BRITAIN, TEST OF SOCIALISM
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Week Britain, Test of Socialism By William Henry Chamberlin LOHDOM. THE WORLD TODAY IS WITNESSING a race between three main types of social and economic systems. These may...
...As its pample< "Labor Believes in Britain," states: "There can be no advance without planning...
...It is harder still to get this" idea over to the individual worker, even if his new boss is a public board, not an individual or corporate capitalist...
...Everyone knows in his heart that the next election, like the one of 1945, will be free and orderly, that the minority will accepjt the result peacefully, and that the majority will not curtail or destroy the constitutional rights of the minority, * * » WHEN I WAS IN ENGLAND three years ago, a certain amount of doctrinaire and sentimental sympathy with the Soviet Union in Britain existed...
...With penetrating sight...
...Never has a doubt...
...Closely connected with America by jKjlitlcal, military and economic ties, by tine North Atlantic Pact...
...They recognize the desirability of keeping the Labor Government in power...
...Its ideal, as Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Labor party, told me, is a mixed economy, with state ownership and operation of the basic hidustries, but with a considerable field left for private enterprise...
...There is a close intermeshing of Labor party and trade union leadership, and the union do not want to embarrass-the government...
...Should sacrifices be requited because of the balanee-of-payments crisis, / the close understanding between the , Labor party and the trade union movement and the discipline of the trade unions, will be put to a severe and searching test...
...A number of other concessions are demanded —all made by our "bold initiative...
...THE COMMENTATOR The commentator's clever* He's got things figured out...
...And thus U Is that nearly Half the time he's right I Richard Armour...
...at times, their hard fanatical core obtrudes, they talk straight, and thus botch their owp finesses...
...BRITAIN NOW IS A TESTING GROUND for socialist ideas...
...There are a few extremists both in Labor and Conservative ranks who occasionally exchange bitter words and exaggerated accusations, Although the general tone of politics in Britain is milder and more moderate than in the United States...
...BEHIND THE HATE BALL A Russian history professor is in hot water with the Kremlin for writing a book that isn't anti-American enough...
...However, a number of unofficial strikes and slowdowns among miners, railwaymen and dockers have taken place...
...in this world, however, we would urge the Friends to ponder a little less "objectively" the wails of their Catholic brothers all over Europe...
...These may be briefly described as democratic individualism, democratic socialism and totalitarian communism...
...Without a word about the Baruch plan for international atom control, we are asked to surrender our stockpiles and devise some vague new scheme (unspecified in the report) which would win Russian approval...
...Newt item...
...These are no longer matters for debate at conferences of people who believe in them...
...Instead of winning prises And getting medals of all sites And being wined and dined and ieled — Because he's short on hate, he's hated...
...The resolution was rejected, and the conference was a joke...
...Bevin received more solid support for his foreign policy from the Conservatives than from his own party...
...Of these three systems, the American and British have far more in common with each other than either has with the Russian, br Britain, for example, there is complete freedom of criticism, in Parliament, in the press, In public meetings, in private conversation...
...Although the report does not mention the Berlin blockade, it recommends lifting our embargo on war-potential goods to Russia, withdrawing our troops from Germany, and scuttling of the West German republic...
...The United States is the chief representative- of the first, Britain of the second, the Soviet Union of the third...
...He called Russia the classic example of a police state and "one of the most backward countries in tne world" from the standpoint of true free- dom, democracy and socialism...
...He is a man who never...
...The most articulate members of this group, Zilliacus and Piatt-Mills, have been expelled from the Labor party...
...Hypocrisy . . is not always the Communists' favorite pate...
...Some of these regulations are considered teempbrary, to be abandoned if and whan plenty returns...
...Significantly enough, the report has nothing to say about the Far East, where the Stalinist machine, is running smoothly...
...They help to shape the living conditions of millions of people...
...The Soviets would gladly welcome "peaceful co-existence if 'new historical conditions' made it appear advantageous...
...to confuse the American people...
...Despite-the great body of Stalmls-vritinyjr proclaiming the necessity and inevitability of a world communist coup, the Quakers' report blithely ignores the Cominform and professes that ^^im1si*weeavth# and the Soviet Union is not inevitable...
...But it is not psychologically easy for a trade union leader who has been fighting for shorter hours and more pay all his life to call on his folowew to wbrtt harder, evAp fai nationalized industries...
...But ^government exercises a good deal of control over agiaeuHurer as op** tile whole economic life of the, owsqtry, nationalised and non-nationalized,' through a system of subsidies, price controls and regulations...
...rather, being somewhat scanty On epithets expressly anil...
...This conclave was asked by peripheral party-liners to urge a Presidential pardon for 18 Trotskyites jailed under the Smith Act — the same law now in voted against the 11 Communist chieftains, arid the conference's main reason for being...
...One problem of outstanding importance is the role of the trade unions when a Labor Government is in power and some of the basic industries have been nationalized...
...The Friends' report, in a word, urges us Co turn the other cheek...
...Now the influence of the people who are often called crypto-communists in Britain and fellowtfaveiers- irr-the United States has waned tremendously...
...Prime Minuter A^llee recently attacked Soviet communism in language as strong as any American statesman has employed...
...Economic planning Is essential to assure that the public interest always canes first: that is a central principle of the Labor party's policy...
...The reason...
...Others are permanent, for planning is an avowed part of the Labor party program...
...A nation-wide slowdown on the railways has just been narrowly averted...
...Labor party leaders freely recognize that without higher production the present standard of living cannot be maintained, much less improved...
...JThe report goes on to chart a future course 'which would not only appear advantageous to Stalin but which, in fact, includes every concession he has demanded over the past three years...
...And so...
...Take last week's New York "Bill of Rights Conference," for example...
...Their voices carry about as touch weight as does Henry Wallace's in the United States...
...Such a course is noble if you wish « joyous and speedy summons to the hereafter...
...And Wishful Thinking...
...But on a much broader front...
...But they are faced with wildcat stoppages, sometimes a product of impatience with slow mediation procedures, sometimes incited by communists...
...These men," he declared, "are the allies of fascism . . . the enemies of the working class...
...That worried look over the shoulder to see who may be listening, the invariable, feature of a totalitarian state, has no place in Britain...
...The attitude of the workers toward production is perhaps Britain's greatest internal problem...
...A Russian writer's in hot water...
...the ERP, and a common interest In resisting Soviet aggesslon, Britain is separated from the United States by the fact that itsgovernment is committed to a philosophy of democratic socialism...
...For saying what he hadn't oughier...
...For the foreign policy report of the American Friends Service Committee certainly seems to bear witness to the effectiveness of crypto-Stalinist propaganda here...
...He sees the future clearly...
...One answer is that there have been no official strikes called by trade unions since the Labor Government came into power...
...What does British socialism mean in practice...
...These situations illustrate a new problem which the leaders of the British t$ade unions must face...
...Paul Robeson entered a hasty demurrer...
...Communists could claim a yictory in their droits to exploit naivete...
...Fascism, which was a kind of totalitarian statecapitalism, was a formidable rival ten years ago, Now it is out of the running, for all practical purposes, because of the downfall of the principal fascist states in the war...
...Indeed, the Labor party'* share of the printed word is rather smaller than its voting strength...
...No one intends jto collec. tivije British farms...
Vol. 32 • July 1949 • No. 30
