Revisionist or Fundamentalist? 1945–56

Abstract

If for Crosland capitalism was dead what then should be the objectives which socialists set themselves? For a start, as he saw it, capitalism’s demise rendered redundant the nostrums advanced by previous traditions of socialist thinking. Guild socialism, Fabian socialism, Marxian socialism had all predicated their critiques of capitalism upon the concentration of economic power in the hands of the capitalist enterpreneur and on the prescriptive side there had been a concomitant determination to transfer that power to the state, the municipality, the guild or the workers in an individual enterprise. However, with the demise of capitalism; with the actual dispersal and socialisation of economic power which had occurred, particularly in the post-war period, the constructive aspect of these traditions of socialist thinking had also been rendered defunct.¹

Total abstinence and a good filing system are not now the right signposts to the socialists’ utopia; or at least if they are some of us will fall by the wayside.

C. A. R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism, 1956

If socialists lose sight of the central importance of social ownership of the means of production, they will cease, in a very real sense, to be socialists at all: they will subside into the role of well-intentioned amiable, rootless, drifting, social reformers.

J. Strachey, ‘The new revisionist’, New Statesman, 6 October 1956

Hugh has promised ICI That private profit shall not die How very handy if we knew What ICI has promised Hugh.

A. Comfort, Tribune, 8 June 1962