A
Minister of Training will co-ordinate all apprenticeship and retraining
schemes. State contracts for scientific research and development will be
granted to private industry, universities, guilds of scientists, etc. Both
the 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 renationalize
steel. An integrated transport system is also planned, involving limited
measures of renationalization. Restrictions on manufacturing self-supply
will be lifted from the public sector. Beyond this, a number of warrants
for possible socialization are included. These are: where an industry is
wholly or mainly dependent on State orders (aircraft, pharmaceuticals),
where an industry is dependent on a public subsidy, and where an industry is threatened by an irresponsible take-over bid or constitutes a
dangerous monopoly. Finally, the Labour Party promises to set up
State enterprises in the new science-based industries where the State
already provides the bulk of investment capital. Maximum emphasis
has been given to this last idea, which constitutes, in a recognizable
sense, the chef doeuvre of official policy on public ownership. The
forms of social ownership, it is stressed, are to be flexible and diverse:
not merely traditional nationalization, but state participation with
private capital in joint ventures, public enterprises competing with
private 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 the
cost-of-living, plus graduated pension rights based on contributions
and average life earnings. An Income Guarantee will ensure a minimum
income to all retired people, superseding applications to National
Assistance in cases where old people needed supplements to their
pensions (currently about 25 per cent). The actual amounts of benefits
and ways of calculating the cost-of-living remain undisclosed.
8

Labours housing programme depends essentially on its plans for

urban land. Here it promises to set up a Crown Land Commission to
buy the free-hold of any land authorized for development. It would
then lease it to private or municipal developers, securing for the community 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 reclamation, are among other measures proposed. The announced
targets for a housing programme are vague and indistinguishable from
Conservative promises (400,000 new houses a year).
The Partys plans for education call for smaller classes and more teachers
in primary schools, and the abolition of the 11-plus and generalization
of the comprehensive system for secondary schools. The leaving age
is to be raised to 16. A crash programme of university expansion is
scheduled, coupled with an upgrading of colleges of advanced technology and a University of the Air. Labours programme also calls for
the abolition of fee-paying in universities and college entrance examinations to Oxford and Cambridge. Finally, it proposes to integrate the
public schools into the State system, possibly turning them into sixthform schools or secondary boarding schools: the form and timing of
integration to be decided by an Educational Trust.
Lastly, the Foreign Policy of a Labour Government remains almost
entirely obscure. The Party is committed to the abandonment of the
independent nuclear deterrent. It has long-standing proposals for
nuclear disengagement in Europe, and opposes with a degree of
determination that is as yet unspecified the establishment of a multilateral force. It has pledged its support to Malaysia. Beyond that, it
affirms its entire loyalty to the Western Alliance. It advocates greater
international liquidity, more Commonwealth trade and easy loans to
under-developed countries. It has not stated its policies towards British
Guiana, Aden, the Gulf Protectorates, Rhodesia, or South Africa.
4. Dangers and Decoys

This is the political programme which is Labours response to the crisis

of Conservative hegemony. The rupture of the old equilibrum offers the
Labour Party a tremendous chance. But it also offers perilous traps. For
the specific nature of the crisis of British capitalism provides at every point both
creative opportunities and false solutions for the Labour Movement. It is a crisis of
the traditional English hegemonic class, the product of centuries of slow
social accretion and adaptation. In the contemporary world of immensely
enlarged and integrated industrial organizations and intensified international capitalist competition, this class has suddenly appeared dilettante and decadent. The consciousness that Britain, under its rule, has
become an economic backwater in the capitalist world, has seemed to
discredit it. Its failures have played into the hands of the Labour Party.
Nothing is easier than for Wilson to denounce the incapacity and archaism of Home and the governing class whom he symbolizes: until
recently, a considerable section of the Conservative press did the same.
The temptation is to do so from the implicit standpoint of capitalist
9

efficiency and rationality the simplest and shortest way to win a

consensus against the government. The very failures of the Conservative
rgime invite a response which imprisons the Labour Party within bourgeois
limits. 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 Wilson
government mean technocracy?
The answer requires a hard, careful look at the programme outlined
above. The first thing hat is immediately apparent about it is the priority
it gives to economic growth as such, to restoring Britains lost
dynamic. Wilson has repeatedly said that everything else in Labours
programme depends on this. Labour spokesmen have declared that the
Partys social objectives will have to wait until this commanding
economic aim is achieved. Yet to achieve it requires, above all, the
co-operation and good-will of private interests whom a serious implementation of Labours social programme would precisely threaten. As
John Hughes has pointed out: Labour cannot be satisfied in its democratic and social egalitarian objectives unless it makes significant advances in organizing social control over the economy; to a large extent
this must be at the expense of the present power of massed capital. Yet
at the same time the state must work with the private sector, must
systematically co-operate with profit-making industry in managing
current output and the pattern of future development. Must this
second need impose such constraints, such compromises to win
business confidence, that it puts in jeopardy the social objectives of the
Labour movement?.4 At this stage, obviously, no dogmatic prediction
would be tenable. But it is clear that in a two-sector economy in which
the private sector is overwhelmingly predominant, priority to economic
growth creates a built-in pressure towards accommodation with
private capital. Big business has the power at any moment to make the
Labour Government the hostage of its own promises. If it fails to deliver a fast growth-rate, it has declared in advance that it will fail in
every other field. Thus the economic crisis that has been Labours
greatest windfall could end by becoming its coup de grace as well.
To what extent does it risk this by its promised encroachments on the
private sector? Wilsons language often sounds aggressively anticapitalist, in a way that Gaitskells never did. His acerbity, however,
has precise and revealing limits. It is directed in the first instance
against anachronistic forms of enterprise ramshackle industries, nepotistic companies, family concerns, in general any sectors dominated by
incompetent or amateur managements; and in the second instance
against parasitical forms of enterprise landlords, stockbrokers,
property tycoons, tax consultants, gambling syndicates and advertising
companies.5 The panorama of English capitalism today swarms with
both 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.
third category is foreign, especially American enterprise. Wilson is particularly
fond of patriotic attacks on take-over bids involving foreign capital (ChryslerRootes deal, etc).
5A

10

in other words, a large element of demagogy in his radicalism. It must

be seen in the light of the suggestive distinction which Wilson made
in a speech early this year, between the Bourbons of the economic
establishment and serious-minded industrialists. Retarded or unproductive elements are rejected; capable, dynamic capitalists are implicitly
endorsed.
Wilsons trenchant criticisms of English capitalism which mark him
off from his predecessor thus conceal a consistent displacement of
attention from essential to the inessential. What is, then, the character
of his case for socialism? Again, by comparison with Gaitskells, it
appears audacious and comprehensive. Indeed, Wilsons analysis at
times has a quasi-Marxist flavour about it. He argues that, whatever the
success of Keynesian capitalism in preventing mass unemployment
under present technological conditions, we are rapidly entering a new
era in which a huge qualitative leap forward in technology, automation,
will require a qualitatively new and decisive scale of social control over
the economy, which will represent precisely the difference between
Keynesian capitalism and socialism. A new mode of production will
demand, inevitably, new relations of production. The simplicity and
force of this thesis is unquestionable. The Party militants who heard it
at Scarborough in 1963 responded to it with delight and enthusiasm.
Probably more than anything else, it served to clinch their confidence
in the new leader. Were they wrong? The theme of automation in
Wilsons speeches is certainly bold and imaginative by the standards of
the 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 that
Wilson always sounds most socialist when he is talking of the indeterminate, distant future? For and this is the crux of the matter
automation is not a significant issue on the political agenda in Britain
now, nor will it be for the entire lifetime of the next Labour Government. This is in no way to belittle its importance in the long-run. But
Wilsons 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 valid
long-term perspective for the Labour Party and a tactical short-term
device for lulling its Left. The boundless promise of the future operates
as a distraction from the limited compromises of the present. Thus
Wilson achieves a certain mirage effect when he talks of socialism, no less
than when he attacks capitalism. In both cases, he bases himself on real
and important issues; but in each case, they also serve to deflect
attention 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 achieve
a rapid rate of growth, they do not injure the interests of the private
sector as such, and will meet little, if any, opposition from it. The test
of the Partys determination lies, necessarily, in its proposals for public
ownership. The casualness with which these have so far been greeted
by socialists is inexcusable. Each needs, on the contrary, to be carefully
scrutinized.
11

The specific commitments require, perhaps, least comment. The renationalizations of steel and road transport, important as these are, do
not represent a genuine advance: they merely restore a position lost
fourteen years ago. The proposals for new measures of public ownership, by contrast, are wide-ranging but vague. Signposts for the Sixties
declares that there is a case for socialism where an industry is dependent for its existence either on state subsidies or state purchases;
and where an industry is controlled by a monopoly. It promises to set
up public companies in the new industries based on science, where the
State already provides 60 per cent of the research funds. These ideas
vary in relevance and importance. Socialization of deficitary sectors
like the aircraft industry, which is dependent on state contracts, would
not in itself mark any advance beyond Labours conceptions of 1945.
Serious use of public enterprise to replace subsidized private enterprise
in the depressed regions could, on the other hand, be a major step
forward. Monopoly power is in one form or another so widespread in
the British economy today that Labours ability to isolate and challenge
it in any significant way seems very doubtful. All these proposals however, are overshadowed by or dependent on the promises to create new,
socially owned industries based on science: it is on them that Labours
programme for the extension of the public sector in the main rests. This
is the core of its new policies. It is time to ask what the objective
content and prospects of this conception are.
The attraction of the idea, as is evident, lies in its reversal of the
direction of traditional nationalizations: the community is now to become the owner, not of bankrupt or archaic industries, but of the most
modern and dynamic sectors of the economy. The official picture, however, omits one vital fact. The most technologically advanced sectors today are
often the most expensive and least immediately profitable: they are not the existing growth sectors, with huge plants and markets and declining unit-costs. There
is a world of difference between, say, the computer and chemical industries that is, a firm like ICT (International Computers and Tabulators) and ICI. The really profitable and expansionist sectors of the
British economy are the big industries producing for the mass consumer
market cars, domestic appliances, synthetic fibres, televisions, etc.
The typical enterprise in these markets is the immense, internationally
affiliated corporation, ramified into a complex hierarchy of product
divisions and subsidiaries: Ford, Unilever, General Electric, ICI,
Phillips, etc.6 There is no chance whatever of a Labour Government
pioneering publicly owned firms in these sectors: they would be
wiped out immediately. What, then, are the prospects for public enterprise in science-based industries working on more advanced technological frontiers? Two such industries that spring to mind are the
electronics industry and its derivative, the computer industry. Electronics is now the main motor of all technological progress. Precisely
because of this, it is an enormously costly and risky field, which requires colossal investment programmes and in which research and de6
This sector is likely to provide the socio-economic base for an eventual Conservative
come-back, after the election, if the Labour Party wins: MacLeod, Maudling or
Heath are the logical candidates to succeed Home in this perspectivethe emergence of a powerful, coherent neo-capitalism. Britain still notably lacks this.

12

velopment failures are constant. It is no accident that it is also one of the

fields in which international integration and concentration is proceeding fastest. The symbol of this streamlined, spear-head sector is doubtless the computer. Wilson himself never fails to invoke the immense
potentialities of the new computers, which command faculties of
memory and judgement far beyond the capacity of any human being or
group of human beings who have ever lived. He has also frequently
attacked the poor performance of the British computer industry: In
computers . . . the import-export ratio worsened dangerously over the
past decade . . . It would look as if this was an ideal field for the new
science-based public enterprise of Labour promises. The reality, however,
is quite different. After a sequence of failures and mergers, there is now
only one major British computer firm left International Computers
and Tabulators (ICT). Yet it commands only 40 per cent of the British
market, and this share is itself increasingly threatened. The rest of the
market has been captured by the American colossus IBM (swollen by the
astronomic military contracts of the US Defence Department). IBMS
position is now so strong that ICTs existence as an independent firm is
more and more doubtful. Its total research budget is some 5 million
a year; IBMs is 60 million a year. In face of this discrepancy, what
chance would a new State computer firm have?7
Of course, the chances of competitive public enterprise are better in
some sectors machine-tools, petro-chemicals than this. But even
here the problematic character of these new forms of public enterprise
remains. A sprinkling of state firms across the vast terrain of the
private sector will simply blur the boundaries between the two types of
ownership. On the other hand, an attempt to occupy in force a given
branch of technology could well achieve, not the reverse, but the complement of the traditional kind of nationalization: instead of the community subsidizing unprofitable industries of the past, it would be
subsidizing as yet equally unprofitable industries of the future.
The Atomic Energy Commission of the last Labour Government has
set a precedent for this. Historically, Western European capitalism has, ever
since the late 19th century, always permitted (indeed sometimes itself carried
through) precisely these two types of nationalization, both of which amount in
effect to a socialization of losses which leaves the system of accumulation of
capital within the society fundamentally untouched. If a Labour Government
is content with public enterprise of this kind, it will not have altered in
any way the classic function of the public sector in contemporary
capitalism. For the range of difficulties facing its present proposals
all come back to one fundamental fact. Socialism cannot simply be
built in the space vacated by capitalism: it requires a genuine confrontation 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 nationalist

aims than a Labour Government is likely to beis trying to save the model French
computer firm Machines Bull from General Electric in early 1964 is instructive. The
full force of de Gaulles intervention was only able to save part of the firm.
13

preliminary description? The partys policy on urban land is certainly

one of the most crucial planks in its platform. It reflects a wide agreement in the Party that, in Croslands words, Market forces . . . work
ruinously in the field of land-use and buildings. For land is not an
ordinary 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 gain
is uniquely high.8 To combat the multiple evils of choked traffic systems, rocketing land prices, otiose office-blocks, and above all, millions
of shameful slum-dwellings, the Party now proposes to take into public
ownership all freehold land scheduled for development. Will this
measure really break the speculators stranglehold? Every socialist
must hope that it will. But the new policy leaves the gravest doubts.
For everything hinges on the exact terms on which land scheduled for
development is purchased by the Crown Land Commission. If the
price is set low (by present standards), it is extremely likely that many
owners will postpone any development of their land, hoping for the
return 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 a
freeze-up of the land-market making Labours plans for urban renewal impossible. Alternatively, if the price is set high, making it worthwhile for property-owners to sell, it will become prohibitively expensive for the Commission to buy enough land thus equally limiting a
real drive for the reconstruction and humanization of British cities. In
actual fact, the decision seems only too likely to go this way. George
Brown has already declared, in his inimitable way, that the propertyowners will have their bit of gravy.
If this is to be the framework for the renovation of urban Britain, who
will do the building? It is clear that a Labour Government would impose
physical controls, in the form of building licenses, to ensure that
humane housing priorities are respected. However, it should not be
forgotten that Wilson has often criticized the British building industry
for 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 the
whole pattern of urban construction over the last decade, might seem
to offer an opening for the competitive public enterprise which Signposts for the Sixties advocates. In practice, Wilson has already suggested
who will do the building, and secure the profit: To encourage new
methods, there is a lot to be said for handing over the building programme of a complete new town to one or more big contractors who
are prepared to use non-traditional methods, because such methods are
priced out of the market if restricted to contracts based on pennynumbers.
7. Pensions

Turning to Labours welfare policies, the pensions scheme outlined in

New Frontiers for Social Security is in many ways a thoughtful and welcome document. It represents a definite breakthrough in the whole
8

The Conservative Enemy, p. 138.

14

direction of Labours welfare thinking. At the same time, it is noticeable

that the critical issue of private pensions schemes, which entrench
double standards in social security and create vast, burgeoning centres
of economic power, is evaded. The florescence of these schemes dates
from the Conservative decision to allow employers to contract their
employees out of the public system. Labours present platform neither
calls for the abrogation of this principle, nor even for the right of contracting out to be transferred from the employer to the employee who
actually receives the pension. Labours programme, in other words, is
acceptable and progressive in terms of its own announced objectives:
but as soon as these involve a confrontation with the power and privileges of the private sector, the programme evaporates: silence descends.
8. Education

How true is this of Labours plans for education? The resolution to

abolish the 11-plus and institute generalized comprehensive schools is
impeccable. The quantitative goals for primary, secondary and higher
education are all necessary minima. The abolition of both university fees
and college entrance examinations to Oxford and Cambridge will undoubtedly be beneficial. All these measures constitute a very respectable
programme for the expansion and democratization of British education.
But the lynchpin of the whole system of hierarchical discrimination and
inequality in our education is, of course, the private sector in secondary
education the public schools. These are the real fastnesses of class
ascendancy in our social and cultural life. No reform of our educational
system which does not attack and dismantle them can be considered
serious for a moment. What are Labours intentions? Signposts for the
Sixties declares that: The nation should now take the decision to end
the social inequalities and educational anomalies arising from the existence of a highly influential and privileged private sector of education,
outside the State system. This statement is, however, less clear-cut
than it appears. The concrete measures envisaged by the Party are
described as follows: We propose, therefore, to establish under the
Minister of Education, an Educational Trust. After full consultation as
to the method and timing, with the local authorities and the schools
themselves, the Trust will recommend the form of integration that will
enable each of them to make its best educational contribution . . . It
would be wrong at this stage to lay down a detailed blue-print for the
future role of the public schools . . .
The commitment to move against the public schools, to integrate
them in some way in the State system, is a long step forward compared
with the Labour Party programme of 1959. Here, if anywhere, Labours
platform seems to have acquired a radical cutting-edge. Having said
this, however, important qualifications remain. Labour leaders recognize in private that the actual content of the Educational Trusts recommendations will depend on the composition of the Trust, the
appointment of whose members will be a conscious decision by a
Labour Government and one which will directly reflect the degree
of its political determination. The pressures brought to bear against an
iconoclastic selection will be enormous. They will have all the more
purchase in that there are powerful elements in the Labour Party itself
15

which have long advocated a solution after the pattern of the mixedeconomy: that is to say, the introduction of a quantitatively pegged intake (perhaps 50 per cent) of non-fee-paying pupils into the public
schools, without any change in the structure and ideology of the schools.
Such a solution would, of course, merely inoculate the public schools
against serious reform while preserving their essential elite character
intact. It must be fought absolutely. Until there is no longer any chance
of Labour adopting a plan of this kind, final judgement must be reserved 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, if
these are realized. So far each of these programmes for remedying social
imbalance in Britain has been examined separately. The limited
character of their direct challenge to private interests is in each case
clear. It is possible, however, the sum of these programmes may pose
a powerful indirect challenge to British capitalism by the level of social
expenditure that they demand and the instruments of social control that
they imply. This brings us to the whole problem of planning. Does the
Labour Partys conception of national planning to some extent compensate for the lacunae in its social policies?
It is clear, in the first place, that planning under a Labour Government
would not be mandatory. Wilsons definition follows classic liberal lines:
Planning at least in the sense of indicative, democratic planning (what
is undemocratic about a mandatory plan?). Instead, the plan will
attempt to impose a kind of social code on industry, which will, it is
claimed, extend the frontiers of social control in new and imaginative
ways. These will probably include joint industrial councils, with Trade
Union and civil servant participation; a limited number of physical
controls; a certain amount of taxation based on social cost and benefit
analysis; a high level of export incentives; and a constant stream of
governmental rhetoric and persuasion in favour of greater efficiency
and patriotic initiatives. Proposals for compulsory efficiency audits and
public advertisement of company posts have also been made by radical
ultras on the Labour Right, but these are unlikely to be adopted. In all,
the degree of public scrutiny and accountability in British industry would
be increased by a Labour Government: but so far there is little evidence
that its planning will do more than institutionalize the presence and
powers which a Labour Government would have anyway, by the simple
virtue 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 have
to be given priority . . . In planning his first budgets, therefore, a
Labour Chancellor would make sure that all his measures were subordinated to this central purpose. Where, then, are the resources for
Labours relatively ambitious social programme to come from? Taxation under a Labour Government would certainly be more redistributive than it is today: both a capital gains tax and a determined attempt
16

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 not
personal but corporate wealth. It is here that Labours radicalism will
be put to the test, in what will almost certainly be the most important
single issue in the early years of a Labour Government. The Labour
Party is committed to a socially just incomes policy, which will ensure
a planned growth of incomes: this involves first and foremost, of
course, wage-restraint by the unions. The realization of a national wages
policy, if it were successful, would mark a historic moment in the development of the Trade Union movement: the first time that it has ever
formally abrogated its freedom of action to the State. The dangers of
such an incorporation in the machinery of the State are immense. What
will the unions be offered in return? Labour leaders have promised
time and time again that an incomes policy would include a restraint on
profits as well as wages. But they have never once clearly suggested how
this was to be achieved. Statutory limitations on dividends has been
refused by Wilson; discrimination against distributed profits is scarcely
a substituteit merely leads to a massive build-up of corporate reserves for the future. Thus, there is no sign at present that the Labour
Party either knows how or is really resolved to control the level of
profits in the economysomething which every other indicative plan
in Europe, whether French, Dutch, Italian, Belgian or Swedishhas
failed to do. Indeed, Callaghan publicly admitted as much at the last
Labour Party Conference. Thus at the very apex of its whole political
programme no less than in its specific social policies, the Labour
Partys inner will and intentions remain crucially uncertain.
10. Foreign Policy

Labours foreign policy, finally, needs to be considered in the light of

its home policy. For the continuity between the two is very close. There
is the same iridescent melange of radicalism and conformity: the same
ambience of equivocation and ambiguity. The context however, is
altogether graver and heavier with consequences. In it, the same
qualities acquire a new significance. What is caution and moderation at
home 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 independent
nuclear deterrent. This represents perhaps the greatest single change
from its platform of 1959: it marks a signal vindication of the unilateralist Left. A vindication, but not in itself a victory. The decision to
jettison the British deterrent probably owes more to the strategic options
of the American Government than to the pressure of the British Left.
It nevertheless meets an evident necessity of peace, and will be welcomed all over the world. It will be the first time since 1945 that a
government has on its own initiative, without any counterpart, introduced a major measure of disarmament.
Having said this, however, one fundamental qualification needs to be
made. Just as Labours domestic stance coincides with a mutation in British
17

capitalism and partly reflects its requirements, so its new deterrence policy grew
out of a mutation in the pattern of international capitalism and reflects its
requirements. There is, in effect, a close homology between Labours
attacks on archaism and dilettantism in British industry, and its attacks
on illusions of grandeur in British defence policy. Both are made in the
name of modernism and rationality. Both freely invoke American example 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 would
also be, in a sense, its least adventurous. It is, rather, the proposals for
disengagement in Europe and the refusal of the multilateral force
which will be truer indications of the real nature of Labours foreign
policy. For these run counter to Washingtons policies, not with it.
In both cases, Labours official positions are irreproachable. But a large
question mark hangs over each. Would a Labour Government, faced
with determined American opposition, persist in its positions, or would
it quietly drop them? Againthe pattern is by now familiarit is not
Wilson, but one of his lieutenants, Gordon Walker, who has indiscreetly
remarked abroad that if it was unable to persuade the USA to the contrary, the Labour Party would finally rally to the multilateral force.
Such statements do not necessarily determine policy. But they are an
unmistakable warning.
In general, the Labour Partys policies towards the arms race and the
Soviet Union are now very similiar to those of the Kennedy-Johnson
administrations; they are covered by the Russo-American entente. The
one significant difference concerns West Germany, where the Labour
Party (and Wilson) has always historically shown a greater sensitivity
to Russian and East European fears than Washington. But Labours
capacity to carry out a genuinely independent and progressive foreign
policy will be at stake over a much wider front than this. The two key
areas, which will determine the character of its foreign policy far more
than the problems of disengagement in Europe, are the world-wide
systems of British and American imperialism. This is where its major
responsibilities lie. It is relatively easy for Labour to seek peaceful coexistence in Europe under the umbrella of the Soviet-American dtente.
But outside Europe, in Vietnam, in Laos, in the Congo, in Cuba, in
BrazilAmerican military and political forces today are fighting a
blind, pitiless struggle against the rising tide of national and social
emancipation. Will a Labour Government, by its silence or support,
abet them? At this moment, it seems only too likely. So far, no Labour
spokesman has condemned the war in Vietnam, the blockade against
Cuba, the repression in the Congo. Loyalty to the American alliance, or
actual conviction of the need to defend the free world, has overborn
every other consideration.
The weight of Atlantic conformism is made all the heavier, and more
dangerous, by the vulnerability of British imperialism today, which has
created a chain of mutual favours and dependences between it and
American imperialism, from Singapore to Georgetown. The Left could
entertain no worse illusion that to believe that only curios and cast-offs
of Empire now remain. Nothing could be further from the truth. As
18

complacent apologists in London have repeatedly pointed out, the

most valuable gems in the imperial treasure have all, in one way or
another been preserved. Oil in the Persian Gulf, tin and rubber in
Malaya, gold and diamonds in South Africathese were always the
great dollar-earners of the Sterling Area. Every one remains an opulent
province 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: twenty
years after the Declaration of Casablanca and the United Nations
Charter none are yet free. The importance all these areas will have in
the next five years cannot be over-estimated. Already, the Labour
Party inherits two full-scale colonial wars, in Arabia and Borneo, and
the equivalent of a military occupation in Guyana. A police rgime is
entrenched in Rhodesia, where an explosion can be expected any
moment. The impending conflict in South Africa will shake the world.
What will Labours polices on these momentous issues be? Very little
information has so far emerged. What there has, however, could hardly
be worse. Chauvinistic calls for greater military build-ups in Borneo and
Aden have been coupled with a refusal to envisage any effective
measures against South Africa. Wilsons conception of the latter-day
role of the Empire in defending the freedom of our way of life is
crudely explicit: Quite apart from the danger zones of Laos and Vietnam, the Middle East and Malaysia, there are many tenuously held
areas 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 area
previously evacuated by the West. There are, indeed, many areas
tenuously held by imperialism today; it will take more than the
Labour Party to save them.
Side by side with this continuing jingoism, there has been an almost
complete absence of specific commitments on colonial issues. Labours
policy 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 has
made itself the standard-bearer of neo-colonial solutions to a whole
range of problems, advocating partition in South Africa, recommending
concessions to America in Guyana, urging prolonged delays in
democratizing Rhodesia, andabove allattacking Indonesia in
terms almost identical to those of the hysteria against Egypt in 1956.
It is clear that from the first days of a Labour Administration, the Left
will have to maintain an unremitting vigilance.
Against all this, there stand Labours promised aid programmes to the
Third Worldin the first instance the underdeveloped Commonwealth countries. There is little to suggest so far that the amount of this
aid will increase dramatically under a Labour government; it may be
hoped, however, that in future the per capita level of British aid will at
least match that of France. The main emphasis of Wilsons speeches
has rather been on the need to repair the disastrous inequalities of
world trade, which regularly wipe out any beneficial effects which aid
19

programmes have had on the economies of under-developed countries.

This attention is in itself welcome: it at least represents an advance over
the characteristic preoccupations of the Kennedy Administration. The
remedies proposedcommodity stabilization agreements, complementary planning, selective liberalization of tariffs, switch to capital
goods exports in the developed countriesare well-intentioned as far
as they go. But they do not go to the root of the problem. Underdevelopment, as has often been pointed out in this review, is not a
simple state of poverty (as Labour leaders like to call it) amenable to
technical amelioration. It is a total social and historical phenomenona
culture and a social structure as much as an economy or demography
which is only intelligible in relation to the imperial system which sustains it. It can only be overcome by a profound revolutionary explosion
and mobilization in the under-developed countrydirected precisely against the imperial power dominating the country, and its dependents within it. Thus Labours moralizing and technicist approach
to aid for the Third World is ultimately not in contradiction with its
willingess to use brute military force to preserve key British imperial
zones. The two policies are, in a sense, complementary: they both proceed from a fundamental inability to recognize the greatest drama of
our time: the political resurgence and reappropriation of history by the
hitherto obliterated nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
To sum up: it is clear that the Labour Party has hitherto made no
independent response to the new international conjuncture. This failure
contrasts with its swift adaptation to the new domestic situation. Undoubtedly a certain provincialism, the traditionally narrow AngloSaxon culture and horizons of the Labour leadership, has played its
part in this. But more important, the dimensions of the Cold War and
the American supremacy are far vaster than those of British capitalism:
to resist them is far harder. Absorbed by its gains at home, the Labour
Party has largely neglected the outside world. It will not be able to do
so 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 traditional
Labourism.9 No more and no less. Neither pure platform of modernization nor all-out attack on social poverty, its ambiguities and evasions
all stem from these origins. In every field at home Labours present
programme is radical, within limits which are always short of a serious
confrontation of the power structure of British society. This is the
secret of Wilsons success as a party leader and a national politician. It
is also the reason why socialists must take their distances from the
Labour programme and criticize if from a fully independent perspective. Anything less is an abandonment of autonomy and principle.
9
Mediated by the distinctive personality of Wilson. In a forthcoming article, I shall
discuss the record of the Left in the fifties the rupture of British capitalism in the
sixties is analyzed in Origins of the Present Crisis.

20

At the same time, it is useless to blame Wilson or the Labour Party

for their deep-rooted evasions. The hallmark of Labourism has always
been its complete inability to face problems of power. For all its surface
novelty, the present programme in this respect merely continues the
Partys oldest traditions. The Left did not succeed in transforming
these 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 ownership 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 of
substantial inroads on the private sector seem small, the Left has
largely itself to blame. The limitations of Wilsonism mark the boundaries of its own efficacy.
At the same time, the very vices of Wilsonism offer the possibility of
transcending it. Its characteristic mixture of trenchant, cutting rhetoric
and 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 his
positions with an absolute ideological statement which precluded any
evolution beyond them. Termination of the private sector in education
was unconscionable; the Pilkington Report showed contempt for
the man in the street; nationalization was no longer essential to
socialism; renunciation of the British deterrent was immoral. Wilsons
procedure is the exact opposite. He never commits himself to rightwing credos: he always frames his proposals so as to leave himself the
maximum freedom of maneouvre. Under his leadership, the whole Labour
programme has become open-ended. It is not at any point socialist; but
nor is it, unlike its predecessor, inherently incapable of debouching
onto 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 only
true on one conditionthat the Left is not lulled or disarmed by verbal
radicalism 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 already
appeared on the Left: nothing could be more self-defeating. For
it is only a rigorous lucidity and decisive energy that can make a
reality of the radical appearances of Labours programme. The final
character of a fourth Labour Government will be determined by the
balance of forces within the Labour movement. It is on this that everything else depends. What should be the role of the Left?
12. The New Leadership

The internal situation of the Labour Movement today is dominated

by two related phenomena: the personal supremacy of Wilson and the
continuing disarray of the Left. A recognition of this must be the
starting-point for considering the problems and opportunities of a
renovated Left. For the first time in its history, the Labour Party is
now lead by a man who by any standards is a consummately adroit and
aggressive 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
21

timidity, tactical incapacity and miserable intellectual vacuity. All the

most crippling limitations of the British Labour movement have been
incarnated in the lamentable succession of its official spokesmen. Now,
suddenly this is over. The Labour Party has at last, after 50 years of
failing, produced a dynamic and capable leader. The whole party is
still disorientated with the surprise of the event. Wilsons dexterity and
flair as a politician enabled him to build up an almost unchallenged
authority within the party within a year of his accession to the leadership. He has kept the initiative ever since. The best description of his
style of leadership is his own: The Labour Party is like a vehicle. If
you drive at great speed, all the people in it are either so exhilarated or
so sick that you have no problems. But when you stop, they all get out
and argue about which way to go.10
It is this tempo which has enabled Wilson, not only to secure his
authority in the Labour Party, but to attack the Conservative Government as well. As a Prime Minister, it could help him to achieve that
self-renewing momentum, which is crucial to a working-class government in a capitalist environment, and which has so far eluded every
Labour Administration, each time with disastrous results. In this sense,
it may have a wider significance. For personally, Wilsons own history
incapsulates the destiny of a whole generation in the class among which
he grew up.11 The rise of a certain number of gifted working-class
children through the State educational system to the prestige universities, and thereafter to rewarding technical and professional careers
has been a phenomenon of the last 30 years. Wilson speaks with all the
culture and confidence of this experience. His technical fluency, his
lack of social deference, his very verbal style, with its penchant for the
aerodynamic image and polysyllabic epithet, are the marks of it. From
this point of view, whatever his faults, Wilson as a leader may in the
end represent a certain moment in the auto-emancipation of the working
class movement in England.
But equally his leadership could have a very different significance: its
meaning is still open: it will only be decided by the future. For the
moment, it is important to point out the negative effects of Wilsons
political skills. In the first place, his personal dominance has tended to
obscure the rest of the Labour leadership, thereby giving the Labour
party a more Left-wing look than it really has. For the fact is that the top
echelon of the Party remains as overwhelmingly Right-wing today as it
was yesterday. Its calibre, too, remains the same: in their different
modalities, from vulgarity to gentility, Wilsons major lieutenants embody the quintessence of traditional Labour mediocrity. The forces of
inertia and reaction in the Party are still very strong. Wilsons leadership
has 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 is
lower-middle classhis father is a pharmacist. But the urban area in which he grew
up during the Depression was overwhelmingly working-class: in such an environment the sociological distance between individual lower-middle class families and
the majority of working-class families around them, although discernible, is not so
very great. The regional culturean important element in Wilsons make-upis,
of course, common to both.
22

More important than this, however, has been its impact on the internal life of the Party. Wilsons dirigisme has been superimposed on a
party long innured to factionalism, but without any recent tradition of
real democracy. His careful avoidance of clear-cut left or right-wing
positions, his apparent ability to propose perspectives satisfactory to
everyone, his constant care to denounce the Conservatives rather than
any section of his own Partyall these have suddenly made the old
factions ineffective and redundant. There is no longer a clearly defined
battlefield with clearly defined protagonists. But this change has not
given rise to a genuine dialectical democracy, in which contrasting
positions are publicly exchanged and debated through to real conclusions, and in which there is a free movement of opinion and discussion which does not ossify into rigid, hermetic factions. For the existence of permanent factions within a partyapparent sign of democracy
in reality denotes almost its opposite: a blocked situation, dominated
by ritual and bureaucracy, in which intrigue tends to replace debate.
The present situation in the Labour Party is simply a void: the factions
have disappeared, but not the bureaucracy. It is merely concealed by
Wilsons expertly suave and deft management. This in itself is hardly
surprising: even without the imminence of a general election, it is unlikely that the habits of open debate and democracy would have been
relearnt immediately. What is much more disquieting is that this temps
mort inside the party is rapidly being consecrated as an ideal state, under
the slogan of party unity. If a Labour Government is elected, the
mystique of unity, the pressure for responsibility while a Labour
Government is in power, and Wilsons own political authority will
make for a formidable combination against the revival of a vital,
critical democracy within the Party. It is all too easy to imagine the reduction of Labour Party Conferences to little more than enthusiastic
demonstrations of loyalty, with occasional, muted expressions of
dissent.
This prospect is clearly in contradiction with the very notion of a
progress towards socialism. The Left must resist it unconditionally. But
it cannot do so abstractly: its resistance will only be successful if it takes the
form of a programme of coherent and concrete demands in advance of the official
objectives of the partydemands which impose themselves as living issues
within the Labour Movement. This is not the place for any full-length
discussion of what such a programme should be. But some elements
in it can perhapsvery brieflybe suggested.
A general remark should be made first. It is useless for the Left to put
forward purely voluntarist demands, which have no point of insertion
into the political context of Britain in 1964. Abstract maximalism of
this kind is, in the current situation, wholly sterile. On the contrary, at
every point the Left should try to press demands which are firmly rooted in
the present problems and perspectives of the Labour movement, but which
creatively prolong and surpass them. This is the only way in which socialist
ideas and objectives will become the political currency of the Labour
Party. What does this imply, in practical terms? There are at least three
sectors in which an obvious application suggests itself. This article may
conclude with a rapid evocation of them.
23

14. Social Priorities and Democratic Mobilization

The first task of the Left, of course, is to fight over the whole range of
domestic and foreign issues for a maximum implementation of Labours
existing programme. The room for different applications of Labours
mandate is, as has been seen, so wide that this will be the immediate
obligation of the Left if and when a Labour Government is formed. This
means an attack all along the line, on every issue. In public ownership, in
land, in housing, in transport, in pensions, in education and in foreign
policy, unrelenting pressure must be exerted to ensure that the radical
and not the right-wing interpretation is adopted: in every field, this
involves a critical contest with national or international capitalism.
This will require a tremendous effort in itself. But the Left cannot rest
there. In addition to all this, it must press for the creation of new democratic institutions to carry out Labours social programme. Officially,
at least, this promises to reorient the whole industrial environment
away from the inhuman mechanisms of profit and towards human needs,
Without the participation and control of the people concerned, this programme will inevitably end in paternalism, if it is carried out at all. For
there to be a genuine advance towards socialism, the stifling urban
limbo of contemporary England must be recovered by the people who
live and die in it, not merely ameliorated for them. The only way to
ensure this is the creation of local democratic institutions, above all
regionally, for the operation and renovation of the economic and
social services of each area. In particular, democratically-elected Regional Assemblies are a key objective. Wilson has called for the virtues
of political irreverence and iconoclasm, and declared that: We want
a Britain in which everyone, not a small clique or class, feel themselves
to be part of a process of new policy-making, of taking national decisions, where every home, every club, every pub is its own Parliament in
miniaturethrashing out the issues of the day. We want a Britain
where the ideas and efforts of its citizens are more important to the
Government than day-to-day ups and downs in public opinion polls
or on the stock exchange. For this rhetoric to become a reality, concrete steps will have to be taken. Only the Left could force a Labour
Government to do so. The whole texture of British political life,
which is now essentially reduced to remote, ritualized debates in a
national Parliament, mediated by the anonymity of press and television
to millions of atomized spectators, will have to be immeasurably enriched and transformed. A dense network of intermediary agencies and
institutions is an absolute necessity for this. It alone can create a concrete
civic democracy in place of an abstract and formal one.
The struggle of the Left for an authentic democracy within the Labour
Party must, then, rejoin a struggle for democracy within British society
as a whole. The same leverage can serve it for both. Party unity
would be even more to a Labour Government than to the party leader
today. It must be made to pay a price for ita radical implementation
of its social programme and, inseparably, a wide devolution of democracy to carry it out.
15. Workers Control

The most explosive single political issue under a Labour Government

24

is likely to be its incomes policy. This is the crunch on which all its
other plans and programmes depend. It is the one time-bomb which no
amount of dexterity or evasion can painlessly defuse. What should
socialist attitudes be towards a Labour Governments incomes policy?
Numerous voices on the Left have suggested that the unions should be
prepared to accept an incomes policy which guarantees them a real
wage increase of perhaps 20 per cent over 45 years, plus the increase in
their real income from he benefits of Labours social programme. This
looks like a perfectly defensible policy. It overlooks, however, one
fundamental fact. Trade Union freedom of action is not simply an
economic asset, a way of achieving a higher standard of living, which
can therefore be bartered for a guaranteed rise in real wages. It is a
political asset in its own right, of priceless value. For however limited
the official credo of Trade Union leaders has been, the reality is that in
Britain, as in every other Western European country, the socio-political
identity of the working-class is first and foremost incarnated in its Trade Unions.
The very existence of a Trade Union de facto asserts the unbridgeable difference between capital and labour within a capitalist society;
it embodies the refusal of the working-class to become incorporated into that society on its own terms. Thus the integration of
the Trade Unions into the State machinery in the long-run threatens
to extinguish working-class consciousness and autonomy within a
framework of neo-capitalism. As such, it must be resisted, no matter
what apparently favourable economic bargain is offered as a counterpart. The two things on exchange are not of the same order.
Does this mean that the unions should a priori refuse any discussion
of incomes policy? By no means. To advocate such a policy would in
any case be utopian, since all the major unions are committed to discussions with a Labour Government. What it does mean is that they
should demand as a priority, not greater wage increases, but measures
of workers control. For workers control is the only negotiable exchange for
an incomes policy: it alone offers a genuine counterpartpowers and not
pence. The sacrifice of Trade Union autonomy to the State which is
involved in an incomes policy could only be compensated by the gain in
return of decisively increased autonomy and control for the workers in
the plant. There is no space here to discuss the successive modes of
workers control that could be envisaged. It is, however, abundantly
clear by nowfrom a wide range of international experiencethat
workers control is not a utopian myth, but is an eminently practicable
political goal, above all in a country with as skilled and mature a working-class as Britain. A crucial first step could be, as Tony Topham has
recently suggested, the institutionalized right of shop stewards and
Trade Union officials to have access to company books, and thus to
administer 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. These
aims should be made an urgent, immediate target of the Left. They are
here 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 how
the entire political future of a Labour Government is at stake in its
programme for economic growth. Nothing could bring this programme
to a complete halt faster than a refusal by the unions to accept any form
of wage restraint. The potential political leverage of the unions will thus be
enormous, if it is used lucidly and unflinchingly. The unions are, in fact, the
one force on the Left that a Labour Government cannot, under any
circumstances, trifle with. This force must be applied creatively, not
simply to pursue traditional claims, but to make a historic entry into a
whole new area of demandsthe achievement by the industrial working-class of control over the conditions and ends of their work.
16. Culture

The Labour Party at present has no official programme of any seriousness in the field of culture and communications. Wilsons speeches
have made no reference to them: a single paragraph in The Relevance of
British Socialism discusses the subject, finishing with a call for more
stadia and cindertracks. It might seem, then, that pressure from the
Left for a coherent cultural policy would have little or no purchase on the
preoccupations of a Labour Government, and as such be vain. In
reality, the picture is likely to look very different if a Labour
Government is elected. For this will have demonstrated that we are
now at a point when it is no longer viableeven in terms of short-run
self-interestfor a Government in Britain to offer a purely materiallyoriented administration. But even apart from this, two highly
successful and internationally renowned examples have already
shown how politically effective a governments cultural policy can be.
It is clear that a significant part of Kennedys immense prestige and
popularity in the United States and in the West generally was due to
his carefully created image as a contemporary Maecenas, a patron of
the arts who was surrounded by the most distinguished thinkers and
men of letters in America. The glamour of the New Frontier owed
much to this. A second and less factitious success has been that of the
Gaullist rgime in France. De Gaulles unique national and international position, due in the first instance to his defiance of America,
also rests on a very skilful exploitation of the traditional clat and
authority of French culture. Within France, the cultural policy of the
rgime has not been limited simply by the simulacrum of a polished court
around the Head of State, but has taken the form of an extensive programme of civic renovation, theatrical subventions, establishment of
cultural centres in working-class areas, etc. The inspiration here too
remains visibly paternalist: culture has become an instrument of the
neo-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 of
outlook that always characterized itand well aware of the precedent
of the New Frontier, would almost certainly attempt some kind of
cultural presence. Left to itself, it is all too likely that this would be a
British version of the American and French experienceworthier,
duller, and more bien-pensant, no doubtbut in essence the same. This
prospect 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 great

opportunity to the Left. Its solid, substantial work over the last decade
in the field of communications and culture has put it in a very strong
position to reject a paternalist programme in favour of genuinely
socialist solutions.
The principles and broad outlines of these solutions, in the cinema, in
the press, in publishing, in advertising, in the theatre, in television, have
already been eloquently presented, notably by Raymond Williams. The
fundamental conception that the means of communication should be
held in trust by the community for the producers themselves must
constitute the basis for any Left programme. Specific, immediate
objectives, which are entirely feasible within the life-time of a Labour
Government, should include: the creation of publicly owned cinema
studios and distribution circuits, a chain of public bookshops linked to
public libraries in all major towns, institution of a serious, independent
Press Council, the establishment of a nation-wide network of Quality
Centres for the scientific comparison and evaluation of competing
commercial products, implementation of the Pilkington recommendations on television. The fullest freedom for producers to create, and
the fullest free availability of works for the community to experience,
must be the aims of a socialist policy for culture. They divide it absolutely from the capitalist organization of culture, in which the market
alone 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 socialism
itself. The culture of a society is its consciousness of itself. In the
advanced capitalist countries of our time, consciousness is the condition
of any meaningful social change. There are few areas where capitalism
will resist as tenaciously and ferociously as in the fields of communications. 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 confrontation with capitalism, and a lasting defeat of it. The chances of the Left
are now tangible. It will take the utmost courage and imagination to
seize them.
September 21st, 1964

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