Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Europe Rethinks Its Socialism THE NEW PROGRAM of the German Social Democratic party, recently ratified by a special party congress, is a very...
...Conservatives may applaud and die-hard Marxists may deplore the retreat from Marx that has been going on for some time in the Socialist parties of Western Europe, reflected most clearly in the German Social Democrats' new program...
...And they may contest elections with better prospects of success when they have got rid of what the British Liberal leader, Jo Grimond, calls "the albatross of nationalization" hanging around their necks...
...One swallow, or one Jay, does not make a summer and there are some Laborites who maintain that what the party needs is an injection of old-fashioned hot-gospelling straight orthodox socialism...
...Among the ideas that have been consigned to the historical mothballs in the new program are irreconcilable class war, ultimate revolution, antagonism to the State as "bourgeois" and the goal of all-out nationalization of means of production and distribution...
...Totalitarian control of the economy destroys freedom...
...But what has happened is not a capitulation or self-liquidation of the Socialist movement...
...But, in the light of present political realities, this sounds like whistling in the dark...
...In reality they have falsified Socialist ideas...
...Socialists want to turn freedom and justice into reality, while Communists exploit the conflicts of society to establish the dictatorship of their party...
...The Social Democratic party, therefore, favors a free market, wherever free competition really exists...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Europe Rethinks Its Socialism THE NEW PROGRAM of the German Social Democratic party, recently ratified by a special party congress, is a very interesting document...
...And there is a significant recognition that "every accumulation of economic power, even in the hands of the state, harbors a danger...
...The program declares that democratic socialism in Europe is rooted in Christian ethics, humanism and classical philosophy—a formula calculated to shock orthodox Marxist materialists...
...Socialist and labor parties will continue to represent substantial voting groups in Great Britain, Germany and other European industrial countries...
...Acceptance of private ownership and competition as normal in a free economy is affirmed in such passages of the program as the following: "The free choice of consumer goods and services, free choice of a place to work, free initiative for employers, are decisive foundations and free competition is an important element of a free economic policy...
...The parallel is not exact, because the British Labor party, although avowedly socialist in ultimate aim, has never been unreservedly committed to the theories of Marx...
...A similar shift of emphasis seems to be going on in Great Britain...
...But, like the German Social Democrats, the British Laborites have suffered three straight election defeats, and each time by a wider margin...
...The most articulate voice has been that of Douglas Jay, one of the party's experts on economics and finance...
...The defense of the country is affirmed...
...Shortly after the election he proposed that there be no more advocacy of further nationalization...
...Not affluent, certainly, in the sense that everyone is well off, but affluent by comparison with the living standards that prevailed when Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, or even with those of the '30s...
...German Social Democrats grew up under the direct inspiration and influence of Marx and Engels, and, like Germans of other views, are apt to be attached to tradition and attracted by theory...
...So the new German socialist ideal is not expropriation, nationalization and transfer of industries to public ownership, but rather changes in the measures of public control and taxation, calculated to break up monopolies and to make for a more even distribution of wealth...
...One might call this latest platform a New Deal manifesto...
...This naturally inspires a process of internal self-criticism and a re-examination of philosophy, program and tactics...
...unconditional allegiance to the ideal of freedom and the methods of democracy is stressed over and over again...
...It reveals a thorough rethinking of socialist principles in the light of modern times, when the phrase "affluent society" could be used for most countries of Western Europe as well as for the United States...
...Communism is frequently and unsparingly condemned, especially in the following passage: "Communists have no right to invoke Socialist traditions...
...Hence there is special significance in the decision of the Social Democrats to work out a new theoretical basis and to strike out along new political lines...
...It is rather a withdrawal from ground that may have been suitable in the past, but that is no longer suitable for political campaigning...
...In the current mood of Britain it is about as safe as any theoretical assumption can be that, if the Labor party had fought the last election on a program of all-out nationalization, expropriation and class war, it would have been defeated far more decisively than it actually was...
...As much competition as possible—as much planning as necessary...
Vol. 42 • December 1959 • No. 47
