The Legacy of Anthony Crosland
KATZ, DAVID H.
Perspectives THE LEGACY OF ANTHONY CROSLAND by DAVID H. KATZ The death last February 19 of Anthony Crosland at age 58 deprived the British Labor party of a possible future prime minister and a...
...And to a remarkable extent, they have chosen to vote for us...
...Keynesian interven-tionism, enlargement of the welfare state, creation of a substantial nationwide industrial sector, and, as Crosland put it, "savage taxation of income and property"—these innovations, originated by Labor and perpetuated under political duress by the Tories, had helped transform Britain into a "statist" society, something midway between capitalism and Socialism...
...What, then, did constitute Socialism...
...If only the people were not fooled by the mass media...
...Social Democrats can rely on hard facts, on how people have actually chosen to behave...
...Not long before his death, for example, he observed: "Other more extreme parties have to rely on 'ifs' to maintain their plausibility...
...Traditional Socialist analyses derived mainly from Marx, he held, had been rendered obsolete by postwar changes in social structures and the resulting redistribution of economic and political power...
...Keynesian controls, cultural homogenization and the advent of the consumer society had, Crosland suggested, combined to relegate such issues to the past...
...lective physical or financial controls...
...The same year he wrote instructions for and personally selected members of a special investigative commission established to consider the future status of the public schools...
...At first glance, Crosland's egalitarian convictions seem to clash with his impeccably upper-middle-class background...
...Crosland's theme in these and subsequent writings was provocative, if not altogether original...
...All of them agreed that ideological revitalization was urgently needed...
...In fact, attacks on revisionist theory, scattered and generally ineffective in the prosperous late '50s and early '60s, have become increasingly pointed as Britain declines into near-insolvency...
...The continued existence of a large private educational establishment, composed of independent boarding ("public") schools catering to the rich, could no longer be tolerated, Crosland felt...
...If only people understood elementary economics...
...the exploitation of its power as final buyer, and generally the uninhibited use (often most effective) of bullying, cajolery and political pressure...
...Indeed, the party's claim to being "socialist" now largely rests on the Croslandite definition of Socialism as an ethically based commitment to a "more classless society" in which social mobility is maximized and all functionally inessential distinctions between individuals are eradicated as much as possible...
...Not everybody agrees...
...His essay on "The Transition from Capitalism" (1952), and his landmark book, The Future of Socialism (1956), helped define the political outlook of a whole generation of moderate Laborites and securely established his reputation as the party's foremost "revisionist" theoretician...
...Crosland enumerated these in his next book, The Conservative Enemy (1962), as follows: "discriminating taxes or subsidies, legislative action . . . se...
...The stage was thus set for the emergence of a Socialist society marked by "a distribution of rewards, status and privileges egalitarian enough to manage social resentment . . . secure justice between individuals, and . . . equalize opportunities...
...Nevertheless, Crosland's ideas still condition—even if they no longer actually set—the terms of intra-parry debate...
...That was a crucial and troubled moment in Labor party history...
...Son of a distinguished civil servant, he was educated at a "good" private school (Highgate) and Trinity College at Oxford, where he briefly taught economics...
...if they had read Das Kapital...
...Moreover, he never wavered in the conviction that his gradual and programmatic strategy was the single effective approach to social change...
...It is still too early to venture a final judgment on the Cros-landite legacy, but some preliminary assessments are possible...
...If only the truth about our society was not supressed...
...Tribune, the Left wing's principal organ, admitted in early 1948: " 'Socialism' does not necessarily mean an endless flow of nationalization measures...
...To these economists, Crosland's central premise looks unduly optimistic—and all the more so when viewed in the context of what Ralph Miliband, a leading antirevisionist, has sarcastically described as "an economic elite dripping with soulfulness...
...Young postwar political aspirants with similar credentials generally identified with the Tories rather than the Laborites...
...Crosland unquestionably played a significant part in redefining his party's objectives and image...
...The old capitalist class, its selfconfidence sapped by the Depression and the attacks of intellectual critics, had on the whole ceased resisting the steady erosion of its privileged position and was fading into the background...
...Distinguished as his career was, it is uncertain how much of Crosland's intellectual legacy will survive...
...on the private corporation" has drawn especially heavy fire...
...It had also nationalized several bask industries, including coal, transportation and public utilities...
...Those who now seek to dismantle the "Crosland Revolution" would be well advised to keep this crucial distinction in mind...
...Defeat intensified rather than quieted the debate over Labor's future, particularly among party intellectuals...
...Later high-level jobs, culminating in his appointment as foreign secretary in the current third postwar Labor government, confirmed his standing as a member of the party's inner circle and as a possible future prime minister...
...In both The Future of Socialism and The Conservative Enemy, Crosland contended that it was time for Labor to face up to the new realities and alter its goals accordingly...
...Specifically, the two books stressed the need to reform Britain's educational system, deemed to be exacerbating class resentments, squandering human resources and affronting ordinary standards of social justice...
...Content with the enactment of Labor's reformist program, a process for the most part completed by 1948, the moderates did not know what to do next...
...the institutions had to be placed under state control in order to "democratize their entry and so destroy their present socially exclusive character...
...For almost a quarter of a century, beginning in 1953, his books, articles and Fabian pamphlets helped mold—his critics would say ossify—mainline Labor thinking on central questions of tactics and strategy...
...The first postwar Labor government, then in its sixth year, had compiled an apparently impressive legislative record in such areas as electoral reform, expanded social security, national health insurance and town planning...
...This seemed to me, and still seems to me, more satisfactory than writing books . . . from an Oxford chair...
...Private industry," Crosland concluded, was "at last becoming humanized...
...While newly hired public relations men busily projected Labor's Croslandite "people's party" identification, Crosland himself was enjoying the theoretician's rare pleasure of implementing many of the reforms he had advocated...
...The Bevanites, quasi-Marxist in spirit but lacking theoretical depth, had no clear answer...
...Granting the government's ability to control small and middle-sized firms, a growing number of economists have expressed understandable doubts about revisionism's applicability to giant multinational corporations, with their protean ability to evade taxes, shift capital, fix prices, and exact demands from public authorities...
...few, however, were willing or able to offer a new overall perspective on major issues of philosophy and strategy...
...Putting Socialism squarely on the political agenda, though, demanded that Labor first put its own house in order by erasing its Left-generated, electoraUy damaging image as a "cloth cap" work-ingman's party dedicated to the "class struggle" and comprehensive public ownership of the means of production...
...Crosland's key and often reiterated contention that there is "no reason to alter the revisionist thesis that government can generally impose its will...
...Neither did the party's Center-Right majority...
...I wanted to go into . . . Labor politics ever since I was about 17," he once told an interviewer...
...This is precisely what Crosland provided...
...His wartime service was spent in North Africa, Italy and Austria as an officer in the crack Parachute Regiment...
...Rereading The Future of Socialism nine years after its initial publication, one contributor to The Spectator found it "astonishing how well most of its doctrines have worn...
...Holder of several important Cabinet posts in successive Labor administrations, Cros-land's most salient contributions to the party were ideological...
...By the time Labor returned to power in 1964, the "Crosland Revolution" (as one Leftist writer grudgingly termed it) had put an already demoralized Left further on the defensive and had made nationalization a virtual non-issue...
...Irresolute and divided, the Labor government simply drifted until the election of 1951 when, with something akin to relief, it finally ceded power to the Conservatives...
...In 1965, as the new government's Minister of Education, he issued a Circular that "asked" local educational authorities to start planning the reorganization of their districts along comprehensive lines...
...By themselves they do not constitute Socialism or anything like it...
...it urged further nationalization, even though it could not articDavid H. Katz is an assistant professor in the department of social science at Michigan State...
...But Crosland was different...
...His chance came in 1950 when, as a protege of Cabinet Minister Hugh Dalton, he won a seat in the House of Commons...
...A new class of nonowning managers was moving to the fore, as concerned with retaining public esteem as with making profits...
...Perspectives THE LEGACY OF ANTHONY CROSLAND by DAVID H. KATZ The death last February 19 of Anthony Crosland at age 58 deprived the British Labor party of a possible future prime minister and a formidable Socialist theoretician...
...Like Max Weber, whom he greatly admired, Crosland frequently emphasized the difference between the "ethic of responsibility" —a realistic acknowledgement of the limits of political action—and the "ethic of ultimate ends"—seeing politics in millennial terms...
...His deepest philosophical assumptions remain important, too...
...Their repeated insistence on the need for "consolidation,"—an extended period of retrenchment—satisfied only the most credulous...
...Crosland believed these changes, combined with increased taxation of unearned income, extension of an upgraded welfare system, and a modicum of worker participation in industrial decision-making, would be enough to lay "the essential foundations of a Socialist society...
...In the new Britain, he argued, class was becoming a matter of social status instead of economic position, while the power accruing to private owners counted for far less than the macro- and micro-level controls available to the state...
...ulate any practical justification for additional takeovers...
...Yet few of these achievements had mollified the party's militant Left wing, the so-called Bevanite faction...
...He advocated reform of the state-run educational system on similar grounds: Middle-class dominated grammar schools and the euphemistically named "secondary moderns" (often little more than deadend holding pens for working-class youths) needed to be replaced by American-type comprehensive schools that would mute class differences and assure all children a decent education...
Vol. 60 • April 1977 • No. 8
