Labor And Industrial Policy
Shell, Kurt L.
The main question Mr. Rogow* sets out to answer is whether the British Labor Party, when in power, was able to influence significantly the structure, psychology, and objectives of British...
...Rogow apparently fails to consider the difference in planning approaches indicated for industrially highly developed economies...
...If a socialist government accepts the survival—the permanent survival— of a large area of private enterprise, it is surely an advantage to gain the cooperation of the leading private managers in rendering this sector broadly responsive to public policy...
...Furthermore, Mr...
...Rogow's major critical conclusions I do not wish to suggest that many of his observations are not fully supported and justified...
...but is dis turbed when political planning decisions turn out, in practice, to be the result of departmental pulling and hauling instead of the expert longrange plan which he evidently yearns for...
...It also harbors the danger of subordinating the public interest to private capitalist advantage...
...Rogow* sets out to answer is whether the British Labor Party, when in power, was able to influence significantly the structure, psychology, and objectives of British industry...
...Rogow finds it that the Labor Government— even the redoubtable Sir Stafford Cripps—preferred this approach of controlling the private sector to the exclusively governmental-bureaucratic one...
...on the impossibility of engaging in extensive central planning without creating a massive bureaucracy...
...In the Soviet Union, in China and India, the goal of industrialization is overarching, and thus prescribes the basic pattern of priorities...
...Is it really so puzzling as Mr...
...spokesmen for private industry to inroads by public authority on their managerial sphere of action...
...If it could be shown—and by 1950 it largely had—that nationalization was not inherently more efficient than private ownership under public supervision (as in the British steel industry...
...something which comes naturally to them as they mostly represent the cartellizing trade associations...
...It is my conviction that, had the Labor Government been able to make out a convincing case for further nationalization—convincing primarily to its own adherents—by pointing either to increased efficiency or to the requirements of social justice, it would have been able to overcome the resistance of its opponents and to obtain the (more or less reluctant) cooperation of the managerial strata which, Mr...
...Cornell Univ...
...Press, Ithaca, N.Y...
...Government during World War II) obviously fosters cartellization and thus runs counter to the professed commitment to maximum competition in the private sector of the economy (in any case, a strange and paradoxical commitment for socialists...
...And as long as this mass contentment is maintained through full employment and rising consumption levels among the working class the decisive shift in the morals and values of society which represents the true core of the socialist revolution must remain the dream of a small minority rather than become the shared impetus to mass action...
...or that, if it existed, it was increasingly recognized as conflicting with other (and profounder) goals...
...Rogow talks too lightly, in my view, of the replacement of market forces by political planning decisions...
...Within that framework, however, they are merely expected to be good businessmen and to act fairly toward their industries...
...Rogow's conclusion that the British Labor Government did not have a comprehensive production plan, if by plan is meant "a set of economic objectives, integrated and consistent in their assumptions which the Government has decided to carry out," appears to me uncalled for...
...He finds that the policies and balance established under the Labor Government broadly satisfy both the significant power groups as well as the masses of British society...
...This appears to me due to the fact that there never existed a clear-cut socialist industrial policy...
...IF MY LINE of reasoning is accepted, then another aspect of the Labor Government's industrial policy which Mr...
...By dissenting from some of Mr...
...The dilemma which emerged when the Labor Government attempted to implement these multiple goals rested on the apparent impossibility of combining high productivity (industrial efficiency) and high wages on one hand with workers' control (or extensive participation) on the other...
...The vast number of economic decisions regarding "allocation of scarce resources," if they are not made by market forces, must be made politically...
...By and large, these businessmen accepted the role assigned to them in a spirit of honesty and cooperation...
...In the second place Mr...
...Total nationalization...
...Rogow admits, it needed for implementing the transfer to public ownership...
...Socialism in industry had traditionally been associated with higher wages, workers' participation, more efficient use of productive resources, public ownership and central planning...
...Rogow views with grave apprehen sion, becomes understandable, even inevitable...
...What were the alternatives...
...Valuable as his analysis is, it misses the more fundamental point in explaining the lagging impetus and enthusiasm which the Labor Government (and Party) has shown since 1950...
...And while I have taken exception to his slighting the disadvantages and difficulties of his suggested alternatives to Labor policies, I must sorrowfully concur with the major conclusion he states in his final chapter entitled "Politics of Stalemate...
...Where they could not do so, they resigned their posts or refus ed to accept them in the first place...
...I am referring to the extensive use made of industrialists to administer controls—in official or semioflicial capacity—over their own industries...
...Where in Britain long-run industrial needs were obvious, long-range planning— as in the coal industry—was undertaken...
...I wonder, however, whether the latter danger is not, to some extent, more theoretical than practical...
...I believe this emphasis misplaced (except with regard to the broader issue of equality of opportunity for persons of working-class background...
...196 pp...
...Rejected (rightly or wrongly) because of unwieldiness, excessive bureaucratization...
...The controllers operate within the framework of law and over-all governmental supervision...
...The result would have been magnification of government bureaucracies and the shift of emphasis from cooperation to attempts at playing "cops and robbers," with private industrialists constantly attempting to deceive the supervisors and to circumvent controls...
...He has a sharp eye for the basic problems faced by the Labor Government and a special knack for summarizing complex sets of data...
...Rogow admits—but does not further consider—the enormous burden of bureaucratic detail which a tightly administered economic system entails...
...The paralysis of will originated primarily within the ranks of Labor itself and it was based on the loss of the original innocent assurance that in public ownership and planning were to be found the keys to economic abundance, "socialist" freedom, a "new social ethic...
...Thirdly, Mr...
...The welfare state devised by the Labor Government permits, in the author's words, "class rule" and "mass contentment" to co-exist...
...Extensive governmental control by civil servants...
...Rogow analyzes carefully the (largely successful) resistance of the • The Labor Government and British Industry, 1945-1951, by A. A. Rogow (withthe assistance of Peter Shore...
...SIMILARLY the criticism implicit in Mr...
...and no regime really has a set of detailed criteria worked out which will permit it (in the absence of some overwhelming imperative such as war) to make these decisions continuously and consistently...
...The author has selected an area for analysis in which performance, I believe by necessity, was bound to fall far short of the socialist goal...
...In the first place, the author himself approvingly quotes E. H. Carr's statement that neither historically nor ideologically does any necessary connection exist between socialism and the concept of central planning...
...The author repeatedly criticizes the Labor Government for failing to educate and train proletarian and socialist replacements for bourgeois managers...
...True, the device adopted by the Labor Government (as well as by NIRA, the Nazi regime, and the U.S...
...But when a country like Britain already possesses a well-equipped industrial apparatus, when its economy is dependent on numerous foreign markets, what criteria—once the more obvious demands for modernization and re-equipment have been met —could expert planners devise besides attempting to anticipate international market developments...
...that workers' participation was as difficult in public as in private enterprises, and that the imperatives of large-scale industrial production (involving managerial authority, wage differentials, and monetary incen tives) prevented any fundamental transformation of bourgeois values, where then was the urgent impetus for further nationalization to come from...
...In the light of Britain's overwhelming need to push exports into a volatile world market, one must wonder whether a long-range plan could ever have possessed the required suppleness...
...The main question Mr...
...For, if public enterprises are to be run on the basis of business principles— and the Labor Government was committed to this proposition—there is no evidence that managers of working class background will function in a significantly different manner from their bourgeois colleagues...
Vol. 5 • July 1958 • No. 3
