Crosland: His Kind of "Socialism" (1976)

From the January 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anthony Crosland, Labour Cabinet Minister and “guru” of the moderate wing of the Labour Party (vide The Observer) has delivered a lecture, at the invitation of the President of Costa Rica (another “socialist”?) on the above theme. It has now been published by the Fabian Society — who else? — and, as it is an artful ploy to kid Labour voters, it calls for a reply from us.

First, it will be noted that Crosland has his very own special brand of Socialism. Socialists have always held that Socialism is definite and unique, like oxygen or silicon: not so! says Tony. But, if everybody is inventing his own brand of Socialism, it ceases to mean anything and is all things to all men — as befits a Labour Party. One difficulty that arises when you run round inventing your own do-it-yourself Socialism is that you have to indicate what you mean, so that the others will think they know what you are talking about.

This our “guru” kindly did. Socialism (Crosland variety) is (1) a set of aspirations which socialists wish to achieve, (2) the relief of the poor, (3) a wider equality in the distribution of property. (Taken from “Social-Democracy in Europe” by A. Crosland, Fabian Society.)

Anybody who has read two issues of the Socialist Standard could tell Crosland that this piffle has nothing to do with Socialism. And a good few who’ve never read it at all — in fact, Disraeli or Gladstone would have agreed with it; in public anyway. It is nothing but good old Liberal (or Tory) baloney.

Just for the record: “relief” of poverty is perpetuation of poverty. Socialism is the abolition of poverty. Socialism is not the re-distribution of wealth (property) but the abolition of property.

Stirring manfully to give his vapourings a semblance of reality, the “guru” has to drag in Karl Marx. Social-Democracy, he declares

  requires, and indeed can be defined as the nationalization of the means of production, distribution and exchange (sic).

He maintains:

  The ownership of the means of production is not now the key factor which imparts to a society its essential character.

Apart from the absurdity of the obsolete notion that nationalization has anything to do with Socialism, this does not even tally with the notorious claims of the Labour Party constitution, which states nationalization (“public ownership”) as one of the party’s numerous objectives.

The artful trick consists in implying that Marx advocated this (nationalization or state ownership). Marx did not. He was crystal clear about it. And in case Crosland is kidding anybody — as the old- time Commies used to try it — that because the very first edition of The Communist Manifesto contained a demand for nationalization, that Marx was a “nationalizer”, the explanation is perfectly clear as Engels indicated in the last edition.

These demands were aimed at a fragmentary, underdeveloped continental transport and industry, and considered (rightly or wrongly) progressive by Marx in 1847. In subsequent polemics with the German social-democrats Marx, and particularly Engels, emphatically denounced the claim that state ownership was Socialism. Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring:

  Recently, however, since Bismarck adopted state ownership, a certain spurious socialism has made its appearance — here and there even degenerating into a kind of flunkeyism — which declares that all taking over by the state, even the Bismarckian kind, is in itself socialistic. If, however, the taking over of the tobacco trade by the state was socialistic, Napoleon and Metternich would rank among the founders of socialism . . . Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal Porcelain Manufacture, and even the regimental tailors in the army, would be socialist institutions.

Our lecturer proceeds to inform us that the dictatorships were easily the most inefficient regimes during the last war — which we have been telling left-wing insurrectionists for years. But this is the lead-in for the suggestion that the “Communist State” has something to do with Marx and Socialism; whereas actually the dictatorship was the invention of one Lenin.

We are treated to a few figures (no Fabian lecture complete without them!) which purport to show that “the trend” is in the right direction. There is less inequality, he claims, because the Diamond Report showed:

  “‘That the top 10% of earners now command only 21.4% of total personal incomes, compared with 34.6% before the war.”
  “That ownership of capital by the top 10% has fallen considerably, and the top 1% very markedly.”

— and that this re-distribution continues. Now these figures by themselves are extremely suspect; and can be juggled to almost any result required, by ignoring inflation and taking special periods (e.g. post-war boom).

But even accepting all his statements — so what? Is this Socialism — that a few rich capitalists have become comparatively less rich? or a few wage- earners less poor? How long before the next figures completely refute this lot?

We now come to the guts of the matter. Crosland says this “statistical evidence” is confirmed “by our own experience”. The beaches in Spain are crowded with “working people, enjoying the pleasures previously reserved for the few”. And (here we go again) "the motor car has brought new freedom to millions of people”.

Right back to the old “the workers are better off” syndrome. Incidentally, thousands of workers today complain that the motor car keeps them poor, not “free’. But what is all this but the hoary old rigmarole of the Theory of Increasing Misery in reverse? Marx wrote that the workers would sink down into ever-increasing poverty — and they haven’t — so there!

First, Marx never wrote anything of the sort. What he did write was:

  Along with the diminishing number of the magnates of capital . . . grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.

(Capital, Vol. I p. 836, Kerr edn.)

Yes! the modern working class has cars, washing machines, colour telly, hot water, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, because this is 1975, not 1875; and because the capitalists spend millions kidding the workers to buy these things (they go broke if they don’t); and because sheer technical progress enables cheap production in factories in thousands instead of ones in laboratories.

  A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise alongside the little house. It shrinks from a house into a hut. Its owner now has no redress however high it may shoot up, if the palace grows to a greater extent, the small house owner will be cramped and dissatisfied.

(Wage Labour and Capital)

What is Marx saying? Suppose two men on ladders, one on the bottom rung, the other on the tenth. If while the bottom one moves up ten rungs the top moves up as well, their relative position is unchanged. The top-dog is still the same degree higher than the bottom dog.

“The contradictions of capitalism today are not those analysed by Marx 100 years ago”, says Crosland. The contradiction of all the contradictions which Marx analysed was that between wage-labour and capital, now rapidly engulfing the last continents of this earth. Crosland’s panacea for all this, his kind of Socialism, is “more industrial democracy”.

In the immortal words of Joe Bloggs: What a load of rubbish!

Horatio.

News In Review: Martyrs Wanted (1960)

The News in Review column from the April 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Martyrs Wanted
THE railways have been carrying a deficit for many years, although it is possible that at some time in the future they will again become a direct profit-making concern. In the meantime, the railways are vital to the smooth running of industry generally.

The railway deficit was a useful propaganda weapon which the Railway Commission wielded in an effort to stave off the railway men’s claim for higher wages last month, along with the well worn slogans like “the welfare of the rest of society,” and “the good of the country.” It is unrealistic for the Railway Commission to expect that one section of the community should martyr itself to ”the national interest,” that is to say, to the interest of the capitalist class as a whole, when workers generally are involved in a constant struggle to secure a living wage. The railwaymen should not be misled by these meaningless catch-phrases, or be swayed in their determination to increase their pitifully low wages. They would be enjoying a much higher standard of living if they had gone about achieving this in a more militant way, with unity and greater purpose.


Clause Four
The Labour Party’s present wrangle over the possible revision of its constitution is merely a further commentary on this party’s reformist character. Mr. Gaitskell has hit back at his critics who object to his plan to alter the clause which pledges the party to 100 per cent. nationalisation. The rank and file are now told that a revised constitution is essential to enable the party to win the next election—which is an interesting comment on the way the Labour Party leaders’ minds work. Gaitskell’s opponents have called his plans “a betrayal of Socialism.” But since nationalisation has got nothing to do with Socialism this criticism is very wide of the mark.

In an article entitled “ The Future of the Left” (Encounter, March, 1960). C. A. R. Crosland, M.P. explains that the Labour Party now accepts a “mixed economy” and is no longer committed to “complete public ownership of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange.” He goes on further to say “Mr. Gaitskell’s (Blackpool) speech came as a great surprise to many of the rank and file who have not grasped what the leadership have been saying for the past ten years." But what have the Labour Party leadership been saying for the last ten years? They have been very busy in offering suggestions and assisting the present Government to run capitalism or, as they would now have us believe, a “mixed economy.”

The battle over clause four has nothing to do with Socialism. Whether clause four is revised or not, capitalism, under Tory and Labour Governments, will continue to produce its nightmares of insecurity and threatened mass annihilation.


Mining Disaster
The beginning of 1960 has seen two major coalmine disasters, first in South Africa, and then in East Germany. In the South African case, the disaster was in the Clydesdale Colliery at Coalbrook, where 435 miners were entombed. It may be thought that disasters in South African mines of the magnitude of this one are isolated, but although not involving so many men at a time, there are many accidents each year, the 1959 figures showing non-white deaths in the mines as 733 (Johannesburg Star, 29/1/60). However embarrassing it may be for the South African Government with its policy of apartheid, five of the 435 men buried together in the mine were white. Separate religious services were held at the pithead at the time of the disaster, one for the five white men and one for the 430 Africans. Under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, which covers African and white mine-workers, there is a grant of £40 for burial expenses for whites but only £15 for Africans. The compensation payable to widows and dependants of the dead men will also be reckoned with due regard to the colour of their skins. Widows of Europeans will be entitled to £13 4s. per month if childless, with an extra £6 12s. per month for each child, but a maximum of £33 per month, regardless of the number of children. African widows will be entitled to a lump sum, handled by a trust fund in Pretoria, which only produces between £3 and £4 a month (Johannesburg Star, 4/2/60). Apartheid still operates even after death.


Four Minutes
Some years ago the phrase "I’ve only got four minutes” was made popular as the opening gambit of a music-hall comedian. Little did he know that in a few short years his phrase would take on a new and terrible significance.

Four minutes, we are told, is all the time that we will have between the warning of an approaching enemy rocket and its arrival on target. For this purpose the Government is spending something in the region of fifty million pounds, so that we can be informed in advance of our impending demise.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with this venture, it seems a pretty hopeless prospect to know that the possibility for destroying us all has now been reduced to a four-minute job. Man's destructive capacity is now such a fine art, with push-button rockets and hydrogen bombs that can devastate a whole country, that the mind boggles at this latest madness.

Thus it is not surprising that people feel totally inadequate to cope with this kind of insanity, and tend to rationalise these happenings by thinking that atom bombs would never be used anyway. In this situation, to be an optimist where such tremendous grounds for pessimism exist, becomes necessary for one’s own sanity. Socialists themselves are not free from this, but at least they are trying to do something about it. What about you?


Jackboot Revival
During the current period of boom and peace old enemies have been forgotten, but recently there has been a slight stir on the western front. Germany has revived, and with this revival have come insidious outbursts of anti-semitism, and more recently, negotiations between Adenauer and Franco with the aim of setting up military bases in Spain. Hands have gone up in horror, as one might expect, and although these negotiations have come as a surprise to ordinary people, it is clear that the British Government have known about this for quite a time.

“Why the secrecy?”, one may ask. Indeed, it is a puzzle which would to many people be too involved to fit together. However, the explanation is not too difficult to find. Britain and France are in a sticky position. The world situation is now one of “West” versus “East,” with Western Germany belonging to the West and East Germany belonging to the East. In these circumstances, Allied countries are prepared to forgive and forget old enemies, and recruit them against old friends. However, no-one has quite forgotten the last war and that Spain was the training-ground for the German soldiers used in World War II.

Herr Strauss, the German Minister of Defence, in charge of the army, discussing uniforms for the new West German Army, was reported to have said: “Jackboots will march for Democracy/' What a paradox! One can envisage the logical conclusion of this view and see racial extermination and the establishment of concentration camps carried out in the name of democracy as well. It is also well to note that Herr Strauss was one of the small minority in the West German Parliament that voted against reparations for Jews who suffered under the Nazi regime.

Where will it end? Our friends are our enemies and our enemies have become friends. It seems reasonable to suppose that these crazy paradoxical antics of the politicians will continue until the British working class abandons completely the pernicious nationalisms that are foisted on them by their leaders, and comes to recognise their identity of interests with the working people of all countries.

Spare a Penny

A cyclone in Mauritius kills thirty-nine, wrecks forty thousand buildings, makes a hundred thousand homeless, and destroys much of the sugar crop on which the economy of the island rests. An earthquake devastates the town of Agadir in Morocco, killing over twelve thousand people. Now appeals are launched on behalf of the disaster areas. This rattling of cans under the noses of the public is the way misfortunes are dealt with under capitalism. In a Socialist society the care of the injured, and the support of the dependants of the dead, would not be left to charity. They, like every other member of the human society, would participate freely in the goods produced by society.

It's Hattersley's Party - Right? Or Wrong? (2001)

The Greasy Pole Column from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Roy Hattersley - or Lord Hattersley as we must call him since he left the Commons to become a Life Peer in 1997 - is a Nearly Man. He is among a large bunch of disconsolate political animals roaming the wastelands of frustrated ambition. Each of these animals at some time had hopes of leading their party, even of posing ecstatically on the front doorstep of Number Ten while the removal men took their furniture in through the back way. But something went wrong for them; perhaps they were outwitted by a slicker rival, or they unwisely upset someone influential or they lost their place in the queue because of an untimely death. Whatever the reason their hopes died and they had to find what consolation they could in writing their memoirs in the hope that someone would read about how they were cheated of the great prize or drowning their sorrows in floods of money from some lucrative City consultancy. And of course they can spend their time sniping at the people who had once been their party colleagues.

That last option has been favoured by Hattersley, who has used his weekly column in the Guardian to berate Blair's government for their failure to transform British capitalism in such a way that a grateful electorate would be persuaded to return them to power at this election and the next and the next ... As every Guardian reader knows, the paper acts as a kind of psychiatrist's couch for disillusioned Labour supporters, who have found much of Hattersley's criticisms to be therapeutic. So far none of the patients on the couch has asked him what responsibility he accepts for Labour's dismal record and why, if he has so many reservations about that party, he remains a member of it.

Comfort

Perhaps in anticipation of that question, Hattersley devoted his column on 7 May to explaining that, in spite of everything "It's still my party right or wrong". The piece did full justice to its dogmatic title because it was a feeble meander through a landscape of false logic and transparent excuses:

"Am I still what I would once call 'a Labour man' because of sentiment, the comfort that comes from imagined familiarity, or because the Tories are so much worse? ... Sentiment is certainly part of the explanation ... If I had no better reason for hoping for a Labour victory on June 7, I would want Tony Blair back in Downing Street because he leads my tribe ... despite all its pathetic timidity and its current admiration for the values of a meretricious society, it remains the best prospect of building a new society - one day."

Bemused Labour supporters - and earnest Guardian readers - may not rate that very highly as a convincing case for misusing their political power to change society by voting to leave it as it is. They may also wonder how, after destroying one after another the arguments for voting Labour, Hattersley can still be so tortuously agile as to support the party. Perhaps that is something you learn through being a Nearly Man.

Hattersley cut his political teeth on the Sheffield City Council and got into Parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook in 1964. Those were great days for Labour and all those who were suckers for the type of deception so deftly practised by Harold Wilson. He had it all worked out; through sheer brain power his party would master-mind a technological expansion which would dramatically increase productivity and they would then plan it all so as to abolish the very elements of capitalist economy. It did not take long for capitalism to see off that spasm of deceit, by proving that its essential anarchy was more powerful than any political party's intention to plan it into order.

This experience did not shake Hattersley's confidence that one day Labour would be there to usher in a new society. His response to that government's difficulties was to decide that what was needed was a new leader. In that way he busied himself trying to replace Wilson with some other, equally unpromising, charlatan. In July 1966 he backed George Brown, which was not an entirely wise choice in view of Brown's unstable temperament and his tendency to attract much unwelcome media attention through being tired and emotional in public. There was also Brown's habit, when he felt slighted, of offering to resign from the government. When one of these offers was accepted - probably to Brown's astonishment - Hattersley switched his support to Roy Jenkins, whose liking for a drink was rather more civilised than Brown's since his taste was for fine sherry and claret consumed in exclusive company.

Chances

When Wilson resigned, making all the plotting against him redundant, Hattersley at first supported Anthony Crosland for the leadership, then switched to James Callaghan. When he went to tell Crosland about this, Crosland, who had so high opinion of his abilities that he was probably quite unable to understand how anyone could possibly support another candidate, used just two words to tell Hattersley to go away. That was not a happy time for Labour government, struggling to survive with a minuscule majority in face of the kind of economic problems with which capitalism has destroyed many a government. Hattersley soldiered on, with a kind of grim enthusiasm, helping to set up the arrangements with the Liberals and the Ulster Unionists which kept the government going long after they should have resigned. He was given the important job of opening the debate on the government's "counter inflationary" policy - which really meant the attempt to hold down wage rises at five percent. As the 1970s drew to a close and Labour seemed doomed to a spell in opposition desperate supporters began to discuss his chances as a future leader.

When, soon after that, the Labour Party did their best to help the Tories give them a drubbing at the polls by electing gentlemanly, bookish Michael Foot as their leader, Hattersley was gloomy at the prospect of the unthinkable happening - a Labour victory on a left-wing manifesto which they could not implement. In fact as an objection this does not rate very highly because, as is so obvious in this election, manifesto promises are never intended to be taken seriously. In any case Labour's crushing defeat at the 1983 election meant that whether they kept their promises was a non-issue. As soon as they could after the election the party sent Foot back to spend more time with his books and began to choose another leader. Hattersley's day had come.

The leadership election of 1983 was between Hattersley and Neil Kinnock. When Kinnock won Hattersley became Deputy Leader, which enabled the two of them to pose with linked hands held aloft to proclaim that they were the dream ticket for the next election. Except that in 1987 the election was more of a nightmare, with another defeat. Their manifesto was as unreal as any that Foot could have been elected on - reduce unemployment by a million in two years, combat poverty "directly", reduce hospital waiting lists, combat bad housing, overcrowding, homelessness - the same problems they claim to be dealing with today - and of course "Britain will win with a Labour government".

Poverty

In August 1983 Hattersley shared his views on poverty with the British Association. As he had been a member of a government which had signally failed to relieve this problem it might have been expected that he would show a little regret or puzzlement, if not humility, when holding forth on the subject. But that is not the way of political leaders. After giving examples of differences in life styles between rich and poor he moved on to the serious business of doing something about it. He did not seem at all troubled that he might, like Michael Foot, make some promises which could not be kept. "The practical programme," he said, "for creating a more equal society is not difficult to construct.". Neither was he troubled by the fact that the 1974-79 government had found that programme not only difficult, but impossible, to construct. To take just one analysis of the effect of their policies, in July 1979 the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth stated that when Labour came to power the top one percent of the population had owned 22.5 percent of the country's wealth. By 1976 the same minority owned 24.9 percent of the wealth. That trend - which was not towards a "more equal" society - had carried on until that government was defeated in 1979.

That remains true of today. Under the Blair government there are many surveys about poverty and inequality which indicate that poverty flourishes and the gap widens. In his column of 14 May Hattersley told us that "... after the election (Gordon Brown's) first priority would be a drive against child poverty". He did not encourage his readers to reflect that that had been a priority of every Labour government and that each time they have failed there have been wordsmiths like him to try to soothe over the failure. Now he writes: "... equality is the hallmark of a good society. Labour remains the best hope of keeping that idea alive. The prospect may be remote ... ". In other words - in spite of reality it's still his party, right or wrong - except that it has to be wrong because it can't be right.

Ivan