Democracy (2001)

Book Review from the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Retreat of Social Democracy. By John Callaghan, Manchester University Press, 2000.

Many of the social reforms implemented by the Labour government after the Second World War were repeated elsewhere in Europe, including Christian Democratic Germany and Italy. Many of these regimes did not claim to be socialist or social democratic, yet by the late 1950s they were spending more on social security than Britain. The economist J.M. Keynes had expressed the ruling class point of view when he called the Beveridge proposals for the British welfare state “the cheapest alternative open to us”. There were other benefits for the ruling class too, including higher profits by maintaining a downward pressure on wages. As Labour MP Richard Crossman explained to his readers in the Daily Mirror (15 November 1955):

“The fact is that ever since 1945 the British trade unionist would have enjoyed a far higher wage packet if his leaders had followed the American example and extorted the highest possible price for labour on a free market. Instead of doing so, however, they exercised extreme wage restraint. This they justified by pointing out to the worker the benefits he enjoyed under the welfare state—prices kept artificially low by food subsidies; rents kept artificially low by housing subsidies, rent restriction; and in addition the Health Service.”

But these reforms were always liable to be reversed if the economy ran into trouble and capitalists sought to reduce the costs of the state. This is precisely what happened in the 1970s when economic stagnation and high inflation (so-called “stagflation”) set in. This set the scene for the rise of Thatcherism and the neo-liberal agenda, hastening the retreat of Social Democracy around the world. Although Professor Callaghan acknowledges the capitalist nature of economic stagnation as a factor in the retreat of social democracy, it is clear that he attributes most of the blame to Social Democrat leaders for capitulating to the Thatcherite onslaught. This may well be the case, but Thatcher was the bastard child of capitalist crisis.

Callaghan also claims that wages increases contributed to inflation. But wage increases cannot cause inflation. Unless market conditions change in their favour, or they are a monopoly or in receipt of a government subsidy, businesses cannot raise prices simply because they have had to pay higher wages. If businesses could recover wage increases by increasing their prices, there would be no point in their resisting wage claims. The fact that they do resist wage increases is because they increase costs and reduce profits. This is quite separate from inflation—a persistent increase in the general price level—which is the sole responsibility of governments when they issue more currency than is needed for the economy at that time.

Callaghan’s qualified support for Labour and Social Democratic parties in Europe rests on the bizarre claim that “self-avowed socialists” exist in all of them. But it is unlikely that the leftist Callaghan would acknowledge Stalin as a socialist because Stalin said he was one. Even Tony Blair very occasionally uses the “s” word, but does anyone still take him seriously?

Lew Higgins

Phoney folk in Loamshire (2001)

Theatre Review from the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

House and Garden. The National Theatre

Alan Ayckbourn’s separate but linked plays, performed by the same group of actors on two of the National’s stages at the same time, were the hottest tickets in town during the late summer. Ayckbourn was fêted, called variously a wizard and a magician, and praised for “his astonishing ingenuity”.

No doubt some of this was justified. To write interlocking plays which can be performed at the same time on two stages, by the same group of actors playing the same characters, clearly requires no little skill. And certainly there was an edge for the audiences, watching in the Lyttelton and Olivier theatres, as they imagined the actors scuttling backstage between the two theatres, leaving one stage only to reappear on the other with seconds to spare. But to my eyes the experience was all about style rather than substance; a triumph of the pseudo.

In the early 1950s, in the days when theatrical productions were still the subject of censorship by the Lord Chamberlain—when for most people contemporary plays were as remote from everyday life as money for the starving poor—Kenneth Tynan had a fine time lampooning the theatrical establishment. He complained that most new plays seemed to be set in some fictitious county which he called Loamshire. He noted that they involved such worthies as the Rt. Hon Angela This and Lord Archibald That. He observed that they all took place in country houses with large lounges or drawing rooms complete with (seemingly compulsory) French windows. And that all the houses were staffed by country bumpkins, or cockney housekeepers and supercilious butlers. It was drama courtesy of Mills & Boon, and it was a sham.

I was reminded of Loamshire as I sat, ever more uncomfortable by the minute, watching first House, and then Garden. I recognised none of the people on stage. I wouldn’t have known them in the 1950s but now, fifty years later, they were even more crass and unlikely. Shallow fictions in a make-believe world. But wouldn’t you just guess? The critics loved the plays, and most of the supposedly sophisticated audiences seemed to share their feelings.

For my part I’m not really interested in the fate of some supposedly successful businessman, boozy and promiscuous by turns, whose behaviour on stage confirms that he wouldn’t last a day in the real world of 21st-century capitalism. I find it impossible to laugh when someone goes out of their mind because they have been ditched by their lover, and I find it hard to sit next to people who think such things are funny. And as for the well-heeled young man, a sixth-form student at some prestigious school and supposedly the ace reporter on the local rag, whose naivety and lack of nous would embarrass an eleven-year-old—he was straight out of the world of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster.

It says much for the dumbing-down of critical taste, to say nothing of the prejudices of the broadsheet press, that such vacuous nonsense should be received with such acclaim. These are plays which are hurtful. Glib and invalid, masquerading as significant social commentaries. My judgment: patronising pap about phoney folk.

Michael Gill