Socialism Is Alive in Britain

Roy Martin

[Reprinted from Land & Liberty, Autumn 2000]

Prof. Martin is a former National Science and Technology Policy Advisor to UNESCO.

Liberalism. It is this vagueness which has enabled Socialism to be pursued by indirect community control and why, today, we have reached the position about which Hayek so clearly warned, and epitomised by the dedication To the Socialists of all Parties", in his Road to Serfdom. The Liberals lost their way after WW1 by pursuing state paternalism -- a poor second to Labour -- and the Conservatives accepted the Welfare State and similar paternalistic reforms, after WW2, because they did not significantly disturb their real economic basis -- indeed, they saw gain from it.

More recently, the Labour Party, after ousting its militant left wing under Kinnoch and dropping nationalisation under Blair, went for the option of indirect state control. The present Government is courting the big corporations and landowners for the control they have (compare the support for aristocrats and Junkers in Germany of the thirties), setting up a multiplicity of agencies and task forces with powers to intervene but unaccountable to Parliament, reducing the Trade Unions (the core of Old Labour), pursuing economic planning by interference in the market place with subsidies, tariffs, licensing and by controlling the money supply and the interest rates, using the welfare system to make the individual state dependent, applying unprincipled arbitration throughout, nurturing collectivism, directing values and morals and preaching "political correctness" (Nazi Kultur?).

This is Socialism in all but name and the antithesis of so-called Western Capitalism, which is defined by the belief that unchecked, by taxation or otherwise, capital led to the optimal development of the economy. It was Hitler's method after crushing the Communists and uniting the Socialists of all classes. He achieved the political rebirth of the German nation by making government 'big business', protecting landed privilege, disarming the Trade Unions, throwing off the Versailles Treaty, and bidding for what Germany wanted most and still does -lebensraum".

Indirect control, by ostensible privatisation, becomes the more efficacious way of maintaining Socialism and state supremacy by avoiding the blame for much of what goes wrong. For example, Blair has freed the Treasury of blame for monetary policy by detaching it from its previous partnership with the Bank of England and making the latter solely responsible, whilst knowing perfectly well that it will keep to the same fiscal... [text ends here in the original]

THERE IS, TODAY, a certain fashion in some quarters to write-off Socialism m" having no political significance. Although, in Britain, there has never been any strong political backing for a Socialist Party by name, nothing could be further from the truth in terms of active politics. Socialism is a political philosophy which was developed after the French Revolution along the lines of Saint-Simon and Fourier who emphasised associative enterprise rather than direct state control (c.f. New Labour below). Marx and Engels dissociated themselves from this Utopian view and sought to turn Socialism into a revolutionary force. Leadership in thought then passed to Germany, where the first major socialist party was founded by Lasalle. In the last decade of the C19th, its counterparts were to be found in Britain and Russia, but the attempted intemationalisation (First and Second Internationals) collapsed through discord.

British Socialism (with its origins in welfare-minded industrial entrepreneurs and Robert Owen with his co-operatives) was deeply sceptical of Marxism and generally held to democratic practices. It tried to use the Trade Unions as its real source of power, eventually entering and trying to influence the Labour Party. In Germany, Socialism was seen as a prop for Nationalism: and Bismarck, whilst not a Socialist, recognised the anti-Liberal and paternalistic affinity of Socialism and Toryism", and aided by "the Prussian schoolmaster" (state education was for the state), set the notion or the corporate state and its industrial army.

Socialism has always been somewhat vague in its mode of achievement as well as meaning. It has covered the whole range from Marxism to so-called Humanistic policy as before and respond to his interventions.

Henry George, himself, was somewhat ambivalent about Socialism, partly due to its vagueness or degree of application, and partly due to the fact that he could only take a theoretical approach to its study because its modern practice, development and appeal had yet to be seen: and to this extent he is out of date. He started by recognising its objective but doubting its efficacy (Progress & Poverty, p.319), then to its seeming inevitability (Social Problems, p. 152) and his support for state control of some routine public services (Protection or Free Trade, p. 122, Condition of Labour, p.52), partial withdrawal over the antagonism of socialism to capital (A Perplexed Philosopher, p.205) and final rejection as impossible on spiritual grounds (Science of Political Economy, p.393). However, if you understand your Henry George, or can go back much further, as does Radical Liberalism, then you can analyse the social-economic situation and understand what is functioning politically, whatever it is called -- New Labour included.

Socialism is not discredited or out of fashion: it lies behind the whole gamut of current party politics. The bickering in the Commons, today, is only about detail arising from minor preferences within the same socio-economic approach, not with major differences in ideology. It is common law and Liberalism (out of fashion if anything is) which has suffered under the growing impact of statutory law and government interference - and the word "Liberty" is rarely heard in the land. The real danger of Socialism remains: every step down the road of perceived need to control people increases the need for those governing to overcome any dissent; and this gradually drives them to extremes, to National Socialism, Fascism and Nazism as it did Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. Even Saint-Simon had to say that those who would not obey his Planning Boards would be "treated like cattle" (Hayek). We are perilously close: and it is not due to Liberalism or old-fashioned "Toryism".