DR. ABRAMS AND THE END OF

DR. MARK ABRAMS’ survey of political attitudes,“Why Labour Has Lost Elections”, published infour consecutive issues of Socialist Commentary,and shortly to achieve wider distribution as aPenguin “Special”, does not tell us anything newabout the reasons for Labour’s defeat, nor doesa close reading support its claim to offer a“reliable understanding of contemporary Britishpolitical loyalties”. Its importance lies rather inthe underlying approach to man and politicswhich it reveals and which, in turn, it supports.

This might be summed up as a species of statusdeterminism, supported by a behaviourist psy-chology of opinions and informed by the assump-tions of motivational and market research. Dr.Abrams, in a general statement of his viewspublished in the May issue of Encounter, advanceswhat he calls a “functional view” of the natureof human opinion. A man, so he believes, holdsa certain opinion not because he thinks it to betrue, or considers it to be important, or becausehe holds that its consequences would be just, butrather because “holding it serves certain functionsin life”, the principal one being that it

“helps him to establish his identity—partly to theoutside world, but primarily in his own eyes.Sometimes this identity is reached by indicatingaffinity with a social type, sometimes by indicatingdissociation”.

Starting from this “functional” definition ofpolitical behaviour, Dr. Abrams would have usrevolutionise the traditional picture of the reasonswhy people support Labour. Working class peoplewho vote Labour, in his description, do not do sobecause of material conditions—since manypeople in the same situation vote Conservative—nor yet because they think Labour policy betterfor the country, or for their class, or even forthemselves, but rather:

“Because of their concern to see themselves aspeople moved by social generosity . . . prosperousworking class adults vote Labour because in thismirror they can see themselves as humanitariansbeyond the reach of (Conservative) selfishness”.

Nor are their Conservative neighbours accordedmuch more respect. They do not, in Dr. Abrams’model of political behaviour, vote Conservativebecause they actively prefer that Party’s policies—thinking them more “national” or more“efficient”, crediting them with responsibility forthe new prosperity or, deferentially, holding that“they’re born to rule”, “they’ve got the money”,but rather that the act of voting Conservative:

“establishes them (in their own eyes) as patrioticand intelligent . . . prosperous working class adultsvote Conservative because ‘buying’ this label, theyare able to recognise themselves as intelligent (i.e.clever, educated, sensible) and altruistic (patrioticand non-Labour)”.Dr. Abrams does not explore all the con-

sequences of his “functional view” of the humanmind, but he does propose it as a general theoryof opinion, and indeed sets it forth as a self-evident truth which requires no justification. TheLabour voter—to translate his analysis into every-day terms—does not support Labour because heis moved by a desire to help the old, or give aidto the poor, or because he would like to see thecountry more socialist or more just, or becausehe wants to improve life for the people of thecountry: his real purpose—since no generousimpulse or objective convictions are allowedto exist—is merely a “concern to be seen tobe a person moved by social generosity” both inthe eyes of others and in his own status mirror.He is “buying” a “label” to support his self-image.He is not so much committed to supporting theLabour Party as enmeshed in a pattern ofcompulsive role-playing, in which a desperate con-cern to validate his own self-image is matchedonly by his desire to win the esteem of hisneighbours (which neighbours, Dr. Abrams doesnot say: it is a curious departure from his theorythat Dr. Abrams’ Labour voters do not seemtroubled by the image they present to theirConservative neighbours, whose pursuit of ego-identification has led them down such verydifferent paths).

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by Ralph Samuel

POLITICS

In Dr. Abrams’ description of man, thereare no substantive emotions left at all: neithergenerosity nor selfishness, altruism nor self-seeking, kindness nor cruelty, but only theirpallid reflections which flicker in the universalmirror of status. If we were to follow him weshould have utterly to revise our view of history,for so low a view of human behaviour wouldallow none of the great passions to have anyindependent existence of the structure of prestige.History, on this view, could not be seen as theproduct of human reason, human will or humanpassion; it would have to be re-written as acommentary on the changing patterns of prestige-ranking, a giant superstructure erected aroundthe edifice of esteem. No movement would belarge enough, no conviction powerful enough, nopurpose transcendent enough, to escape thedictates of the status mechanism. When Latimerand Ridley were burning in St. Giles—so theargument would run—they were sustained not (asthey appeared to believe) by the conviction that“We shall light this day such a candle, by God’sgrace, in England as shall never be put out” butrather by an overwhelming desire to secureapproval according to the culturally-approvedmores of early Tudor England, in which marty-rology occupied so disproportionate and distres-singly prominent a position. The ringing declar-tion of the Norfolk peasants in 1549 that “Christmade all men equal, with his precious bloodshedding” would be seen as no more thanconformity to the norms of a plebeian sub-culture which validated egalitarianism as a“label” it was approvable to “buy”. And, facedwith Colonel Rainboro’s famous declaration inthe Putney Debates of 1647 that “the pooresthee that is in England hath as much right to alife as the greatest hee” it would no doubtinsinuate that he was not so much moved by thisbelief, as by the desire to see himself (and beseen by his fellow Leveller officers to be) a person“moved by social generosity”.

The Status Mirror

Nor are these conjectures entirely fanciful, for,although Dr. Abrams does not speak of the past(how could he, since his is a view which deniesthe very spirit of man, and debases the meaningof history?), it is clear that this is how he expectsus to judge the present and envisage the unfoldingof the future. “In post-war Britain”, he asserts,“intelligence and higher education have achieveda social prestige which overrides almost all otherday-to-day values”, and, in consequence, “one-third of prosperous working-class people prefer

to think of themselves as intelligent rather thangenerous”. “The heart of the problem facingTransport House”, he concludes from this, is thatthe Labour Party must offer an image and anobject of identification which will be, for itssupporters, “a mirror which shows them to beintelligent as well as generous”, in this waygiving them the assurance that:

“in voting Labour they will not automaticallyrob their self-image of one of these traits at the expense of the others”.

It is a gloomy characterisation of contemporaryBritish man; one which allows him no core ofconviction or steady centre, but only a moralvacuum in which the fast-flowing streams ofstatus deposit their sediment. He sees people asconsumers of politics, behaving in politics muchas they would—in the motivational researchimagination—when confronted with mass-marketed commodities: they “buy” politicallabels and allegiances as they would any brand-image—because of the pleasurable associations itpromises to afford. Thus Dr. Abrams leaves nostandard by which to judge the relationshipbetween Labour and its supporters, beyond theinjunction that they must stand—as Mr. Croslandexpresses it—in “rapport” with each other.Labour, on Dr. Abrams’ view, should renounceits historical role as a Party changing the waysin which people look at their society and givingform and voice to the demands they make of it.Instead, its principal concern, it seems, should beto give off a favourable pattern of “associations”.These associations may have an organic or onlyan accidental connection with people’s desires;they may bear a real or only a fancied relation topeople’s genuine needs; but for this politicalphilosophy, it does not matter at all. It is enoughthat, as in subliminal advertising, the associationsshould “connect” in people’s minds, and that theimage they give off be assimilated into the patternof self-identification. Dr. Abrams is not, therefore,concerned with the real nature of peoples’ needsand desires—since on his view they cannot be saidto have any that are truly autonomous—nor withthe quality of Labour policies, since these haveno validity independent of the “identifications”they offer—but solely with “associations”, bothpersonal (“ego-identification”) and political (Party“image” and Leader “personality”), and it iswith these that his survey is principally concerned.

It would be pedantic to dwell at length on themore obvious deficiencies of Dr. Abrams’sociological methods. But since his survey pur-ports (large claim!) to reveal the “underlyingattitudes” determining political allegiances, andcarries an unmerited aura of objectivity objectifiedsomething at least needs to be said of its limitation.

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For one thing, his sample of 724 people, whileit would pass muster for the study of a localcommunity, can scarcely stand as representativefor the country as a whole (it is, in fact, ninetimes smaller than that used by the Gallup Pollon their election survey). What is more, it is a“quota sample”, which is generally recognised tobe a less reliable way of choosing respondentsbecause it leaves this to the whim of the inter-viewers. Moreover his results suggest that thesurvey has in fact suffered from the biases thiscould be expected to induce. Dr. Abrams hasnever satisfactorily explained why his statisticsshow only a 35 per cent Labour vote comparedwith 43 per cent in the October election and theonly slightly lower level than that which theGallup Poll has shown throughout this year.Nor does he attempt to explain the startlingdiscrepancy between a Survey he conducted inthe months preceding the October election—which showed “prosperous workers” dividing2 to 1 in favour of Labour—and the present surveywhich shows the upper half of the working classdividing 6 to 4 against Labour.1

These doubts about the authority of thesurvey are intensified by Dr. Abrams’ readinessto base important assertions upon the mostminiscule of sub-samples. When, for example,you read that “a half of Labour’s middle-classsupporters favoured more nationalisation” (com-pared with a fifth among the working class), itis necessary to remind yourself—for Dr. Abrams,beyond a preliminary word, says nothing of themagnitudes behind his tables—that he is talkingabout a sub-sub-sample, and that his percentagerepresents no more than 10 actual people, justas it is sobering to remember that the 2 per centof young people, who solemnly appear at thefoot of the table of self-identifications as “identi-fying” with “people who ‘fiddle’” can refer tono more than three actual boys.

The smallness of the Survey’s scale would besomewhat less alarming, were it not for the largeand confident claims—owing more to the idiomof salesmanship than of serious sociology—whichDr. Abrams advances for his findings. Not onesingle doubt is permitted to disturb the symmetryof his analysis, nor any hesitation to interrupt arelentless progression from statistic to conclusionwhich gives the series the stupefying quality of

1 Here, as elsewhere, explanation is made impossible becauseDr. Abrams feels under no obligation to reconcile apparentlycontradictory findings. It may be that those he refers to as“prosperous working class” in the pre-election survey (reportedin Encounter) included some of those he is pleased to call“labouring working class”; but it could scarcely have includeda majority of them; and in the present survey even the two groupstogether show only a bare Labour majority. My own guess isthat both surveys were probably innaccurate, though in oppositedirections.

a prolonged demonstration of geometricaltheorems.2 Even when he is making novelassertions about absolutely fundamental attitudesand values, he is burdened by none of theuncertainties which afflict sociologists coveringmuch less ambitious themes, and offers the readerneither caution nor qualification.

Conjuring Up Majorities

What is worse, Dr. Abrams shows a facility forconjuring majorities out of minorities which,while no doubt the envy of every Constituencyagent who reads him for guidance, suggests arather less than complete candour. To takeone example of the illegitimate extensions hefinds for his statistics: it is enough that 25 per centof his young people pick “middle class” onhis card of identities, for Dr. Abrams to inferthat “young people identify themselves in themain with the middle class”. “In the main”, likeits opposite “only”, is a phrase which, in Dr.Abrams’ vocabulary, is capable of considerablemanipulation: on page nine of the first instal-ment, we learn that “only 30 per cent of Laboursupporters used one of their three votes toidentify with Old Age Pensioners”; two para-graphs later Dr. Abrams uses the 35 per centof Conservative supporters who identified with“fair play and justice” to support the assertionthat “Conservative voters concentrated on fairplay and justice” and, still more surprising, toprompt the somewhat extraneous reflection thatthey “saw themselves as ‘average people’ andnot as ideologists”. On the same page, the 28 percent who thought young people more likely tovote Conservative (compared with 13 per centwho thought them more likely to vote Labour,and 49 per cent who thought they would vote foreither Party), are deemed sufficient to warrantthe claim—one of the most widely publicisedof Dr. Abrams’ “findings”—that “the electorate”sees the Conservatives as “the Party of youngpeople”.

Dr. Abrams’ treatment of young people them-selves is even more cavalier. Teds and Mods,Beatniks and Ravers, Aldermaston Marchers andNuclear Campaigners, they all disappear amidstthe whirrings of his Hollerith Machines, to re-emerge, on his Punch Cards, an almost un-differentiated mass whose principal “identifica-tion” is with “middle class progressive ‘opti-mists’ ” (!) Dr. Abrams says nothing about the

2 This is not rhetoric, either. Of 12 people I know who attemptedto read the Survey only one (8 per cent) was able to complete it.The Survey cries out for the sound of a solitary human voice,for a single personal insight to illumine the dreary wastes ofstatistics.

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characteristic attitudes and values of the differentgroups of young people he is claiming to describe,and, dismissing at the outset the 10 per cent of hissample, “whose political views were so unformedthat they could not be described even as ‘leaning’towards any Party”(how one would like to knowwhat they actually said to his interviewers), hethen proceeds to the startingly insensitive con-clusion that:

“the young people of today have, in politicalmatters, very much the same attitudes, assessmentsand values as their elders”.

Dr. Abrams seems intent on proving—againstsuch weight as his own statistics may be allowedto possess—that young people see themselves asmiddle class in values and Conservative in sym-pathies. Only when answering criticism on this,has he shown any respect for his own percentilescores:

“‘It is true’, he wrote in reply to a correspondentin Socialist Commentary, ‘that a slightly higherproportion of young people, according to theSurvey, believe that Labour is the Party that willbenefit young people most; but does this reallybring much consolation when in fact young peopleholding this view amount to only 27 per cent of thetotal sample’ ”.

This is almost the only time, on this subject,when he is prepared to admit that a minority is,in fact, only a minority. Elsewhere he allowsnothing to impede the monotonous predictabilityof his conclusions. In face of statistics whichshow that young people “attach very littleimportance” to a party standing “mainly for themiddle class” (this actually came bottom in theParty attributes his young people thoughtimportant) and that only 1 in 4 “identified”themselves with middle-class people (though ifthe magnitudes were the same as in the adultsurvey one-third must themselves have beenmiddle-class), he nevertheless advances, un-dismayed, to the proposition that “tomorrow’svoters identify mainly with middle-class people”.Confronted by such strained interpretations asthese, the reader would do well to bear constantlyin mind Disraeli’s still relevant typology of thethree kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies andstatistics”.

Nor is the conversion of minorities intomajorities the only kind of glossing in whichDr. Abrams indulges. Less obvious, but no lessimportant, is his habit of projecting livingsentiments—predictably akin, however, to hisown—on to statistics which will scarcely bearthe emotional weight he so freely thrusts uponthem. The 91 per cent affirmative replies by theyoung on “job satisfaction” enable him to discern,from the fastness of St. Martin’s Lane, a pictureof “solid contentment” (!); the 29 per cent of young

people who, on income levelling, chose thesoubriquet “strongly disagree” (in preference to“disagree, but not strongly”, “agree, but notstrongly”, “strongly agree”) are thought—suchis the sensitivity with which he endows hisattitude scales!—to have displayed “considerableintensity” on this subject, just as the smallnumber of people spontaneously mentioning“nationalisation” as a hoped-for outcome of aLabour victory are judged sufficient for him to declare that nationalisation “bores” Labourvoters.

Bewildering Set of ChoicesIn this sense Dr. Abrams is probably right to

suggest that had he used a much larger samplehis results would not have been very different. Itis not only his remarkable dexterity in handlingstatistics which makes one suspect that, whateverthey had shown, his conclusions would hardlyhave altered. It is also that many of the “answers” were plainly determined by the questions them-selves. Dr. Abrams ponderously reminds us thatthe statements offered respondents were “syste-matically rotated to eliminate all possible bias”,and insists that their “choice” was, in consequence,entirely “free”. But there is a threshold afterwhich choices can be so numerous and sotrivialised as to be meaningless, and Dr. Abrams’questionnaire must have passed well beyond it.Faced with so bewildering a variety of choice—15 possible attributes of the Party leaders, 16characteristics of the Party image, 20 differenttypes of personal identification—confronted bythe bottomless character of Dr. Abrams’ cate-gories, and the relentless profusion in whichthey were offered, one suspects that the mindmust have wandered and the spirit wearied inface of it all. How else is one to account for the30 per cent of Dr. Abrams’ Labour respondentswho picked “has a sense of humour” as one ofMr. Gaitskell’s personality attributes, a claimwhich even his most ardent partisans have neveradvanced for him? And by what strange alchemy,to take another example, did 89 per cent ofLabour supporters believe the Party stood“mainly for the working class”, while 37 per centof them held simultaneously the opposite viewthat it stood “mainly for the middle class”?

And how else—to pursue this line of enquiry—can we account for some of the more startlingstatistical differences, unexplained by Dr. Abrams,which so insistently confront us? Why do 20 percent of Dr. Abrams’ young people rate Mr.Gaitskell more “straightforward and frank” thanMr. Macmillan, but only 9 per cent more“honest and sincere”? Or 20 per cent of their

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elders prefer Mr. Macmillan as the more “friendlypersonality”, but only 10 per cent as the more“kindly and humane”? One is pleased, thoughpuzzled, to learn that, among Conservative voters,15 per cent believed the Conservatives stood“mainly for the working class” and 7 per centbelieved they “had most in common with under-dogs” (whoever they might be), but then dis-concerted to find that, amongst the young, only56 per cent were prepared to identify themselveswith young people, and not at all reassured (inlooking for the missing 44 per cent) to find that8 per cent identified themselves with Old AgePensioners! It is, of course, possible, that thesestatistical variations represent subtle and deeplypersonal discriminations on the part of Dr.Abrams’ respondents; but it seems more reason-able, if uncharitable, to assume that they weredetermined by the emptiness of the choices madeavailable in such paralysing multiplicity.

Where the replies do not obviously supportone of his hypotheses—and above all wherethey make nonsense of the whole method—Dr. Abrams does not feel obliged to evaluatetheir meaning, for he seems hardly aware thathis survey is about attitudes. Instead of trying tosearch out the cluster of opinions that make upa genuine “attitude”, he is content to displaythem as percentage scores—“united team ofleaders” near the top, “help for the underdog” near the bottom—rather in the manner of aFootball League table. He does not so muchrelate his findings to each other, as engage inelegant permutations to pick the probable winners.For example, he tests 15 possible attributes ofpolitical leaders, and then compares them againstthe Party leaders to announce that:

“Mr. Gaitskell’s three highest outright scoreswere on ‘in touch with ordinary people’, ‘practical,down to earth’ and ‘friendly personality’”.

And as if this were not enough he then proceedssolemnly to remind us that:

“the first of these had been judged by the wholesample as the fourth most important characteristicsof a good Party leader”.

Now this “first” attribute—“in touch withordinary people”—is a traditional Labour andworking-class attitude, which has rather moresignificance than the other choices offered, andso it is interesting to learn that this was theone single point on which 21 per cent of Dr.Abrams’ Conservative voters gave Mr. Gaitskella preference over Mr. Macmillan. Perhaps,behind this statistic, lie those working-classConservatives who—like the Coventry motorworker described by Dennis Butt in NLR 3—are “really Labour men at heart”? But whenDr. Abrams pauses, it is not to consider their

possible significance but only to dismiss themrapidly from mind:

“it should be remembered that only 30 per cent ofall Conservatives nominated this when asked toname the four most important characteristics of agood Party leader” .

But if the 21 per cent were drawn from the30 per cent (something Dr. Abrams does notexamine), then we might have here two “scores” which had at last actually jelled into somethingthat could, recognisably, deserve the name of an“attitude”. The reader is not allowed to con-sider this, for Dr. Abrams intervenes rapidlyagain, recalling that “judged on the wholesample”, the quality of being “in touch withordinary people” had been rated only the “fourthmost important characteristic for a good Partyleader”.

No Room For Greatness

If it is possible to talk seriously of the“fourth most important” characteristic of Partyleaders we must wonder whether we have not,unwittingly, been translated into the realm ofsome higher irrationality. For what are wegoing to say about the thirteenth “most impor-tant characteristic for a good Party leader”:“having some qualities of greatness”? No placehere, evidently, since it rates a mere 12 per cent,for Mr. Bevan (or for Mr. Churchill, or for thatmatter—since a “united team of top leaders” israted second on the score card of Party attributes—for Mr. Fox or Mr. Gladstone or Sir RobertPeel). And what about the fourteenth, “humaneand kindly”? Clearly these are qualities whichany putative Party leader can dismiss from hismind as statistically so negligible as to be safelyignored. Even so, it is difficult to see how Mr.Gaitskell can find in Dr. Abrams’ table theprescription for successful political leadership itis obviously, in part at least, intended to provide.It is clear enough that he must be a “strong leader”,since this comes top with 58 per cent. But what ishe to make of “strong enough to make un-welcome decisions”, which runs it a close secondat 48 per cent? What it is that he must be “strongenough to make unwelcome decisions” about?Should he fly in the face of all received opinion?Demand the division of England into Heptarchicalkingdoms? Proclaim himself King of Wessex?Disinter the bones of Edward the Confessor? Orwill the electorate deem it sufficient if he horse-whip Mr. Cousins on the steps of TransportHouse? Alas, Dr. Abrams leaves him only withthe recipe to mix 37 per cent of honesty with17 per cent of cleverness and 12 per cent of great-ness, and nowhere says how unpopular he wouldneed to be in order to become popular once again.

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It is when he comes to discuss social class thatDr. Abrams’ way of discussing things becomesmost misleading. Some of the more obviousdeficiencies of his approach come into play: hisunwillingness to allow for the extreme limitationsof this type of survey, his capacity for com-mitting himself to improbable conclusions basedon inadequate data, a refusal to evaluate themeaning of his statistics or to consider what, inthe minds of the respondents themselves, theirdifferent replies actually meant.

In his treatment of “prosperity and politics” there is again the suspicion that the reader isbeing treated with rather less than completecandour. His statistics show that between Labourand Conservative working class voters, there isno difference at all in their ownership of washingmachines, refrigerators, television sets and CARS.Since this appears to contradict the general driftand tenor of his Survey, and since it places inquestion some of the more crucial assumptionsboth of Dr. Abrams’ own previous work (notablyhis much discussed “Home-Centred Society”), aswell as Mr. Crosland’s Can Labour Win? (whichleans heavily on Dr. Abrams’ earlier “findings”) itmight be expected that Dr. Abrams would have agood deal to say about this. But apart from abrief gesture in the direction of a halting self-criticism—political loyalties, he allows may, onthis showing be based on “considerations otherthan the ownership or non-ownership of durableconsumer goods”—Dr. Abrams pursues the oneindex—“house ownership”—that has not entirelyfailed him, endowing it with vote-producingpropensities previously ascribed to the wholerange of “durable consumer goods”. His statis-tics cannot really support the burden so suddenlyborne upon them: the differential of 30 percent: 20 per cent which separates Conservativefrom Labour working class home owners,scarcely explains the political allegiances ofeven the 25 per cent of his working classrespondents who owned their own home, andtells us nothing at all about the remaining 75 percent.3 Nor is it easy to understand the supportfor his thesis Dr. Abrams affects to discern indifferential ownership of the telephone, sincehere the gap (a ratio of 14/7 per cent), dividingConservative and Labour voter is still narrower.None of this, perhaps, should be very surprising,since neither houses nor telephones—nor, for thatmatter, as his statistics prove, refrigerators, orwashing machines, or vacuum cleaners, or spin-

3 Dr. Abrams might have been on slightly safer ground hadhe concluded—from the fact that 39 per cent of his working class“Others” owned their own home—that home ownership is acritical determinant of ” deviant electoral behaviour among theworking class” .

driers, or even cars—but, in the end, only peoplehave the vote.

In discussing class identification more directlythan this, Dr. Abrams introduces a characteristicconfusion by projecting on his respondents,distinctions and meanings which are entirely hisown, forcing them to assign themselves to“labouring working class” or “skilled workingclass”, and then foisting on them the responsibility for making it, to triumphantly observe that:

“one-quarter of Labour supporters, while admit-ting (!) their working class general status, distinguishthemselves clearly from the labouring workingclass”.4

Self-assignmentThis does not exhaust, however, Dr. Abrams

adeptness at discovering crucial divisions inthe working class, nor his capacity to confusesociological referents with political determinants.He seems quite unaware that “self-assignment” to a class—even in answer to an open-endedquestion, let alone in so circumscribed andrigidly pre-coded a questionnaire as he offers—provides no more than a clue to the wholecomplex of values and opinions which go intothe making of “class attitudes”. Thus it issufficient for him, that many of his working classrespondents picked a middle-class self-assignment, and that a “statistically significant” difference separated Conservative and Labour(50 per cent: 30 per cent) for him to arguethat:

“upgrading oneself is one of the most importantcharacteristics which in the working class separatesLabour from non-Labour supporters” .

Now if there is one thing his statistics do notshow, it is surely this. For, though it is true thatthere have always been, among working classTories, people whose vote was influenced by thedesire to “upgrade themselves”, there is noevidence that this group have notably increasedin number. “Self-assignment” may have nothingto do with “self-upgrading”. In the NLRStevenage Survey, for example, there was anactual majority of Labour voters among“objectively” working class people who, whenasked about class, described themselves as“middle class”, some to distinguish themselves

4 Defending this forced choice in Socialist CommentaryDr. Abrams has claimed that to deny its general usage is to show“ignorance of the working class: it is a concept and a phrasewidely used by them”. It would be truer to see it as a figment ofhis imagination, deriving—like his other addition to our politicalvocabulary: the invention of a class of people he names “under-dogs”—from that rather older tradition which was in the habitof distinguishing the “respectable artisan” and the “loyal servant” from the mass of “common” labourers. Perhaps it should beadded that not one of the people interviewed in the NLRStevenage Survey described themselves as “labouring workingclass” when asked what class they would say they belonged to.

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from “the poor”, “the down and outs”, and manywhose attitudes and “identifications” were generally“working class”, and who, describing Labour as“the Party of the working man”, gave as theirmain reason for supporting Labour that “it standsfor working class people”. In any event, the differ-ence between one third and one half cannot standas a crucial dividing line, nor can “self-upgrading” be equated with “middle class self-assignment” where one third of Labour voters are perfectlyable to reconcile this with supporting the Partyfor “working class” reasons.

Dr. Abrams’ treatment of working class con-sciousness is, indeed, capricious and, at times,almost frivolous. Although, as he himself says,the overwhelming majority of Labour supportersidentify Labour with the working class, andgive this as the main reason for their vote, theone third who assigned themselves to a middleclass category enable him to pronounce this a“fragile bond” and from there—ignoring thedecades of struggle and achievement that hasmade “Labour stands for us” a phrase so pregnantwith meaning—to infer that:

“present support for Labour stems largely froman unconsidered identification with the workingclass!”

To dismiss as “unconsidered” the maturedexperience of generations of working people is toshow a peculiar insensitivity to perhaps themost important “underlying attitude” whichshapes British politics, even to-day: the convic-tion (in the words of a Stevenage man) that“Labour stands for me, and the bloke next door,and the people down the street”. This attitude isweaker than it was in the ’Forties and early’Fifties, but it would take more than Dr. Abramsluxuriant display of “identification” self-designation” and “image” tables to deny itscontinuing relevance.

These weaknesses are the more unfortunate inthat Dr. Abrams is touching on importantproblems and genuine issues which the LabourParty has not yet been willing seriously to face:the changing composition of the working class,the expansion of white collar and service occupa-tions, the changed outlook of the youngergeneration, the growth of “classlessness”. Thereare attitudes here at once fundamental andchanging: the matrix of values where politics areformed. Their discussion—a difficult, exploratoryand always strenuous task—cannot be short-circuited by relying uniquely on so inadequate anindex as the score of “self-assignments”, norshould it be frozen at the points where it mustsurely begin, by endowing possible, but whollyinadequate “hypotheses” with a spuriousappearance of scientific validation.

In the end it is because of the way he seespeople that Dr. Abrams is unable to conduct thatserious examination of underlying attitudes theLabour Party so urgently needs. His voters do notdecide how they will vote; they do not choosebetween the alternatives available, nor do theygenuinely prefer the policy of one Party to that ofanother. They drift—by the ineluctable pressuresof the status machine into their politicalallegiances; they are driven, by the anxiouspromptings of ego-identification, to sustain aself-image which, through voting, they validatefor themselves and legitimate in the eyes of theirneighbours. Just as for Mr. Crosland—whoseanalysis is otherwise more subtle—it is the“cross-pressured” the “socially ambivalent”, the“shifters” and the “crystallisers” who dominatethe political map, so for Dr. Abrams it is theunthinking, the inert and the patheticallydogmatic:

“A great many people manage to hold opinionsquite dogmatically without being either clever orwell-informed, and usually it is the opinion of thesepeople which dominate political life”.

A Responsible Sociology?

Dr. Abrams’ Survey, in fact, does violence tothe best tradition of sociology. He respects few ofthe limitations which any sociological enquiry—above all one so restricted as this—must accept.He shows neither caution nor candour in pre-senting his results and not only transcends thelimits of his statistics, but is even prepared, attimes, to contradict their plain meaning. He isready to father respondents with his opinions,forcing them to accept distinctions that are hisown, and enmeshing them in the banal rigiditiesof his categories. Nor is this all. There is acondescension in Dr. Abrams’ contemptuousdismissal of matured allegiances and convictionsas “dogmatic” and “unconsidered”, whichdeparts from that profound respect for the humanindividual which is the distinguishing feature ofany serious sociology and which it must retainif it is not to default from its responsibilities.

His is also an approach which stands in polaropposition to everything that socialism has meant.For it is indeed a sad picture of people withwhich we are presented. Floater and shifters,socially ambivalent and cross-pressured, anxiouslyexamining themselves in their status mirror,seeking duly to validate their self-images,“admitting” their working-class general statusand making their “unconsidered” identification,they are miserable creatures indeed. But ofcourse behind the image scores, and the identitytables which here encapsulate them, there

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NLR Readers . . . if the Review interests you and you would like to see it stay alive,this will take a little more effort than buying it occasionally from a newstand. Forseveral reasons—shortage of numbers for distribution, the colour of our politics, andso on—NLR is, in any case, in far fewer book-stalls than we would wish. You couldhelp by asking for it regularly from your local newsagent or bookstore, or urging yourlocal library to take out a copy. But our most urgent need is a large, steady andexpanding subscription list, and something regular besides in the form of a donation.There’s a subscription and donation form in this issue. Will you use it? And pass oneon to a friend? Independent socialist journals only keep going if their readers valueindependence enough to help pay for it. . . .

are real living, breathing, thinking, feelingpeople: Tredegar steel workers and Cannockminers, Blackheath teachers and Suffolk farmers,Kentish Town mothers and Wythenshawe clerks:the common people; not all of them withLabour, and not as many as in the past, but still,Radical England, us and not them. A LabourParty that forgot this, that abandoned—as insome directions it already has—the active,serving, learning relationship which ties it to thepeople from whom it came, would not deserveto retain their support, nor to win back those ithas lost, nor to represent the aspirations of thenew generation that has arrived.

For more than a century, the Labour movementhas been sustained by a generous belief in thecapacity of people to triumph over the adversityof circumstance and the cramp of necessity: it is abelief embodied in all the institutions of workingclass self-help—the friendly societies and thesavings clubs, the co-operatives and the tradeunions and, above all, in the Labour Party itself,shaped as a great engine of working-classemancipation, designed to impose on a wilfuland heartless industrial machine, and secure in anelite-bound society, the common decencies withwhich people conducted their everyday lives,respecting each other and helping each other.Socialism has always been a way of measuringthe actual against the potential, the immediate asagainst the possible condition of man. In the pastit was always the cry that the fallen should rise.“Eh, love, you cannot understand now”, oneChartist grandfather said to a little girl who wasto become a leader of the Bradford textileworkers, “but when you get to be a big girl, I wantyou always to think for the people, and live forthe people, for it will be a long time before theycan do it for themselves”. But now that the fallenhave risen—to more power, more wealth, moredignity, more choice in their lives than at any

time since the coming of the industrial way oflife—socialists cannot discard their fundamentalbelief in the ability of ordinary people—thinking,choosing and organising—to embody theirhighest values in the life of society. This is not, asMr. Crosland seems to imply, “messianic” or“chiliast”, nor is it, in the favoured phrase of theSpectator and the Guardian, an “apocalyptic” vision, nor is it the special property of any parti- cular wing of the movement, or uniquely tied toany particular programme of change.

“I wish to treat all the poor as I would my ownfather, mother, sister, brother”, “Educate everychild as if it were your own”: the convictions ofthe early socialists were formed under the impressof conditions vastly different from our own, butthey express an ethic of human brotherhood—and propose an “identification” of the highestmoral order—which has lost neither its relevancenor its validity. For socialism, before all else, hasbeen a way of thinking about people, of how toserve them, of how to speak for them, of how tolearn from them; in the words of Tom MacGuire,a founder of the Yorkshire ILP, “it is of thepeople—such will be the secret of its success”.If that success now seems less assured than it didto the founders of the Movement, it is in part,at least, because we too often ignore this lessonwhich they taught. If the Labour Movement werefinally to abandon its traditional way of thinkingabout people—and that alone is truly fundamental—to lose its faith in the power of the word tomove people, and of the idea to change them, ifit were to let go its conviction in the capacity ofhuman beings rationally to choose between thealternatives which face them, and purposefully tore-shape the society in which they live, then itwould be finished, and would find itself trappedin that limbo of the political imagination whosefeatures Dr. Abrams has so meticulouslyoutlined.

AS TRADITIONALLY, and—I think—correctly under-stood, the purpose of socialism may be definedas follows:

“That the government, democratically responsibleto the electorate, should assume ownership of the‘commanding heights’ of the economy and, inassociation with subsidiary agencies of a democraticcharacter, take effective control of the economy asa whole; that it should use the power thus obtained(a) to ensure a rapid development of total produc-tivity in accordance with certain centrally-decidedpriorities, (b) to redistribute both income andleisure in favour of the ‘under-privileged’ and(c) to place greater emphasis than is possible in asociety where the main criterion of economicdecision is private profit on the provision ofcommunal facilities designed to raise the generallevel of material and cultural well-being.” The adaptation of these principles to mid-

twentieth century conditions can be either of twokinds: (1) adaptation to the needs of our time;(2) adaptation to the views, existing or predicted,of the electorate. These two kinds of adaptationdo not necessarily coincide. In fact, their coinci-dence is now becoming not more but less close.

Up to quite recently there was at least no glaringcontradiction between vigorous campaigning forSocialism, as thus defined, and the winning ofelectoral victories. Today, as a result of the very

real achievements of “welfare capitalism”, thatcontradiction is obvious. Ultimately, people judgepolitical policies and programmes on the basis ofexperience, and to an ever-increasing extent thesignificant and politically-decisive experience is ofthe prosperous fifties, not of the hungry thirties.Where comparisons are consciously made, theyare between the free flow of consumer goodscharacteristic of the recent period of Tory rule andthe “restrictionism” characteristic of the imme-diate post-war years when Labour was in office.Both, of course, were periods of almost-fullemployment, but the first was one of full employ-ment plus rationing, the second one of fullemployment plus hire-purchase.

This is not to suggest that satisfaction with therecord of “welfare capitalism” is almost universal.Clearly, there are many groups of people, suchas old age pensioners and families on the waitinglist for municipal housing, who have the mostobvious reasons for dissatisfaction. The so-calledconsumer revolution, moreover, cannot developits full ideological impact in areas where unemploy-ment is well above the national average. Marginaldissatisfactions, however, are a very poor bag ofelectoral assets.

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SOCIALISMand

AFFLUENCEby Harry Hanson

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But if Labour cannot mark these up on thecredit side, nor can it count on the much moreserious contrast between “private opulence andpublic squalor”. This offends some of the people(e.g. the radical intellectuals) all of the time, andall of the people (e.g. when they are beingeducated, hospitalised or mechanically trans-ported) some of the time. But the frustrated plansof educationists, public health experts, townplanners and road builders can all too easily bedismissed as “utopian”. The flood of consumerdurables is real, and the consumer revolution, asthe authors of Out of Apathy have emphasised,is tending to produce an atomised society, peopledby competitively-acquisitive individuals who haveceased to feel a sense of responsibility forcommunally-provided services. Hence, althoughthey grumble freely about deficiencies of allkinds, they no longer think in terms of collectiveaction to effect or demand improvements, par-ticularly if these would involve higher taxation.But what of equality? The question almostanswers itself. You can choose equality, asSocialists understand it, or you can choose theacquisitive society. You cannot choose both.This is not to say that there is no real demand forequality in the sense of “the career open totalents”, nor resentment at obstacles to personaladvancement built into our social system. Butsuch obstacles are not all part of the essentialnature of capitalism. Capitalist institutions, infact, might benefit considerably if the “public” schools were abolished, the “eleven plus” dis-carded, secondary education made “compre-hensive”, and the narrow bottleneck of universityentrance widened. We should be more likeAmerica—that is all—i.e. less “backward” bytwentieth-century capitalist standards.

It is far otherwise with the conception of socialequality. Of all ideas, this can become the mostpotent of anti-capitalist forces, once it has grippedthe masses; for from it flows nearly everythingelse that is distinctively socialistic: the abolitionof private ownership, the extinction of unearnedincome, and the extension of freely-availablecommunal facilities. Yet it is precisely this ideathat today has almost no electoral appeal.Equality has fared perhaps worse than any othersocialist principle in the prevalent “Damn you,Jack” climate of opinion. The current attitudetowards the rich and comfortable is one thatcombines envy with admiration. And the richthemselves, confident that the “levelling” senti-ments of earlier years have now evaporated, canagain safely flaunt their wealth. This new self-confidence among the rich is the best evidenceof the decline of egalitarian aspirations.

Every socialist knows, to his cost, that thesetendencies are growing stronger rather thanweaker. Indeed, in a society which has both“affluence” and the Bomb, it is surprising thatthey are not still more marked. For, while thenuclear threat stimulates the spirit of carpe diem,the consumer revolution provides us with anunprecedented number of aids to more-or-lessblissful oblivion.

To talk of “adjusting” socialism to this climateof opinion is plainly nonsensical. It cannot bebrought into line with an acquisitive, class-domi-nated, inegalitarian, Bomb-threatened society.Hence the force behind the accusation thatGaitskell, Jay and Crosland are in point of factabandoning socialism. Yet few of their “left” critics seem sufficiently aware of the dilemma thatthese political leaders face. They are concerned,as professional politicians are bound to be, withthe winning of office. To succeed, at least in theshort run, they must simultaneously attract amass of “prosperity-corrupted” electors by givingLabour a new and essentially un-socialist “face”,and retain the support of the many who still callthemselves socialists. This is a difficult assign-ment.

From their point of view, it is the old-fashionedtype of socialist that currently constitutes themain problem. Some kind of satisfaction has tobe given to the rank-and-file electioneer, who isnot unnaturally suspicious of the “new look”,and also to the active trade unionist, who mayhave the vaguest ideas about what socialism is,but associates a vigorous socialist language withindustrial militancy. The trouble is, obviously,that the more attractive the new face becomes tomilitants and traditionalists, the less attractive itseems to the rest of the electorate.

Political ArithmeticThe revisionists calculate, no doubt, that Old

Guard socialism is a waning force, and that theirvictory is therefore guaranteed by the passage oftime. The premise of this calculation is almostcertainly correct; but the conclusion does notnecessarily follow. For side by side with the OldLeft—and, at the present moment, “objectively” reinforcing it—is a New Left, growing in strength.Young, vigorous and intelligent, its membershave already completed their initial and basictask of re-stating socialism in mid-twentieth-century terms, and are now beginning to organisethemselves. For them, the Gaitskellian andCroslandian political arithmetic is irrelevant.The more realistic are thinking far beyond thenext election. It would be wrong to say that they

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do not care whether Labour wins in 1964; butthey do not regard this as of decisive importance.The less realistic are emotionally incapable ofaccepting the well-authenticated conclusions ofthe psephologists, and continue to persuadethemselves that a vigorously-promoted “left” policy could not fail to elicit an equally vigorouselectoral support.

Even if this basic contradiction were solvedthere remains the difficulty of persuading asceptical, television-attuned electorate, that a partyled by a combination of “selfish and irrespon-sible” trade unionists and “theorising” intellec-tuals (mutually suspicious) could run the Oppor-tunity State and Welfare Capitalism moreeffectively than those already at the wheel. “Toryfreedom works—don’t let Labour ruin it” wasa brilliantly-conceived and exceptionally effectiveslogan of which we are likely to hear more.

It is for these reasons that the Labour Partyis now displaying signs of decay. How can thatdecay be arrested? It is no answer at all to saythat everything would be all right if the leadershipadopted “leftist” policies and became inspiredwith a vigorous, crusading spirit. To capture the“commanding heights” of the economy, to imposesensible and humane economic and socialpriorities, to refurbish and use the machinery ofeconomic planning, to replace “state capitalist” industries with genuinely socialised ones, to slashunearned and undeserved rewards, to cut thearms bill and abandon the “deterrent”—all areessential socialist measures. But they are notgoing to cut much electoral ice, so long as “Toryfreedom works”.

Nor is it an answer to say that a new leadershipcould do the trick; for the assumption that sucha leadership could simultaneously unite the Partyand give it a more attractive “image” is un-realistic, depending as it does on the false beliefthat the Gaitskells, Jays and Croslands representno-one but themselves, and retain their powersimply by controlling and manipulating the Partymachine. It is true, of course, that they are skilledin the arts of political manipulation. But funda-mentally, they derive their strength from the factthat they represent a body of opinion. Suchalternative leadership as one can see is no morefirmly rooted in inner-party and much less firmlyrooted in extra-party opinion. That certain“leftist” leaders are popular with the constituencyparties means little, for the constituencies arewell out on the left of the main body. Nor is itvery significant that Frank Cousins has “won” the T and GWU for his policies. The power andprestige of the General Secretary of the Unionensure that, in the long run, his views prevail.The fact is that the proposed new leadership

would divide the Labour Party as thoroughlyas the old one does.

Perhaps this would not matter if the new imagewere electorally more attractive than the old.But there is no reason to suppose that it wouldbe. If “leftism” were a current electoral asset,even the sedate Mr. Gaitskell would be carefullystudying the oratorical techniques of Harry Pollittand Gerry Healey. By using such techniques, therevisionists might be able to win over, at leasttemporarily, an assortment of nuclear disarmers,ex-communists, trade union militants, and thelike; but electorally it would be a non-starter.

The dilemma of the left, therefore, is in someways more serious than that of the right. Therightist, baulked of the prospect of political power,can easily take refuge in cynicism or retire toprivate life. After all, he has no very fundamentalquarrel with society as it is. The leftist, on theother hand, is more likely to be emotionallyinvolved in the causes that he has espoused. Forhim, it is essential to communicate to otherssomething of his vision of a New Social Order.

It is for this reason that the left is even moretempted than the right to part company withreality—to over-estimate the power of the word,to mistake the marginal discontents of a minorityfor the first stirrings of the great mass, to seerevolution, if not just around the corner, at leasta measurable distance ahead on the road. As faras the New Left is concerned, this dangeroustendency has been, so far, held in check. Theauthors of Out of Apathy are certainly no facileoptimists. But all too often their aspirations getin the way of their analysis. Fairy Wish-Fulfilmentis never very far away, and lurking somewherearound is the Janus-faced daemon of HistoricalNecessity.

Day of Judgment?

Rational hope has become so difficult tosustain that we are strongly tempted to substitutethe irrational variety. In some cases, the result isa complete break with reality, as in currentTrotskyism. In others, the disease is not soadvanced, but nevertheless its symptoms areominously present. Already, among the membersof the New Left, there is a tendency to accept—albeit in a very much modified form—one of theessential elements of Trotskyist (and also orthodoxCommunist) thought: the conception of a Day ofJudgment. This idea is attractive because it offersa semi-automatic, if long-term, solution topolitical frustration. It guarantees the defeat ofthe “right”, ensures that the popular supportnecessary for making the transition to socialismwill eventually be forthcoming, and has the great

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advantage of making the question of whetherLabour will win the election of 1964 or 1969 or1974 an almost irrelevant one.

At this point in my argument caution is needed.It is easy to dismiss what seems an apocalypticview, and thus absolve oneself from the incon-venience of inquiring whether the Day of Judg-ment is really at hand. Although I take it forgranted that the Proletarian Revolution, asconceived by the Trotskyists, is a work of theimagination, that does not rule out a Day ofJudgment of another kind. British capitalismappears to have escaped from the classicalMarxist contradictions—but may it not haveacquired another set?

Most members of the New Left appear tothink so; but so far they have been pretty vagueabout the nature of these contradictions. Neitherin Out of Apathy nor in New Left Review can wefind anything to compare with that precisionwhich gave classical Marxism its strength. Thetendency has been to argue that people cannotpossibly continue to remain satisfied with asociety as bad as ours once they have beenconvinced that they can create a better one;socialism will then re-appear on the historicalagenda.

The latest recruit to “leftism”, R. H. S.Crossman, in his recent Fabian pamphlet, hasattempted to popularise these “new contradic-tions”. He argues, in New Left manner, supportedby references to Galbraith, that in a capitalistsociety the maintenance of public services “mustalways take second place to the satisfaction ofconsumer needs” and that “the price which themodern, managed capitalism pays for avoidingthe old-fashioned crisis of mass unemploymentis the continuous sacrifice of public service,community welfare and national security toprivate profit”. In what sense is this a contra-diction? Certainly not in the Marxian sense, forone can hardly conceive that a capitalism whichdeliberately stimulates mass consumption to keepitself alive will be brought to its doom by therevolt of the poor and oppressed. The crisis, inMr. Crossman’s view, will be the product offactors external to capitalism as well as thoseinternal to it. For the essential nature of thesystem ensures its defeat in “peaceful com-petition” with the communist countries. Onlydemocratic socialism, involving the dominance ofthe public sector in our economy, can stand upto the challenge of totalitarian socialism.

“What is wrong with the revisionists is that theymisjudge altogether the times in which we are livingand, in particular, the stability and strength of theAffluent Societies in which we have lived for undera decade.”

The Day, therefore, is not very far ahead. There

will be a “creeping crisis” in the 1960s and 1970s.For this, the revisionist policy of “coming toterms with the Affluent Society” is no preparation,even if it does succeed in the winning of anelection. On the contrary, the leadership of theLabour Party

“should hold itself in reserve . . . warning theelectorate of the troubles that lie ahead andexplaining why they can only be tackled by ensuringthat public enterprise dominates the whole economy and creates the climate in which private enterpriseworks.”

If the analysis on which these “harsh predic-tions” are based is well-founded, it is difficultto see how even Gaitskell and Crosland canresist the cogency of Crossman’s argument. Butis the argument a valid one? “Judgment Day” horses ought always to be examined critically.When the revolution against mid-nineteenthcentury capitalism failed to materialise, as Marxand Engels predicted, the explanation offeredwas that a phase of temporary industrial mono-poly enabled the capitalists to “bribe” and“bourgeoisify” the working class. When thisended, “there would be socialism again inEngland”. It did, and there was—but only of adecidedly “reformist” kind. The successors toMarx and Engels then argued that the revolutionhad been postponed by another kind of monopolybased on profits from colonial exploitation. Thecrisis would now come when the colonies revoltedor the imperialist powers reduced the world toa shambles through their competitive feuds. Theslaves did revolt, and the world was reduced toshambles—twice. But the socialism which emergedtook place where the countries were least “ripe” for it. Even the Great Depression led no furtherthan The New Deal. In England it temporarilycrushed the Labour Party and in Germany itwas succeeded by “national Socialism”. Since thewar British capitalism, shorn of most of itscolonial “tribute” and deprived of all its moreimportant overseas possessions, has succeeded inemploying, feeding, housing, doctoring, educatingand entertaining its workers better than everbefore—even if not nearly well enough by thestandards that we now set.

Mr. Crossman’s Predictions

What evidence is there that Crossman is anybetter at predicting “Judgment Day” than thedistinguished but unreliable prophets of old?None whatever that he himself has provided. Ofcourse, the fact that several prophesies of Judg-ment have turned out to be false alarms does notmean that this one cannot possibly be genuine.

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After all, civilisations have decayed, revolutionshave occurred: never more so than during thetwentieth century. That British democracy has anunusually high assimilative capacity is undoubted.But there are limits. As the authors of Out ofApathy emphasise, it would be very strange ifBritain and a few other countries of advanceddisorderly and menacing forces of political changethat are sweeping the mid-century world.

However, this type of broad speculation is nosubstitute for serious analysis. One must carefullyexamine the forces that are supposed to bepropelling us towards the crisis.

Is British capitalism permanently stuck in thefamiliar inflationary-deflationary, upturn-down-turn impasse? Possibly it is; but a few years arehardly enough to provide the basis for confidentjudgment. It has looked that way before, butthen proceeded to confound those who came tocheer at its funeral. There is certainly much tosuggest that the economy may be incapable ofrecovering its dynamism without undergoing basicstructural changes. But this would seem to bemore true of the specifically British form ofcapitalism than of capitalism in general. Are wenot always pointing to the contrast between thehigh-investment dynamism of Western German(and even French and Italian) capitalism and thelow-investment stagnation of our own?

Is it true that British capitalism, being basedupon the pursuit of profit, is inherently incapableof creating or radically improving our transportsystem, educational and medical services, housingand the state of our cities? No-one can reasonablydoubt that these things could be done very muchfaster and better in a planned, socialist economy.But capitalist European countries have at leastvigorously tackled some of these problems. Is ittotally impossible for British capitalism success-fully to imitate them? The stock reply is thatthere are narrow limits to “fiscal socialism”,owing to the resistance of big business and theeffect of high taxation on capitalist incentives.But where are the limits? To pay for wars andwar preparations, taxation has already beenpushed up to levels that would have caused asit-down strike among the capitalists of formerdays. Could not the proceeds even of existingtaxes, diverted to constructive purposes, effect amarked improvement in Britain’s basic equip-ment? And what evidence is there that any furtherincrease would be the last straw? The reason whyrapid improvements are not being made may bethat capitalism is involved in certain inescapablecontradictions; but we should at least inquirewhether some less “fundamental” explanationmay not be found, e.g. that British capitalism(a) has neglected, through sheer inertia and short-

sightedness, to develop productivity fast enough,and (b) has not been “pressured” with sufficientvigour by the working class movement.

It is at this point that our doubts about a quasi-revolutionary socialist perspective are stilled bythe entry of the Monstrous Crow. All this maybe true, it is said, but however fast Britishcapitalism expands it will be outpaced by theSoviet Union and the other totalitarian countrieswith planned, socialist economies. Unless weourselves go socialist, we shall be beaten in“peaceful competition”. For Crossman, this isevidently the conclusive argument. But is it soconclusive?

What is the nature of the beating we are goingto take? Does Mr. Crossman mean that the SovietUnion, by entering the competitive struggle forforeign markets, is going to deprive us of ouroutlets and supplies? Or is his emphasis on the“demonstration effect”, whereby the Russians,through well-publicised successes of socialist con-struction, will convince the people of this countrythat a planned economy with a large public sectoris the only way of keeping up with the Ivanovs?Or is it that Communism will win the battle forthe underdeveloped and developing countries,thereby isolating the comparatively small areaof the world remaining to capitalism, preparatoryto destroying it? Or is there to be some com-bination of all three?

Socialism By Competition?

On the issue of straight economic competitionit would be unwise to be dogmatic, for no-oneknows precisely what the intentions of the SovietUnion—still less those of China—are in this field.But even if our worst fears materialised, it ispossible that our position as a trading nationwould remain basically unchanged. Is marketcompetition from a socialist country any differentthan from a capitalist one? Perhaps—if thatcountry is intent on forming a closed trading bloc.If, however, we are faced with ordinary com-petition for the economic favours of a group of“uncommitted” countries, the situation may bemuch less dangerous. Of course, a socialistcountry has the advantage that it can disregard,if need be, normal “commercial” considerations.But capitalist governments are not incapable ofsubsidising exports and of granting credits oneasy terms, if they see advantage in doing so.When the full blast of Russian competition isturned on, it will certainly seriously reduce ourshare in the world market. But that in itself doesnot matter. Our share has been declining eversince the beginning of the century. If the worldeconomy continues to expand, then the absolute

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magnitude of our foreign trade can continue toincrease. The effect of Russian trading com-petition, therefore, cannot be clearly foreseen.

As for the “demonstration effect”, this indeedmay become serious by the 1970s. But even then,what will be demonstrated is a whole way of life,not necessarily acceptable simply because itcapitalism could insulate themselves from theembodies a higher standard of living. At presentthe Americans have standards which, on theaverage, are twice as high as ours, but resistancesto the adoption of the American way of life—which is less alien to us than the Soviet way—are still considerable.

It is curious and typical that those whoemphasise the demonstration effect tend to assumethat capitalism will be quite unable to respondto the challenge of the Soviet Union in anyconstructive way. This is a product of the beliefthat it is enmeshed in its own internal contra-dictions. “Whatever the bourgeoisie does, it isbound to be wrong; it cannot escape its inevitablefate”. Strange how this dogmatic belief survives!Capitalists are presented as, on the one hand,infernally clever and cunning; on the other, asvirtually helpless. Is it not possible that they willfind new ways of responding to the Sovietchallenge, that they will be stimulated by it toput their untidy house in order? Must theybecome mere asphalt under the Soviet steam-roller? And are there not indications that, by aprocess of parallel if uneven development,capitalist and Communist societies, in the longrun, will begin to look very much alike?

It is the third form of competition that looksmost serious. Russia and her allies, assisted by“western” foreign policies, have already gonefar towards isolating the countries of advancedcapitalism. But how much further they will gois difficult to predict. Russia’s leaders, no longerbelieving that only the capitalist world wouldperish in a nuclear holocaust, have becomecautious. They are also influenced, no doubt, bythe growing “maturity” of Soviet society, and bythe slackening of its internal tensions as easyliving becomes more widespread. China, ofcourse, is still in her “heroic” phase, and theAmericans appear determined to ensure that sheshall remain there. One can only hope that theChinese reach calmer waters before they havedone irreparable damage. If this comes to pass,there is some chance of a modus vivendi betweenthe capitalist sector of the world and the com-munist. Possibly most of the underdevelopedcountries, having ceased to hope that “western” aid will ever be given, on an adequate scale, toother than corrupt and reactionary governments,will choose the communist path. It certainly looks

the safer bet. This will increase the difficulties ofthe remaining capitalist powers. But the door tomutually beneficial economic relations betweenthe two sectors has not yet been closed, and theRussians at least seem still anxious to keep itopen. What only a few people on this side of thefence seem as yet to realise is that the menacingbehaviour of the Communists is very largely aproduct of “western” policy. I am not attemptingto disprove the “Judgement Day” perspectives,but simply indicating that it is not only thepossible one. Nor am I trying to spread com-placency. Believing that the odds are pretty heavythat we shall all be killed, either swiftly andmercifully by thermo-nuclear blast or slowly andexcruciatingly by atomic radiation, I feel anythingbut complacent. Nor, except by way of contrastwith this “apocalyptic” vision, do I feel anymarked enthusiasm for a lengthy epoch ofcapitalist “affluence”. What I am suggesting isthat, if the Labour Party adopted the policiesof which Mr. Crossman, the New Left and Iapprove, there is no guarantee that by the 1970sor 1980s a sadder but wiser electorate will besaying “You were right after all”. It is thereforenot surprising that, despite the menacing appear-ance of the shape of things to come, Mr. Gaitskelland Mr. Crosland should continue to do theirpolitical arithmetic, calculating that if they canget the old men off their backs and stop the new-leftist dogs from yapping round their legs,victory and the fruits of office will be theirs by1964 or 1969.

Cassandra In The Wilderness?

The calculation is probably false, but at leastit seems to them a better bet than waiting,Cassandra-like, for the contradictions of capital-ism to reach their bursting point. A majorpolitical party, working within the framework ofparliamentary democracy, cannot in these daysprosper by predicting and preparing for disaster.It must present itself as an alternative government,with reasonably short-term expectations of cominginto office. Only if it is reasonably certain thatsome distance ahead looms a crisis from whichit alone can extricate the country will it consentto go out, temporarily, into the wilderness. Sucha crisis, may indeed, be looming now, but neitherits causes nor its lineaments are sufficiently sharpto compel the leaders of the Party to concentratetheir attention on it.

To be realistic politicians, we must makeallowance for several different sets of possibilities.We must be prepared, for instance, for the failureof the expected crisis to materialise, and considerthe implications of this for socialism. In such

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circumstances, we can expect a further strengthen-ing of the relationship between government andbig business, and further advances towards amanaged and managerial economy. We shallsimultaneously become more “socialised”, inLenin’s sense of the word, and more affluent, butno less class-divided. We may, indeed, becomeconsiderably more class-divided, as successiveinjections of the “merit” vaccine will give classa new and more “rational” justification. Societywill be “objectively ripe” for socialism but willlack the “subjective prerequisites” for the tran-sition. The trade union movement will concentratemore and more upon ensuring that a “fair share” of an increasing national income shall accrue toits members. The Labour Party will then eithermake way for or transform itself into a new typeof party, providing a periodical change from butno real alternative to Conservatism.

What of socialism in this context? I do notbelieve that a distinctively socialist movementwill disappear, but I do think that it will bereduced, at least for the time being, to a com-paratively small group of determined left-wingers.I also believe that this group, although withoutany immediate hope of achieving political power,will have an immensely important role to play.Intent on keeping the socialist idea alive, it willunceasingly expose the “negative” features of thenew society, use every advantage to popularise itsaims, and perhaps secure, by some process of “en-croaching control”, the partial realisation of someof them. It will watch, in a positively Fabianmanner, for the “objective possibilities” of makingnew advances, constantly bring all forms ofpressure to bear on the two main parties, and—if possible—maintain a small but vigorous anddisciplined group of Members in the House. Itsnucleus, obviously, will be the present “left” inthe Labour Party, which would probably be welladvised, if it feels that the above perspective isthe likely one, to seize the first suitable oppor-tunity to make a clean break and start a separateand distinct political organisation.

What I should not relish, in these circumstances,would be the virtual elimination of a “normal” parliamentary opposition, which is what wouldhappen if the exacerbation of factional strugglewithin the Labour Party caused its completedisintegration. An effectively-operating two-partysystem is one of the most valuable features of anadvanced capitalist (or socialist) society. Thedifference may be that between Tweedledum andTweedledee, but the Government is neverthelesscompelled to defend and justify its policies, ever-conscious that its tenure of office is a conditionalone. I would rather, of course, have a socialistopposition; but if this is impossible, any sort of

“progressive” opposition which is capable oftaking over the government will do. In such anopposition, our right-wing friends in the LabourParty could play a useful if unspectacular role.I myself would prefer to remain with the “left”.

If however, the prospect is that in the nearfuture the capitalist world is going to undergoa deep crisis, socialists may find it desirable toadopt a different strategy. In such circumstances,one need not worry about the normal workingof the two-party system. The important thingwill then be to get the socialist movement in thebest possible shape to cope with the crisis whenit comes. Boldness and resolution should there-fore be the watchwords of the “left”. It mustmake a bid to capture power in the Labourmovement, irrespective of whether, in doing so,it splits the Party and destroys the possibility ofany immediate appeal to a majority of theelectorate. I do not know whether this is thecourse of action that Mr. Crossman is nowadvocating, but I am sure that, if he maintainshis present position, he will be driven to advocateit sooner or later.

I must admit that the alternative here presentedis a schematic one. It implies the existence of acoherent “left” capable of making up its collectivemind about perspectives and adjusting its strategyaccordingly. But the “left” is in fact an amorphousand disorderly assortment of groups. One canhardly conceive of the taking of any decision bythis miscellaneous collection, even if the data onwhich it ought to be based were a good dealclearer than they are. The Labour Party, I believe,will split, but how and with what result will notbe determined by anyone’s precise and far-seeingpolitical decision.

What I am fundamentally interested in is theformation of a more coherent socialist group,which can either come to the rescue of Britainduring a crisis or keep alive the cause of socialismduring a long period of “affluent” apathy. Theleft, I believe, must keep both tasks in mind.

It may be, of course, that Labour will not split,but will continue to lurch along an erratic course,holding together the rival factions by means of aseries of semi-intelligible verbal compromises.But this, surely, is a situation which no-one canwant. Moreover, it does not seem to me likely.Admittedly, the Party has tended to behave likethis in the past. But the tensions were then lessserious, and the Party showed a remarkablecapacity to recover from its electoral defeats.Nothing like the losing of three successiveelections, by steadily increasing margins, hashappened before. This, like “affluence” itself, isa new situation. Socialists have only just begunto wake up to what it means.

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Its common denominator is not liberalism asa political philosophy, but the liberal rhetoric,become formal and sophisticated and used as anuncriticised weapon with which to attackMarxism. In the approved style, various of theelements of this rhetoric appear simply assnobbish assumptions. Its sophistication is oneof tone rather than of ideas: in it, the New Yorkerstyle of reportage has become politically trium-phant. The disclosure of fact—set forth in abright-faced or in a dead-pan manner—is the rule.The facts are duly weighed, carefully balanced,always hedged. Their power to outrage, theirpower truly to enlighten in a political way, theirpower to aid decision, even their power toclarify some situation—all that is blunted ordestroyed.

So reasoning collapses into reasonableness. Bythe more naive and snobbish celebrants of com-placency, arguments and facts of a displeasingkind are simply ignored; by the more knowing,they are duly recognised, but they are neitherconnected with one another nor related to anygeneral view. Acknowledged in a scattered way,they are never put together: to do so is to riskbeing called, curiously enough, “one-sided”.

This refusal to relate isolated facts and frag-mentary comment with the changing institutionsof society makes it impossible to understand thestructural realities which these facts might reveal;the longer-run trends of which they might betokens. In brief, fact and idea are isolated, so thereal questions are not even raised, analysis of themeanings of fact not even begun.

Practitioners of the no-more-ideology schooldo of course smuggle in general ideas under theguise of reportage, by intellectual gossip, and bytheir selection of the notions they handle.Ultimately, the-end-of-ideology is based upon a

LETTERTO THENEW

LEFTWHEN I settle down to write to you, I feel somehow“freer” than usual. The reason, I suppose, is thatmost of the time I am writing for people whoseambiguities and values I imagine to be ratherdifferent from mine; but with you, I feel enoughin common to allow us “to get on with it” inmore positive ways. Reading your book, Out ofApathy, prompts me to write to you about severalproblems I think we now face. On none of thesecan I hope to be definitive; I only want to raisea few questions.

It is no exaggeration to say that since the endof World War II in Britain and the United Statessmug conservatives, tired liberals and disillusionedradicals have carried on a weary discourse inwhich issues are blurred and potential debatemuted; the sickness of complacency has prevailed,the bi-partisan banality flourished. There is noneed—after your book—to explain again why allthis has come about among “people in general” in the NATO countries; but it may be worth-while to examine one style of cultural work thatis in effect an intellectual celebration of apathy.

Many intellectual fashions, of course, do justthat; they stand in the way of a release of theimagination—about the cold war, the Soviet bloc,the politics of peace, about any new beginningsat home and abroad. But the fashion I have inmind is the weariness of many NATO intellectualswith what they call “ideology”, and their pro-clamation of “the end of ideology”. So far as Iknow, this began in the mid-fifties, mainly inintellectual circles more or less associated withthe Congress for Cultural Freedom and themagazine Encounter. Reports on the MilanConference of 1955 heralded it; since then, manycultural gossips have taken it up as a postureand an unexamined slogan. Does it amount toanything?

* World Copyright Reserved.

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disillusionment with any real commitment tosocialism in any recognisable form. That is theonly “ideology” that has really ended for thesewriters. But with its ending, all ideology, theythink, has ended. That ideology they talk about;their own ideological assumptions, they do not.

Underneath this style of observation andcomment there is the assumption that in theWest there are no more real issues or evenproblems of great seriousness. The mixed economyplus the welfare state plus prosperity—that is theformula. US capitalism will continue to beworkable; the welfare state will continue alongthe road to ever greater justice. In the meantime,things everywhere are very complex, let us notbe careless, there are great risks . . .

This posture—one of “false consciousness” ifthere ever was one—stands in the way, I think,of considering with any chances of success whatmay be happening in the world.

First and above all, it does rest upon a simpleprovincialism. If the phrase “the end of ideology” has any meaning at all, it pertains to self-selectedcircles of intellectuals in the richer countries. Itis in fact merely their own self-image. The totalpopulation of these countries is a fraction ofmankind; the period during which such a posturehas been assumed is very short indeed. To speakin such terms of much of Latin-America, Africa,Asia, the Soviet bloc is merely ludicrous. Anyonewho stands in front of audiences—intellectual ormass—in any of these places and talks in suchterms will merely be shrugged off (if the audienceis polite) or laughed at out loud (if the audienceis more candid and knowledgeable). The end-of-ideology is a slogan of complacency, circulatingamong the prematurely middle-aged, centred inthe present, and in the rich Western societies. Inthe final analysis, it also rests upon a disbelief inthe shaping by men of their own futures—ashistory and as biography. It is a consensus of afew provincials about their own immediate andprovincial position.

Second, the end-of-ideology is of course itselfan ideology—a fragmentary one, to be sure, andperhaps more a mood. The end-of-ideology is inreality the ideology of an ending: the ending ofpolitical reflection itself as a public fact. It is aweary know-it-all justification—by tone of voicerather than by explicit argument—of the culturaland political default of the NATO intellectuals.

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All this is just the sort of thing that I at leasthave always objected to, and do object to, in the“socialist realism” of the Soviet Union.

There too, criticism of milieux are of course

permitted—but they are not to be connectedwith criticism of the structure itself: one may notquestion “the system”. There are no “antagonisticcontradictions”.

There too, in novels and plays, criticisms ofcharacters, even of party members, are permitted—but they must be displayed as “shocking exceptions”: they must be seen as survivals fromthe old order, not as systematic products of the new.

There too, pessimism is permitted—but onlyepisodically and only within the context of thebig optimism: the tendency is to confuse anysystematic or structural criticism with pessimismitself. So they admit criticisms, first of this andthen of that: but engulf them all by the long-runhistorical optimism about the system as a wholeand the goals proclaimed by its leaders.

I neither want nor need to overstress theparallel, yet in a recent series of interviews in theSoviet Union concerning socialist realism I wasvery much struck by it. In Uzbekistan and Georgiaas well as in Russia, I kept writing notes to myself,at the end of recorded interviews: “This mantalks in a style just like Arthur Schlesinger Jr.”“Surely this fellow’s the counterpart of DanielBell, except not so—what shall I say?—sogossipy; and certainly neither so petty nor sovulgar as the more envious status-climbers.Perhaps this is because here they are not throwninto such a competitive status-panic about theancient and obfuscating British models ofprestige”. The would-be enders of ideology, Ikept thinking, “Are they not the self-coordinated,or better the fashion-coordinated, socialist realistsof the NATO world?” And: “Check this carefullywith the files of Encounter and The Reporter.”I have now done so; it’s the same kind of . . . thing.

Certainly there are many differences—aboveall, the fact that socialist realism is part of anofficial line; the end of ideology is self-managed.But the differences one knows. It is more usefulto stress the parallels—and the generic fact thatboth of these postures stand opposed to radicalcriticisms of their respective societies.

In the Soviet Union, only political authoritiesat the top—or securely on their way up there—can seriously tamper with structural questions andideological lines. These authorities, of course, aremuch more likely to be intellectuals (in one oranother sense of the word—say a man whoactually writes his own speeches) than areAmerican politicians (about the British, youwould know better than I). Moreover, suchSoviet authorities, since the death of Stalin, havebegun to tamper quite seriously with structuralquestions and basic ideology—although forreasons peculiar to the tight and official joining

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of culture and politics in their set-up, they musttry to disguise this fact.

The end-of-ideology is very largely a mechanicalreaction—not a creative response—to the ideologyof Stalinism. As such it takes from its opponentsomething of its inner quality. What does it allmean? That these people have become aware ofthe uselessness of Vulgar Marxism, but not yetaware of the uselessness of the liberal rhetoric.

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But the most immediately important thingabout the “end of ideology” is that it is merelya fashion, and fashions change. Already this oneis on its way out. Even a few Diehard Anti-Stalinists are showing signs of a reappraisal oftheir own past views; some are even beginning torecognise publicly that Stalin himself no longerruns the Soviet party and state. They begin tosee the poverty of their comfortable ideas asthey come to confront Khrushchev’s Russia.

We who have been consistently radical in themoral terms of our work throughout the postwarperiod are often amused nowadays that variouswriters—sensing another shift in fashion—beginto call upon intellectuals to work once more inways that are politically explicit. But we shouldn’tbe merely amused—we ought to try to make theirshift more than a fashion change.

The end-of-ideology is on the way out becauseit stands for the refusal to work out an explicitpolitical philosophy. And alert men everywheretoday do feel the need of such a philosophy.What we should do is to continue directly toconfront this need. In doing so, it may be usefulto keep in mind that to have a working politicalphilosophy means to have a philosophy thatenables you to work. And for that, at least fourkinds of work are needed, each of them at onceintellectual and political.

In these terms, think—for a moment longer—of the end-of-ideology:(1) It is a kindergarten fact that any politicalreflection that is of possible public significanceis ideological: in its terms, policies, institutions,men of power are criticised or approved. In thisrespect, the end-of-ideology stands, negatively,for the attempt to withdraw oneself and one’swork from political relevance; positively, it isan ideology of political complacency which seemsthe only way now open for many writers. toacquiesce in or to justify the status quo.(2) So far as orienting theories of society and ofhistory are concerned, the end-of-ideology standsfor, and presumably stands upon, a fetishism of

empiricism: more academically, upon a preten-tious methodology used to state trivialities aboutunimportant social areas; more essayistically,upon a naive journalistic empiricism—which Ihave already characterised above—and upon acultural gossip in which “answers” to the vitaland pivotal issues are merely assumed. Thuspolitical bias masquerades as epistomologicalexcellence, and there are no orienting theories.(3) So far as the historic agency of change isconcerned, the end-of-ideology stands upon theidentification of such agencies with going institu-tions; perhaps upon their piecemeal reform, butnever upon the search for agencies that might beused or that might themselves make for a struc-tural change of society. The problem of agencyis never posed as a problem to solve, as ourproblem. Instead there is talk of the need to bepragmatic, flexible, open. Surely all this, hasalready been adequately dealt with: such a viewmakes sense politically only if the blind drift ofhuman affairs is in general beneficent.(4) So far as political and human ideals areconcerned, the end-of-ideology stands for a denialof their relevance—except as abstract ikons.Merely to hold such ideals seriously is in thisview “utopian”.

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But enough. Where do we stand on each ofthese four aspects of political philosophy? Variousof us are of course at work on each of them, andall of us are generally aware of our needs inregard to each. As for the articulation of ideals:there I think your magazines have done theirbest work so far. That is your meaning—is it not?—of the emphasis upon cultural affairs. As forideological analysis, and the rhetoric with whichto carry it out: I don’t think any of us are nearlygood enough, but that will come with furtheradvance on the two fronts where we are weakest:theories of society, history, human nature; andthe major problem—ideas about the historicalagencies of structural change.

We have frequently been told by an assortedvariety of dead-end people that the meanings ofLeft and of Right are now liquidated, by historyand by reason. I think we should answer themin some such way as this:

The Right, among other things, means—whatyou are doing, celebrating society as it is, a goingconcern. Left means, or ought to mean, just theopposite. It means: structural criticism andreportage and theories of society, which at somepoint or another are focussed politically asdemands and programmes. These criticisms,

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demands, theories, programmes are guidedmorally by the humanist and secular ideals ofWestern civilisation—above all, reason and free-dom and justice. To be “Left” means to connectup cultural with political criticism, and bothwith demands and programmes. And it means allthis inside every country of the world.

Only one more point of definition: absence ofpublic issues there may well be, but this is notdue to any absence of problems or of contra-dictions, antagonistic and otherwise. Impersonaland structural changes have not eliminatedproblems or issues. Their absence from manydiscussions—that is an ideological condition,regulated in the first place by whether or notintellectuals detect and state problems as potentialissues for probable publics, and as troubles for avariety of individuals. One indispensible meansof such work on these central tasks is what canonly be described as ideological analysis. To beactively Left, among other things, is to carry onjust such analysis.

To take seriously the problem of the need fora political orientation is not of course to seekfor A Fanatical and Apocalyptic Vision, for AnInfallible and Monolithic Lever of Change, forDogmatic Ideology, for A Startling New Rhetoric,for Treacherous Abstractions—and all the otherbogeymen of the dead-enders. These are ofcourse “the extremes”, the straw men, the redherrings, used by our political enemies as thepolar opposite of where they think they stand.

They tell us, for example, that ordinary mencan’t always be political “heroes”. Who saidthey could? But keep looking around you; andwhy not search out the conditions of suchheroism as men do and might display? They tellus we are too “impatient”, that our “pretentious” theories are not well enough grounded. That istrue, but neither are they trivial; why don’t theyget to work, refuting or grounding them? Theytell us we “don’t really understand” Russia—and China—today. That is true; we don’t;neither do they; we are studying it. They tellus we are “ominous” in our formulations. Thatis true: we do have enough imagination to befrightened—and we don’t have to hide it: weare not afraid we’ll panic. They tell us we “aregrinding axes”. Of course we are: we do have,among other points of view, morally groundedones; and we are aware of them. They tell us, intheir wisdom, we don’t understand that TheStruggle is Without End. True: we want tochange its form, its focus, its object.

We are frequently accused of being “utopian” —in our criticisms and in our proposals; andalong with this, of basing our hopes for a NewLeft politics “merely on reason”, or more con-

cretely, upon the intelligentsia in its broadestsense.

There is truth in these charges. But must wenot ask: what now is really meant by utopian?And: Is not our utopianism a major source ofour strength? “Utopian” nowadays I think refersto any criticism or proposal that transcends theup-close milieux of a scatter of individuals: themilieux which men and women can understanddirectly and which they can reasonably hopedirectly to change. In this exact sense, ourtheoretical work is indeed utopian—in my owncase, at least, deliberately so. What needs to beunderstood, and what needs to be changed, is notmerely first this and then that detail of someinstitution or policy. If there is to be a politicsof a New Left, what needs to be analysed is thestructure of institutions, the foundation of policies.In this sense, both in its criticisms and in itsproposals, our work is necessarily structural—and so, for us, just now—utopian.

Which brings us face to face with the mostimportant issue of political reflection—and ofpolitical action—in our time: the problem of thehistorical agency of change, of the social andinstitutional means of structural change. Thereare several points about this problem I wouldlike to put to you.

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First, the historic agencies of change forliberals of the capitalist societies have been anarray of voluntary associations, coming to apolitical climax in a parliamentary or congres-sional system. For socialists of almost allvarieties, the historic agency has been the workingclass—and later the peasantry; also parties andunions variously composed of members of theworking class or (to blur, for now, a greatproblem) of political parties acting in its name—“representing its interests”.

I cannot avoid the view that in both cases, thehistoric agency (in the advanced capitalistcountries) has either collapsed or become mostambiguous: so far as structural change is con-cerned, these don’t seem to be at once availableand effective as our agency any more. I know thisis a debatable point among us, and among manyothers as well; I am by no means certain about it.But surely the fact of it—if it be that—ought notto be taken as an excuse for moaning and with-drawal (as it is by some of those who havebecome involved with the end-of-ideology); itought not to be bypassed (as it is by many Sovietscholars and publicists, who in their reflectionsupon the course of advanced capitalist societies

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simply refuse to admit the political conditionand attitudes of the working class).

Is anything more certain than that in 1970—indeed this time next year—our situation will bequite different, and—the chances are high—decisively so? But of course, that isn’t sayingmuch. The seeming collapse of our historicagencies of change ought to be taken as aproblem, an issue, a trouble—in fact, as thepolitical problem which we must turn into issueand trouble.

Second, is it not obvious that when we talkabout the collapse of agencies of change, wecannot seriously mean that such agencies do notexist. On the contrary, the means of history-making—of decision and of the enforcement ofdecision—have never in world history been soenlarged and so available to such small circles ofmen on both sides of The Curtains as they noware. My own conception of the shape of power—the theory of the power elite—I feel no need toargue here. This theory has been fortunate in itscritics, from the most diverse points of politicalview, and I have learned from several of thesecritics. But I have not seen, as of this date, anyanalysis of the idea that causes me to modify anyof its essential features.

The point that is immediately relevant doesseem obvious: what is utopian for us is not at allutopian for the presidium of the Central Com-mittee in Moscow, or the higher circles of thePresidency in Washington, or—recent eventsmake evident—for the men of SAC and CIA. Thehistoric agencies of change that have collapsedare those which were at least thought to be opento the left inside the advanced Western nations:those who have wished for structural changes ofthese societies. Many things follow from thisobvious fact; of many of them, I am sure, we arenot yet adequately aware.

Third, what I do not quite understand aboutsome New-Left writers is why they cling somightily to “the working class” of the advancedcapitalist societies as the historic agency, or evenas the most important agency, in the face of thereally impressive historical evidence that nowstands against this expectation.

Such a labour metaphysic, I think, is a legacyfrom Victorian Marxism that is now quiteunrealistic.

It is an historically specific idea that has beenturned into an a-historical and unspecific hope.

The social and historical conditions underwhich industrial workers tend to become a-class-for-themselves, and a decisive political force, mustbe fully and precisely elaborated. There havebeen, there are, there will be such conditions; of

course these conditions vary according to nationalsocial structure and the exact phase of theireconomic and political development. Of coursewe can’t “write off the working class.” But wemust study all that, and freshly. Where labourexists as an agency, of course we must work withit, but we must not treat it as The NecessaryLever—as nice old Labour Gentlemen in yourcountry and elsewhere tend to do.

Although I have not yet completed my owncomparative studies of working classes, generallyit would seem that only at certain (earlier) stagesof industrialisation, and in a political context ofautocracy, etc., do wage-workers tend to becomea class-for-themselves, etc. The “etcs.” mean thatI can here merely raise the question.

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It is with this problem of agency in mind thatI have been studying, for several years now, thecultural apparatus, the intellectuals—as a possible,immediate, radical agency of change. For a longtime, I was not much happier with this idea thanwere many of you; but it turns out now, in thespring of 1960, that it may be a very relevant ideaindeed.

In the first place, is it not clear that if we tryto be realistic in our utopianism—and that is nofruitless contradiction—a writer in our countrieson the Left today must begin there? For that iswhat we are, that is where we stand.

In the second place, the problem of theintelligentsia is an extremely complicated set ofproblems on which rather little factual work hasbeen done. In doing this work, we must—aboveall—not confuse the problems of the intellectualsof West Europe and North America with those ofthe Soviet Bloc or with those of the under-developed worlds. In each of the three majorcomponents of the world’s social structure today,the character and the role of the intelligentsia isdistinct and historically specific. Only by detailedcomparative studies of them in all their humanvariety can we hope to understand any one ofthem.

In the third place, who is it that is getting fedup? Who is it that is getting disgusted with whatMarx called “all the old crap”? Who is it that isthinking and acting in radical ways? All over theworld—in the bloc, outside the bloc and inbetween—the answer’s the same: it is the youngintelligentsia.

I cannot resist copying out for you, with a fewchanges, some materials I’ve just prepared for a1960 paperback edition of a book of mine on war:

“In the spring and early summer of 1960—more

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of the returns from the American decision anddefault are coming in. In Turkey, after studentriots, a military junta takes over the state, of laterun by Communist Container Menderes. InSouth Korea too, students and others knock overthe corrupt American-puppet regime of SyngmanRhee. In Cuba, a genuinely left-wing revolutionbegins full-scale economic reorganisation—with-out the domination of US corporations. Averageage of its leaders: about 30—and certainly arevolution without any Labour As Agency. OnTaiwan, the eight million Taiwanese under theAmerican-imposed dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek, with his two million Chinese, grow in-creasingly restive. On Okinawa—a US militarybase—the people get their first chance sinceWorld War II ended to demonstrate against USseizure of their island: and some students takethat chance, snake-dancing and chanting angrilyto the visiting President: “Go home, go home—take away your missiles.” (Don’t worry, 12,000US troops easily handled the generally gratefulcrowds; also the President was “spirited out therear end of the United States compound”—andso by helicopter to the airport). In Great Britain,from Aldermaston to London, young—but youwere there. In Japan, weeks of student riotingsucceed in rejecting the President’s visit, jeopardisea new treaty with the USA, displace the big-business, pro-American Prime Minister, Kishi.And even in our own pleasant Southland, Negroand white students are—but let us keep thatquiet: it really is disgraceful.

“That is by no means the complete list; thatwas yesterday; see today’s newspaper. Tomorrow,in varying degree, the returns will be moreevident. Will they be evident enough? They willhave to be very obvious to attract real Americanattention: sweet complaints and the voice ofreason—these are not enough. In the slumcountries of the world today, what are they saying?The rich Americans, they pay attention only toviolence—and to money. You don’t care whatthey say, American? Good for you. Still, theymay insist; things are no longer under the oldcontrol; you’re not getting it straight, American:your country—it would seem—may well becomethe target of a world hatred the like of which theeasy-going Americans have never dreamed.Neutralists and Pacifists and Unilateralists andthat confusing variety of Leftists around theworld—all those tens of millions of people, ofcourse they are misguided, absolutely controlledby small conspiratorial groups of trouble-makers,under direct orders straight from Moscow andPeking. Diabolically omnipotent, it is they whocreate all this messy unrest. It is they who havegiven the tens of millions the absurd idea that

they shouldn’t want to remain, or to become, theseat of American nuclear bases—those gay littleoutposts of American civilisation. So now theydon’t want U-2’s on their territory; so now theywant to contract out of the American militarymachine; they want to be neutral among thecrazy big antagonists. And they don’t want theirown societies to be militarised.

“But take heart, American: you won’t have time to get really bored with your friends abroad:they won’t be your friends much longer. Youdon’t need them; it will all go away; don’t letthem confuse you.”

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Add to that: In the Soviet bloc, who is it thathas been breaking out of apathy? It has beenstudents and young professors and writers; it hasbeen the young intelligentsia of Poland andHungary, and of Russia too. Never mind thatthey’ve not won; never mind that there are othersocial and moral types among them. First of all,it has been these types. But the point is clear—isn’t it?

That’s why we’ve got to study these newgenerations of intellectuals around the world asreal live agencies of historic change. ForgetVictorian Marxism, except whenever you need it;and read Lenin again (be careful)—RosaLuxemburg, too.

“But it’s just some kind of moral upsurge,isn’t it?” Correct. But under it: no apathy. Muchof it is direct non-violent action, and it seems tobe working, here and there. Now we must learnfrom their practice and work out with them newforms of action.

“But it’s all so ambiguous. Turkey, for instance.Cuba, for instance.” Of course it is; history-making is always ambiguous; wait a bit; in themeantime, help them to focus their moral upsurgein less ambiguous political ways; work out withthem the ideologies, the strategies, the theoriesthat will help them consolidate their efforts:new theories of structural changes of and byhuman societies in our epoch.

“But it’s utopian, after all, isn’t it?” No—notin the sense you mean. Whatever else it may be,it’s not that: tell it to the students of Japan.

Isn’t all this, isn’t it something of what we aretrying to mean by the phrase, “The New Left?” Let the old men ask sourly, “Out of Apathy—into what?” The Age of Complacency is ending.Let the old women complain wisely about “theend of ideology.” We are beginning to moveagain.

Yours truly,C. Wright Mills.

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by David Riesman & Michael Macoby

THERE HAS never been in American life anythingcomparable to the Fabian Society. WoodrowWilson and Franklin Roosevelt gathered aroundthem an ad hoc team of advisers who included anumber of bright lawyers, economists, andpolitical scientists, but neither these nor theirjournalistic and academic allies created anythinglike an ethos or a basis for interpreting therelation between specific pragmatic measures andoverall social and political change. Moreover,both the Wilson and Roosevelt administrationssoon ran dry of ideas for domestic reform, andwere, so to speak, rescued by World Wars fromthe necessity of demonstrating their weakness.Although in part thanks to them Washington,D.C., has become somewhat less of a cultural andintellectual colony, it still remains a city domin-ated by middle-level civil servants, the military,the lobbyists, and the service trades dependenton all of these, and not a city tied in to avant-garde ideas in American life.

Several of the state govenments have been inthis respect somewhat less badly off in recenthistory. The University of Wisconsin has beena kind of unofficial Fabian Society for the stategovernment, or at least this was the case duringthe Progressive Era; and the state governmentand state university of Minnesota have had some-what analogous relations. But neither locally nornationally has there been a disinterested intellec-tual stratum tied in any systematic way togovernment activity.

In the Congressional elections of the fall of1958, however, a group of Democrats wereelected to the House of Representatives whohave banded together as the Liberal Project inan effort to change the state of affairs. Some ofthem had in fact attended the University of

Wisconsin, or fallen under the influence of mentrained there. They were frustrated to discoverthat the Democratic victory in the elections wasnot to be translated into public policy; but theyalso realised that, even if they were to have alarger voice in affairs, there was no substantialseedbed of ideas on which they could draw formeasures that went beyond what might beregarded as the mopping-up operation of theNew Deal: while these men were sensitive to thelarge residual areas of deprivation in Americanlife, they did not believe that a policy could bebased on this alone. For one thing, they had aconcern, unusual for members of the House ofRepresentatives who are supposed to leaveforeign policy to Senators, with foreign policy;they were, for instance, among the small groupof Congressmen who opposed the sending ofnuclear information to the Adenauer government(in spite of the fact that some of them came fromdistricts with a heavy German population). Otherswere concerned with the lack of preparation,either economic or psychological, for possibledisarmament. At one discussion the questioncame up for example as to what redeploymentthere could be for ex-Air Force generals whenthey could no longer go into the business ofweapons-making, and when they had filled allthe posts in the military academies and secondaryschools that might still be looking for “tough” headmasters. Plainly, the members of the LiberalProject were out of sympathy with the Truman-Acheson wing of their own party, which has stillnot given up the effort to prove, over the deadbody of Senator McCarthy, that it is even moreferociously anti-Communist than any Republican.

Such dissatisfactions, however, did not con-stitute a new policy; and for this the Congressmen

THEAMERICANCRISIS ���

25

turned to a group of university professors andwriters whose books and articles they had read,and who they thought might furnish them, notonly with specific proposals that would point ina new direction, but also with a philosophy ofliberalism that would locate the specific measuresin an ideological context. In seeking such contact,the members of the Liberal Project had to over-come the characteristic attitude of Americanscholars and intellectuals towards Congressmen—and towards politicians in general—who tendto be regarded either as cynical opportunists oras stupid windbags.

The Liberal Project At WorkNow that these exchanges have been going on

for a year or so, we have talked to a number ofintellectuals who are astonished to discover howacademic in the best sense is the intelligence of thegroup of Congressmen and with what integrityand dedication they approach their work. Exceptfor James Roosevelt of California (who is in histhird term in the House), none of the members ofthe Liberal Project is well known outside hishome state in the United States, let alone abroad;a scattering of people are familiar with CharlesPorter of Oregon who has been a notable criticof the Atomic Energy Commission and ofAmerican policy vis-à-vis Latin America. (Thereare a few Congressmen, of whom Chester Bowlesis best known, who are close to the LiberalProject, although not active members, and whopossess a wider reputation and influence.)1 Themajority of the dozen or so Congressmen whomake up the Liberal Project, including WilliamMeyer, the first Democratic Congressman fromVermont since the Civil War, hold their seats bythe barest majority and face close contests for re-election in the fall of 1960; all of them have beentold by sager heads that there is no political“mileage” in what they are doing. Certainly theintellectuals they have recruited to meet withthem and to write papers on assigned topics fora volume to be modeled in some measure afterConviction, coming as they very largely do fromNew York, Boston, and Chicago, cannot helpthe election campaigns of men scattered over theCongressional districts of the North. And itshould be remembered by British readers thatAmerican Congressmen are virtually on theirown—a better example of “free enterprise” thanis to be found in most businesses—dependent onlocal support rather than on any overall partyeffort on their behalf, though to be sure theycan be greatly helped or hurt by the way thenational Presidential campaign goes down in theirhome districts. Moreover, the inevitably bureau-cratic management of this flock of 535 independent

entrepreneurs in the House makes it very difficultfor any one member to attract attention com-parable to that of a Senator. Hence, few Americansrealise that the Congressmen of the LiberalProject, as well as a number of others who arepotential recruits, are on many specific issuesand in general outlook far to the “left” of well-known Democratic senators such as Humphrey.Indeed, the Congressmen would probably feel thatthe tag, “left”, is one of those dated legacies they hope to surmount.

The essay that follows was prepared for theLiberal Project, and reflects the concern of theCongressmen with an American political climatethat makes it difficult for them to develop acoherent programme—far more difficult, wewould gather, even than for the Labour Partyafter three successive defeats. It was discussed inJune with the Congressmen, their staff assistants(one of whom, Marcus Raskin, has taken aleading role in the development of the Project),and a few newspapermen.

In addition, our essay reflects the preoccupa-tions of an organisation which is at the momenteven more embryonic and powerless than theLiberal Project itself, namely, the Committees ofCorrespondence, a sm all group which hopes toenlist intellectuals in realising an inventive andradical response to the problem of war and itsimplications for American culture. The name,“Committees of Correspondence”, is taken fromthe American Revolution, and reflects the desirefor a very loose affiliation of groups in differentuniversity communities; the original leadership,in which we ourselves have taken an active hand,includes some leading pacifists who are membersof the American Friends Service Committee or theFellowship of Reconciliation, one or two labourintellectuals, Marc Raskin of the Liberal Project,several Socialists including Erich Fromm, ourcolleague, Stuart Hughes of the Harvard HistoryDepartment, and a growing group of academi-cians. A number of us who founded theCommittees of Correspondence have also beenactive in the Committee for a Sane NuclearPolicy; but this American equivalent of theCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament, confined asit has primarily been to asking for the cessation ofnuclear tests and a successful Summit, hasprovided no adequate basis for a critique ofAmerican foreign policy, let alone of the domesticconsequences and concommitants of that policy.2

The Committees of Correspondence have begunoperation only in the last few weeks. They have

1 For a fuller description of the group, its membership and itsplans, see Harris Dienstfrey, “ ‘Fabianism’ in Washington,” Commentary, Vol. XXX (July, 1960), pages 22–28.

2 Cf., André, Schiffrin “Protest in America,” SocialistCommentary (July, 1960), page 13.

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held seminars in Cambridge, Massachusetts todiscuss the consequences of disarmament; andAmerican policy vis-à-vis Cuba at the Universityof Illinois; they are issuing a “Political Corres-pondence” by various hands that might becompared to the excellent newsletter issued bySir Stephen King-Hall; the paper that followshas grown out of such discussions, and has inturn been an effort to contribute to them.

I

Although America has been for much of itshistory a belligerent and expansionist country, ithas not been a militaristic one, and up until thepresent, it has resisted military control of politicalpolicy. While this encapsulation of the militarymight have been a protection for the peacetimelife of the country, for only rarely did generalsas such get involved in politics, one consequencehas been that during wartime America has lackeda politically sagacious military elite. With a fewfamous exceptions, our generals have considereddestruction of the enemy at the least immediatecost in American lives, or even the least budgetarycost, to be their sole concern. In the Second WorldWar, this outlook gave a mindless justificationfor the mass bombings of German cities (alsoparticipated in by the British) and for the terribleand unnecessary destruction of Hiroshima andNagasaki (when in fact the Japanese had givenmuch evidence that they were prepared tosurrender).

Only as the Second World War progressed,did the American military begin to enlist advisersfrom civilian life, and a large number of intellec-tuals (a number of them ex-New Dealers)became involved in its planning and execution,while the physical scientists were of courseheavily engaged. At the end of the War, inorder to maintain this link, the Air Force setup the Rand (Research and Development)Corporation; the Army has a similar “brainstrust” in the Operations Research Office ofJohns Hopkins University; and the CentralIntelligence Agency, while not outside the govern-ment in an Exchequer sense, has a somewhatsimilar immunity from immediate federal super-vision. Science and social science departments ina number of major universities have closepersonal and professional ties with these agencies.It would not be accurate to say that all thesemen have been mobilised on behalf of the policyof deterrence through the threat of mass destruc-tion; indeed, there are probably men working forRand who have done as much to subject thatpolicy to rational scrutiny as have men who areknown to be dedicated workers for peace.3

Nevertheless, these agencies and their ancillary

groups, along with the armed services themselvesand the Atomic Energy Commission, haverecruited many exceptionally intelligent menwhose full time task it is, not only to maintain thedeterrence policy, but to find objections to anylimitations on it. From this group of men havecome many of the scientific efforts to discoverholes in any possibility of a test ban which couldbe negotiated with the Russians.

Recruits For The DeterrentTake, for example, the fantastic idea, developed

in Edward Teller’s Livermore Laboratory, thatdeep holes might be dug in salt mines andbombs exploded therein without anybody’snoticing—a notion that is fantastic, not becausethe Russians couldn’t do it, but because it wouldtake a long time, require immense commotion ofmen and machines, and would therefore be veryhard to keep secret, if not from us, then from theRussian people themselves. Moreover, there arenumerous indications that the Soviet Union haslittle interest in testing small or “clean” nuclearweapons, and that many Soviet citizens have abetter sense of the dangers of a spread of nuclearweapons than is often found on the American side.

Once upon a time, the Navy in its own interestopposed reliance on massive retaliation, and itsexperts were therefore free to explore the dangersof this doctrine. But then, faced with a decliningstrategic role, the Navy traded doctrine forbudget—reaping a harvest in big carriers andatomic submarines—and joined the Air Force inalliance against the remaining Army men (such asGenerals Ridgway, Gavin, and Taylor) whoserecurrent protests have usually led to theirleaving the intra-service battlefield altogether.4For reasons we hope to explore in this paper,there is no organisation comparable to the RandCorporation, dedicated to disarmament; in fact,only a few journalists (among whom WalterLippmann is outstanding), some universityprofessors, and in the government the membersof the Liberal Project and a few others, are freeto explore the risks of current military policy andthe foreign and domestic policies to which it istied.

The authors of this essay are neither expertson defence nor on foreign policy. At the sametime, we have had some experience in seeing theexperts make mistakes by virtue of their expertise.This does not mean that amateurs are necessarily

3 See, for a sympathetic account. Joseph Kraft, “Rand:Arsenal for Ideas,” Harpers, Vol. CCXXI (July, 1960), pages69–76.

4 Our understanding of these matters owes much to EricLarrabee’s work on post-War military policy.

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better than professionals; but until a seriouseffort is mobilised for peace, amateurs willprobably have to be relied upon for new ideas inthe field of defence and foreign policy.

Among the most important and interestingproblems of education is that of exploring themeans by which people can learn to make a properjudgment of expert opinion. One way is to becomeexpert in a particular field oneself. Anotherapproach is to gain some sense of the kind ofperspective or style of perception that the expertsUse, as a basis for seeing what might be thepossible limitations of their view in a giveninstance. Thus one can find experts privy todiscussions concerning deterrence who talk aboutthe American ability to “accept,” let us say, ten orthirty million casualties—experts who arefamiliar with the post-World War II disasterstudies but who fail to ask what sort of back-woods reactionaries would take over whateverwould be left of America if our major urbancentres were destroyed in a nuclear (or biologicalor other mass) war.

Nuclear SpeculationsSo, too, there are other men, intelligent enough

to grasp some of the inherent weaknesses in thestrategy of deterrence, who have speculated aboutan automatic deterrent, protected from thepossibility of human frailty on our side. Onemechanism that has been proposed for achievingthis is a cobalt bomb, aimed at all countrieshaving nuclear power themselves and primed togo off without reference to a human chain ofcommand the moment any nuclear weapon isfired at us. The argument for such a scheme is thatif a potential enemy thinks that we, as humanbeings, might decide for some reason or othernot to hit back (despite the fact that we areequipped to do so) then our deterrent, thoughstill terrifying, loses its absolute value; thereforewe must try to set up a system over which none ofus has any control. This reasoning, logical as faras it goes, typically leaves other variables out ofaccount altogether—like the fact that becomingthe prisoners of our own mechanisms wouldintensify the dangerous feelings of helplessnesswhich the policy of deterrence has alreadysucceeded in producing. It would mean surrender-ing the hope that the human race can get controlof the arms race—even though it has been arguedthat once the automatic cobalt bomb was knownto exist, no one would tempt fate.

One further point about experts: they havefended-off outsiders, including many intelligentCongressmen, by establishing as a condition ofentering the debate on armaments a knowledge ofhighly technical matters (frequently “classified”)

and the possession of a polished rationality ofthe game-theory sort. Many of the traditionalpacifist groups can make no headway in thissituation—they are regarded, if not as un-American, then as all heart and no head.

Especially perhaps for a British audience, sucha complaint about the role of experts may soundsnobbish—as if we supposed that the gentlemanlyamateur was really better at these things, and thatone could still muddle through, without takingdisciplined thought. This is not our point, norare we contending that the experts have pur-posely maintained a monopoly on discussion.Indeed, if we had to choose we would surelyprefer to trust our fate to the experts of Randthan to some of the blustering generals (orsenators) who have enjoyed talking tough (a greathelp, no doubt, to their opposite numbers inChina and the USSR). Our hope is that thepracticality of ethical considerations may becomemore widely understood, and that discussion ofdeterrence and its alternatives can be enlarged,and more differentiated modes of thoughtencouraged.

Intellectuals in Britain are certainly not happywith their nation’s political life after the recentConservative electoral victory, and the journals ofthe Left, including the New Left Review, havebeen full of re-examinations. As it looks toAmericans, however, the situation in Britainappears much healthier. For example, GeorgeKennan’s BBC lectures of a few years agoexcited much greater response than any com-parable talks he has given in this country. Whilethe British government in power has been some-what less effective as a restraining force on theAmericans and the Soviets than would have beensalutary for both, and while the Suez adventureshowed that the British blimps had enough airleft for another flotation, the Americans canindeed envy the ease with which Englishmendiscuss alternatives to nuclear war, ranging fromunilateral disarmament to diplomatic manoeuvresaimed at easing particular points of tensionin the Cold War, whether in China or in Germany.As against the tiny handful of American universitystudents who feel anything can be done about theBomb (a far larger number are concerned withthe struggle for racial integration), Americanslook on the Aldermaston marchers as some-thing quite inconceivable at present in thiscountry.

What accounts for this difference betweenBritain and America? The problem of dealingwith experts is the same in both countries, althoughin Britain—which is smaller and still partiallyaristocratic in nature—political leaders are lesscut off than ours are from intellectuals, literarymen, and scientists. It may be that people feel

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safer in this country because it is big and powerfuland seemingly remote from the traditional areasof danger. This is an irrational feeling in themodern world of deterrence, since our fearfulpower and our weapons themselves become alightning rod inviting attack; nevertheless thefeeling does seem to exist. A Gallup poll inJanuary roughly mirrored the results of a polltaken by Samuel Stouffer a few years ago: whenpeople in a national cross-section are questionedabout their worries a large proportion of themmention health and family troubles, and anotherfraction money troubles, but only one in fourteenallude to the international situation.5 Yet halfthe Gallup sample also thought that there wouldbe another war before too long—a war that, asthe general texture of their answers indicates, hasvery little reality for them. Mothers, for instance,said that they didn’t want their sons to serveoverseas—evidently still unaware, despite theheadlines, that in effect there is no “overseas” inmodern war.

Another, and related difference between thiscountry and Britain, is that on the wholeAmericans have not suffered much from recenthistory. Whatever suffering the Second WorldWar involved for a few was more than matched,for millions, by the fact that the war brought thegreat depression to an end. Besides, the war left alegacy of wild Keynesianism that continues in anew war economy to sustain prosperity: asGerard Piel points out in the current (April) issueof the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, it is thewar economy which during the last fifteen yearshas brought a full third of the population intorelative affluence.

Americans are famously generous. There isgreat and admirable concern for individual life, aswhen somebody falls down a well or into the sea,or is captured by the enemy. In recent decades,Americans have become less cruel, enjoying lessbarbaric sports and appreciating gentleness inpersonal relations. Still, the lack of suffering leadsto a certain callous lack of sympathy for thesuffering of others, particularly when this can berationalised in terms of American ideals andexplained as not the result of visible injustice.

There is still another difference which EdwardShils has noted in his book, The Torment ofSecrecy. The British, protecting their privacybetter, fear spies, secrets, and invaders less thanwe do, and have never been as hysterical aboutCommunism. Even after the Klaus Fuchs case,they in effect decided that they would rather risklosing a few secrets to a few spies than turn thecountry upside down in the alleged hope of

5 Stouffer, Communism, Conformity and Civil Liberties(Doubleday, 1955). The Gallup poll is reported in Look, January5, 1960.

flushing all enemy agents out. One result is thatthe ex-Communists in Britain are not nearly soeager to prove their virtue as the ex-Communistsin this country—and it is perhaps the ex-Communists in this country who above all justifySilone’s remark that the next war would befought between the Communists and the ex-Communists. Not only does much of the brainstrust of anti-Communism in America consist ofex-Communists, but a number of them are refu-gees who have perhaps grown hysterical in theireffort to make an impact on their new country—acountry so big and unmanageable that it oftenseems to drive people into fits of shouting, whileproviding in its political life room for theentrepreneurially-minded who could not move sorapidly in the managerial world of the largecorporations.

The Fear of UnmanlinessThough McCarthy is dead, the fear of invasion

by spies and secret agents on which he played isendemic in American life and operates locallyeven when it is quiescent nationally. In the lastdecade, for example, a great many municipalitieshave been aroused against the chimerical andimaginary dangers of fluoridation in their watersupplies (chlorination as a safe-guard against thepollution of American streams and sub-surfacewaters is already an accomplished fact); thedoctors and dentists and local civil servants whohave proposed fluoridation have met a barrage ofsuspiciousness and have been regarded aspoisoners, alternately puppets of the AluminiumCompany (which manufactures fluorides), or theCommunist Party. Of course it is safe and evenpatriotic to attack these men, who have no greatvested interests behind them, either contractual orideological; and correspondingly it has beenextraordinarily difficult to rally people in Americaagainst the real poisons of fall-out or the dangersof chemical and biological warfare. For in thelatter case, fear of realistic dangers, if openlyexpressed, might invite the accusation we our-selves have often met from student audienceswhen we have discussed these matters, as towhether we would rather live on our knees (asappeasers of world Communism) than die on ourfeet. The trail-blazer attitude behind this rhetoricwas well expressed a few months ago in aconversation with a nine-year-old and very brightlittle boy. We had been talking with his parentsabout the news that day in the paper thatKhrushchev would come to America, and wereexpressing our hope that perhaps there would bea detente in the Cold War. The boy piped up tosay, “They’re both chicken,” meaning by thisthat both the US and the USSR were afraid.We asked him if it was chicken to fear the end of

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the world, and he said, “Well, we all have to diesometime”; and then after a moment added,“Anyway, I’ll go live on the moon.”

It is along just this line that we see perhaps thedeepest difference between ourselves and theBritish, namely that American men seem con-stantly pursued by the fear of unmanliness, andtherefore feel the need to present themselves ashard and realistic. This way of being realisticmay have nothing to do with reality. Often,“realism” becomes no more than the opposite ofidealism, reasonableness, or morality. Many menof an older generation, having witnessed theexcesses to which sentimentality and self-righteousness can take us, and completely sureof their own morality and dedication, are some-times unwitting heralds for what is only aseemingly similar realism in others, a pseudo-realism that springs from fear about masculinity.The British seem less obsessed than we are on thisscore. Nor do they have a proponent of tragicrealism so brilliant as Reinhold Niebuhr. Whatproduces the difference? What is the aim which inAmerica has been distorted into a need to feeltough?

End Of The Frontier?One possibility is that for those to whom being

American means being a pioneer—a trail-blazerand producer—the lack of new frontiers createsa fear (felt within and reinforced from outside)that the country is going soft. Perhaps, havingescaped the bombing and much of the sufferingof the Second World War, many Americans havenever established their courage in their own eyes,and this may be another reason why the fears ofbeing “soft on Communism” or just soft, are farstronger here than in Great Britain.6 To recogniseand admit the enormous dangers that grow everyday the cold war continues would feel like weak-ness to these people; it would seem but anotherstep leading to a retreat from the heroic standagainst nature, a stand that makes sense when, inorder to survive physically, man must fight, butwhich now becomes merely a “posture”—a termthat is increasingly and symptomatically cominginto use in describing American policy (along withthe somewhat analogous word, “position”). This“posture” which so many people insist uponbecomes self-destructive in a world of fantasticallyrapid change, where survival depends on flexibilityand on willingness to accept some responsibility

6 Obviously, we are not here proposing that the British lackproblems of their own, including those in the area of masculinityand sex! But British society does provide people with a structureagainst which to rebel and within which to define oneself;correspondingly, even some ex-Communists can feel at home a bitmore readily there than in this country, without having to rushinto a new dogmatism. However, by the same token, certainutopian possibilities in America, presented by abundance and theabsence of class conflict, are less available in Britain.

for what is happening in the world as a whole.Such people have been brought up to feel that

worthwhile national action is to be defined mainlyin terms of military or semi-military attacks onobstacles, either physical or human. They viewwith horror their countrymen who, captured bythe ideology of consumption, have none of thespartan virtues, and in fact seem drones heraldingthe collapse of the state. A number of these menare the American analogues of Tory patricians (orin some cases, would-be patricians) who sinceTheodore Roosevelt’s day have seen war andpreparation for war as the condition of nationalhealth.7 Having no goals for America in its ownterms and (like most of us) more attuned to whatthey despise in their countrymen than to what theyhope for, they cannot help being preoccupiedwith the Communists as a possible barbarianthreat (often failing to realise how necessary wein turn are in the Soviet Union as a model foremulation, frequently for our worst Victorianexcesses). So much, in fact, do these Americansdepend on frightening their own countrymenwith the not entirely fanciful bogey-men of aSoviet take-over, and so much do they rely ongenerating and maintaining a mood of crisis, thatwe ourselves are troubled lest the title and themesof this paper, too hurriedly read, add to theimage of menace, when our own spirit, thoughno less critical, looks further and more hopefullyahead. It is one of the many ironies of the currentsituation that people who fear the missile gap(a presently unrealistic fear, as the U-2 flights havehelped to show) and those like ourselves who fearthe arms race as the gravest danger have virtuallycancelled each other out, thus creating a climateof middle complacency and fringe hysteria.

These contradictory images of our hardness andof our softness cannot help but cloud the visionof those military men and political leaders whoare charged with the national defence. Becausethey fear softness, they seek to maintain a climatein which only hardness can thrive—so much soso that perhaps a general is best able to movetoward peace, since a general is less vunerable tolaccusations of softness. Correspondingly, manypeople who have different goals in mind seek tohitch them to the defence star, with the result thatsomething so magnanimous in conception as theMarshall Plan becomes from the very start a cold

7 Senator Kennedy was quite in the patrician tradition when heconcluded a Senate speech, “An Investment for Peace,” ofFebruary 29, by saying, “I urge that this Congress, before thePresident departs for the summit, demonstrate conclusively thatwe are removing those doubts (about the missile gap and likeweaponry) and that we are prepared to pay the full cost necessaryto insure peace. Let us remember what Gibbon said of theRomans: ‘They kept the peace—by a constant preparation forwar; and by making clear to their neighbours that they are as littledisposed to offer as to endure injury.’ ” In fairness it should beadded that Senator Kennedy in this and more explicitly in otherspeeches has called for active steps towards disarmament and forsomething comparable to a Rand Corporation for peace.

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war weapon, and find a good deal of its legacy inpropping up or even creating military regimes inplaces like Pakistan whose officials can persuadeus that they are real made-to-order anti-Communists.

IIObviously, it is not so hard to be anti-

Communist if that is the way to build up one’smilitary faction in a still emerging nation. But asthe cold war continues, it becomes increasinglydifficult for decent Americans, humane enough toprefer peace to an egocentric national honour, tobe outspokenly and genuinely anti-Communist.For example, we had very mixed feelings aboutthe idealistic and dedicated Americans, some ofthem our colleagues, who last summer went toVienna and set up shop to oppose the propagandaof the Communist Youth Festival. We hadmisgivings because it was impossible to escapethe fact that, whatever their personal motives,these students became, in effect, emissaries of ourState Department and our national cold war line.While this is the last thing many of these studentswanted, the Iron Curtain creates just such ironies.

And the problem is equally grave for the radicalopposition. As Margaret Mead observed in anaddress last year, a student in this country ageneration ago who had radical ideas had theadvantage of being powerless: of being on theside of a future which did not yet exist. Today,however, such a student may find that his par-ticular idea happens at the moment also to bepart of the Communist party line, in which casehe is not in alliance with a non-existent andtherefore uncontaminated future, but with anextremely menacing, and totally unwelcomepower. On the reverse side, someone likePasternak, or many young Polish writers who areacclaimed in this country, may feel themselvesbetrayed by their very courage and virtue. Thus,as long as the cold war goes on, we lack anuncorrupted political debate.

Under such conditions, it is not surprising thatso many people prefer to withdraw from the fieldaltogether. Although they are willing to coun-tenance arms spending, a large number ofAmericans cannot bring themselves to contemplatethe true horror of war, and so they simply go tosleep when they are asked to “wake up” to thedangers that face them. They have learned thatthe thing to do with anxiety (whether based onreal danger or not) is to rid oneself of it throughdrink, drugs, or canned fantasies.

There are other Americans, however, whoseanxiety and escape take more productive forms.Like many of the Soviet intelligentsia who hatethe system but feel powerless to change it, certainAmerican elite groups have chosen the road of

“inner emigration,” retreating from social res-ponsibilities into, at best, a concern with theirimmediate surroundings, family, and friends.Though such people are often aroused by issueslike education, urban renewal, or mental health,they are estranged from the system because itseems to them run for political motives in thenarrowest rather than in the best sense. Unlikethe escapist security seekers, they are not alienatedfrom themselves as human beings, yet the fact thatthey remain without political purpose beyondtheir small civic circles limits their vision andhence their growth. It is for this reason that theymay today be ready to give enthusiastic supportto a far-reaching idealistic political movementthat will provide them with a way of reassertingtheir faith in democracy.

Still others who are intelligent enough to beconcerned with the world have escaped intocynicism, considering the system as corrupt andfinding a sense of purpose in expertise, even if thismeans selling themselves to the highest bidder.Such people, amorally working for personal gainwithin the system, have in fact supported manyof its worst elements. But perhaps “support” istoo strong a word, for one often finds in talkingto them that they have a streak of buried idealismhidden as much from themselves as from othersby this mask of cynicism. Whereas the hypocrisyof the Victorians consisted of concealing meanmotives under noble rhetoric, our own hypocrisyoften conceals a cankered decency beneath a cloakof Realpolitik. Sometimes the decency manifestsitself only in the family and in intimate relations,sometimes in the restlessness that underlies thepurposive exterior, sometimes merely in theaggressive defence that is put up by these peopleagainst any suggestion that their public andprivate selves need not always remain so com-pletely at odds.

Inadequate AlternativesWhether in foreign policy, or in personal life,

Americans appear today to suffer from aninadequate formulation of their alternatives. Ithas become extremely common among the well-educated to denounce “blind conformity” and“mass society”, often symbolised by such minorirritants as tail-fins, TV, or grey-flannel suits.But the only alternatives many people see to theorganisation man is the nostalgic image of thecowboy or the rebellious artist; hard-shelledindividualism and a rejection of human solidarityare mistaken as signs of strength and in-dependence. Even the best students in our collegestend to assume that they must eventually maketheir peace with “the system”—which they see aseven more monolithic than in fact it is—and they

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will then often become vicarious fellow-travellersof the Beats whose passive and almost entirelynon-progressive defiance serves to publicise aprivate helplessness.

Students in recent years have frequently saidthat helplessness is realistic: “What can you doabout nuclear war?” Searching for a guaranteethat life never provides, a guarantee not only thataction will be effective but that all its con-sequences will be good, such young people neverget started and therefore never gain the realisticpolitical experience necessary to make them lesshelpless. Again, there is a tendency to jump toextreme alternatives: either total control of thetotal weapons, or total inaction.

The sit-in strikes in the South and their supportin the North may be the first sign of a change inthese attitudes, for they have shown how much canbe done even by relatively powerless and un-organised students. We ourselves have a veryvivid sense of the rapidity of this change, for a fewyears ago we visited briefly several of the SouthernNegro colleges that have been in the forefront ofactivity; and at that time they appeared to bequite somnolent institutions, run by despoticNegro patriarchs who were used to wheedlingsupport from white leaders, at the same timedominating their own faculty and student bodies,while the students themselves appeared to hopefor a safe passage into the world of the blackbourgeoisie behind the wall of segregation. Nodoubt, recent visitors to West Africa are equallystruck with the speed with which things canchange: at the very moment when the ‘system’appears impregnable to the realist, it oftens turnsout to be vulnerable to the quixotic. Of course,we are not saying that “where there’s a will, thereis always a way,” but we are saying that many ofthe most gifted and sensitive American studentshave been oversold on cultural and historicaldeterminism—in which, incidentally, there maybe self-serving elements, since determinism allowsus publicly to accept the existing politicalstructure while we privately deplore conformity,perhaps even showing by minor and irrelevantrebellions like sexual promiscuity or wearing abeard that we are rebels at heart.

IIIIf we see only two choices in our personal

behaviour, such as conformity as against indivi-dualism, or adjustment as against neurotic lone-liness, then it is likely that a similar dichotomisingtendency will capture our political life. Thus, theAmerican is asked to choose between democracyand communism, when in fact neither system ismonolithic, and both have many things—literallythings—in common, in contrast with the lessindustrialised and bureaucratised parts of the

world. As already implied, our relationship withRussia is similar to that of a big brother who isobsessed with the fear that his little brother willovertake him, and this over-concern keeps us, theolder brother, from realising our unique poten-tialities. In this case, the sibling rivalry runs bothways, for the Russians gear their system to showthat they are as good or better than we in thoseareas we most prize—technology, sports, andeducation. The tragedy is not only that because ofour obsession we are rejecting utopian possibilitiesand ignoring more pressing problems (at thelowest level the much greater threat of Red China)but also that we are missing a chance to provide abetter goal for Soviet growth. We may hope thatthe Russians will get rich enough to be pre-occupied by the problem of national purposewhich currently plagues us; and in the American-like desires of the Soviet elite, we find signs of thisdevelopment. Conceivably if we were to show thatour system can be mobilised to produce a betterlife, drawing its meaning from activity rather thanfrom consumption per se or from national might,we would eventually shift the emphasis of Sovietemulation.

In fairness it should be added that a surrenderto apocalyptic alternatives is sometimes found onthe more humane side of current Americandebates concerning deterrence. It would besurprising if this were not the case, for thedominant ways of perceiving in a culture generallyturn up, sometimes in a disguised form, in thevery models of opposing such ways. Thus, thereare some pacifists, among the many differentschools of pacifist thought, who see the presentsituation as demanding either preparation fortotal destruction or a complete cessation of allmilitary measures through unilateral action. Webelieve that if the world survives these nextcritical years and becomes less uncivilised, weshall move away from the anarchy of nationalism,reducing arms to the level of police forces andhandling as imaginatively as we can the problemof coping with despotic governments—in partby the remarkable invention of Gandhian non-violent resistance, a manlier and far more difficultpolitical weapon than trading blow for blow.Naturally, it is hard to see how the transitionfrom the fully armed nation-state to the fullydisarmed nation-state can be accomplished. It iseasier to envisage a diplomatic give-and-takebetween ourselves and the Soviet Union that(without complete disarmament) would settleoutstanding conflicts of interest in Europe andAsia—even though attempts at such a settlementwould encounter the opposition of Adenauer andUlbricht, Chiang and Mao, American ColdWarriors and their Stalinist opposite numbers inRussia. Efforts at disarmament not coupled with

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diplomatic moves to settle the cold war will makeAmericans as uneasy as high-flying spy planesmust make the Russian people, and hence mayboomerang. In our judgment, one must worksimultaneously on both fronts, diplomacy anddisarmament, keeping in mind the long-runpacifist goal of a world in which conflict is settledwithout weapons and war.

What we wish to emphasise here, however, isnot the details of the various positions, but ratherthe way in which the American style of thinkinghas suffered from a tendency to oversimplifyalternatives and to leap always to absolutepositions. It is wrong to insist that one mustchoose between conformity and individualism,slavery or freedom, absolute toughness or uni-lateral disarmament. Our need to plan distant aswell as short-run goals, to work out the fullimplications of alternative actions, is confusedwith simplistic self-definitions, and thus wemilitate against graduated approaches. Where thearms race is concerned, a graduated approachwould start with a definition of the goal as dis-armament and would continue with a step-by-stepattempt to find ways of overcoming our fears onthe one hand and Russia’s distrust of inspectorson the other. A good illustration of the kind ofimaginative plan that is needed is Leo Szilard’sidea of an inspection game.8 Recognising thereality both of our fear of secret Soviet operations(and of the unreliability of any government’spromise, including our own) and theirs offoreigners poking around, Szilard would allowinspection in detail any time that either partysuspected clandestine atomic activity or decidedthat a tremor might not merely be an earth-quake.However, if we turned out to be wrong we wouldhave to pay the Soviets a huge indemnity and viceversa. The goal of such a game is greater trustthrough experience rather than an idea of securitythrough armaments which suggests either astatuesque posture or a swaddled, unrealisticexistence, perhaps lived underground in concreteshelters.

IVHow does one begin the effort to change this

pattern of thinking about security througharmament? Because different people in the UnitedStates are at different stages of alertness andhealth or flight and cynicism, the answer willvary depending on which group in the populationone addresses.

When a man is being over-manipulated to thepoint where his very existence has become unreal,he cannot be “made” human by more and bettermanipulation from the “right” direction, by mere

8 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April, 1960.

bombardment with pressures and appeals. It isthis very habit of ignoring the human qualities ofmen in order to get them to run smoothly that hascaused much of our trouble.

Manipulation “downward,” from the elites tothe public, inevitably intensifies apathy and sapsthe strength of an alert public just when it is mostneeded. Thus—to return to an earlier point—by apropaganda campaign which persuaded people toview the Marshall Plan as a semi-military strokeagainst Communism rather than as an idealisticand ultimately practical acknowledgement of ournew world responsibility, we increased the chancesof a quick acceptance of the programme at theexpense of setting a pattern in which all economicdevelopment of underdeveloped countries wouldcarry the imprimatur of our particular sort ofidealism. By reinforcing the ideology of cageyness,we have been killing the very quality in ourselveswhich might save us from a moral disintegrationthat armaments can never arrest.

Lobbying From BelowHowever, while manipulation downward or

sideways leads to dysfunctional precedents whichnarrow future alternatives, lobbying “upward” isnecessary and in the best traditions of keeping ourleaders responsible. Today, as free citizens, weneed energetically to influence the military,industrial, political, and educational elites intoletting go of their investments in the cold war andinto working not only for a safer but for a betterworld. This might involve setting up programmesfor the economics of disarmament, as SeymourMelman says in a study in progress. For example,part of Raytheon might be deployed into agovernment-supported project for the renewal ofdown-town Boston, thereby insuring the managersthat the cessation of arms stockpiling will notleave them and their industries holding the radio-active potato. Or, to take another example,programmes might be developed for the re-training of officers of SAC and other agencieswhose existence depends on the cold war. Some ofthese men can certainly be deployed into inspec-tion for disarmament; but in a less bellicoseclimate, they will not find jobs with defencecontractors, nor even perhaps as headmasters ofmilitary schools. Still, their organisational abilityand their dedication should be useful.

Many people do not take even the smallopportunities to lobby for human interests,encouraging elements of idealism in even themost cynical, and thereby supporting the factionof peacemakers in Washington and perhapsindirectly in the Kremlin, too. The paradox isthat in an age when many feel so powerless asingle irate letter can often have a totally un-anticipated impact. With an elite like ours that

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is both divided and confused, a “grass roots” complaint about a TV show or a Congressionalmeasure can, as often for worse as for better,show the fallacy of those who believe that thereare no channels left for effective political action.

VYet, if we get out of the immediate crisis, we

shall still be faced with the underlying disorderin a society in which—partly as the result of itsgreat past achievements—people feel there isplenty for all, but little joy in using the thingswe have made. In order to assuage the managerialfears, often less than conscious, that the end ofthe cold war would bring us face to face with aproblem quite unlike that of 1945 (when thedemand for consumer goods had not yet beenfulfilled), we need a programme which wouldprovide alternatives both to spending for defenceand spending for spending’s sake.

For the Russians, a decrease in defence spend-ing means the beginning of television and toastersfor all, and perhaps a slight loosening of despoticcontrols. For us, much more is involved, andmore difficult problems—those of “abundancefor what?”9 Indeed, no society has ever been inthe American position before or anywhere nearit (although the Scandanavians and WestGermans are close, and the British not too faraway), and thus the dream of plenty until ourtime has remained unsullied. We cannot look tothe experience of other times and other countriesfor models for the American future. Neither canwe discover much relevant wisdom in earlierprophets of abundance. Very few of theseprophets foresaw the actual cornucopia of evenso modestly efficient an industrial plant as ours(a plant which, if we were not so afraid ofproductivity or of controlling waste, wouldproduce in a manner truly comparable to themyth of American efficiency).10 For example,Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which hadan enormous impact on the Gilded Age, envisagedan industrial utopia whose amiable and genteelstandard of living has long since been attainedthroughout a large American middle-income belt—though the inner peace and spaciousness thatwas supposed to go along with this prosperityhas scarcely been approached. Even the mostdevoted apostles of capitalism in previousgenerations seldom foresaw that it would outruntheir grandest hopes (though Schumpeter didgrasp this)—while enemies of capitalism likeKarl Marx, who acknowledged its power to

9 We have drawn in what follows on Riesman, “Abundance forWhat?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. XIV, No. 4 (1958),pages 135–139.

10 This myth remains unpunctured because most othercountries not only have fewer resources, but are even less efficient,

surpass all earlier levels of production and con-sumption, never predicted its chastened mana-gerial form nor indeed its bounteous exploitability.We are a generation who, prepared for ParadiseLost, are afraid that if we enter Paradise Regained,we shall deprive ourselves not merely of theincentive to produce but even of the incentive tolive. We therefore resist such a predicament as atemptation of the devil, and in the process faileven to take the necessary steps, first towardpeace, and then toward improved social con-ditions, and better education and medical care.

We have been trained for a world of scarcityand we have developed an image of man underthe psychology of scarcity. The maturation ofAmerica and correspondingly of world civilisationrequires that we begin a programme for abun-dance with a new view of man and his poten-tialities: neither the inherently weak and sinfulpuritan nor the self-indulgent consumer, butinstead a being whose nature is fulfilled throughwork that truly engages him, both because itdraws upon his creative power and because itgives him the responsibility for helping to decidethe form and use of what he makes. In this waywe would be able to consider human destructive-ness as the manifestation of a thwarted need tocreate and to initiate—a need thwarted byinadequate education and opportunity (as PaulGoodman declares in his forthcoming book,Growing Up Absurd). In Man for Himself andlater writings, Erich Fromm argues that man doesnot live merely for the release of tensions (asFreud’s writings often suggest), but that whenthis is all society asks of him, his passive-receptiveorientation to life can fill him with a naggingself-doubt—which may in turn be exploited inthe fantasies of omnipotence that virulentnationalism demands.

These conflicting ideas concerning man’snature are dramatised in contemporary Americanarguments about the educational system. A beliefin the spontaneous potentialities of human nature,and in the relevance of schooling to thosepotentialities, animated some of the originalleaders of the progressive education movement,notably, of course, John Dewey. In practice,however, many followers of this movement simplycame to terms, as new social strata swamped theschools, with the latter’s diluted demands for alaying on of educational hands. Now, in reactionagainst this laxity, many American leaders havefound in the Cold War an opportunity to “tightenup” education. Men like Admiral Rickoverespouse a climate of rigour, based not on theintractable tasks set both by knowledge and bylife, but by a need to keep up with the Russians.One of the most profound lessons a child learnsin school is how he is to feel about his later life-

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work, and if he is taught to approach the ideaof work only with a sense of duty, competitiveness,and fear of failure, he will never develop thecapacity to impose meaning on whatever taskshe comes to undertake.11

The problems, political and technical, of re-organising work along lines we can now onlydimly envisage, are so enormous as to be almostinhibiting. If one ponders on these matters, onefinds oneself facing into a new frontier that isneither physically nor politically simple, but thatrequires as much resourcefulness and tenacity asthe older frontiers did. For example, one mightconsider the changes involved if every job inAmerica were re-analysed, not with an eye onlyto its efficiency in terms of traditional output,but in terms of its long-run effect on the worker,his family, his friends, and his political life. Wenow assume that production will go on as usual,and that humane progress demands only ancillaryadjustments, fringe benefits, which repair some ofthe ravages of work, on the one hand by makingthe work place less physically exhausting anddespotic, and on the other by trying to shore upthe leisure life of the worker with a variety ofwelfare measures. It is difficult to change thispattern, even if management is willing to initiatethe attempt. Edwin Land has found that workersin his Polaroid factory are not eager to leave theassembly line, to whose routines they havebecome accustomed, for an unspecified job in alaboratory. They doubt their ability to cope witha larger untried situation, just as some studentsprefer rigid routines, which give them the assur-ance they are learning something, to less predict-able programmes of self-directed study. In Dr.Land’s experience, workers, like students, needsupport and encouragement to attempt new tasks.

Another example of inertia is provided byProfessor Chris Argyris of the Yale Departmentof Industrial Administration. The president of asmall corporation, Argyris reports, decided that

11 Of course, many people today will say that while they maynot be “mad” about their work, neither do they mind it. InThe Lonely Crowd, (1950), the senior author took a sanguine viewof the attenuation of “meaning” in work, arguing that in anaffluent society, arduous and demanding work would becomeincreasingly unnecessary, and that the productive impulse wouldhave to be expressed in leisure and play. Further reflection hasconvinced us that here we are not necessarily the prisoners of ourtechnological fate, of our given forms of mass production and ofthe organisation of work. We now believe that a rich, heavilyautomatised society is precisely one that can afford to reorganisework so that attention is focused no longer exclusively on theproduct, but on the worker himself as a product of his work. Wehave been greatly excited and impressed by a few pioneeringexamples, like Edwin Land’s Polaroid factory. There, deepinvolvement in work and a concept of the factory that continuesthe process of education for the workers, have significantlyenlivened many workers (without any loss in productivity whenmeasured by the traditional standards of the balance sheet,although this must not be the sole or even the crucial measure ofsuccess). To be creative in leisure while mindless and passive inwork demands a schizoid attitude which even if psychologicallypossible would put too great a burden on leisure, just as the familybears too great a burden when it becomes the only reservoir ofdecency in a disordered civic and national life.

all foremen should determine their own rates ofreimbursement. One day he announced thatthere was a payroll of so many dollars to whichhe would add an annual increment, and that theworkers should divide it among themselves asseemed equitable to them. At first, they jumpedat the chance, but not long after they asked to berelieved of the responsibility. The president,however, did not give up. It took him seven yearsto create a work milieu in which the foremencould develop respect for themselves and oneanother. In the course of making his innovations,the president discovered how deep were thefeelings of alienation, of separateness, and howlow was the sense of self-esteem among theforemen. He found also that these feelings couldnot be changed by propaganda, that suchpersuasion merely increased self-hate and aliena-tion. The foremen preferred paternalism untilthey had developed a confidence in themselvesbased on an altered work situation in which theymade decisions about style and methods ofproduction. And the president was secure enoughnot to feel that he had to hang on to traditionalprerogatives; as the workers took over moreactivities, he was freed for new ones.

VI

When in discussion we have stressed hopefulillustrations like these as models for social change,we have sometimes found them quickly dismissedby people brought up in the shadow of Marxism.Such people believe that the coming of abundancedoes not change the vested interests, and thatpolitical commitments will continue to reflecteconomic advantage.12 They look to what is leftof the American disinherited as the potentialcadre to displace the power elite, and they seehostility rather than hope as the principal leverof political change; therefore, they do not eventry to move men by rational appeals. One mightask whether they are in fact good Marxists.However, one need not be entirely theoretical:recent student rallies for Negro rights at leadinguniversities, and the response of a few studentsto the Committees of Correspondence, suggestwhat seems to us to have been generally the casein historical development, that it is not the mostunder-privileged who are most concerned aboutjustice and about the future. Even the hangoversof scarcity psychology—for example, the prevalentnotion that, even if there should be enough ofthe good things of life for all, there would alwaysremain a short supply of status—do not alter thefact that those who worry least about havingenough (including enough status) frequently showthe clearest sense of responsibility. This is truenot only for the Tory patricians referred to

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earlier, but also for many of their opponents inpolitics and in intellectual life. What is lackingtoday is an audience of restless poor (save amongNegroes) awaiting the leadership of the better-off.

As higher education expands and as blue-collarwork gives way to white-collar work, the oftendenigrated bourgeois idealist, the pilot fish of theMarxian theory of revolution, becomes a memberof a class quite as large in number as the factoryworkers. This group is only residually a “class” in the traditional sense, for it lacks any sense ofidentity of interest and any large reservoir ofhatred or of solidarity. Unlike the well-to-do ofother times, it is not supported by servants—indeed, its lack of the habit of command is oneof its present political weaknesses. On the whole,its members, children of the industrial revolution,have thought that any increase in productivityautomatically spells progress; but today this hasbecome a tarnished belief, and little as yet existsto take its place. The answer for which manyradicals look is the highly unlikely prospect ofanother depression. In our judgement, a depres-sion is unlikely at present, less because theKeynesian weapons of fiscal and other govern-mental intervention are well understood andpolitically available, than because, as we havealready argued, an increase in “defence” expen-ditures can again be used, as it was in therecession of 1957–58, to maintain the flow ofincome. But even if such measures should failand another depression would threaten, theresult at best would be another New Deal—ifone could imagine such coasting on inheritedideals which were barely adequate in their ownday, let alone in our era of potential abundance.Another formula, occasionally suggested by theengineering-minded is to regard the race forouter space as a safety valve for the arms race,furnishing an outlet at once for imperialisticenergies and cowboy imaginations. While it goeswithout saying that this latter “solution” ispreferable to the arms race, it seems to us afictional frontier, reflecting a nostalgia for along-past day when the West had to be settled,the industries developed, the cities built, theimmigrants “Americanised”.

To summarise our argument: many Americansthink that the only changes needed in our nationallife are minor ones, or choices between starkly

12 There is no question that there are vested interests inarmaments and against radical innovation in nearly all ourindustries. However, Americans differ from perhaps any otherpeople in that all accept a classless ideology. The weaponsmakers in America are not evil plotters, who cynically take therisks for the gain. Rather, they often consider themselves“realistic idealists” and are usually men of good will, whoseeconomic advantage makes it easier for them to rationalise byputting full blame on the Russians and by parading the horrors ofCommunism; in effect, they want the debate to remain polarisedand the proponents of pacifism to seem religious odd-balls.

stated alternatives. In this, they are like patientswho come to a psychiatrist and say, “There isnothing basically the matter with me except thatI have this ulcer.” So it is with the ulcer of the coldwar which exposes the failure of a style of life.Though the immediate peril demands the begin-ning of disarmament as one first step towardending the cold war, in doing this, we only patch asymptom. Disarmament is not the end of therapy,and true peace is not merely the absence of warbut a state in which the quality of existence becomes humane and generous rather thandestructive.

The analogy goes further. Just as no therapistcan cure anyone but merely provides the supportfor another’s steps toward health, so our leader-ship cannot manipulate us into utopia. In order forus to live with our abundance there must begreater participation in the political life of theUnited States and of the world. The traditionalAmerican ideology which is concerned only withequality of economic and political opportunityand freedom from control—in other words withthe major problems of scarcity alone—must re-adjust to face the problems that have suddenlybecome visible because of abundance: lack ofparticipation in life and lack of opportunity andeducation for self-expression. Once these problemscan be faced, a people of plenty may be able touse its power for helping other people towardeconomic prosperity (as an essential step towardfurther difficult alternatives).

When we can overcome our embarrassment abeing frankly idealistic in our actions, we will nolonger be slaves to an ideology that demands thecontinual creation of pseudo-needs as a basis forproduction and continued “prosperity”, anideology which leads the American people todoubt the possibility of any growth beyond com-fortable survival, protecting the nest egg. Ourimagination must focus on other frontiers, workat bringing more people into participation byforming many small groups, by decentralisingindustry, by creating better means for continuededucation not merely for children but for adultsthroughout life. To be sure, none of the problemsof scarcity has been dealt with in a wholly satis-factory way: not all Americans are affluent, manyare destitute, and many of the traditional issuesof welfare and social justice—markedly, of course,the race issue—remain exigent. But a movementof renewal dedicated only to these issues is notconceivable. We shall move faster on these olderfronts if they do not usurp all our attention andif we can invent an American future which isexciting, active, and responsible, but neithermurderous nor imperialistic. It is for this thatpolitical programmes are needed which transcendthe details of the present.

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Based on Convention notes from Los Angelesby Emmanuel de Kadt.

NO DEADLOCKS, no switches, no Southern break-aways, no second ballot. Smooth as a trans-continental express, the Kennedy machine rolledthrough the Democratic Party’s Convention,carrying everything (including 806 votes) beforeit. Its progress marked the rise and triumph of thecollege-cut button-down-collar business techni-cians in politics: the new men of power, JackKennedy’s “boys”, made the old professionalmachine men look like a crew of provincial hicks.

There was something of a self-fulfilling prophecyabout the Kennedy success. While he consistentlyunderestimated his strength, appearing hopefuland calm but never over-confident, his “team” consistently utilised the highest figures of support,to induce a feeling among delegates that whoeverwanted to wave from the window when thePresidential train rolled in in November, hadbetter climb aboard early. They did. While theprocessions and acclamations for “favouritesons” went on, the Kennedy professionals couldbe seen, moving across the floor of the Conven-tion, smoothing the way. The headquarters of theConvention, the Biltmore Hotel, saw many awild-cat demonstration. At one point, a mob ofbigoted segregationists invaded the lobby withplacards for Orval Faubus, famous for his standat Little Rock. Their placards demanded, “AChristian In The White House”, “Faubus ForPresident”, “States Rights vs. Communism”. Atanother time, two or three Nazis, with swastikaarmbands, distributed leaflets saying, “A vote forStevenson is a vote for Khrushchev”. But all thiswas just part of the political mardi-gras.

The only two real alternatives to Kennedy wereStevenson and Lyndon Johnson, leader of theSenate and the Southern hope. Johnson re-mained confident until the end. With his smile

and his studied friendliness, he tried to navigatehis way round all the cliffs. Asked about Cuba,he said “Foreign policy is the prerogative of thePresident!” Pushed by the creeping crisis inCuba, he retreated behind the Monroe Doctrineand the Caracas Agreement. He failed to find theappropriate tone for the Convention, and theSouth did not feel strongly enough about hisallegiance to segregation to threaten to break theParty in order to let him through.

The Stevenson movement had unsuspected“grass-roots” strength, in New York andCalifornia particularly, and enclaves of liberalsupport around the country: but it lackedorganised power. The inner contradiction ofStevenson’s position—he remained aloof, un-willing to campaign, and yet was obviouslyanxious to be “drafted”—made it difficult for hissupporters. Finding themselves largely outsidethe machines, often in blatant opposition to them,they had to rely upon public demonstrations. InNew York alone, more than 500,000 signed the“Draft Stevenson” petitions, and when heappeared at the Convention, the demonstrationsin favour of his candidature interrupted theproceedings for twenty minutes. “Do not leavethis prophet without honour in his own party.Do not reject this man”.

That was precisely what the Convention did.The Kennedy team worked tirelessly, promotingthe young Senator from Massachusetts. At onestage, the candidate was so tired that he said,

THEDEMOCRATICCONVENTION

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“I wonder whether I’m exuding the basicconfidence?” He was.

The Kennedy magic had three componentelements. First, he found exactly the toneappropriate to the Democratic mood. “Privateopulence and public squalor”—of course, “withinthe free enterprise system”: national sacrifice andresponsibility. “The New Frontier is not a set ofpromises; it is a set of challenges. It sums up notwhat I intend to offer the American people, butwhat I intend to ask of them”. Secondly, hecommanded the slickest, youngest, smoothestteam of professionals of any recent Presidentialcandidate. Compared with these cultivated buttough operators, even the Nixon Republicanmachine, which rolled to success a few weeks later,looked a little obsolescent. Thirdly, Kennedy saidjust enough to distinguish himself as someonewith his own “slant” on affairs, and offered justenough in private to keep warring delegationssweet. There must have been scores of Governors,Senators and politicians on the floor who haddangled before them, during the Convention, theprospect of key Cabinet or Convention jobs ifKennedy won. Several of these men bull-dozedtheir delegations into the Kennedy camp in thehope of winning some important post of loyalty,not excluding the Vice-Presidency.

above the most dangerous yawning vacuum in“Western” policy. Even Mr. Nixon, anxious notto be hit on the head by the President’s back-swing, has been busy dissociating himself fromwhat has not been going on in the White House.

But what would the candidates do, if elected?Both Party platforms reflect what must now be adecisive popular swing with history on the subjectof segregation. Nixon, supported by Rockefeller, defied the Republican backwoodsmen on the subject: so did Kennedy. On the other hand, theselection of Lyndon Johnson does suggest thatMr. Kennedy in the White House might not beso ardent a crusader against segregation as heappeared previously. On such questions asschooling, housing and welfare (the “Galbraith” issues), the Democrats are far more committedthan the Republicans to public spending. Butthe crucial question is defence and foreign policy:and here, the glass is very dark.

Nixon forced the Republican Convention,including the President, into the Rockefellercamp on the defence issue: the Party is com-mitted to “intensify”, “accelerate” and “increase” defence spending. And the recent tests of Polarissuggest that, armed with this massive new weapon,a Republican administration would take a “hardnuclear line” against what is now regarded asSoviet intransigence. Kennedy, on the other hand,has taken the more temperate line of increasedeconomic aid—but that is not quite enough. IfSymington becomes his Secretary of State, hiswill undoubtedly be an Administration of “BigBombardiers”—for Symington represents theTruman-Acheson wing of the Democratic Party,and they are traditional anti-communist wieldersof the massive deterrent. If, however, he choosesStevenson, that would strengthen the influence ofChester Bowles and George Kennan, who areboth strongly ranged behind a policy of dis-engagement and disarmament. This could havethe greatest possible significance for the conductof American policy—and is, therefore, what reallyinterests anyone watching the Presidential carnivalfrom afar. If Kennedy were to be elected, it couldbe either a Truman or Kennan line in foreignpolicy: and the fate of the world could dependon which it was. What is even more frightening—American politics and Parties being what theyare—it could easily be both!

Yet as soon as the Convention closed, theSenator proceeded to tie up the loose ends. Theloosest of these was the Southern vote: so, with aruthlessness which left many delegations gaspingfor breath, Mr. Kennedy chose for his runningmate as Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson—thereby appearing to make nonsense of the“liberal” noises, particularly on segregation,which he had been making.

The problem is that the Conventions give littleor no indication of what kind of administrationwe shall have after November. The two candi-dates, Nixon and Kennedy, are such mass-produced men that very little but their publicpersonae has been permitted to appear. Indeed,the only reason for thinking that something mustbe done is the fact that, at the moment, there isno policy at all. The caretaker Eisenhower-Hertergovernment has done nothing for months butcollect the back-wash from the disintegration ofDulles’ foreign policy. Since the death of the OldWarrior, the Administration has been sitting tight

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NOT LONG after the last war, Bayard Rustin got ona bus in Chicago and headed south. When theycrossed the Mason-Dixon Line, he stayed wherehe was. The cops took him off. He “went limp.” They beat him into unconsciousness. They tookhim to jail and finally to a hospital. When he gotout, he got on another bus and continued south.So it went, for months—sometimes jail, some-times the hospital, sometimes they just kickedhim into the ditch. Eventually he got to NewOrleans. Eventually Jim Crow was abolished oninterstate carriers. Individual non-violent directaction had invaded the South and won. TheSouthern Negro had been shown the onlytechnique that had any possibility of winning.

Things simmered for a while and then,spontaneously, out of nowhere, the Montgomerybus boycott materialised. Every moment of thebirth and growth of this historic action has beenelaborately documented. Hour by hour we canstudy “the masses” acting by themselves. It is mymodest, well considered opinion that MartinLuther King, Jr., is the most remarkable man theSouth has produced since Thomas Jefferson—since, in other words, it became “the South.” Now the most remarkable thing about MartinLuther King is that he is not remarkable at all.He is just an ordinary minister of a middle-classNegro church (or what Negroes call “middleclass,” which is pretty poor by white standards).There are thousands of men like him all overNegro America. When the voice called, he wasready. He was ready because he was himself partof that voice. Professional, white-baiting Negroeswho thrill millionairesses in night clubs in theNorth would call him a square. He was a bravesquare. He is the best possible demonstration ofthe tremendous untapped potential of humanitythat the white South has thrown away all theseyears. He helped to focus that potential and exertit. It won.

. . . The Montgomery bus boycott not only wonwhere Negro Zealotism, as well as Uncle Tomism,had always failed, but it demonstrated somethingthat had always sounded like sheer sentimentality.It is better, braver, far more effective and farmore pleasurable, to act with love than with hate.When you have won, you have gained an un-impeachable victory. The material ends pass orare passed beyond. “Desegregated” buses seemnatural in many Southern cities today. The guilt-less moral victory remains, always as powerfulas the day it was gained. Furthermore, eachmoral victory converts or neutralises anotherblock of the opponents’ forces.

Before the Montgomery episode was over,Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King hadjoined forces. Today they are world statesmen ina “shadow cabinet” that is slowly forming behindthe wielders of power, and the advisers andauxiliary leaders in the councils of Negro Africa.At home in America, the Montgomery achieve-ment has become the source from which hasflowed the moral awakening, first, of Negro and,following them, of white youth.

Everything seemed to be going along nicely.According to the papers and most of theirprofessors, 99 44/100 per cent of the nation’syouth were cautiously preparing for the day whenthey could offer their young split-level brains toG.M., I.B.M., Oak Ridge or the Voice of America.Madison Avenue had discovered its own petminority of revolt and tamed it into an obedientmascot. According to Time, Life, M.G.M. andthe editors and publishers of a new, pseudoavant-garde, all the dear little rebels wanted todo was grow beards, dig jazz, take heroin andwreck other people’s Cadillacs. While theexurbanite children sat with the baby sitter andthrilled to Wyatt Earp, their parents swooned inthe aisles at The Connection or sat up past bed-time reading switch-blade novelists. The psycho-

STUDENTSTAKE OVERby Kenneth Rexroth

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logical mechanisms were the same in both cases—sure-fire, time-tested and shopworn.

But as a matter of fact, anyone with any sensetravelling about the country lecturing on collegecampuses during the past five years, could tellthat something very, very different was cooking.Time and again, hundreds of times, I have beenasked by some well-dressed, unassuming, beard-less student, “I agree with you completely, butwhat shall we, my generation, do?” To thisquestion, I have never been able to give but oneanswer:” I am fifty. You are twenty. It is for youto tell me what to do. The only thing I can say is,don’t do the things my generation did. Theydidn’t work.” A head of steam was building up,the waters were rising behind the dam; the damitself, the block to action, was the patent ex-haustion of the old forms. What was accumu-lating was not any kind of programmatic“radicalisation,” it was a moral demand. Andthen one day four children walked into a dimestore in a small Southern city and pulled outthe plug. Four children picked up the massivechain of the Social Lie and snapped it at itsweakest link. Everything broke loose.

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From the first sit-ins, the young have kept thecommand in their own hands. No “regularlyconstituted outside authority” has been able tocatch up with them. The sit-ins swept the Southso rapidly that it was impossible to catch up withthem physically, but it was even harder forroutinised bureaucrats with vested interests inrace relations and civil liberties to catch up withthem ideologically. The whole spring went bybefore the professional leaders began to get even aglimmering of what was happening. In the mean-time, the old leadership was being pushed aside.Young ministers just out of the seminary,maverick young teachers in Jim Crow colleges,choir mistresses and school marms and Sundayschool teachers in all the small cities of the South,pitched in and helped—and let the students leadthem, without bothering to “clear it with Roy.” In a couple of months, the NAACP found itselfwith a whole new cadre sprung up from the grassroots.

The only organisation which understood whatwas going on was CORE, the Committee OnRacial Equality, organised years ago in anevacuated Japanese flat, “Sakai House,” in SanFrancisco, by Bayard Rustin, Caleb Foote and afew others, as a direct-action, race-relations off-shoot of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (theFOR) and the Friends Service Committee. COREwas still a small group of intellectual enthusiasts

and there simply weren’t enough people to goaround. To this day, most Negroes know littlemore of CORE than its name, which they haveseen in the Negro press, and the bare fact that itsprogramme is direct, non-violent action. Thisdidn’t deter the high school and college studentsin the Jim Crow high schools and colleges inRaleigh and Durham. They set up their own directnon-violent action organisation and in imitation of CORE gave it a name whose initials spelled aword COST. Soon there were COST “cells” inremote hill-country high schools, complete withcodes, hand signals, couriers, all the apparatus ofyouthful enthusiasm. Needless to say, the verywords frightened the older Negro leadership outof its wits.

The police hosed and clubbed the sit-inners, theUncle Tom presidents of the captive Jim Crowcolleges expelled them in droves, white studentscame South and insisted on being arrested alongwith the Negroes, sympathy picket lines werethrown in front of almost every chain varietystore in almost every college town in the North.Even some stores with no branches in the South,and no lunch counters anywhere, found them-selves picketed until they cleared themselves ofany implication of Jim Crow.

The effect on the civilised white minority in theSouth was extraordinary. All but a few had goneon accepting the old stereotypes. There weregood Negroes, to be sure, but they didn’t want tomix. The majority were ignorant, violent, bitter,half-civilised, incapable of planned, organisedaction, happy in Jim Crow. “It would takeanother two hundred years.” In a matter ofweeks, in thousands of white brains, the oldstereotypes exploded. Here were the Negrochildren of servants, sharecroppers and garbagemen—“their” servants and sharecroppers andgarbagemen—who had always been content withtheir place, directly engaged in the greatest con-trolled moral action the South had ever seen.They were quiet, courteous, full of good will tothose who abused them; and they sang, softly, alltogether, under the clubs and firehoses, “We willnot be moved.” Long protest walks of silentNegroes, two abreast, filed through the pro-vincial capitals. A major historical moral issuelooked into the eyes of thousands of whitespectators in Southern towns which were solocked in “our way of life” that they wereunaware they lived in a great world. The end ofJim Crow suddenly seemed both near and in-evitable. It is a profoundly disturbing thing tofind yourself suddenly thrust upon the stage ofhistory.

. . . The response on the campuses of the whitecolleges of the South was immediate. There had

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always been inter-racial committees and clubsaround, but they had been limited to a handful ofeccentrics. These increased tremendously, andinvolved large numbers of quite normal students.Manifestations of sympathy with the sit-ins andjoint activities with nearby Negro schools evencame to involve student government and studentunion bodies. Editorials in college papers, withalmost no exceptions, gave enthusiastc support.Believe me, it is quite an experience to eat dinnerwith a fraternity at a fashionable Southern schooland see a can to collect money for CORE at theend of the table.

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More important than sympathy actions forand with the Negroes, the sit-ins stimulated asimilar burst, a run-away brush fire of activityfor all sorts of other aims. They not only stimu-lated the activity, they provided the form and ina sense the ideology. Non-violent direct actionpopped up everywhere—so fast that even thepress wire services could no longer keep track ofit, although they certainly played it up as thehottest domestic news of the day. The actionsdealt with a few things: compulsory ROTC,peace, race relations, civil liberties, capitalpunishment—all, in the final analysis, moralissues. In no case were they concerned withpolitics in the ordinary sense of the word.

Here the ROTC marched out to troop thecolours and found a line of students sitting downacross the parade ground. In another school, aprotest march paraded around and through andbetween the ranks of the marching ROTC,apparently to everybody’s amusement. In otherschools, the faculty and even the administrationand, in one place, the governor joined in protestrallies against ROTC. There were so many peaceand disarmament meetings and marches it isimpossible to form a clear picture—they seem tohave taken place everywhere and, for the firsttime, to have brought out large numbers. Off-campus, as it were, the lonely pacifists who hadbeen sitting out the civil-defence propagandastunt in New York, called their annual “sit out” and were dumbfounded at the turn-out. For thefirst time, too, the court and even the policeweakened. Few were arrested.

The Chessman execution provoked demonstra-tions, meetings, telegrams, on campuses all overthe country. In Northern California, the “massbase” of all forms of protest was among thestudents and the younger teachers. They providedthe cadre, circulated petitions, sent wires, inter-viewed the Governor, and kept up a continuousvigil at the gates of San Quentin. All this activity

was unquestionably spontaneous. At no timedid the ACLU or the regular anti-capital-punishment organisations initiate, or even takepart in, any mass action, whatever else they mayhave done. Chessman, of course, had a tremen-dous appeal to youth; he was young, he was anintellectual, even an artist of sorts; before hisarrest he had been the kind of person they couldrecognise, if not approve of, among themselves.He was not very different from the hero of On theRoad, who happened to be locked up in SanQuentin along with him. As his life drew to aclose, he showed a beautiful magnanimity in allhe did or said. On all the campuses of thecountry—of the world, for that matter—heseemed an almost typical example of the alienatedand outraged youthful “delinquent” of the post-World War II era—the product of a delinquentsociety. To the young who refused to be de-moralised by society, it appeared that that societywas killing him only to sweep its own guilt underthe rug. I think almost everyone (Chessman’ssupporters included) over thirty-five, seriouslyunderestimates the psychological effect of theChessman case on the young.

At all points, the brutal reactionary tendenciesin American life were being challenged, not ona political basis, Left versus Right, but becauseof their patent dishonesty and moral violence.The most spectacular challenge was the riot atthe hearing of the Un-American Activities Com-mittee in San Francisco. There is no question butthat this was a completely spontaneous demon-stration. The idea that Communist agitators pro-voked it is ludicrous. True, all that were left ofthe local Bolsheviks turned out, some thirty ofthem—Stalinists and the two groups of Trotsky-ites. Even the “youth leader” who, twenty-eightyears before, at the age of thirty, had beenassigned to lead the Y.C.L., showed up androared and stomped incoherently, and providedcomic relief. Certainly no one took him seriously.There was one aspect about the whole thingthat was not spontaneous. That was the work ofthe committee. They planned it that way. Overthe protests and warnings of the city administra-tion, they deliberately framed up a riot. When theriot came, it was the cops who lost their nerve andrioted, if rioting means uncontrolled mobviolence. The kids sat on the floor with theirhands in their pockets and sang, “We shall not bemoved.”

Spectacular as it was, there are actions moreimportant than the San Francisco riot. Here andthere about the country, lonely, single individualshave popped up out of nowhere and struck theirblows. It is almost impossible to get informationabout draft resisters, non-registrants, conscien-

41

tious objectors, but here and there one pops up inthe local press or, more likely, in the studentpress.

Even more important are the individual actionsof high school students whom only a hopelessparanoiac could believe anybody had organised. Asixteen-year-old boy, in Queens, and then threein the Bronx, refused to sign loyalty oaths to gettheir diplomas. As kudos are distributed in a NewYork suburban high school, a boy gets up andrejects an award from the American Legion.Everybody is horrified at his bad manners. Acouple of days later two of his prizes are offered tothe two runners-up, who reject them in turn.This is spontaneous direct action if ever there was.And the important thing about it is that in allthese cases, these high school kids have made itclear that they do not object to either loyaltyoaths or the American Legion because they are“reactionary”, but because they are morallycontemptible.

The Negro faculties and presidents of the JimCrow colleges who not only opposed the sit-ins,but expelled dozens of the sit-inners, now foundthemselves faced with deserted campuses. Theywere overtaken by a tremendous groundswell ofapproval of their youngsters’ actions from Negroparents, and were dumbfounded by the sympathyshown by a broad strata of the white South.One by one they swung around, until Uncle Tomswho had expelled students taking part in sit-insduring their Easter vacations in other states, wenton public record as saying, “If your son ordaughter telephones you and says he or she hasbeen arrested in a sit-in, get down on your kneesand thank God.”

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Not only did the New Revolt of Youth becomethe hottest domestic copy in years, but it reachedthe ears of all the retired and semi-retired andcomfortably fixed pie-card artists of every lost andevery long-since-won cause of the labour andradical movements. Everybody shouted, “Myselfwhen young!” and pitched in with applicationblanks. The AFL-CIO sent out a well-knownleader of the Esperanto movement who reportedthat the kids were muddled and confused andlittle interested in the trade-union movementwhich they, mistakenly in his opinion, thought ofas morally compromised. YPSL chapters of theThomasite Socialists rose from the graves oftwenty years. Youth experts with theories aboutwhat their grandchildren were talking about wenton cross-country tours. Dissent had a sub-scription drive. The Trotskyites came up withprogrammes. Everybody got in the act—except,

curiously, the Communists. As a matter of fact,back in a dusty office in New York, they weregrimly deadlocked in their last factional fight.Although the movement was a spontaneousoutburst of direct non-violent action, it didn’tquite please the libertarians and pacifists. Theywent about straightening everybody out, andLiberation came out with an article defining thecorrect Line and pointing out the errors of the ideologically immature.

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As the kids go back to school this fall, this isgoing to be the greatest danger they will face—allthese eager helpers from the other side of the agebarrier, all these cooks, each with a time-testedrecipe for the broth. All over the world this kindof ferment is stewing on college campuses. InKorea and Japan and Turkey the students havemarched and brought down governments andhumbled the President of the greatest power inhistory. So far the movement is still formless, aworld-wide upheaval of disgust.

Is this in fact a “political” upsurge? It isn’tnow—it is a great moral rejection, a kind of massvomit. Everybody in the world knows that we areon the verge of extinction and nobody doesanything about it. The kids are fed up. Thegreat problems of the world today are im-mediate world-wide peace, immediate raceequality, and immediate massive assistance to theformer colonial peoples. All of them could bestarted toward solution by a few decisive acts ofmoral courage amongst the boys at the top of theheap. Instead, the leaders of the two rulingnations abuse each other like little boys caughtout behind the barn. Their apologists stageelaborate military and ideological defences ofMarxian socialism and laissez-faire capitalism,neither of which has ever existed on the earth orever will exist. While the Zengakuren howls in thestreets, Khrushchev delivers a speech on theanniversary of Lenin’s “Leftism, an InfantileDisorder” and uses it to attack—Mao! Meanwhilea boy gets up in a New York suburban school andcontemptuously hands back his “patriotic” prize.He is fed up.

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Reprinted in part from The Nation, by kindpermission of the Editors.

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AS MR. MACLEOD makes arrangements for thegranting of independence to each of Britain’sAfrican colonies, socialists and radicals are boundto try once more to take their bearings. In thepast 15 years almost all of the 1,300 millionpeople who lived in 1945 under colonial rulehave won the right to govern themselves. What,then, is left of imperialism?

In this article, it is proposed to review someof the connections between the history ofcapitalism and empire; then to examine the specialconnections between imperialism and the mono-poly stage of capitalism; and finally to see howfar something that may be called imperialismstill exists today. This subject has recently receivedclose examination by John Strachey in his newbook, The End of Empire, the second of hisprojected studies in the Principles of DemocraticSocialism (Gollancz, 1959). Points where hisanalysis differs from that presented here will bereferred to in footnotes throughout.1

What started Britain on the road to Empire?Innate superiority, absent-mindedness, a semi-mystical will to rule, our island geography?2 Noneof these stock answers can be satisfactory fora Marxist. We shall look for a technological basisfor understanding the social relations of anyhuman culture, but we shall not forget that socialrelations gain a life of their own. Nonetheless,over broad sweeps of history, one may followMarx’s divisions of human history into Slave.Feudal and Capitalist Societies, and Marx’s sub-divisions of Capitalist society into the periodswhen merchant capital, industrial capital andfinance capital were uppermost.

Each of these societies has been a class society,in the sense that a dominant group or class hasbeen able to get others to work for them invarious forms of servile labour. Empires historic-ally have been an extension of the area ofdomination of the ruling group or class from its

own people to other peoples. The fact that thisgroup may have shared with its own people somepart of the advantages accruing to them—thefree bread and circuses of Imperial Rome, forexample—should not blind us to the centralclass, rather than national, character of theexercise.3 Some distinctions must be drawnbetween the drives to empire of merchant capital,industrial capital and finance capital. In the firststage, merchant capital looked mainly to buycheap and to sell dear, if possible to plunder—silks, spices, sugar, precious metals and otherrare luxuries from overseas lands for sale athome and in Europe. Trading posts and plan-tations were established to this end. However,different developments followed in North America,where the empty land was settled by Europeanimmigrants and a new capitalist society estab-lished, and in Africa, India and South America,where no such settlement was possible.

There can be no doubt that this first stage ofconquest and plunder, though small, did muchnot only to set back economic development in theplundered lands, but to nourish the early yearsof Britain’s industrial revolution.

But the first stage of plunder had to be ended.If markets were to be opened up for British goodsall over the world, the competition of Indian andChinese textiles and handicrafts had to bedestroyed. It is from this period that the divisionof the world into rich advanced industrial landsand poor under-developed lands may be dated.

1 Strachey’s important book is discussed in footnotes becausethe stimulus of his work demands a self-consistent statement ofone’s own views, without too many side glances. This article is atribute to his thought-provoking contribution to the discussion.

2 Strachey rather surprisingly advances the theory of a“daemonic” will to empire, “which is now leaving us”, in hisdiscussion of the East India Company. Yet elsewhere he appearsto accept an extreme economic Marxist explanation for the laterstages of Empire.

3 Although Strachey gives many examples of this class characterof empire—pp. 90, 156, 180, 188, 216, 292, 318–9, 321, 327, 329,334, 340–1—he nevertheless makes his definition of empire “theconquest and domination (de jure or de facto) of one people byanother people”.

Michael Barratt Brown

IMPERIALISMYESTERDAY ANDTODAY

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But even then, only in India was direct colonialrule extended. In this second stage, so supremewas Britain’s naval and military strength afterthe Napoleonic wars, and so superior was Britishindustry, that the whole world was Britain’scolony.

In the first years of British industrial develop-ment, the object of foreign trade was to widenthe markets for consumer goods. But industrialisa-tion led to a large capital goods industry. Whenthe railway boom at home ended, overseas marketsfor rails, locomotives and wagons became asimportant as for textiles. But capital equipmentcannot be sold, like textiles, through nativemerchants to individual buyers. Capital goodsrequired overseas loans and investment. Britain’sregular and large annual export surplus in the15 years or so after 1855 provided just suchinvestment-funds—in Europe, the United States,South America, Australia and India. Increasingly,the British state became involved in defendingthe interest of the British oversea bondholder.

The major extension of direct rule after 1880took place because Britain was committed todefend bondholders’ interests, and the bases ofher world power, against the claims of newindustrial competitors. By 1880, both the UnitedStates and Germany had overtaken British basicsteel production, and had begun to look foroverseas colonies. Support therefore grew forBritain to secure herself against competitors inthose parts of the world, outside North America,not yet nominally under British rule. Thisexpansion of Empire was pushed by Empirebuilders on the spot, like Rhodes, and indus-trialists at home like Joseph Chamberlain.

This period of rivalry and partition, from the“scramble” for Africa to the First World Warand after, was the period of high imperialism,and an important debate raged in the earlyyears of this century on the drives to Empire,and the relation of imperialism to capitalism, inthis period. (Hobson, Lenin, Kautsky andHilfreding, among others, were involved.) It is tothis discussion that we turn next.

Hobson and LeninHow much, and in what ways, was imperialism

part of the structure of British capitalism afterthe turn of the century? Hobson argued that thedrive behind the new imperialism at the end ofthe nineteenth century was the pressure of capitalfrustrated of profitable investment opportunitiesat home and looking for employment overseas.The cause of the frustration of capital at homeHobson saw in the lack of consumption poweramong the masses of Britain’s workers. This wasthe “economic taproot of imperialism”. (Strachey

accepts this analysis and builds upon it the wholethesis of his book.)

There are two weaknesses in the Hobsonposition, however. The first is the under-con-sumptionist argument, which does not explainwhy the workers’ consuming power was low inthe first place. This part of Hobson was largelyrejected by Lenin, who emphasised the increasingpressure of monopolies to maximise profit. In thesecond place, there is no simple correlationbetween the outward pressure of capital andgoods for overseas markets, and the expansionof empire. There was little or no increase, infact, in the Empire share either of British overseasinvestment or of British overseas trade after 1880,in the very period when the main expansion ofdirect rule took place. The huge flow of Britishinvestment overseas in the years up to 1913 wentlargely to North America and Australia withsome to Europe and South America.

Over-emphasis on the outward pressure ofcapital, however, may lead to two wrong impres-sions: first, that a great deal of capital flowedinto the colonies, It didn’t, and they would bemuch better off today if it had. (Hobson himselfwas the first to point out that the new lands werequite unsuitable for emigration and too poor formarkets.) Secondly, imperialism, at least inBritain, has never been a purely economic affair.

Posts as colonial governors, especially in India,had become, in the nineteenth century, likeArmy commands—the preserve of the greataristocratic families. Though no longer providingthe same wealth that Clive enjoyed in India,these positions nevertheless carried immensepower and prestige. In many ways, the Empirewas the way to the top for the adventurer andself-made man. In the case of Africa, the pressureto extend direct rule came either from the man onthe spot—an individual speculator playing for thelucky strike, like Cecil Rhodes—or as a directreflection of the European power game. In fact,by the 1890s (the years of Kipling and “jingo”)British imperialism was already established aspart of the social system, though the outwardpressure of capitalism had only just begun.

Lenin, following 16 years after Hobson, seizedprimarily on what had happened in the develop-ment of German capitalism. In his view, imperial-ism began with the period in capitalism when“the enormous growth of industry and theremarkably rapid process of concentration ofproduction in ever larger enterprises” had led tothe growth of monopoly. He then drew a distinc-tion between the earlier phase of “old capitalism,under which free competition prevailed, theexport of goods was typical” (roughly, oursecond stage of imperialism), and the “newest

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capitalism, when monopolies prevail, the exportof capital has become typical”. Thus, he wrote,

“Imperialism is capitalism in that stage ofdevelopment in which the dominance of monopoliesand finance capital has established itself; in whichthe export of capital has acquired pronouncedimportance; in which the division of the worldamong the international trusts has begun; in whichthe division of all the territories of the globe amongthe great capitalist powers has been completed”.(Imperialism, Little Lenin Library, p. 77).

Lenin’s vision certainly seemed true enough ofthe First World War.

His vision of the future of capitalism after 1918was that of a moribund system, parasitic onimperial tribute, stagnating at home while invest-ment flowed overseas. Lenin believed that theworkers—“the grave-diggers of capitalism”—were held back only by the bribery of theirleaders, and that this bribery was derived fromthe tribute exacted from exploited colonialworkers. Was this really how it worked?

Was Capitalism “Moribund?”

By 1870, the flow of investment overseas hadresulted in a great reduction in the cost of importedfood and this, together with increased productivityat home, made for a considerable improvement inthe standard of living of the British working class.Defeated in their claim to share fully in thepolitical life of the nation, they began to enjoyat least some of the benefits of industrialisation.But this was not due to tribute or colonialexploitation. Before 1900, the “tribute” (that is,the income from overseas investment) was quitea small proportion of the national income—alittle more than 4 per cent. And when it wasmore than twice as large as that—in the yearsbefore 1913—it did not obviously hold backthe militancy of the working class. The clearcorrelation between the willingness of the workersto “dig capitalism’s grave” and the size of imperial“tribute”, is not in fact borne out, as Leninapparently thought.

What was true, was that—given the latentjingoism and arrogance of the British peoplebefore 1914—it hardly seemed necessary to offerbribes. When the war threatened in 1914,chauvinism easily asserted itself over internationalworking class solidarity. Moreover, the yearsafter 1917 were revolutionary years in Britain,ending only in the debacle of 1926: and althoughthe corruption of empire and bribery too playedtheir part, they were not the whole story.

To what extent was capitalism, in this period,(as Lenin argued) “moribund”? The advance ofBritish industry had certainly been halted after1870, and this was directly related to the orienta-

tion of capital towards overseas enterprise.Industrial enterprise at home remained inflexible,manufacturing units small, and technical educa-tion almost non-existent. Throughout this period,great industrial opportunities in electricity,chemicals and the application of the internalcombustion engine, were neglected. Savings fromrentier incomes were increasingly attracted intofurther overseas investment. Some part of thisneglect and decay in British industry may beassociated with the interest in empire.

That British industry remained stagnant for solong between the wars certainly can be attributedin good part to the preoccupation of the City withempire and overseas finance. The policies whichled up to the re-establishment of the GoldStandard in 1925 were closely related to thisemphasis—to give the £ strength to face the $.The resulting high prices had a deflationary effectat home and nearly ruined British exports abroad.

Nevertheless, real incomes of the employed didgrow all through the slump years thanks to cheapimports, and this did finally enable British industryto develop the new techniques that science hadbeen offering so long. But the basis for this wasthat very concentration of production units, bymeans of the mergers of the 1920s and the take-over of bankrupt firms in the early 1930s, whichLenin characterised as “monopoly capitalism”.This process of concentration into giant semi-monopolies took place at home and among theoverseas concerns as well. It was the period of therise of Unilevers, Tate and Lyle, ConsolidatedZinc, United Molasses, Brooke Bond Tea,London Tin Corporation, Cadbury, Distillers, andthe tobacco, rubber and oil companies.

The City of London retained its power through-out in its role as bankers, helping to effect themergers of the giant companies. British capitalismthus came to resemble more the German modelwhich Lenin examined. In that way, despite theinefficiencies and wastages and the desolation ofwhole regions, British capitalism made the adjust-ment to the modern world.

The Changing SituationWhat had saved the system was not direct

colonial exploitation or tribute, but the exploita-tion of the terms of trade the world over betweenmanufactures and primary products. This itselffollowed from the earlier division which capitalismestablished between industrial and agriculturalcountries. The colonial economies showed—and,as we shall see, continue to show—the extremeform of this relationship because they were leastable to climb out of it.

In summary, then, we can see that Hobsonand the extension of Empire pressures did

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underpin the whole structure and psychology ofEmpire. Lenin, too, was right in his analysis of therelationship of imperialism to the “moribund” capitalism. Where he was wrong was in hisestimate that capitalism would continue to dependupon imperial tribute until it was destroyed.

How much, then, has imperialism matteredsince the period of rationalisation? The searchfor capital outlets has gone on, but foreigninvestment has none the less played a subordinaterole in post-war capitalism. To commentators,like Mr. Shonfield, annual overseas investmenthas seemed too high: but it is now barely 2 percent of the national income. (This figure must becompared with the nearly 10 per cent of thenational income being invested overseas in 1913.)Income from overseas adds a bare 4 per cent toBritain’s national income annually. Secondly,modern industry is much less concerned with theprice of raw materials. With the one exception ofoil, imported raw materials are being graduallyreplaced by synthetics. Thirdly, technologicalchanges involved in automation and the scale ofstate expenditures on transport, power andwelfare, but chiefly on armaments, have made thehome market a much more important one forcapital equipment than it was. In addition, thereis the question of the search for overseas markets.This is an important factor, and more than oncein the post-war period a falling away of overseasdemand has triggered off or aggravated a reces-sion at home. However, with the remarkablegrowth in trade between developed industrialcountries, Britain has come to rely rather lessthan previously upon securing markets in develop-ing countries.

These are general trends, of course. Theimperial connection remains, and it is still verymuch worthwhile to the City and the overseascorporations. Today, the earnings of the com-panies operating overseas amount to one-fifthof those of all companies quoted on the StockExchange (more than half of that being accountedfor by the two main oil companies alone). Thisis a tidy sum, bringing a good reward to thosedirectly involved; but it is no longer the crucialfactor which Lenin believed. It would be amistake to believe that capitalism could notsurvive even the total loss of the present controlthat it exercises over ex-colonial and less-develop-ed lands.4

Nevertheless, the long historical connectionbetween imperialism and British capitalism had

4 This is still, of course, the official Communist view. R. P.Dutt, in his review of Strachey’s book for the Daily Worker,gives us the most recent example of this view; “The blood of theimperialist tribute (in a hundred more forms than simply theoverseas investment income) courses through all the veins of theBritish economy and gives it the feverish glow of a spurious andtranspient prosperity”.

a direct bearing upon its behaviour after the endof the Second World War.

In a world dominated by the dollar, the City’sfirst concern after 1945 was to re-establish thestrength of the £. With a large American loanto fend off immediate creditors, the major stepin the operation was the creation of a tighterSterling Area out of the old Sterling Bloc. Thiswas achieved by continuing the war-time systemof banking foreign exchange earnings—dollarsin particular—in London. At the same time,currency boards insisted on retaining thesebalances as £ for £ backing for local currencyissues. Big dollar earners (e.g. Malaya andGhana) thus contributed far more dollars thanthey spent. As Professor Arthur Lewis andProfessor Paish emphasised, the colonies werein fact financing Britain. As Mr. Robarts ofFlemings Merchant Bank, Chairman of NationalProvincial, put it, “on such small financialfoundations . . . the enormous achievements ofthe post-war years were built”.

But today, independence carries the right tospend their own foreign exchange, to makefiduciary issues to expand the economy, and toinvest their savings where they choose. Thefreedom may, for a time, be limited by thecontinuing influence of central bankers trained bythe Bank of England, and by the operation oflocal banks which are in fact branches of Londonbanks. But in principle, the ex-colonial peoplesare out in the open, with the right and duty ofstanding up to the imperial banks and the imperialcompanies as best they may. While it lasted, thesuccess of the Sterling Area operation can scarcelybe underestimated. It established the dominantrole of the City over British industry and Con-servative Governments since 1951. It inducedboth Labour and Conservative Governments tohold back imports and encourage exports. Indeed,to achieve the annual surplus for overseas invest-ment, each wave of home investment has beencut back by deflationary policies, Once again.overseas investment has been at the expense ofdevelopment at home.

What Of Imperialism Remains?

But the attempt to build imperialism back intoBritish capitalism after the war by means of theSterling Area was frustrated by the irreversiblepost-war tide of colonial liberation and indepen-dence movements. This process has transformedthe picture. The question then is, what nowremains of imperialism?

This question can only be answered by lookingat the relationship which now exists betweendeveloped and less-developed countries.

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The first aspect of this relationship is the effectof the terms of trade between them. Though therelease of balances will help to finance colonialdevelopment plans, the effects of deflation inBritain, and the reduction of the capacity ofthese territories to purchase British or otherexports, are part of a vicious spiral which stillremains. An economic dependence between richand poor countries, maintained at an earlierstage by direct rule, continues today as part ofthe pattern of trade. The result of the “favour-able” movement since 1951 in the terms of tradefor Britain’s manufactured exports (comparedwith the prices Britain has been paying forimports of food and raw materials) has, un-doubtedly, been to raise the national income ofthe British people at the expense of primaryproducers. And this time, farmers at home havenot suffered along with those overseas, becauseof subsidies which many of them have beenenjoying. This movement has certainly workedalmost wholly to the detriment of less-wellorganised primary producers overseas. Of course,the impoverishment of primary producers beginsto work back into the more industrialisedeconomies, for poor producers, like poorcolonies, make poor markets. For a countrythat lives as we do by processing raw materialsand exporting manufactured goods, this is adangerous procedure. Nevertheless, so far, Britishcapitalism has solved its problems at the expenseof the less-favourably placed peoples.

The Vicious CircleThis polarisation of wealth and poverty between

advanced and under-developed lands through theworking of the terms of trade, is but one aspect ofthe general process which Dr. Gunnar Myrdal hasseized upon in his recent books. The other aspectof it is the vicious circle of rich lands attractingcapital and poor lands repelling it. Dr. Myrdalsums this up in the Biblical words: “Unto every-one that hath shall be given, and he shall haveabundance: but from him that hath not shall betaken away even that which he hath.” In theperiod before 1913, it was precisely in coloniesand under-developed lands that investment didnot take place (except, as Nurkse points out, in“enclaves” of plantation and mineral exploita-tion).5 Similarly, since the war, capital has notgone, as the textbooks would have it, where itwas scarcest, but largely to places where develop-ment was taking or had already taken place—principally Canada, Australia and South Africa.

There has, of course, been some investment toprovide the infra-structure for industrial develop-ment in the colonies (ports, railways, transport,

etc.): but the scale has been small, and directedalmost entirely to the export of raw materials.Secondary and refining industries have continuedto be situated mainly in the metropolitancountries. There is very little spread from theinvestment to the rest of the colonial economy,and what there has been has not gone further thanencouraging small-shopkeeping, trading and those“comprador”6 activities, associated with the rawmaterial export business. This has had a crucialeffect on the development of a native middleclass.7

Successors to ImperialismThe favouring of “comprador” development

has a critical importance for under-developedcountries. Imperial rule has everywhere beenassociated with the preservation of rule by localprinces, landlords, chiefs and sheiks. This is thekey to the distinction between the development ofempty lands settled by Europeans and the stagna-tion of older inhabited lands colonised byEuropean influence or rule. For merchants andcompradors do not develop industry. In thissense, as well as others, the relationship ofa colony to the imperial power has been one ofabsolute distortion, so that the colonies do notstart off on their economic advance now at thepoint reached by, say, Britain 150 years ago. Theystill have to break the grip of feudal lords andtown merchants which have maintained theirpower because of the very nature of imperial rule.

The second effect follows on closely from thefirst. Independence has taken place, since theWar, in very special circumstances, against thebackground of “comprador” native classes alreadyin existence, and with great care taken byimperialist powers to ensure sympathetic andappropriate successors to their rule in countrieswhich were liberating themselves. What hashappened since 1945 is that independence hasbeen granted to just such feudal and compradorgroups as we have been discussing, in most of theBritish colonies. Where rival claimants to thesuccession (from trade union movements, orcommunist or socialist intellectuals) have beentoo strong to allow this, colonial wars have beenfought to guarantee protection of imperial

5 Strachey says that Myrdal’s thesis is the “theoretical crux ofthe whole argument” of his book. He does not make it clear thatMyrdal is contradictory to that part of the Hobson-Lenin viewwhich relied upon the outward pressure of capital, and whichStrachey seemed, earlier, to accept.

6 Comprador was the name given to the Chinese merchants whooperated European factories in the Chinese treaty ports.

7 This is the essential truth in the argument of Paul Baran’sbook, Political Economy Of Growth, which a reader of Dr.Myrdal’s book alone might miss. Strachey grossly under-estimates its importance in his discussion of Baran, pp. 197–9.

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interests (in Malaya and Indo-China, for example).Furthermore, everything has been done—

constitution-mongering, knighthoods, scholar-ships for the colonial elite, the paraphernalia ofJudges wigs, gowns and Parliamentary ceremonial,and the services of British advisers and civilservants—to ensure continuity from colonial topost-colonial rule. Much has also been made ofreligious or national divisions to weaken successorgovernments (India, Palestine, Malaya). The factis that the granting of independence has rarelybeen an act of grace, and where communist-ledparties appeared as successors, as in BritishGuiana, the act has not taken place.

Has this careful selection of successor govern-ments by imperial powers been, as the Com-munists assert, to obtain reliable “custodians” oftheir investments? The answer to this questionmust lie in the Cold War context in which colonialliberation has taken place.

The Cold War ContextIn one aspect, the cold war is precisely con-

cerned with the defence of capitalist positionsagainst communist encroachments. ColonelNasser, with his jails full of communists, shouldbe enough to prove that colonial liberation andcommunist encroachment are not the same thing,but the imperial powers have often based theirpolicies on this misapprehension. Moreover, thecold war is concerned with the overall position ofcapitalism—the “way of life” of the so-called“free world”—and as such falls very much underthe leadership of the United States. Thusindividual imperialist positions may be aban-doned (e.g. in Indonesia or Suez), but the overallstrategy of the West must be maintained (e.g. inSouth Korea, or Southern Viet Nam).

Furthermore, the military moves of the coldwar have developed a logic and momentum oftheir own, only distantly related to the economicconsiderations from which they may derive. Thus,the United States continues to defend the ChiangKai Shek regime in Formosa long after itspossible effect upon the economic development ofmainland China has ended.

It is only in the cold war context that we canunderstand the aid granted, mainly by the US, tounder-developed lands. As much as a quarter ofthe total British Government loans and grantsto the Commonwealth between 1954 and 1959 wasfor the colonial armed and police force. Over halfthe total US aid between 1945 and 1960 has beenmilitary; and it has gone mainly to South Korea,Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, Turkey, Pakistan,Formosa, Thailand, Spain and West Berlin—inthat order.

The major part of United States aid has helpedto maintain in power just those governments(grouped in the anti-communist alliances NATO,CENTO and SEATO) of a feudal or compradortype which, we saw earlier, had a hampering effectupon economic development. It is not so much,as Baran argues, that the capitalist powers want tocheck development in order to keep down wagesin the mines and plantations. But the general defence of capitalism has kept alive SynghmanRhee, Nuri es-Said, Firoz Khan Noon and AdnanMenderes, and other governments of that kind.This special cold war form of imperialism isanother crucial aspect of the relationship betweenadvanced and under-developed lands.

The cold war attempt to defend capitalistpositions in an overall East-West strategy has,in addition, a hard core of economic interest.This is to be seen in the economic role of thegreat imperial corporations, functioning withinthe general cold war context. In many cases, theinfluence of the overseas corporations hasextended beyond independence. Many “emergent” economies, after all, are still dependent upon theoperation of these companies, particularly duringthe transition period. For example, the net profitsof Unilevers in 1959 was £113 million on a turn-over of £1,800 million: the national income ofGhana and Nigeria together are not much morethan £1,000 million. Its influence in West Africais still, clearly, enormous.

“Off-Shore” ImperialismThe case of oil is an instructive example of

“off-shore” imperialism. The Middle Easterncountries are nominally independent. But anythreat to the oil companies has provoked thesharpest reaction in the area. Dr. Moussadek’snationalisation of Anglo-Iranian was frustratedby boycott and then by military coup fromoutside. Colonel Nasser only succeeded in takingover the Suez Canal because Anglo-French andAmerican policies were divided. General Kassem’srevolt in Iraq provoked the American and Britishlandings in Lebanon and Jordan: and he has notnationalised Iraq oil.

Of course, Kassem has used his share of theprofits to develop the Iraqui economy. But theeffects of foreign exploitation cannot be overcomewholly in this way. Because of the cartelised oilmonopolies and their price-fixing power, oilprices to consumers in Europe are bound to beinflated, and huge profits made available for oilcompanies and the ruling groups who share themin oil-bearing countries. The air-conditionedpalaces of the Arab sheiks, banquets deliveredfrom New York by jet plane, and so on, are but afew examples. The result of the continuing interests

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of the overseas corporations is both to exploitthe producing country, to support in powerthose feudal and comprador-based governments,and to oppose any attempts to replace them.

Even where overseas corporations have taken amore enlightened attitude towards independence,or been forced to come to terms with it, theirpriorities still remain opposed to the priorities ofthe countries where they operate. Where theyown mineral resources or large plantations, theywill tend to favour single-crop or single-mineraleconomies, with high profits from migrant labour,whereas the countries will want to oppose boththe extraction of profits, and the exploitation ofcheap labour, and favour balanced economicdevelopment. This they must do to strengthentheir terms of trade position. Apart from the newoil empires, there is one other new development inimperialism: that is the considerable increase inthe investment overseas by manufacturing com-panies. The motor firms, cement companies,electronics manufacturers like AEI and EMI,drug companies like Beecham and Glaxo,artificial textile makers like Courtaulds andTurner & Newall, have all been developingoverseas subsidiaries, mainly in the old dominions,but also in the new. Metropolitan capitalism isnot now so much extending throughout the worldits marketing and raw-material sources, asspreading its industrial undertakings, even intounder-developed lands.

The Imperial CompaniesThe influence of the imperialist companies is,

therefore, still very important. And even those“progressive” firms which support the emergenceof local capitalists against the more backward-looking feudal rulers, reach the frontier of theirtolerance as soon as there is any threat of theterritory being withdrawn from the sphere ofcapitalism itself. Thus the cold war alliances, Suez,the Lebanon and Jordan landings, gun boats inthe Persian Gulf and off Honduras and BritishGuiana, economic sanctions against Cuba—theseare only the most open demonstrations of asteady pressure that goes on all the time to retaingovernments throughout the world favourableto capitalism. The effect of the cold war and theeconomic interests of the imperial companies haverun very close indeed. Empire, as we discussedearlier, is the extension of the power of a class,of an economic and social system, from onecountry to another: direct political rule is onlyone way of achieving this.

What, then, is the balance of forces in the post-war period? The old factors are no longer soimportant as they were: the outward pressure of

capital and goods, the reliance upon tribute, theinterest in direct colonial rule. But is a similarimperialist effect achieved by the other factors—particularly the imperial companies and the ColdWar? Imperialism remains but we must not forgetthat new factors have entered the scene—particu-larly the growth of the Soviet bloc, and the riseof the emergent territories to independence.

Pattern of External PowerIn spite of this, imperialism still remains.

It is that vicious circle of poverty to which theunder-developed territories are bound. This pat-tern or relationship between the “haves” and“have-nots” is held in place by certain historicaldistortions which still obtain: the terms of trade,the distorted single-crop or single-mineral depen-dence of their economies, the entrenched positionof feudal and comprador governments which holdback development. This pattern is further ag-gravated by two powerful factors: the cold war,which has drawn the less-developed territorieswithin the Western strategy of a general defence ofcapitalist positions against communism; and thedeeply-embedded influence of the imperial com-panies, even in so-called “independent” countries.This is a system of external power, no longerresting—except in the settler territories—on directrule, but an indirect system of power whoseinfluence lies directly athwart the path to develop-ment.

How can this structure of power and influencebe broken? We have to convince the Britishpeople that they have every possible reason toencourage the economic development of the poorlands of the world, not only as a moral questionto make up for past neglect but from sheer self-interest. We are above all a trading nation and thegreatest amount of trade is carried on betweeneconomically developed nations. We have theskills and engineering capacity which the wholeworld needs to carry through its industrialisation.But to do this the under-developed lands willneed not only economic aid and long-term agree-ments on trade exchange and price stabilisation;they will need support of every kind for pro-gressive governments, including those that are ledby communists, who are trying to modernise theircountries. We have to give the United Nationsfunds to develop as well as power to police.We have nothing to lose from the demise ofimperialism and everything to gain from endingthe cold war.

It is a smaller and smaller number of people—itwas never large—who gain from the remainingimperialist relationships of the great imperialcompanies. For many years now infinitely greater

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benefits have accrued to ordinary people from theapplication of man’s growing knowledge of howhis natural environment may be controlled thanever came from plunder and exploitation. But thiscontrol involves man in ever widening inter-dependence. The advance of one is conditionalupon the advance of all. What men can do byco-operating exceeds by far anything that was wonin the past by conquest and war. The possibilitiesof man’s fullest personal development, free fromcold and hunger, ill health, insecurity and heavytoil, unite us together as never before.

This is the alternative vision to capitalism thatwe have to propagate. There is much, however, inour imperialist past that prevents our doing this.It will take a positive act of will, which we each

must make, for Europeans to bring themselves tothink of Africans, Asians, Arabs and AmericanIndians as not only deserving of our aid but ascomrades with whom to build a new co-operativecommonwealth out of the old corrupt and unjustempire of capitalism and its feudal and com-prador allies.8 It will also take a major shift ofeconomic and political power at home. It shouldhelp that the same capitalist companies thatdistort our lives for profit are frustrating theirstoo.

8 Strachey’s emphasis of the need to give aid, as a palliative toan uneasy conscience, misses the point that Keynesian remedieswill not carry through the industrialisation of the world. Onlyfundamental changes in class relations inside the under-developedlands will make it possible to do the job.

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. . . As a result of low and illegal tactics by thewill of those who rule today, and the weakness onthe part of those who judge, here I am in this littleroom in the Civil Hospital, where I have beenbrought up to be judged in secret so that I mightnot be heard, so that my voice be muffled, andthat no one might learn the things I am goingto say. Why then not have an imposing Palace ofJustice where the judges, no doubt, would bemuch more comfortable? It is not wise, I warnyou, to impart justice from a room in a hospitalsurrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets,because the people might believe that our justiceis sick . . . and that it is a prisoner . . . . . . . I listened to the Dictator on Monday, July 27,while I was in a shack up in the mountains, whenthere were still eighteen of us under arms. Thosewho have never before lived such moments willnever know the meaning of bitterness and scorn.Just as the long-cherished hopes of liberating ourpeople came tumbling down, we saw the despotloom over them haughtier than ever. The flood ofstupid, hateful and repugnant lies and calumniesthat gushed from his mouth were only equal tothe flood of youthful and clean blood being spilledsince the night before, with his full knowledge,complicity, consent, and applause, by the mostheartless gang of assassins that a human mind canconceive. To have believed what he said even forone second, would have been sinful enough tomake a conscientious man live repentant andashamed for the rest of his life. With a ring ofmore than a thousand men closing in on us,carrying weapons of longer range and greaterpower than ours and with orders to return withour bodies, I didn’t even have the hope then ofever tattooing on his miserable forehead the truthwhich would stigmatise him for the rest of hisdays and unto eternity. But on this day with thetruth beginning to be known, when I finish themission which I imposed upon myself I can die apeaceful and happy death. Therefore, I shall with-hold no blows against those furious murderers.. . . The Prosecutor seemed very interested inknowing what our possibilities of success were.Our possibilities were based on technical, militaryand social reasons. Some have tried to establishthe myth that modern arms make impossible an

open and frontal fight of the people againsttyranny. Military parades and pompous exhibi-tion of war equipment have, as a primary objec-tive, the fomenting of this myth, thus creatingamong the citizens a complex of absolute im-potence. But no weapon, no force is capable ofovercoming a people who are determined to fightfor their rights.. . . When we speak of people, we do not mean thewell-to-do, conservative segments of the nationalways ready to reap some advantage from anyregime of oppression, from any dictatorship, andfrom despotism, kneeling down, if need be, beforeeach master in turn. When we mention the peoplein connection with a struggle we mean the un-redeemed masses to whom everything is offeredbut nothing given except deceit and betrayal; thegroup that longs for a better and more worthy andjust country; the group with ancestral longings forjustice, having suffered injustice and mockery forgenerations untold; the group that desires greatand wise changes in all the order of things, beingready to give the last drop of blood in order toattain them once it believes in something or insomeone and, especially, when they believesufficiently in themselves.. . . When we speak of battle and we refer to thepeople, we mean the six hundred thousand Cubanswho are out of work and who want to earn anhonest living here instead of having to emigrate insearch of a better opportunity; we mean the fivehundred thousand farm workers who live inmiserable huts, working four months and goinghungry with their children the rest of the year,with not an inch of land to farm, and whoseexistence would move us to compassion were it notthat we are so stony-hearted; by people we meanthe four hundred thousand industrial workers andlabourers whose retirement funds have beenrobbed, and from whom all benefits are beingtaken away, whose housing consists of singlerooms in tenement houses, whose salaries gofrom the hands of the employer to those of themoney lender, whose future is a cut in wages anddismissal, whose life is one of never-ending work,and whose only hope for rest lies in the grave; bypeople we mean the hundred thousand share-croppers who live and die working a land that is

Extract from Fidel CastroAt dawn,July 26th,1953,Fidel Castro and a small

band attacked the Military Barracks at Santiago, a stronghold of the Batista dictatorship. This attack,

though unsuccessful, succeeded in awakening the conscience of the Cuban people: it marked the birth of the

revolution. The following is an Extract from the speech, History Will Absolve Me, which Fidel Castro

delivered to the military court.

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not theirs, contemplating it as Moses did thePromised Land, only to die before managing toown it, and, like feudal slaves having to pay for theuse of that land with a large part of the crop; andwho can neither love that land nor improve it norbeautify it by planting a cedar tree or an orangetree, because they know not when the bailiff willcome around with the rural guard to tell themthey must leave; by people we mean the thirtythousand self-sacrificing teachers and professors,so indispensable for the better destiny of futuregenerations, who are so badly treated and poorlypaid; by people we mean the twenty thousanddebt-ridden small merchants, ruined by theeconomic crisis and to whom venal public officialsare dealing the finishing blow; by people we meanthe ten thousand young professionals; doctors,engineers, lawyers, veterinarians, dentists,teachers, pharmacists, journalists, painters,sculptors, etc., who leave the universities with theirdegrees willing to fight for a living and full ofhopes only to find themselves in a dead-end alley,with all doors closed to their clamour and pleas.Those are the ones I call people, those are theones I mean when I say people, the ones that sufferall the misfortunes and because of it are capableof fighting courageously! To these people, whoseroad of anguish is paved with deceit and falsepromises we would not say: “We are going togive”, but rather, “Here you are; now fight withall your might so that you may be happy andfree!”

A Revolutionary Programme. . . A revolutionary government counting on the

support of the people and the respect of theNation, once it makes a complete sweep of allvenal and corrupt office holders, would proceedimmediately to industrialise the country, tomobilise all inactive capital through the NationalBank and the Bank for Industrial and Agri-cultural Development, submitting that giant taskto the study, organisation, planning and finalrealisation of and by technicians and men ofabsolute capability, free from political meddling.

After making the hundred thousand smallfarmers owners of the land for which they nowpay rent, a revolutionary government wouldproceed to end the land problem once and for alltime. This would be done first, by establishing—asthe Constitution says—a limit to the extent ofland a person may own for each type of agri-cultural undertaking, acquiring any excess byexpropriation; by recovering the lands usurpedfrom the State; by drying swamps; by setting asidezones for tree nurseries and reforestation.Secondly, by distributing the rest of the land

available among the rural families preferably tothose large in number; by setting up co-operativesfor farmers for the common use of costly farmequipment, cold storage, etc. with technicalguidance by experts in cultivation of crops andthe breeding of livestock. Finally, by makingavailable all resources, equipment, protection andknow-how to farmers.

A revolutionary government would solve theproblem of housing by lowering rent fifty percent; by giving tax exemptions to houses in-habited by their owners; by tripling the taxes onhouses built to rent; by replacing the ghastlyone-room flats with modern multi-storey build-ings; and by financing a housing project to coverthe Island on a scale never before seen, whichwould be based on the principle that if in therural area the ideal is for each family to own itsland, then in the city the ideal would be for eachfamily to own its house or apartment.. . . Finally, and in order to properly prepare the

generation who are to live in a happy Nation, arevolutionary government would proceed to atotal reform of our educational system, placingthis reform at the same level of importance asother problems to be solved. Don’t forget thewords of José Martí: “A big error is being com-mitted in Latin America. In nations which livealmost completely off the products of their land,the people are educated exclusively for urban lifeand are not prepared for life on a farm.” “Thehappier people are those who educate theirchildren on how to think for themselves and onhow to guide their sentiments.” “An educatedpeople will always be strong and free.” . . . Even though this trial, as you have said, is the

most important ever held since the establishmentof the Republic, what I may say here shallprobably get lost within the plot to silence me.Think not that you are judging a man now, butthat you shall be judged over and over againwhen the present will be submitted to the crushingcriticism of future times. Then, what I may havesaid here will be often repeated, not because I wasthe one who said it, but rather because theproblem of justice is eternal, and the people havea profound sense of it over and above the opinionsof jurists and theoreticians. The people have andmake use of a sound simple logic implacably atodds with all which is absurd and contradictory;and if any people heartily hates privilege and in-equality, it is the Cuban people. They know thatJustice is represented by a blind-folded womanholding a scale and a sword. If they see herkneeling before some and furiously brandishingthe sword against others they will imagine her aprostitute holding a dagger in her hand. That isthe simple logic of the people.

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THE EXTENSION of culture has to be consideredwithin the real social context of our economic andpolitical life. All studies of the growth of particularcultural institutions show a real expansion, whichof course is continuing, but show also the extentto which this is affected or determined by otherfacts in the society. In the 1960s, the rate ofgrowth seems promising, and we are busy withplans to maintain and increase it. Yet here, veryclearly, is a major contradiction easily overlookedby following a simple rising graph. For while realart and argument are being more widely enjoyed,the distribution of a bewildering variety of badart and bad argument is increasing even morerapidly. We are reaching the point where thecontradiction between these different lines andrates of growth is serious and inescapable, yeteven those who see this situation feel particularlyuncertain about what can be done.

We must look first at a particular and localcontradiction which can quickly confuse any suchdiscussion. If someone proposes ways of extend-ing good art and argument, and of diminishingtheir worst counterparts, someone else usuallyanswers that we mustn’t be snobs: that football,after all, is as good as chess; that jazz is a realmusical form; that gardening and homemakingare also important. Who exactly is someone likethis arguing with, since it is usually obvious thathe is not really arguing with the man to whomhe replies? Unfortunately he is arguing with actualpeople and a familiar way of feeling. It is truethat certain cultural forms have been used as away of asserting social distinction, and that muchwholesale condemnation of new forms has been away of demonstrating the inferiority of those twogroups who have regularly to be put in their(lower) place: the masses and the young. Thishabit has to be resisted, but there is equal dangerin a popular form of demagogy which, by the useof selective examples, succeeds in avoiding theproblem of bad culture altogether. Can we agree,perhaps, before passing to the more difficultquestions, that football is indeed a wonderfulgame, that jazz is a real musical form, and thatgardening and homemaking are indeed important?Can we also agree, though, that the horror-film,the rape-novel, the Sunday strip-paper and thelatest Tin-Pan drool are not exactly in the same

world, and that the nice magazine romance, themanly adventure story (straight to the point ofthe jaw) and the pretty, clever television advertise-ment are not in it either? The argument againstthese things, and the immense profits gained bytheir calculated dissemination, cannot afford tobe confused by the collateral point that a goodliving culture is various and changing, that theneed for sport and entertainment is as real as theneed for art, and that the public display of ‘taste’,as a form of social distinction, is merely vulgar.

In a rapidly changing and therefore confusedsociety, in which cultural forms will in any casechange but in which little is done by way ofeducation to deepen and refine the capacity forsignificant response, the problems that confrontus are inevitably difficult. Two parallel efforts arenecessary: on the one hand the maximumencouragement of artists who are seriously tryingto create new forms or do significant work intraditional forms; on the other hand, the steadyoffering and discussion of this work, includingreal criticism and therefore its distinction at leastfrom calculated and indifferent manipulation.It would be wrong to say that these efforts arenot being made: some help, though still in-adequate, is being given to the arts; some respon-sible offering and discussion are publicly under-written. These policies fall within the evolutionaryconception: a steady encouragement of elementsof valuable growth. But while supporting them,and certainly wishing to see them extended, I findit difficult to feel that they go to the root of theproblem. For it is usually not recognised thatinferior and destructive elements are being muchmore actively propagated: that more is spent, forexample, on advertising a new soap, and im-printing a jingle attached to it, than on supportingan orchestra or a picture gallery; and that inlaunching two new magazines, one trying to do aserious new job, the other simply competing tocapture a share of a known popular market, theratio of comparative investment is ludicrous, forhardly anything is behind the former, while hugesums of money are poured out on the latter. Thecondition of cultural growth must be that varyingelements are at least equally available, and thatnew and unfamiliar things must be offeredsteadily over a long period, if they are to have a

Raymond Williams FREEDOM & OWNERSHIP IN THE ARTS

This is part of the final Chapter of The Long Revolution, which will be published by Chatto and Winduslater this autumn.

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reasonable chance of acceptance. Policies of thisdegree of responsibility seem impossible in ourpresent cultural organisation. The encouragementof valuable elements is restricted to what is littlemore than a defensive holding operation, which ofcourse is better than nothing but which is hardlylikely to make any general change. The rest of thefield is left to the market, and not even to thefree play of the market, for the amounts of capitalinvolved in financing our major cultural institu-tions restrict entry to a comparatively few power-ful groups, so that both production and distribu-tion are effectively in very few hands. The seriousnew magazine referred to, usually the result of amajor voluntary effort by a group of dedicatedpeople, is unlikely to be even available for buying,in the sense of lying ready on the average book-stall where somebody might try it, while the newcommercial magazine will be so widely displayedthat it can hardly be avoided. It is then stupidand even vicious, when it is clear that no realcompetition exists, to use the evidence of im-mediate results as proof of the unalterablevulgarity of the public. Instead of the ritualindignation and despair at the cultural conditionof ‘the masses’ (now increasingly uttered even bytheir supposed friends) it is necessary to breakthrough to the central fact that most of ourcultural institutions are in the hands of specu-lators, interested not in the health and growth ofthe society, but in the quick profits that can bemade by exploiting inexperience. True, underattack, these speculators, or some of them, willconcede limited policies of a different kind, whichthey significantly call ‘prestige’; that is to say,enough to preserve a limited public respectabilityso that they will be allowed to continue to operate.But the real question is whether a society canafford to leave its cultural apparatus in suchirresponsible hands.

Conceiving An Alternative

Now I think many people feel the strength ofthis question, but feel even more strongly thedifficulties of any possible alternative. Steady andparticular encouragement, in the obvious limitedfields, is quite widely approved, but any attemptto tackle the whole situation runs into majordifficulties. For it is obvious that the amount ofcapital and effort required , to make any substan-tial change, can come only from public sources,and to this there are two objections. The first isthe question whether such resources are reallyavailable, on the scale required. This goes back tothe difficulty discussed earlier: that we find italmost impossible to conceive the financing of

social policy out of the social product, and havenever learned a system of accounting which wouldmake this possible or even visible. For it is true,of course, that the present investment comes fromthe society and economy as a whole. The supplyof advertising money (the contemporary equiva-lent of manna) can only come in the end from us,as workers and buyers, though it is now routedthrough channels that give control of thissocial capital to very limited groups. If we canrealize that we are paying for the existing culturalsystem, by one kind of organisation of theeconomy, we need not be frightened by the scaleof resources required, since that organisation isin fact subject to change. We should be muchclearer about these cultural questions if we sawthem as a consequence of a basically capitalistorganisation, and I at least know no better reasonfor capitalism to be ended. It is significant that theliveliest revolt against the existing system,particularly among the new young generation, isin precisely these cultural terms.

But then the second objection is deeply involvedwith this point. What is the alternative to capital-ism? Socialism. What is a socialist culture? Statecontrol. There are many good liberals, and manyanxious socialists, who draw back if this is theprospect. Better even the speculators, they say,than the inevitable horde of bureaucrats, officialbodies, and quite probably censorship.

This difficulty has a representative significance.It is not only in cultural questions, but in thewhole area of thinking about change in oursociety, that this knot is tied. Here is the deepestdifficulty in the whole development of our demo-cracy: that we seem reduced to a choice betweenspeculator and bureaucrat, and while we do notlike the speculator, the bureaucrat is not exactlyinviting either. In such a situation, energy issapped, hope weakens, and of course the presentcompromise between the speculators and thebureaucrats remains unchallenged.

Democratic policies are made by open discus-sion and open voting. In relatively small bodies,contact between members and policies can beclose, though even here some responsibility fordecisions will be passed to elected representativesrather than to members as a whole, and wheremuch administrative work is necessary will alsobe passed to officials. The principle of the officialin a democratic organisation is quite clear: headministers within an elected policy, and is respon-sible to the membership for his actions. Thepractice, we all know, can be otherwise, but givenan adequate constitution and genuine equality ofmembership it is still the best and most responsiblesystem known.

There are strong arguments for the national

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organisation of the means of cultural exchange,but the persistent danger, even in a democraticcountry, is that too large an organisation becomesrigid and in a sense impenetrable. Any adequatecultural organisation must be open, flexible andcommitted to genuine variety of expression. Itwould seem simple to say that the best people torun the various cultural organisations are thosewho use them for the production of their ownwork, for here is the deepest and most practicalinterest in keeping the organisation flexible andopen. Yet it is equally clear that the actual pro-ducers of cultural work cannot, from their ownresources, command the ownership of any butthe simplest means. Where indeed they can do so,no change is necessary. But in the press, in broad-casting and television, in the cinema and theatreit is obvious that this simple co-operative owner-ship is impossible. This ought not then to mean,however, that the control of these expensive meansshould be made available to the highest bidder,especially when he is not even particularlyinterested in the actual work but mainly in itsfinancial possibilities. The signs are, in contem-porary Britain, that this worst of all arrangementsis becoming normal, with a dominant policycriterion of profit and with the producers turnedinto employees within this emphasis. In press andtelevision this is especially the case, and powerfulinterests are working to extend the same systemto broadcasting. It is urgent to define the alter-native principle, which I think can only be thatwhen the producers cannot themselves own themeans of their work, these must be owned by thecommunity in trust for the producers, and anadministration set up which is capable of main-taining this trust. The difficulties here are obvious,but all administration and constitution-making infact proceed from an emphasis of what is desir-able, and I believe that if we can agree that thisend is desirable, no society is better qualified fromexperience to devise adequate practical methods.

Publicly-Owned Theatres

In the drama, for example, it would be possiblefor most theatres to be publicly owned, preferablyby local authorities though perhaps with a smallnational network in addition, and then licensedto companies of actors. It would then be possiblefor these companies, through open regional andnational organisations which they would be freeto join or not as they decided, to pursue resonablylong-term policies by the guarantee that a particu-lar production would go to a series of theatres,when financially necessary. Similar arrangementscould be made, through permanent and regular

liaison, with the broadcasting and televisionservices. The advantages to the drama of per-manent companies creating their own varyingtraditions, in a context of adequate professionalsecurity, would undoubtedly be great: almost allthe good work we have now in the theatre comesfrom such companies, which are left, though, tostruggle on as they can with the hope of beingeventually hired by the speculators who control the big national theatres. If we are serious aboutfreedom in the arts, we can give it, in this way, toactual artists.

Publishing and The Cinema

In the cinema, a related system is possible. Asthings now are, the makers of films are almostwholly in the hands of the distributors, whodecide, by certain crude tests, whether a film isworth making before it is made. This is the free-dom of the artist which our liberals so com-placently defend. It is clear that the number ofcinemas is in any case going to decline. Theopportunity this presents of a sensible re-organisation ought not to be missed. The cinemasshould become publicly owned and vested in anindependent public authority. There should be atleast two or three circuits, including one specialisedcircuit, to ensure alternatives. Production shouldbe in the hands of independent permanentcompanies, which as in the case of the theatrewould have to satisfy the public authority of theirprofessional competence. Public money shouldthen be made available to these companies, forthe making of films which would be guaranteedexhibition on one of the circuits. The moreindependent companies there are the better, andit would be encouraging to see some links betweensome of these and the theatre companies alreadyreferred to. A possible organisation of theindependent authority would be joint represen-tation between officers appointed by and respon-sible to Parliament and representatives elected bythe permanent companies.

In the case of books, we already have a goodrange of independent publishers, though thepressures on them to surrender independentpolicies are severe. A rapid process of amal-gamation (often retaining apparently independentimprints) seems to be under way, and new kindsof owner, often little concerned with literature,are becoming more common. With high costs,and the wide opportunities of the “paperbackrevolution”, it seems that a stage has beenreached very similar to that in newspapers at theturn of the century. The quantitative thinking

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that can follow from such a system would bedisastrous to publishing, past a certain point, andI think the time has come for an enquiry intothe facts of recent changes, and possible coursesof action. Meanwhile it is of vital importance thatpublishers who pursue, as now, responsible andtherefore varying policies should be given allpossible help. This can probably best be done inthe now chaotic field of distribution. It is astanding disgarce that there should be hundredsof towns without anything that can be called adecent bookshop. The good independent book-seller performs an especially valuable service, butunless he is lucky in his locality he will often gounder. The existing chain shops apply to booksand periodicals simple tests of quantity: below acertain figure they do not consider particularitems worth handling. Is this any kind of freedom,or free availability? I think we could set up aBooks Council, representative on the one handof publishers, booksellers and authors, on theother hand of Parliament, which would have theduty of ensuring the continued independence ofpublication, and at the same time the best possibledistribution of books and periodicals here andoverseas. The pressure to reduce publications toa limited number of standard items, easily soldin quantity, should be resisted as a matter ofpublic policy. Such a Council could reviewexisting bookselling arrangements, and whereverit found (as it would now widely find) that thereal range of books and periodicals is not offered,it would have power to establish and guaranteeindependent enterprises committed to the policyoutlined. It is very odd that we have acceptedthis principle, in the public library service, forthe borrowing of books, but are still so far shortof it in terms of books that readers can buy andkeep.

Newspapers and Magazines

In the case of newspapers and magazines, wehave to deal with a situation in which control ispassing into fewer and fewer hands, within apolicy dedicated not to the quality of newspapersand magazines but to their profitability. Thecriterion of profitability is being raised to absurdlevels, in which for example a daily newspapermay have to cease publication if less than amillion people buy it, and in which a steadydecline in the number of newspapers and maga-zines seems assured. Again, is this freedom, orfree availability? The quality of newspapers isunlikely to be raised either by exhortation orcensorship. Experience in all other fields suggests

that standards in a profession rise when they arein the control of members of that profession. Suchprofessional responsibility is now virtually im-possible, as a permanent and consistent policy,since the whole organisation of the press (likethe organisation of the cinema and the theatre)creates a different atmosphere, in which standardsare set by the controllers, on an estimate of likelyprofit, and the actual producers instead of feelinga common responsibility to their work areencouraged, in far too many cases, to competewith each other in supplying a predeterminedarticle. Personal standards will always vary, butit is a poor society which creates institutions thatgive success to the least scrupulous and the leastconcerned. Any attempt to reform these institu-tions, though, is met with prolonged abuse andmisrepresentation. Obviously we do not want astate-owned press, but I think we have reachedthe point where we need a new Press Council,including public and elected journalist repre-sentatives, charged with the maintenance andextension of genuinely independent newspapersand magazines. We need in particular to ensurethe survival of local newspapers, and I think it isessential that these should become locally ownedand managed, as very few of them now are. Thereare serious objections to involving local authoritiesin the ownership of local newspapers, though incertain cases this might be done. More generally,the guarantee of independence, and any necessaryprovision of capital, should be accepted as apublic service at national level, through a PressCouncil including, as defined, journalist repre-sentatives. The same public service principleshould be applied to magazines, on termsguaranteeing independence to professionallyrecognised editorial bodies. With experience, thisprinciple could be extended to the national press.I do not see why the editorial bodies of anynewspaper or magazine should not be free, bytheir own democratic decision, to apply to sucha Press Council to be recognised as an independententerprise, which would then be guaranteed free-dom from any external private financial control.The terms on which this recognition and supportwould be granted would be the producers’ owndefinition of policy. There might be cases whenthe Council, including public and professionalrepresentatives, would be unwilling to underwritea particular policy proposed, but in such caseswe should be no worse off than we are now: sucha policy could be tried on the market, or financedmuch as now, for of course there can be noquestion of any newspaper or magazine beingforbidden to publish. I think that with experienceand goodwill a majority of professionally respon-sible independent papers could be built up, and

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even if we did not achieve a majority, we shouldat least have ensured that no newspaper ormagazine could be killed by a financial organisa-tion indifferent to quality and interested only inimmediate profit. Reform can only come fromwithin, in such a field, if it is publicly supported.

Broadcasting and Television

In broadcasting and television we see animperfect but still generally responsible publicauthority, the BBC, powerfully challenged by newkinds of organisation. It is obvious, as theseservices extend, that we need the continualextension of choice, but it is doubtful if we shallget this, on any responsible basis, if we construeindependence as the possession of working capitalfrom elsewhere (mainly, as now, from advertising).There might well be two or more public authoritiesowning the technical means of distribution, butthe same principle holds as before: policy canbe generally defined by the public authorities,but the provision of actual work must be in thehands of the real producers. Practical networksexist, and their wide use is clearly desirable, butwhat one would like to see serving them is avariety of independent groups, with genuine localaffiliations and alternative policies. The existingprogramme companies, in commercial television,are hardly ever of this kind, but are essentiallya congeries of financial interests employing thereal producers. It should be a matter of publicpolicy to encourage the formation of professionalcompanies to whom the technical means ofdistribution would be made available by thepublic authorities. The core of such groups wouldbe the professional broadcasting and televisionproducers, who would work out means ofassociation with other professional companies inthe theatre, the cinema and the press, withorchestras and other similar institutions of theirregion, and preferably with wider local organi-sations, including education committees and thegreat voluntary societies. In this way the dangersboth of a central monopoly and of simplesurrender to the speculators could be avoided.

I am very much aware, in putting forwardthese outline proposals, that much remains to bedone in detailed planning and in improvement,by discussion between all those with relevantexperience. I do not suppose that any of thesemeasures of reorganisation would be easy, butI do claim, emphatically, that we can envisage acultural organisation which would greatly extendthe freedom of the cultural producers, by thesensible application of public resources to cut

out their present dependence on dominant butessentially functionless financial groups, and byforms of contract which, while preserving respon-sibility in the spending of public money, wouldgive the producers control over their actual work.This is surely a hopeful way forward, andconstitutions can in fact always be devised ifthere is substantial agreement on principles.

The matter is now urgent, for while some liberalsstill shy away from reform in the name of thefreedom of the artist, or argue that culture in anycase can never be organised (the spirit blowethwhere it listeth), a very rapid reorganisation of adifferent kind is in fact going on, with the areaof real ownership and independence shrinking inevery part of our culture, and seeming certainto continue to do so. I must plainly ask suchliberals what they are really defending, for thereseems little in common between the freedom theyvalue and the actual freedom described recentlyby an owner of a television service and a greatchain of newspapers as “a licence to print yourown money”. We have reached a crisis in whichfreedom and independence can only be saved ifthey are publicly assured and guaranteed, andthe ways I propose seem a working basis for this,taking care as they do to avoid or minimise thereal dangers of bureaucracy and state control.

Would the quality of our cultural life be im-proved by such measures? I feel certain that itwould, in the real energies that would be released,but I am not thinking in terms of any overnighttransformation. I say only that the channels wouldbe more open, that the pressure for quick profitwould be lifted, and that a more genuine rangeof choices would be made available. My wholecase about social change is, moreover, that theinterdependence of elements which I described asa matter of theory is an argument for conceivingchange on the widest possible front: the changes inemphasis in our economy, in our ordinaryworking relationships, in our democratic institu-tions, and in education are all relevant to culturalchange in this more explicit field. I would repeatmy emphasis on the over-riding educationalproblem: the provision of new kinds of educationfor the now neglected majority between 15 and21. The growth of adult education is alsorelevant: much more could be done to housethis increasing work properly, at the centre ofits communities and to improve its connectionswith wider cultural services. The more all thisnew work could be brought together, so thatthese new kinds of community service could beseen as factually linked—buying and learning,using and appreciating, sharing and discrimina-ting—the more likely a healthy cultural growthwould be.

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from JUDITH HART, M.P.“GROUPS HAVE never thirsted after truth,” saidFreud. “They demand illusions, and cannot dowithout them. They constantly give what is unrealprecedence over what is real.” If Labour’selectoral losses are seen as the sharp death of anillusion that had gripped a decade—an illusionthat electoral success must reward patience andzeal and devotion, and that the nation must surelyset socialist logic against capitalist myth—thenthe General Election of 1959 provides as good astarting-point as any for the analysis of apathy.

But we deceive ourselves dangerously once moreif we think that political failure is the only motivewhich should prompt a search for a “newdynamic”. That way lie the temptations andenticements of Mr. Crosland and Mr. Jenkins andthe other sirens of revisionism. If the search fortruth in a new social situation is once accepted asmerely a means to a 1965 election victory, we shallagain be lost in the myths of the collective un-conscious and corrupted by the search for an easyroute to power.

The need to restate socialist truths on the basisof up-to-date analysis, is, of course, an end initself. Indeed, there is a considerable acceptanceof the view that our present troubles beset usbecause we lost sight of the urgency of the needfor constant reappraisal of a rapidly-changingsociety between 1945 and 1951. We have goodexcuses for our intellectual stagnation. It was ourmisfortune that a Labour government’s economicpolicies, restricting conspicuous consumption andestablishing a social minimum, inhibited thecrystallisation of the new economic and socialpattern so comprehensively and vividly describedby Ralph Samuel and Stuart Hall. Nor could weknow until 1951 how far British capitalism wasready to accept Keynsian doctrine to make itssystem more workable and more acceptable.

Now we accept and urge the need for new socialanalysis. On this at least Socialist Commentary andVictory for Socialism can agree. Out of Apathydoes the movement real service in offering onewhich is sound in its generalisations and oftenbrilliant in its detail.

Does it do more than this? I am not sure that itintended to answer the question posed by E. P.Thompson in his last chapter, “Revolution”: he

asserts the “positives” on which the socialistcommunity is to be built, and asks “How is thisto be done?” His only answer seems to be thatwe must “place the transition to the new societyat the head of the agenda,” “make the context” within which Parliament legislates, and organise abreakthrough in foreign policy. With all of this,of course, one wholeheartedly agrees (and I aminclined to believe him right in judging theforeign policy issue to be the most likely earlypoint of breakthrough) but is not seized of anysudden revelation of hidden truth. Perhaps thereal truth is that there is little new to be said abouthow the labour movement is to achieve power. Weknow it all so well: we know that we mustpersuade and convince and arouse and that theway is hard.

To this extent, E. P. Thompson’s preoccupa-tions with the distinctions between revolution andevolution is unconstructive, and poses an artificialdilemma. The violent proletarian revolutiondemands moral indignation on a wide andpassionate scale; so does the democratic seizureof political power. “Popular pressures of greatintensity” are a precondition of either. If they areabsent, to postulate a choice between the two isacademic. If they are present, they can acteffectively within the framework of westerndemocracy and create the revolution by parlia-mentary means.

But it is certainly true that “the breakthroughis not one more shuffle along the evolutionarypath which suddenly sinks the scale on thesocialist side.” The programme on which theparliamentary revolution is based must so takeaccount of the society which has produced moralindignation that it transforms it as dramaticallyas possible within the time-scale of parliamentarylimitations. Because these are important limita-tions, the need to assess new priorities is acute.And it must certainly take account of many fieldsof political decision outside Parliament, as E. P.Thompson points out.

The assessment of priorities, however, can onlybe made on the basis of an integrated philo-sophical approach. It seems to me that E. P.Thompson, in his discussion of social classantagonisms, draws very close to the kernel ofthis—and then runs away from it when he has italmost in his grasp. “The making of socialists”,

COMMENTThree of the many comments we have received on Edward Thompson’s Chapter from Out OfApathy published in NLR 3. His reply to comments, and further thoughts on the “Revolution”theme will be in the next issue.

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he says, “cannot and must not rely exclusivelyupon the explosive negatives of class antagonism.” It is not class consciousness, he believes, whichprompts teachers and actors and scientists to wantbetter schools and a National Theatre and greateremphasis on research. But incorrect subjectiveidentification of social class interests does notestablish a new fact: it merely shows how wrongpeople can be.

Class antagonism is, in fact, the root of oursocial disorders, now as always. The better schoolsand the National Theatre are absent not merelybecause capitalism has not yet completed itssocial reforms, but because they do nothing toserve the direct class interest of capitalists. Ourtask is to widen the definitions of social class, tomark out the social consequences of class anta-gonisms, and to demonstrate to the scientist andthe welfare worker and the bank clerk that thereason for their discontents and for the extensivewaste of intellectual and technological resourcesof which they are symptomatic, lies rooted in theinevitable opposition of their interests, as workersin a society organised for the greater profit of theprofit-makers, to those of the new entrepreneursof monopoly state-subsidised capitalism. We shallno doubt need to revise the vocabulary of theclass struggle: but in doing so we must re-emphasise, and not doubt, its theoretical validity.

If we should fail to do this, how could we defineour point of departure from the new theories ofpolitical opportunism? Transport House has justissued a brand-new propaganda leaflet: “A decentlife for all. A decent chance for all. That’s theLabour philosophy in a nutshell.” We have todemonstrate that the nutshell has a good dealmore in it.

from JOHN KEENAN

THE NOTION that socialism will come along,without putting anyone unduly out of joint, assimply an inevitable series of links in the evolu-tionary chain, is about as useful as a torn cartilage.The day of piece-meal reformism, considered as atotal philosophy designed to bring about a societyof equals, is over.

This is not to deny the solid contribution madein the past by those men and women who,impelled by its dynamic, dedicated to its human-istic content, were responsible for a great deal ofenlightened reform. But to-day it is obvious thatit is incapable of dealing capitalism a mortal blow.It is able merely to force accommodation to itsdemands in any given favourable period, leavingpractically untouched the ancient and in-

supportable evils of poverty, inequality, and theflabby decadence of a corrupt society wonderingdesperately where its next gimmick is comingfrom.

Thompson focuses attention on the onlyquestion which matters in this context—“. . . how,and by what means, is a transition to socialistsociety to take place?” In reply he himself saysfour clear things: (a) a total abandonment ofFabian reformism as a means, complete in itself,capable of ushering in a socialist society; (b) theformulation of a democratic revolutionarystrategy designed to draw into a common strandall forward and upward pressures; (c) the tacticalimplementation of such a strategy at every possiblepoint where the conflict may be joined; and(d) that he doesn’t know, or at least isn’t too sure,how things might go on from there, but thinks anew volume might usefully be written around thisarea.

As far as this goes, all this is clear. But does itgo far enough? Does it take us as far as we needto go? I do not think it does. It seems to me thatthe author, with a fine display of logic, builds upan unassailable case in favour of revolution asthe only way by which socialism can be achieved,to spoil it finally by appearing unable or un-willing to look the fact of “bloody” revolution inthe face. He maintains that we can have a blood-less revolution. So we can, for that is possible; but,in my view, it isn’t probable, and it is no use, aswell as being quite wrong, to wax derisory aboutthe “Statist’s” supposed attitude, for that doesn’tremove the difficulty.

The function of an analysis of the contemporarysituation which has in view the creation of atleast the outline of a democratic revolutionarystrategy, is surely to make some provision forevery forseeable contingency. Well then, whatabout the contingency which is the most easilyforseeable, a resort to the use of force by theenemy in order to keep their “Way of Life” extant? Is there to be no provision for this?

This is something that cannot be left to chance.It has to be catered for in advance. The dictumthat “ . . . one choice would disclose another” canbe permissible only within the framework of thelarger picture. It may well be true that “eventsthemselves would disclose to people the possibilityof the socialist alternative, and if events wereseconded by the agitation and initiatives ofthousands of convinced socialists in every area oflife the socialist revolution would be carriedthrough.” One certainly hopes it would, for asThompson correctly points out, the “smashing” process is a double-edged sword. But setting inmotion revolutionary processes and leaving thepossibility of their successful conclusion to the

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he says, “cannot and must not rely exclusivelyupon the explosive negatives of class antagonism.” It is not class consciousness, he believes, whichprompts teachers and actors and scientists to wantbetter schools and a National Theatre and greateremphasis on research. But incorrect subjectiveidentification of social class interests does notestablish a new fact: it merely shows how wrongpeople can be.

Class antagonism is, in fact, the root of oursocial disorders, now as always. The better schoolsand the National Theatre are absent not merelybecause capitalism has not yet completed itssocial reforms, but because they do nothing toserve the direct class interest of capitalists. Ourtask is to widen the definitions of social class, tomark out the social consequences of class anta-gonisms, and to demonstrate to the scientist andthe welfare worker and the bank clerk that thereason for their discontents and for the extensivewaste of intellectual and technological resourcesof which they are symptomatic, lies rooted in theinevitable opposition of their interests, as workersin a society organised for the greater profit of theprofit-makers, to those of the new entrepreneursof monopoly state-subsidised capitalism. We shallno doubt need to revise the vocabulary of theclass struggle: but in doing so we must re-emphasise, and not doubt, its theoretical validity.

If we should fail to do this, how could we defineour point of departure from the new theories ofpolitical opportunism? Transport House has justissued a brand-new propaganda leaflet: “A decentlife for all. A decent chance for all. That’s theLabour philosophy in a nutshell.” We have todemonstrate that the nutshell has a good dealmore in it.

from JOHN KEENAN

THE NOTION that socialism will come along,without putting anyone unduly out of joint, assimply an inevitable series of links in the evolu-tionary chain, is about as useful as a torn cartilage.The day of piece-meal reformism, considered as atotal philosophy designed to bring about a societyof equals, is over.

This is not to deny the solid contribution madein the past by those men and women who,impelled by its dynamic, dedicated to its human-istic content, were responsible for a great deal ofenlightened reform. But to-day it is obvious thatit is incapable of dealing capitalism a mortal blow.It is able merely to force accommodation to itsdemands in any given favourable period, leavingpractically untouched the ancient and in-

supportable evils of poverty, inequality, and theflabby decadence of a corrupt society wonderingdesperately where its next gimmick is comingfrom.

Thompson focuses attention on the onlyquestion which matters in this context—“. . . how,and by what means, is a transition to socialistsociety to take place?” In reply he himself saysfour clear things: (a) a total abandonment ofFabian reformism as a means, complete in itself,capable of ushering in a socialist society; (b) theformulation of a democratic revolutionarystrategy designed to draw into a common strandall forward and upward pressures; (c) the tacticalimplementation of such a strategy at every possiblepoint where the conflict may be joined; and(d) that he doesn’t know, or at least isn’t too sure,how things might go on from there, but thinks anew volume might usefully be written around thisarea.

As far as this goes, all this is clear. But does itgo far enough? Does it take us as far as we needto go? I do not think it does. It seems to me thatthe author, with a fine display of logic, builds upan unassailable case in favour of revolution asthe only way by which socialism can be achieved,to spoil it finally by appearing unable or un-willing to look the fact of “bloody” revolution inthe face. He maintains that we can have a blood-less revolution. So we can, for that is possible; but,in my view, it isn’t probable, and it is no use, aswell as being quite wrong, to wax derisory aboutthe “Statist’s” supposed attitude, for that doesn’tremove the difficulty.

The function of an analysis of the contemporarysituation which has in view the creation of atleast the outline of a democratic revolutionarystrategy, is surely to make some provision forevery forseeable contingency. Well then, whatabout the contingency which is the most easilyforseeable, a resort to the use of force by theenemy in order to keep their “Way of Life” extant? Is there to be no provision for this?

This is something that cannot be left to chance.It has to be catered for in advance. The dictumthat “ . . . one choice would disclose another” canbe permissible only within the framework of thelarger picture. It may well be true that “eventsthemselves would disclose to people the possibilityof the socialist alternative, and if events wereseconded by the agitation and initiatives ofthousands of convinced socialists in every area oflife the socialist revolution would be carriedthrough.” One certainly hopes it would, for asThompson correctly points out, the “smashing” process is a double-edged sword. But setting inmotion revolutionary processes and leaving thepossibility of their successful conclusion to the

60

magic hand of chance is something that cannot bejustified.

If the declared purpose is to change completelythe nature of our society then there must bepreparation and provision for the worst that canhappen. Revolution requires careful and detailedplanning. It requires resolute and effective leader-ship of the kind that will not baulk at “smashing” (regrettable though that would be) should itbecome necessary.

“Popular pressures of great intensity” mayindeed heave us forward much nearer to the goal,to make subsequent work that much easier. Evenif, however, such popular pressures were to bringus up to the point where the public sector of theeconomy had gained a firm dominance over theprivate sector, and supposing a similar rate ofadvance ethically and culturally, this, contraryto what Edward Thompson asserts, would not berevolution. It would, I maintain, merely take us upto the point of a revolutionary situation: anintensified Fabianistic process, part of a revolu-tionary strategy which, without the committedwill, the total dedication, would stand in thegravest danger of being rolled back so long ascapitalism had any kind of foothold.

from ERIC HEFFERIN THE past, the apparent basic division in thesocialist movement was between those whoaccepted the evolutionary path, and those whoadvocated revolution, usually associated with ameasure of violence. I use the word apparent,because, beneath the surface, the two concepts ofa socialist society were similar, both the evolu-because underneath, the concepts of a futuresocialist society were similar, both the evolu-tionists and revolutionists advocating a societyorganised from the top down, with an elite as thecentre of political direction.

The methods of achieving the new society mayhave been different; the result was the same. Thisis underlined by the enthusiasm with which theWebbs greeted the Soviet system after a visit tothe Soviet Union. For many years after mybreak with Stalinist thinking, I was confused bythe enthusiasm of the Webbs, until I realised thatwhat the Webbs saw was an embodiment of theirélitist ideas.

Amongst both “Evolutionists” (I put G. D. H.Cole in this category) and “Revolutionists” (hereI place Rosa Luxembourg), great stress has beenlaid on the need for a concept of Socialism, whichplaces faith in the self-activity of the masses.Luxembourg said, “Socialism cannot be intro-duced by decree”, whilst Cole in his earlier and

later works raised the need for industrial demo-cracy. The emphasis of both was on control frombelow, cutting across both the Bolshevik andFabian attitudes. The real division then, was notso much between the “Evolutionists” and“Revolutionists” but between the State Socialists,and non-State-Socialists, a division which to-dayhas great practical significance, and which mustexercise much of our thinking if we are to evolvea new point of departure.

The non-State conception (except for a fewsmall groups and individuals) went out for allpractical purposes, with the rise of the SovietUnion and the election of Labour and Social-Democratic Governments in Europe. Now thewheel has turned full circle, and the inadequacies ofState Socialism are there for all to see. To-day thefirst tentative and faltering steps are being takentowards a re-evaluation of the non-State concept.Thompson fails to get to grips with this problem,the State being dealt with in a passing reference.

I raise these issues because it is important indiscussing revolution to have clearly in view thetype of society we want the revolution to usher in.If it is to be a society dominated by a politicalélite, with the position of the worker basicallyunchanged, then all that has been achieved is thecreation of a new class (to use Djilas’s term) basedon state-ownership, with the State as the collectivecapitalist taking the place of the old ruling-class.The fact that the new class stems directly fromthe workers, and was put there either by evolu-tionary means or by a revolutionary overthrow,does not change the fundamental class position ofthe workers. Yet this is what socialism is about,if it’s about anything at all.

Therefore, to argue, or re-argue the questionof force versus non-force, seems to me to berather meaningless. We surely should supportevolution, as far as it is possible, and revolution(meaning force) when it is necessary. We can,within the framework of the capitalist system,extend the frontiers of socialist control. If we areto gain the support and sympathy of the mass ofthe workers, both “blue-collar” and “white-collar”, then we must introduce a policy whichgives them responsibility and, in a practical way,brings them up sharply against the limitationsimposed by capitalism. For example, even now, inall Labour-controlled local authorities, a systemof workers’ control could be introduced in alldepartments. In such a way, Social Ownership,in this case by the Municipality, takes on a realmeaning, and the frontiers of socialist conscious-ness are immediately extended. Equally, a cam-paign should be commenced for workers controland management in the nationalised industries.

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magic hand of chance is something that cannot bejustified.

If the declared purpose is to change completelythe nature of our society then there must bepreparation and provision for the worst that canhappen. Revolution requires careful and detailedplanning. It requires resolute and effective leader-ship of the kind that will not baulk at “smashing” (regrettable though that would be) should itbecome necessary.

“Popular pressures of great intensity” mayindeed heave us forward much nearer to the goal,to make subsequent work that much easier. Evenif, however, such popular pressures were to bringus up to the point where the public sector of theeconomy had gained a firm dominance over theprivate sector, and supposing a similar rate ofadvance ethically and culturally, this, contraryto what Edward Thompson asserts, would not berevolution. It would, I maintain, merely take us upto the point of a revolutionary situation: anintensified Fabianistic process, part of a revolu-tionary strategy which, without the committedwill, the total dedication, would stand in thegravest danger of being rolled back so long ascapitalism had any kind of foothold.

from ERIC HEFFERIN THE past, the apparent basic division in thesocialist movement was between those whoaccepted the evolutionary path, and those whoadvocated revolution, usually associated with ameasure of violence. I use the word apparent,because, beneath the surface, the two concepts ofa socialist society were similar, both the evolu-because underneath, the concepts of a futuresocialist society were similar, both the evolu-tionists and revolutionists advocating a societyorganised from the top down, with an elite as thecentre of political direction.

The methods of achieving the new society mayhave been different; the result was the same. Thisis underlined by the enthusiasm with which theWebbs greeted the Soviet system after a visit tothe Soviet Union. For many years after mybreak with Stalinist thinking, I was confused bythe enthusiasm of the Webbs, until I realised thatwhat the Webbs saw was an embodiment of theirélitist ideas.

Amongst both “Evolutionists” (I put G. D. H.Cole in this category) and “Revolutionists” (hereI place Rosa Luxembourg), great stress has beenlaid on the need for a concept of Socialism, whichplaces faith in the self-activity of the masses.Luxembourg said, “Socialism cannot be intro-duced by decree”, whilst Cole in his earlier and

later works raised the need for industrial demo-cracy. The emphasis of both was on control frombelow, cutting across both the Bolshevik andFabian attitudes. The real division then, was notso much between the “Evolutionists” and“Revolutionists” but between the State Socialists,and non-State-Socialists, a division which to-dayhas great practical significance, and which mustexercise much of our thinking if we are to evolvea new point of departure.

The non-State conception (except for a fewsmall groups and individuals) went out for allpractical purposes, with the rise of the SovietUnion and the election of Labour and Social-Democratic Governments in Europe. Now thewheel has turned full circle, and the inadequacies ofState Socialism are there for all to see. To-day thefirst tentative and faltering steps are being takentowards a re-evaluation of the non-State concept.Thompson fails to get to grips with this problem,the State being dealt with in a passing reference.

I raise these issues because it is important indiscussing revolution to have clearly in view thetype of society we want the revolution to usher in.If it is to be a society dominated by a politicalélite, with the position of the worker basicallyunchanged, then all that has been achieved is thecreation of a new class (to use Djilas’s term) basedon state-ownership, with the State as the collectivecapitalist taking the place of the old ruling-class.The fact that the new class stems directly fromthe workers, and was put there either by evolu-tionary means or by a revolutionary overthrow,does not change the fundamental class position ofthe workers. Yet this is what socialism is about,if it’s about anything at all.

Therefore, to argue, or re-argue the questionof force versus non-force, seems to me to berather meaningless. We surely should supportevolution, as far as it is possible, and revolution(meaning force) when it is necessary. We can,within the framework of the capitalist system,extend the frontiers of socialist control. If we areto gain the support and sympathy of the mass ofthe workers, both “blue-collar” and “white-collar”, then we must introduce a policy whichgives them responsibility and, in a practical way,brings them up sharply against the limitationsimposed by capitalism. For example, even now, inall Labour-controlled local authorities, a systemof workers’ control could be introduced in alldepartments. In such a way, Social Ownership,in this case by the Municipality, takes on a realmeaning, and the frontiers of socialist conscious-ness are immediately extended. Equally, a cam-paign should be commenced for workers controland management in the nationalised industries.

Tokyo Against The AllianceTHE STORMS of June are over: but the Japanesesky is still full of clouds. The recent high-tide ofthe anti-Kishi movement, whose crest was themassive resistance to the new US-Japan SecurityTreaty, washed away the visit of PresidentEisenhower. Nevertheless, the Premier and hisLiberal-Democratic Party won the summer. Theever-increasing petitions (signed by more thanten million people, and endorsed by almost allthe major commercial newspapers) that the LowerHouse should be dissolved before the ratification,were disregarded. The new Treaty became effec-tive, though the Opposition declared it null andvoid. Kishi has gone, but the Kishi-policy hassurvived.

It is too early to estimate the general politicalsignificance of the resistance. The new SecurityTreaty was intended to tie Japan down for anotherten years as a military base against the Communistcamp in the Far East. Mr. Kishi, adhering to thefamiliar logic that the Cold War is “reality” andNeutralism “the nightmare”, insisted that thenew Treaty would give more equal terms toJapan than the old one, which was nothing more

than the bastard child of the American Occupa-tion. The Opposition proposed that Japan shouldrenounce, rather than revise, the old Treaty.

At one point, there seemed to be a compromiseemerging between these opposing viewpoints.But in the debates of the Special Committee, theKishi Government, by its inconsistent and un-convincing replies, failed to vindicate its claimthat the new Treaty was purely defensive incharacter. This was the beginning of popularsuspicion and anxiety. Seizing this opportunity,the recently-formed People’s Council AgainstThe Revision of the Security Treaty rapidlyextended its influence by petitions and demon-strations. The dominant organisations in thisCouncil were the Socialist Party and the Sohyo(General Council of Trade Unions), but it alsoincluded the Communist Party and the JapanCouncil Against Nuclear Weapons. At thesame time, the National Federation of Students(Zengakuren), split between pro-Trotskyist andpro-Communist factions, staged massive demon-strations.

May 20 marked the turning point of the wholemovement against the Treaty. On that day, the

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Government moved the resolution ratifying theTreaty, without any warning, and they usedforce to remove the Socialist members who triedto block the ratification. These measures, adoptedby Kishi and his followers to force the Treatythrough, roused considerable anger. The commonslogans became, “The dissolution of the LowerHouse”, “The invalidity of passing the newTreaty”, and “The postponement of the Eisen-hower visit” . The Treaty was, indeed, generallyunpopular. The Liberal-Democratic Party haddeliberately avoided it as an issue at the lastGeneral Election. According to the Asahi samplesurvey at the time, only 12 per cent of the popula-tion supported Kishi. Now many people ofdifferent classes and occupations—trade union-ists, unorganised employees, professors andteachers and intellectuals, housewives and businessgirls—rallied to the demonstrations organised bythe People’s Council. The Zengakuren demon-strations were reinforced by numbers of students,many of whom held to no extreme ideologies.These demonstrations were the ones whichenveloped Mr. Hagerty so dramatically onJune 10, and which led to the bloody incidentsof Juns 15. On the 19th, however, the Treatybecame automatically valid. “What shall we do,now that all legitimate attempts at protest havebeen ignored?” one student asked me in adesperate tone that midnight, as we sat withcountless other student demonstrators on thechilly pavement outside the Diet building.

It is clear that the recent tension has been no violence inspired by international Communism, the excuse most commonly offered. The fact isthat any popular opposition to US Far Easterndiplomacy will always be explained in this way.There is no hostility to the Chinese from theJapanese nation as a whole: and they have reasonto know better than any people on earth thehuman consequences of nuclear strategies. On theother hand, the reconstruction of the Japaneseeconomy has gone hand in hand with theAmerican economy, particularly in the sphere offoreign trade. And the Government is in manyways a post-Occupation government. It is nowonder, then, that Mr. Kishi firmly backed theTreaty, and that Japanese big business firmlybacked Mr. Kishi. And although the anti-Kishimovement was centrally organised by the Left,it was not a general movement against the existingeconomic system. The anti-Kishi resistance gaineda great deal of strength from the Government’sintrigue: the Government itself has not fallen.Perhaps the greatest legacy of the recent eventsis the establishment of a tradition of civil dis-obedience, a form of political action which wouldscarcely have been expected in pre-War Japan.

H.Y.

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C. P. Sleet The Racket

(This is the seventeenth in the sequence of novelsrelated by Lewis Elsberger. The complete work,in 30 or 40 volumes, will have the title of Newcomersand Old-Timers.)

PART NINE: THE PLAN MATURESChapter 46: Offer Of A Cigarette

I WAS mildly surprised when Artie Brown invitedme for what, in his rather dated slang, he describedas “a natter”. I knew, of course, that he was outagain—news travels rapidly in the closely-knitenvironment with which I had not entirely losttouch—but I assumed that, since I had ceased tobe a professional burglar, my company mighthave lost some of its attraction for a man of suchsingle-minded purpose as Artie. Before accepting,I mentioned the matter to Daisy, who was nowsleeping at my flat when her work kept her toolate to find a taxi.

“I should go,” she said, sipping an early after-noon gin. “There might be—well, shall we say,something in it for you.”

“There might be a complication,” I demurred.We were interrupted by the ringing of the

telephone, its note peculiarly high and shrill inthe small room. When Daisy had completed herarrangements for the evening, I said: “Shouldyou go, nevertheless?”

“You should go,” she smiled. I smiled in return.She smiled in response. We understood each otherrather better than if we had been married.

The cloud from the tea-urn obscured my viewfor a moment as I pushed open the door of thecaff. Outside, the air was not cold, but cool, withthe familiar dampness of Frith Street on aNovember evening. Inside, however, it was nothot, but warm.

Artie was not alone. In fact, there was some-one else with him. Their heads were close togetherand their lips were moving. It was evident thatthey were holding a conversation.

As I moved to their table, Artie looked up,with his characteristic trick of raising his head.“Take a chair, Lewis,” he said. Curiously, he hadnever addressed me as Elsberger.

“You know Frank, don’t you?” He knew, of course, that I knew Frank. Indeed,

Frank knew that I knew him. We had never beenclose friends, but we had been associated in theBravington job which had been among the firstof my successful undertakings when I had comefrom the town I came from.

“Lewis knows everybody,” said Frank, in theodd American accent which he had acquired—so I suspected—during his childhood in theUnited States. Since I saw no reason to contradictthis statement, he improved on it. “Everybodyknows Lewis,” he added.

“Starling will be here in a few minutes,” Artiecontinued. “I have been planning this reunionfor—oh, about five years with remission.”

I made an appropriate answer. I had a feeling,despite Artie’s deceptively convivial air, that thiswas not merely a reunion, but very probablysomething more than a reunion. The impressiondeepened as Artie, opening what I recognisedas the Duchess of Suffolk’s gold case, said “Willyou have a cigarette?”

I hesitated, remembering what I had said toDaisy. Then, unable to remember what Daisyhad not said to me, I accepted. The cigarettewhich appeared to have been made in a factory,tasted agreeably of paper. Frank struck a match,and the flame burned strongly, then flickereduntil it went out.

Starling arrived and took the remaining chair,so that we sat on all four sides of the table,making the pattern that was as old as the caffitself and had indeed become traditional at othercaffs. It struck me, as Starling pierced the endof a cigar with a chased metal tool for piercingthe end of cigars, how completely he had liveddown his beginnings. When he had first joinedour society, he had been no more than a hospitalsurgeon. Now, you would never have imaginedhim as anything but a prosperous abortionistwith a Chelsea practice.

“It must be years since we were all together,” Starling said. “More years than I care to thinkabout. With your permission, Chief, I should liketo honour the occasion and our guest by present-ing tea.”

“That is most generous of you, Doctor,” Artiereplied.

Serious matters were deferred until the teaarrived. It was an Indian growth, blendedgenerously with milk. The sugar, in its customaryplace on the table, gave off a quiet glitter thatreminded me of whitened sand.

I was thinking that Artie looked, if not older,certainly not younger. His hair, which had longbeen partly grey, was now only partly black. It

Labour Party Conference . . . fordetails of NLR and Left Club plans forScarborough during the week of the LabourParty Conference, see Letter To Readers inthis issue, p. 68.

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was too early yet to tell whether he had beenmellowed or, like so many I had known whosecareers had followed the same course, embittered.At all events, he could look back on a solidrecord of achievement. He had done good work—nothing, perhaps, so outstanding as Alf orToby, but what most of us would recognise asgood. Did he, now, want something else? It wasdifficult to say what that something could be.Even money was possible.

Here, however, I was wrong. When our tea-cups were empty and the cigarette butts quietlysoaking in the saucers, Artie said in his subtlyforceful way: “Shall we come to business?”

Frank gave his low, impenetrable laugh. “Ihad supposed, Chief,” he said, “that this was notentirely a social occasion.”

Artie was frowning. “Can any of you tell me,” he inquired, “where Flash Andy is?”

It was a good five years, with remission, sinceI had heard the name. Occasionally I had won-dered why Flash Andy had never been presentat the caff, even on commemorative occasions. Iwaited, confident in Starling’s sources of informa-tion.

Here, indeed, I was not wrong. Laying hiscigar carefully on an ancient stain on the cloth,Starling said: “He’s working the Span flats.”

“Indeed,” said Artie. “A new line, I believe.Should you have called that a remunerativeoccupation?”

“I should have, Chief.” There was a silence, during which the sounds

from St. Anne’s Court reached us with theclarity bestowed by expectation—a patter ofrunning steps, the tinkle of a breaking milk bottle,a scream or two. Then Artie, examining thepatina on his spoon with a deceptively casual air,said: “Do you know, I rather imagine that heput me inside.”

So that was it. I glanced at the others. Theywould immediately recognise a matter of justice—indeed, of honour.

“That is your considered view, Chief?” askedFrank.

“I should say he was responsible. Put it anotherway: I don’t see how he could not have beenresponsible.”

“In that case,” said Starling, “what should yousay we should do?”

I knew, of course, the turn that the conversationwas taking. In the Thirties, very likely, it wouldhave been more direct. Yet in essentials there hadbeen no change.

Artie rapped the table. His mind, at all events,was as clear as ever.

“Do you know,” he said, “I rather think thatwe should do him.”

THENEW

DRAMAby Michael Kaye

FRANCOIS VILLON—that mad fifteenth centuryFrenchman—concludes his Brechtian Ballad,Counter-Truths, with the verse:

You want the truth from me?There is no joy save in illnessNor truth in literature save tragedyNor cowardice save in being a gentlemanNor sound more horrible than melodyNor wisdom save in the folly of lovers.

In a recent paper-back of his complete work(Bantam classic, 4/6, translated by AnthonyBonner with French text vis-a-vis) the third line ishelpfully mistranslated—“nor truth outside thetheatre”. It is with this idea I want to begin. Lifehas hit the London stage at last. And with real

A

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was too early yet to tell whether he had beenmellowed or, like so many I had known whosecareers had followed the same course, embittered.At all events, he could look back on a solidrecord of achievement. He had done good work—nothing, perhaps, so outstanding as Alf orToby, but what most of us would recognise asgood. Did he, now, want something else? It wasdifficult to say what that something could be.Even money was possible.

Here, however, I was wrong. When our tea-cups were empty and the cigarette butts quietlysoaking in the saucers, Artie said in his subtlyforceful way: “Shall we come to business?”

Frank gave his low, impenetrable laugh. “Ihad supposed, Chief,” he said, “that this was notentirely a social occasion.”

Artie was frowning. “Can any of you tell me,” he inquired, “where Flash Andy is?”

It was a good five years, with remission, sinceI had heard the name. Occasionally I had won-dered why Flash Andy had never been presentat the caff, even on commemorative occasions. Iwaited, confident in Starling’s sources of informa-tion.

Here, indeed, I was not wrong. Laying hiscigar carefully on an ancient stain on the cloth,Starling said: “He’s working the Span flats.”

“Indeed,” said Artie. “A new line, I believe.Should you have called that a remunerativeoccupation?”

“I should have, Chief.” There was a silence, during which the sounds

from St. Anne’s Court reached us with theclarity bestowed by expectation—a patter ofrunning steps, the tinkle of a breaking milk bottle,a scream or two. Then Artie, examining thepatina on his spoon with a deceptively casual air,said: “Do you know, I rather imagine that heput me inside.”

So that was it. I glanced at the others. Theywould immediately recognise a matter of justice—indeed, of honour.

“That is your considered view, Chief?” askedFrank.

“I should say he was responsible. Put it anotherway: I don’t see how he could not have beenresponsible.”

“In that case,” said Starling, “what should yousay we should do?”

I knew, of course, the turn that the conversationwas taking. In the Thirties, very likely, it wouldhave been more direct. Yet in essentials there hadbeen no change.

Artie rapped the table. His mind, at all events,was as clear as ever.

“Do you know,” he said, “I rather think thatwe should do him.”

THENEW

DRAMAby Michael Kaye

FRANCOIS VILLON—that mad fifteenth centuryFrenchman—concludes his Brechtian Ballad,Counter-Truths, with the verse:

You want the truth from me?There is no joy save in illnessNor truth in literature save tragedyNor cowardice save in being a gentlemanNor sound more horrible than melodyNor wisdom save in the folly of lovers.

In a recent paper-back of his complete work(Bantam classic, 4/6, translated by AnthonyBonner with French text vis-a-vis) the third line ishelpfully mistranslated—“nor truth outside thetheatre”. It is with this idea I want to begin. Lifehas hit the London stage at last. And with real

A

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drama has come the truth. It has come withOrson Welles’ production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros;with the Lunts’ magnificent performance inFriederich Dürenmatt’s The Visit, which combinesthe insights of Kafka and Marx in the form ofGreek Tragedy; and in the method-actedTomorrow With Pictures, which begins as astraight comedy-attack on British stagnation andends up on the level of Eugune O’Neill, with anexposure of the social and psychological pathologyof a Rothermere or Kemsley-type family empire.It has come in the shape of John Fernald’smagnificent production of Brecht’s Good WomanOf Setzuan by the Royal Academy of DramaticArt which was done at the York Festival: a playwhich enacts just how the Gods (if there are any)fail to understand that to love and be good isimpossible without at the same time surviving as atough businessman. It is there too in HaroldPinter’s Caretaker and Brecht’s Galileo—thelatter given the rough-and-ready performanceBrecht would have liked, at the Mermaid: a playabout the sempiternal struggle of reason againstthe complacent, the bureaucratic, the Tory andthe brain-washers. In Galileo, Bernard Milesfrees himself of all suspicion of veniality intaking over the businessman-sponsored MermaidTheatre by showing his sponsors just what theywould have done with Galileo. I hope his toffaudience is getting the message. Finally, it hascome—and the New Left has been waiting forit, because it is probably the one it thinks mostworth seeing—in the Wesker Trilogy, whoseCentrepiece, Roots, I want to discuss first.

Roots and Us

Roots tells us the truth about ourselves in theNew Left. Dramatically, it is a triangle play.There is us, which is Wesker or you or me. Thereis Beattie, the girl who has left her working-classagricultural background, and who is that TradeUnionist we might be trying to address or thatLabour voter we may be trying to convert. Andthere is Beattie’s family, the mass, the cause of ourmoments of despair. And what does Roots tell us?It tells us that we are both to blame—both Themand Us. It tells us more—that, such as things are,we cannot love Her because she is still one ofThem. And for all our talk (and I includeWesker as one of Us), when the time comes weare still liable to stand Her up. But it tells us alsothat there is still hope, for she might become oneof the salt of the earth, one of the transformatoryminority, one of the leaven that will lift the loaf.

Dramatically, Wesker gets away with murder.Were I not of the New Left I would tell him torewrite the play so that Ronnie appears in Act One

and stands Beattie up in Act Three. Only thenwould the centrepiece of the Trilogy make senseto my friends not intimately acquainted withBritain. For after all, I should add, Beattie is notexactly waiting for Godot, nor indeed for Lefty.But being of the New Left, I think I know whyWesker-Ronnie did not want to appear in theplay. It is because we are still ashamed of our-selves, still unsure of how to appear in thatNorfolk set-up. We do not know whether in thelong run we shall have stood-up Beattie too.We do not know whether the Revolution EdwardThompson has spoken about has really begun. Ifit has, we may go on to speak about “Jerusalem”.If it has not, then we may as well have the courageto portray ourselves and show up Ronnie for whathe is. If it has, we can forgive Arnold Wesker histechnical faults, for he is our Gorki. But woe to theGorki of the Revolution that is never to come!I do not want to leave Roots without saying some-thing of the love and care with which it is actedand produced. It has grown since its first produc-tion, and Joan Plowright has flowered into some-thing that promises more than Vivien Leigh wasever to attain.

From the love with which Roots was acted, Iwant to turn to the commercial professionalism ofPeter Brook’s production of The Visit at theRoyalty. On the sad Sunday on which TheCritics discussed this play on the BBC, theydismissed it as “German expressionism” that“works on several levels”, and went on to saythat this was a thing alien to us Englishmen.They said the production made the play. Well,Peter Brook is British and Dürenmatt is Swiss,but doesn’t Shakespeare or Britten “work onseveral levels?” The characters, they said, were not“real”: everything was forseeable (ReadOedipus?): the play belonged to “the nightmareworld of expressionist drama”.

The World of The Visit

“The world” of The Visit is one in which a lovebetrayed can turn into a vengeful hate; in which amillionairess’s promise of a billion marks giftprovokes a hire-purchase spree amongst thevoters of a bankrupt town, which leads them tocomplete their down-payments on TV sets andfurs at the price of a man’s life—the price the richwoman demands. It appears that the stagnantlittle dream world of the BBC Critics leaves littleroom for even the aesthetic appreciation of thenightmare of our psycho-social reality.

The production? The effects, I must admit,were marvellously contrived. The performance ofthe Lunts, who have given their lives to thetheatre, was past reproach. But the cast, with the

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exception of a few individuals who put in acertain amount of private enterprise (particularlyBrian Wilde as the intellectual who sees and sellsout, and Richard Dare as the pastor who con-soles) lagged miles behind. But what does oneexpect, with a fortnight’s rehearsal time? Given afortnight, the most Peter Brook could do wasarrange the effects and leave the rest to individualactors. They take the chance, or they do not. Andthe audience comes away with the usual, “Wasn’tso-and-so good?”, but never with “What aproduction!” Without proper rehearsal facilities,we never see the whole of a play brought to lifein the way the Moscow Arts Theatre did Tshekhov.We are doubling our standards of living so fastthat we are willing to sacrifice our Stanislavskys.(Wasn’t that partly what The Visit was about?)We can only afford Klemperers by doubling theprice of the seats. (“No one wants a goodconductor”, a friend of mine used to say, “hemight ask for an extra rehearsal”).

Dürenmatt’s The Visit is one of the great playsof all time. It re-creates the vengeance theme ofEuripides’ Medea. A woman got with child usesher money to avenge herself on the man whobetrayed her. At first, the people of the townrefuse to accept her bribe and sacrifice the man:but in the end, they are so much in her debt thatthey can do nothing else. The tragic victim of theplay dies the death of Kafka’s Joseph K in TheTrial—“like a dog”. But the moral is not just,“see how vengeful a woman can be”. The Visitdemonstrates what Brecht meant by the epic play,when he wrote:

“The spectator of the dramatic theatre says, ‘Yes,I have felt the same—I am just like this—This isonly natural—it will always be like this—This isgreat art: it bears the mark of the inevitable.’ Thespectator of the epic theatre says, ‘I should neverhave thought so—This is not the way things shouldgo—This will have to stop—This is great art:nothing here is inevitable’.”

Roots, I fear, is in Brecht’s sense, dramatic,though it may be too early to tell. The Visit isepic: it is more like, “Justice without mercy is aKafkan nightmare—we live in a society in whichit exists—capitalist democracy provides legalmeans for the perpetuation of monstrous privatevengeances—the world we live in conceals ahideous potential”.

Of course, Brecht’s Galileo made some of thesepoints too—but then, as the Critics would say,“We all know Galileo was right”. Living in anex-Protestant country, we all know how wrong itwas for the Popes to use torture. But Dürenmatt!He showed that a hire-purchase spree in a littletown could have the same illiberal effects as papalinstruments of torture, the mere sight of which

made Galileo recant. The BBC Critics could notforgive that. After all, hire-purchase is part ofour doubling standard of living. Moreover,Dürenmatt showed good decent folk—Labourpeople, Tories and Liberals, intellectuals andpastors—doing a man in “like a dog” becausethey had got terribly in debt to capitalism. Andyet. . . . Are not, on perhaps a slightly largerscale, the finance ministers of, say, India doing ina lot of their fellow citizens by letting them go onliving like dogs? I am thinking of the way plansare cut down for lack of hard currency in severalunder-developed countries. It is uncomfortable tobe forced to connect the vengeance of the Medeawith certain Western agencies for the aid of under-developed territories. Irrational? Nightmareexpressionism? Well, yes. “Only connect”, E. M.Forster once wrote. Dürenmatt has forced us tomake some connections. In certain of his laterwritings, Brecht put in place of his term epictheatre, the term dialectical. Oh yes, The Visitworks, all right, and “on several levels”. But it isnot I who make the connections. You have to seehow they are enacted in the play.

Connections . . .

Which brings me back, inevitably, to Roots.The second point of criticism about Roots is thatthe connections are spoken about, not enacted.Of course, that is partly because they have yetto be made. The Revolution may be only aboutto begin. But still, even if we do suffer—and theprotagonists in Roots do—from a lack of con-nections, this should be enacted, not talked about.A large part of the point of the play is conveyed inBeattie’s great speech in the final scene—a ULREditorial to end all ULR Editorials. But how canthis speech be enacted with Ronnie left out?After all, that is the locus of the connection inRoots—Ronnie and Beattie making love; Ronnietalking—Beattie silent; Beattie inhibited byRonnie, and Ronnie getting annoyed at Beattie’sobtuseness. The two have still to go their ownways. It is too early to “talk about Jerusalem”.

Aristotle is right. Speeches in drama ought tobe verbal actions, to subserve the action of theplay. The action is the interaction. But the inter-action must be shown, not spoken about. That iswhere Dürenmatt wins. He does not tell you whatis the matter. He shows it. And he shows it to thewhole world, not merely to England. Longinussaid that great art should move all men at alltimes. I am not a tremendous believer in anotherpurely English Revolution. Things interconnect alittle too much. What with NATO and Kafka,Euripides and South Africa. . . .

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tradeunions

andthe

artsby Arnold Wesker

THE ESSAY on The Nature of Gothic by Ruskinapparently was a revelation for his contem-poraries. I tried to buy this in Charing CrossRoad the other day and was informed that manypeople were buying Ruskin and the book ofessays I wanted was unavailable. To quote froman essay by Furneaux Jordan, this was the firstwriting “to see a link between art and labour, tosee that the savage ruggedness of a northerncathedral might be humanly—and thereforeaesthetically—a more tender, a nobler thing thanthe classical formulae of the Mediterraneanstyles: the one produced by men and the otherby slaves.” This is as exciting a conception todayas then.

That an age reveals itself by its culture we arelearning from our own times. What, however, Iam personally not certain of is whether thatculture appears inevitably or whether artists areaware that an age is marked culturally andtherefore they must make that mark. What comesfirst? One is tempted to say, and no doubthistory can prove, that artists unconsciouslyreflect the age. But this means: God help thejoyous artist in a sordid age! On the other handsomeone once said “truth is not merely what isbut what can be.” There is hope.

As artists, we would like to think we wereeither reflecting our times or pointing to newworlds; but if a people is not aware that theculture it produces is a reflection of itself (if

it did it might take its arts more seriously), andif a people is not around to whom we can showour new worlds (that is to say the theatres areempty), then neither of these two observations canbe applied with any weight. Unless culture is theshared experience of a whole nation theseobservations remain frustrated tools. Yet toolsthey certainly are, but for what?

Bill Holdsworth and myself have started acampaign to urge the Trade Union Movementnot only to spend money on the arts but, indoing so, to make it a natural part of its members’life. They have succeeded to a large degree insharing out the nation’s economic wealth, whycan they not do the same for its cultural riches?We are not asking them to create a particularkind of art but rather to make sure that art is, infact, a nation’s shared experience. Our aims andsuggestions are outlined in two pamphlets whichwere sent to every trade union in the countryand the response was exciting. Now comes thetime to organise it. New Left Groups throughoutthe country can assist in this way. At this year’scongress the ACTT have put forward a resolution.We do not know at the time of going to presswhat will happen to it—we are assuming it willnot be passed. This whole campaign, therefore,must be an attempt to get it passed next year, orthe year after.

We are aiming to organise a big, professionallyrun, festival of the arts specially for Congressdelegates during their week of meeting, but whatis needed is a softening up process. Before theyarrive at their week’s conference, it would be agreat help if campaign committees all over thecountry could have been responsible for smallerfestivals specially for delegates and tradeunionists. BUT—the festivals must not beesoteric little gatherings on the one hand orweak, amateurish efforts on the other; they mustbe robust, exciting and as professional as possible.The ACTT resolution must be demonstrated andproved relevant.

So far NLR groups have centred round theCND campaign; here could be another focalpoint of activity, here in fact could be a furthermeans of knocking down that barrier between theworker and the artist that breaks us all. NLRgroups, together with university groups and localreps, could all combine on this project. Becausehe has not the millions to compete with thecommercial world, the artist must go out andpull in his public by the hair. I cannot see anotherway. The ACTT resolution is the piece of paperaround which we could change the whole culturalclimate of this “dead behind the eyes” society,and every trade unionist should know of itsexistence.

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The Communist Party

of the Soviet Union

by Leonard Schapiro

Eyre & Spottiswoode, 63s.

LEONARD SCHAPIRO’S recent book is the first generalhistory of the Soviet Communist Party by a Westernscholar, and it contains a great deal of informationnot previously available in English. It is the onlyplace, for example, where the names of Politburomembers between 1917 and 1958 are fully listed. Theauthor has enriched his work with interesting materialfrom unpublished studies by competent scholars suchas J. L. H. Keep and T. H. Rigby.

But the publisher’s claims for this study are verylarge. “The author’s treatment is factual and non-partisan”, and the history is “fully documented”.“Its purpose is to show, against the background ofthe social, economic and intellectual history of thecountry and of its foreign relations, the evolutionof the ideas, aims, structure and social compositionof the party; its relations with the life of the population;and, especially, the effects upon the party of thecircumstances in which it grew up, seized power andstayed in power”. These claims have been endorsedby most reviewers so far, so much so that theEconomist’s reviewer, in expressing dissatisfactionwith the book, described himself as “a dissentientvoice”.

I believe that the book does not come near fulfillingthe publisher’s claims, and that the consensus ofexpert opinion will prove to concur with this view,after the year or so which the academic world requiresto absorb and think over a book of this size. It isstrongly to be deplored that journals such as theNew Statesman (unlike the Economist) should be sounserious in their attitude to Soviet affairs that theyshould employ reviewers who failed to note even themore obvious weaknesses in Mr. Schapiro’s study.

In the first place, the author’s canvas is so largethat he could not and did not make an adequateexamination of the rich source-materials. This subjectrequired a decade’s or a lifetime’s study to be coveredby one man; not three or four years. The authorhas made little use even of some of the key debatesand reports at Party Congresses on party organisation(Kuibyshev’s reports on the work of the importantCentral Control Commission, for example, are vir-tually ignored). This means that even on his centraltheme of the party itself the author’s materials areinadequate. And when he deals with the economic andsocial background, his treatment is often deplorablythin. An example: it is his merit that he raises thecentral question of the relationship of the party tothe working-class movement at different stages ofSoviet history, but we get only glimpses of an answer—there are for instance only 16 lines (p. 151) on thework of the Bolsheviks within Russia between theoutbreak of the first world war and the end of 1916.Or again, because Mr. Schapiro tells us so little aboutthe complex history of economic policy between 1925and 1928, Stalin’s collectivisation policy pops up

somewhat miraculously in 1929, although its relation-ship to the economic background is a cardinal issuefor this book. Moreover, the author’s handling ofthe source materials he does use is somewhat cavalierand often unreliable. A few minor errors are boundto be made in a book of this length, but a quick checkof the chapter on “The Defeat of Bukharin” revealeda dozen major and minor errors in that chapter alone.

But the trouble with this book is not simply thatits theme is too ambitious. Its biggest weakness is inits analysis. There are certainly omens of the begin-nings of a break-through into a fresh approach to anhistorical critique of the Stalin period. The authorrightly rejects the (mythical?) students of Soviethistory who assume that “because things happenedin a certain way therefore they had to happen in thisway, irrespectively of the political actions of men”.Throughout his study he therefore raises the questionof political motives as a factor in Soviet evolution.His concern is particularly with the motives andactions of prominent individuals: in fact his generalpicture of Lenin’s days is of a determined manwielding a party round himself, seizing power, andthen refusing to compromise, so that the Bolshevikshave a monopoly of power but a permanently pre-carious hold on the country. And of the Sovietindustrial revolution, Mr. Schapiro writes: “I see novalid reason for assuming that it had to take placeat the time and in the manner which Stalin determined,other than the reason that Stalin so determined itand was able to put his determination into effect” (p.x).

The ideas of individual men are the key, then, inMr. Schapiro’s analysis. But these ideas are nowherefully or carefully presented (compare Schapiro’sexposition of Soviet marxism with, say, HerbertMarcuse’s); and the critique of them is clumsy. Thushis ground for rejecting the view that the need for adefence industry was a major motive pushing Stalinto rapid industrialisation is that the defence industrycould have been established more easily by less drasticmeans (p. 383): he does not even discuss whetherStalin may have been motivated by a wrong assessmentof the likely effects of his policy. Elsewhere we aretold that the party was unable to compromise inpolicy between economic freedom for the peasantsand exploitation of them because in the prevailingconditions “there could be no middle way betweensubmission to the Secretariat and rebellion” (p. 291):incredible as it may seem, Mr. Schapiro fails todiscuss in this connection why Stalin and the partySecretariat did not themselves adopt a compromisepolicy.

At times, it is true, Mr. Schapiro does seem to begroping towards such questions. He links centralisedparty discipline and Stalin’s emergence in the 1920sto the precarious position of the party in the country;he sees collectivisation as partly motivated by theneed to control the peasants politically; and hesuggests that the purges may spring out of Stalin’sneed to consolidate his personal position by breakingup any cohesion or solidarity and restocking the élitewith a new generation dependent on himself (pp. 291,382f., 429f.).

But in his rare analytical passages, Mr. Schapiro isusually very confused; there is, in fact, no serious

book reviews

69

attempt to examine the sociology of Soviet ideas inhis book. Why did Stalin hold the views he did whenhe did? Why did his thought move towards forcedcollectivisation in the years 1926 to 1929? Suchquestions are never clearly posed.

If posed, they would need to be answered in termsof the views of Stalin’s colleagues and the influenceexerted on him and them by the ideas of their timeand place and by the problems with which they werefaced. Even within the limits of his own rather naiveconception of history, Mr. Schapiro would then needto bring in much more than he does the “backgroundof the social, economic and intellectual history of thecountry” referred to by the publisher, and to relatethis background to the evolution of the party and itsideas.

R. W. Davies

Mr. Love and Justiceby Colin Maclnnes,

MacGibbon & Kee, 15s.Mr. Love and Justice is an attempt at an objectivenovel, in which implicit values are realised throughcharacter and action instead of being expresseddirectly by their author in first person narrative, asin his previous books. It is about a seaman turnedponce, Frankie Love, and a policeman, EdwardJustice, who come into contact through the latter’sduties as a vice detective. It is in the form of a moralantithesis of Love and Justice, with a central paradoxby which Edward Justice leaves the police for love ofhis girl, and Frankie Love defends his professionwith his sense of natural justice.

The novel is set in a no-man’s land, somewhat cutoff from normal social references. On one side isEdward, his girl, her Dad, and a star-sleuth, and onthe other Frankie, his girl, her Mum, and a star-ponce. But despite this elaborate symmetry a worldof ponces and the police is created in terms of theexperiences of the characters, and on the ponce’sside of it Mr. MacInnes does not impose any judge-ments. Frankie, for example, breaks down his ownconventional repugnance for ponces when he becomesone, and crosses a barrier of attitudes on the otherside of which he has to get used to being disliked.The author is also giving us a very personal anddocumentary view of London after the Street OffencesAct, with his usual flow of acute and lively observa-tion. But through this comes a weight of feelingagainst the police and their authoritarianism, as amain emphasis of the novel.

The two main characters represent the contrastedvalues of the book. Frankie has something in commonwith Mr. MacInnes’s earlier heroes, with a generous,unmoralistic nature, and an integrity of response toexperiences which is the essence of his sense ofjustice. Edward is less likeable. “The profoundsolitude that lay at the centre of his personality” isin sharp contrast to the vitality at the centre ofFrankie’s, and the deep attachments to his girl andthe Force which derive from this solitude are ones ofself-centred need. His beliefs in Love and Justice aretherefore mere moralisings, necessary to reassure hissense of being.

The novel evolves by alternate chapters devotedto Mr. Love and Mr. Justice and their concerns. Itis carried at a balanced pace, mostly on a lightly-

loaded and responsive dialogue, until the two mencome into conflict. But here it loses its poise, andthere is some confusion and arbitrariness in the finalrush of events when Frankie is arrested, in whichFrankie and Ted lose their central emphasis to thedetails of the events themselves. It recovers its balancewhen the two become friends in hospital, but theresolution of the plot is too schematic, and notsufficiently related to the attitudes of the two men.

There are two explicit debates in the book, one onjustice and one on love. In the first Frankie opposesthe Law, because he says a real law is different,something you can respect and live for, like it is on aship. The community has thrown all its responsibilityfor justice on to the police, but the police have onlyauthority, and no real sense of justice at all. Thisfeeling underlies the race-riot scenes in AbsoluteBeginners, and relates to the structure of the books—a viewpoint of minority groups on the edges of boththe community and the law.

There is not the same explicit sympathy for oneside expressed in the debate on love, as there is forFrankie’s natural justice. Where Ted’s formal viewof justice is shown up by his misuse of police power,Frankie’s disbelief in love is not discredited by hisactions. His relationship to his girl, sexual andsisterly as he describes it, makes up in vitality whatit lacks in constancy by comparison with Ted’s, andhis disbelief is felt more as an assertion of freedomthan as a denial of feeling, not damaging the implicitsympathy for him.

The book has an off-centredness and lack ofintensity which is perhaps due to Mr. MacInnes’stechnical pre-occupations. The formal scheme servesto define a limited area within which the realisationcan be managed, and if it restricts what can beexpressed, this may be a necessary sacrifice to experi-ment. Mr. MacInnes’s books have a vitality whichmakes them among the most important affirmationsof life in recent literature, in their responsiveness tothe present scene and the genuine centre of feelingto their characters. But the books have a limited areaof expression, missing experiences of real tension, andfeelings involving a more than humorous intensity.The social perspective is also confined—the extra-social heroes maintain a bombardment of the widerworld out there, “the great world of the mugs, themillions who pay their taxes by the pea-eh-why-ee”,through an observation that is always humane, butthere is little realised sense of the pressures of thatworld. The enlargement of these two horizons byMr. MacInnes is something one deeply wants to see,and one hopes that Mr. Love and Justice, an essentialadvance in form, will be a step along this road.

Mike Rustin

NLR SIXIn the next issue, E.P. Thompson replies to critics withsome further thoughts on the “Revolution” theme . . . Ron Meek reviews Deutscher, Dobb and Rostow . . . an essay on Work And Its Discontents by David Armstrong . . . on Scandinavia by Perry Anderson . . .and on Lady Chatterley’s Lover and a Photo-supplementon the Algerian war.

69

attempt to examine the sociology of Soviet ideas inhis book. Why did Stalin hold the views he did whenhe did? Why did his thought move towards forcedcollectivisation in the years 1926 to 1929? Suchquestions are never clearly posed.

If posed, they would need to be answered in termsof the views of Stalin’s colleagues and the influenceexerted on him and them by the ideas of their timeand place and by the problems with which they werefaced. Even within the limits of his own rather naiveconception of history, Mr. Schapiro would then needto bring in much more than he does the “backgroundof the social, economic and intellectual history of thecountry” referred to by the publisher, and to relatethis background to the evolution of the party and itsideas.

R. W. Davies

Mr. Love and Justiceby Colin Maclnnes,

MacGibbon & Kee, 15s.Mr. Love and Justice is an attempt at an objectivenovel, in which implicit values are realised throughcharacter and action instead of being expresseddirectly by their author in first person narrative, asin his previous books. It is about a seaman turnedponce, Frankie Love, and a policeman, EdwardJustice, who come into contact through the latter’sduties as a vice detective. It is in the form of a moralantithesis of Love and Justice, with a central paradoxby which Edward Justice leaves the police for love ofhis girl, and Frankie Love defends his professionwith his sense of natural justice.

The novel is set in a no-man’s land, somewhat cutoff from normal social references. On one side isEdward, his girl, her Dad, and a star-sleuth, and onthe other Frankie, his girl, her Mum, and a star-ponce. But despite this elaborate symmetry a worldof ponces and the police is created in terms of theexperiences of the characters, and on the ponce’sside of it Mr. MacInnes does not impose any judge-ments. Frankie, for example, breaks down his ownconventional repugnance for ponces when he becomesone, and crosses a barrier of attitudes on the otherside of which he has to get used to being disliked.The author is also giving us a very personal anddocumentary view of London after the Street OffencesAct, with his usual flow of acute and lively observa-tion. But through this comes a weight of feelingagainst the police and their authoritarianism, as amain emphasis of the novel.

The two main characters represent the contrastedvalues of the book. Frankie has something in commonwith Mr. MacInnes’s earlier heroes, with a generous,unmoralistic nature, and an integrity of response toexperiences which is the essence of his sense ofjustice. Edward is less likeable. “The profoundsolitude that lay at the centre of his personality” isin sharp contrast to the vitality at the centre ofFrankie’s, and the deep attachments to his girl andthe Force which derive from this solitude are ones ofself-centred need. His beliefs in Love and Justice aretherefore mere moralisings, necessary to reassure hissense of being.

The novel evolves by alternate chapters devotedto Mr. Love and Mr. Justice and their concerns. Itis carried at a balanced pace, mostly on a lightly-

loaded and responsive dialogue, until the two mencome into conflict. But here it loses its poise, andthere is some confusion and arbitrariness in the finalrush of events when Frankie is arrested, in whichFrankie and Ted lose their central emphasis to thedetails of the events themselves. It recovers its balancewhen the two become friends in hospital, but theresolution of the plot is too schematic, and notsufficiently related to the attitudes of the two men.

There are two explicit debates in the book, one onjustice and one on love. In the first Frankie opposesthe Law, because he says a real law is different,something you can respect and live for, like it is on aship. The community has thrown all its responsibilityfor justice on to the police, but the police have onlyauthority, and no real sense of justice at all. Thisfeeling underlies the race-riot scenes in AbsoluteBeginners, and relates to the structure of the books—a viewpoint of minority groups on the edges of boththe community and the law.

There is not the same explicit sympathy for oneside expressed in the debate on love, as there is forFrankie’s natural justice. Where Ted’s formal viewof justice is shown up by his misuse of police power,Frankie’s disbelief in love is not discredited by hisactions. His relationship to his girl, sexual andsisterly as he describes it, makes up in vitality whatit lacks in constancy by comparison with Ted’s, andhis disbelief is felt more as an assertion of freedomthan as a denial of feeling, not damaging the implicitsympathy for him.

The book has an off-centredness and lack ofintensity which is perhaps due to Mr. MacInnes’stechnical pre-occupations. The formal scheme servesto define a limited area within which the realisationcan be managed, and if it restricts what can beexpressed, this may be a necessary sacrifice to experi-ment. Mr. MacInnes’s books have a vitality whichmakes them among the most important affirmationsof life in recent literature, in their responsiveness tothe present scene and the genuine centre of feelingto their characters. But the books have a limited areaof expression, missing experiences of real tension, andfeelings involving a more than humorous intensity.The social perspective is also confined—the extra-social heroes maintain a bombardment of the widerworld out there, “the great world of the mugs, themillions who pay their taxes by the pea-eh-why-ee”,through an observation that is always humane, butthere is little realised sense of the pressures of thatworld. The enlargement of these two horizons byMr. MacInnes is something one deeply wants to see,and one hopes that Mr. Love and Justice, an essentialadvance in form, will be a step along this road.

Mike Rustin

NLR SIXIn the next issue, E.P. Thompson replies to critics withsome further thoughts on the “Revolution” theme . . . Ron Meek reviews Deutscher, Dobb and Rostow . . . an essay on Work And Its Discontents by David Armstrong . . . on Scandinavia by Perry Anderson . . .and on Lady Chatterley’s Lover and a Photo-supplementon the Algerian war.

70

Experiencing Architecture,

by S. E. Rasmussen,

Chapman & HallTHIS IS a very good, and possibly dangerous, bookabout architecture. It is good, above all, for threereasons. In the first place, it is not written in profes-sional jargon—neither the academic jargon of “archi-traves” and “curtain walls”, where structural techni-calities become an excuse for lack of discrimination;nor the matey jargon of the architectural magazines,where every building is a “neo”-movement, and every-body “Bill” or “Ted” or “Corb”. It avoids theparochial professionalism of most architects, to whomthe “layman” is either client (i.e. nuisance or bore) ora vague abstraction (i.e. “peopling the perspectives”).Secondly, it never deals in the sort of historicismwhere either “everything leads up to the modernmovement” or “each period has its own style appro-priate to the age”. Thirdly, it is not angry about“modernism”, nor “subtopia”, nor telegraph poles,and consequently does not label everything “good” or “bad” on grounds of external appearance alone.This is, in fact, a book about buildings as we see, use,enjoy and even find them annoying all the time.Professor Rasmussen’s criticism of architecture isessentially “functional” in the true unlimited senseof the word. He considers every building as anorganism created by many things: the site and theuse to which it is to be put; the ideals and the taste(two different things) of the age or of the client; thecreative genius or otherwise of the architect; thecraftsmanship of the builder; and the accident of theevents that can occur while it is being conceived orerected. He is absorbed in the effect of buildingson everyday life; perhaps his main aim is to bringto our notice—in a far subtler way than the criesagainst “subtopia”—the created environment in whichwe spend nearly all our lives. He does not describeany buildings he has not himself visited. Because ofthis first-hand experience he can say—as the apologistsfor the modern movement and the shout-ugly boyscannot—that this doorway in a mediocre house issuperb, this detailing is poor in a well conceivedwhole; he can say that so-and-so is “trying” to dosomething, not necessarily either wholly succeedingor wholly failing. He is genuinely critical because heis genuinely alive and interested in why and how—inthe widest sense—any building is as it is.

This kind of critical education is the only kind thatwill ever produce a real appreciation of architecturethat will demand the environment that could—becauseof technology—and should be ours today. The “good” v. “bad”, “modern” v. “fake” notion of architecturaleducation for the “layman” is useless. A thoroughexamination of where, for example, Span at Black-heath and Churchill Gardens, Pimlico (to take twowidely accepted canons of contemporary taste) aresuccessful as places to live in and as expressions of amodern way of life, and where they are not, whereevery detail is examined as an experience that mustbe felt daily, would be of far more value than puttingthem upon a pedestal for lesser designers to copyinadequately. Let us criticise the best, find out wherethe best has created richness and where flatness, askwhat the best have forgotten, down to the smallestdetail. Then we might have the basis for some “good” architecture and some criticism which might keeparchitects in touch with the reality of their job. This

book is an example of the way this criticism mightbe carried out.

Yet I have said that this might be a possiblydangerous book, and so it might. For two reasons:the first is that it has an eclecticism of its own, whichseems at times to be able to separate buildings fromthe quality, as opposed to the kind of life for whichthey were designed. If that appears a little unfairlet me put it in another way. Professor Rasmussensees life, it seems to me, as inexhaustibly differentand varied, which is true enough; but he does notdraw the necessary distinction between what, in theinexhaustible pageant of culture, is a valuable expres-sion of real life and what is merely a stultifying ritual.And at times he is satisfied with and praises archi-tecture which is only the ritual, the facade, insteadof the embodiment of a living idea. He cannot saythat the ritual architecture of old Peking or ofVersailles is unbearably repressive, or that the SpanishSteps in Rome are grandiose and mundane.

This is a weakness in a man who sees the task ofarchitecture to be that of bringing “order and relationinto human surroundings”. And this is the seconddanger of this book. For this is a large aim and Ifeel a mistaken one. We must be aware of the limita-tions of architecture. It is a truism to say that goodbuildings alone are not an assurance of contentedpeople and happy lives. It is not perhaps such atruism to say that to impose a false sense of orderupon people, an order they do not understand, is toask for swift revenge. Many architects find out toolate what the people who are put to live in them willdo to the formal layouts that look so impressive onthe drawing-board. We are mostly humane enoughnow to know that the solution is not a return to theconcept of the barrack-room—“they can’t damagethis!” But we must also escape from the idea ofimposing the order of an architectural formalitybased upon the existing social patterns and classideals. I suspect that Professor Rasmussen is uncon-sciously expressing the emergence of a truly newconception of architecture in his occasional com-parisons of baroque and modern. This is not a retreatfrom “functionalism” into a new “style”. Functional-ism should—as I understand it—be able to embodythe living culture of the old society, the new ideasand needs that are arising, in buildings that can freely,undogmatically, without the necessity of formal order,express this superabundant life.

But this can only happen so long as the architecthimself has ideals of what social life can and shouldbe firmly embedded in his own consciousness, and ifhe is artist enough to be able to express them. Thereal fact about “good” architecture (especially goodhousing, but it also applies to more standard formsof building such as offices) is that people alwaysrecognise when a building or a housing scheme hasbeen designed with this kind of feeling—a feeling forpeople and for living needs, not for shapes on thedrawing-board or ideas of community culled from thelatest sociological study. The only “order” is thenthe underlying feeling for what life can be in thepresent; this is the only “order” which will evermake architecture live.

The difference between formal “order” and thisother concept, to return belatedly but necessarily tobuildings, is the difference between the winning designfor Churchill College, Cambridge, and the schemeplaced second by the judges.

P. M. Aldis

� � � � � �

71

Trade Unions and the Government,

by V. L Allen,

Longmans, 35s.

DR. ALLEN writes in a dry, flat, matter-of-fact style,oddly reminiscent of Lord Attlee’s. There areoccasions, such as the 1921 Coal Dispute or the 1926General Strike, when this heightens the drama of hisnarrative. Elsewhere the unadorned, almost colourlessprose makes needlessly heavy going of the intricaciesof collective bargaining or of labour relations innationalised industries.

The book deals with the relationship of trade unionsto the central government in Britain in an attempt toassess their influence and power. The author exercisesa masterly control over his facts, and carefullycultivated legends about the irresponsible power oftrade union oligarchs will not survive a study of hisevidence. Under Conservative governments, theunions’ influence on legislation is marginal and withLabour in power it is sometimes even less than that.Indeed, the uneasiness of the relationships betweenLabour ministers and their industrial allies is still,after four Labour governments, one of the dozenmajor unsolved problems of the British working classmovement.

Like so many assiduous research workers, Vic Allensometimes suffers from the defects of his merits. Hetends to ignore the realities of power in favour of theconstitutional and procedural formalities in whichthey are cloaked. While influence is an elusive concept,power is not. It depends upon the possession ofsanctions. Trade unionists have two—the ability tovote and the ability to strike. So long as the LabourParty remains a possible alternative government andwhile the general level of employment remains high,trade unions wield a great deal of negative power.They can hardly hope to sponsor pieces of classlegislation as blatant as—for example—CommercialTelevision or the Town and Country Planning Actof 1958. But they have so far successfully blockedproposals for worsening their own legal status, whileattacks on the social services have been delayed bythe probability that they would provoke vigorouscompensatory wage claims. In rightly demonstratingthe inability of the unions to exercise much direct

influence on legislation, while neglecting their con-siderable negative powers, Vic Allen presents toogloomy a picture of the prevailing balance of classforces.

One could question, too, the author’s treatment ofthe political element in strikes. He is right to showthe negligible importance of political strikes inBritain’s industrial history. But when the workers ina nationalised industry go on strike against the con-sequences of Government policies, it is hardly possibleto keep political factors out of the campaign. Allencriticises, by implication, the leaders of the LondonBus Strike in 1958 for “mixing their industrial claimswith political issues”. Yet the miners and railwaymenare now facing the threat of decentralisation. Whilethis can be presented as a matter of economic andpolitical policy, it can also affect the wages of a millionworkers. If the NUM and the NUR decide to throwtheir full weight against the change, it will hardlybe possible to avoid the “mixing” which Allen appearsto deprecate.

This is a valuable book because it provokes morequestions than it answers, because it gives rise to adiscussion of neglected topics and because, above all,it provides so many of the facts which we must haveif our “new thinking” is to become more than a jokegone sour.

Henry Collins

72

letterto

readersWE HAVE had a steady flow of comments from readersand critics on Out of Apathy, and particularly EdwardThompson’s Chapter on “Revolution” (NLR 3). Hewill discuss some of the points raised, and developthe theme in a follow-up essay in our next issue. In themeanwhile, the second in the series of New Left Bookswill be out later this year. This will be Irving Howe’sexcellent study, Politics And The Novel, which hasreceived a good deal of critical attention in America,but has not previously been published in this country.Howe’s book begins with the arresting quotation fromStendhal: “Politics in a work of literature is like apistol shot in the middle of a concert, something loudand vulgar, and yet a thing which it is not possibleto refuse one’s attention”. He pursues this themethrough several detailed and sympathetic studies ofStendhal’s own Red And The Black, Dostoevsky,Conrad, James, Malraux, Silone, Keostler and Orwell.This is an extremely provocative book, and therelationship between politics and literature is brilliantlyhandled. We are pleased to have the book in our series,and we hope readers will enjoy it.

In the meanwhile, two new books written speciallyfor the New Left series are already on the stocksfor early next year: a book on Advertising AndSociety edited by Raymond Williams, and MichaelBarratt Brown’s Imperialism Yesterday And Today,which is the basis for the essay on Imperialism pub-lished in this issue. Somewhere in the back rooms,John Hughes is preparing a manuscript for us onNationalisation and Social Ownership, David Ross isransacking the files for a History of the Cold War, andPaddy Whannel and Graham Martin are pasting upfilthy pictures for a book on The Visual Persuaders!

* * *Now that the Left Clubs are better organised and

stronger, they are planning the steady production,over the year, of a series of pamphlets, aimed atparticular targets, but written for a wide and differingaudience. Some of these will be informative—apamphlet on What Is The New Left, and a pamphleton Why You Should Be A Socialist In The Sixties(especially for use among Young Socialists andyounger people) are already in preparation. Severalof the Left Clubs have been doing detailed work inStudy Groups—Nottingham has framed an excitingand challenging scheme for comprehensive educationin Nottingham, Edinburgh has made a detailed studyof Central African Federation, the London Club hasdone important work in Notting Hill and on Educa-tion; and all of these deserve to be written up and morewidely circulated. There is talk of a pamphlet on theNew Towns by the New Left Club in Stevenage andthe VFS group in Harlow. Indeed, it would be quitefeasible for the London Club, say, to launch a cam-paign—A London Project, if you like—based on aseries of pamphlets on the “affluent issues”—housing,municipalisation, rents, comprehensive planning,

traffic and transport, etc.—which could be used torally Left Clubs and Constituency Parties in a Cam-paign For Local Socialism which would put some heartback into depressed Labour minorities on ToryCouncils, and some fire beneath the seat of complacentLabour majorities on Labour Councils. Given thepresent discontents about traffic or education orspeculative building, such a Project could rouseimmense support from the condemned and theapathetic.

* * *The Northern Regional Committee of Left Clubs,

anxious to pick off, one by one, the flabby Southernmetropolitan intellectuals, proposed that the Editorand volunteers from NLR should be drafted intoScarborough for the Labour Party Conference, toproduce a daily news-sheet—The Week With The NewLeft?—of the momentous events. The idea was thatthe Editor should be installed, with a delapidatedduplicator, in the window of a prominent coffee-bar,and made to produce a stinging indictment ofReformism with every sip of his expresso. Provincialreaders will be happy to know that the scheme—in asomewhat modified form—is actually to take place.Volunteer troops will arrive, with duplicating paper,in Scarborough on Saturday, and set up camp insuitably central quarters. The Left Clubs Committeeare preparing a special brochure, describing the workand aims of the Left Clubs and NLR, which will begiven away to delegates to help spread the word. Adaily edition of NLR—special Conference issues—willbe published, and we are anxious to have teams ofhelpers to supply us with those interesting tit-bits fromthe Compositing Room, and to assist us produce anddistribute the libellous sheet. We hope that Left Clubsin the area will make a special effort to bring a con-tingent and a Club banner in to Scarborough for theCND March and Demonstration on the Sundaypreceding the Conference, and stay around to watchthe fireworks. Typists, expert duplicators, accreditednews-vendors, urgently required. Seriously, if you aregoing to be in Scarborough as delegate or “visitor”,please make sure you find out early where the People’sLeague For The Defence of A New Left Press hasestablished its GHQ. This may be the last Conferencewhich you have a chance to attend: by next year, youmay need a do-it-yourself atomic stockpile and a year’ssubscription to Encounter or The Spectator to getwithin spitting distance of the National Executive . . .

* * *Contributors to NLR 5: C. Wright Mills, who is

working on a study of the Soviet intelligensia, isprobably at this moment taking socialist greetings toCastro in Havana . . . David Riesman, sociologist andauthor of the extremely popular book, The LonelyCrowd, is now teaching Social Sciences at Harvard . . . his co-author, Michael Macoby has taught at bothHarvard and Chicago . . . their article was preparedfor a collection of Essays entitled The Liberal Papersand originally appeared in the American journalCommentary . . . Kenneth Rexroth, distinguished poet,has been both mentor and critic of the “beat” gene-ration . . . his article was written on the basis of anextensive tour of American universities . . . Judith Hartis an MP for Lanark . . . Eric Heffer is a leading Liver-pool socialist, and has been Chairman of the LiverpoolTrades Council . . . John Keenan is a Fife Miner, anda member of the Fife Socialist League . . . R. W.Davies lectures at Birmingham and Harry Hanson atLeeds . . . Mike Rustin is, among other things,secretary of the Oxford Labour Club.