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AT EVERYpoint the way out of apathy leads us outside theconventions within which our life is confined. Out ofNATO. Out of the mixed economy. Out of theacquisitive ethos.

It is because the conventions themselves are beingcalled in question, and not the tactical manoeuvringwhich takes place within them, that the gulf which isopening between the young socialist generation andtraditional Labour politicians is so deep.

It is a gulf as deep as that which opened in the1880s between the Lib-Lab politicians and the newunionists and socialists. Mr. Gaitskell, if he read it,

would certainly not obtain a clear idea of what, indetail, he was supposed to dothis is Mr. AntonyCroslands comment, when reviewing Dennis PottersThe Glittering Coffin in the Spectator. Mr. Howell orMr. Broadhurst, if they had picked up a copy ofCommonweal or Justice, would have been faced withsimilar difficulties.

Of course it is generally agreed (as Mr. Croslandremarks in the same review) that the Labour Partybadly needs a dose of iconoclasm at the presentmoment. Even psephologists can see that the Partyrequires an influx of Youth if it is to present itself tothe electorate in a mid-20th-century guise. And sincethere is no choice, Transport House Grundies, who havewon past battle-honours by decimating Youth, are nowprepared to encourage angry radical noises in jazz clubsor coffee bars on the periphery of the movement.

But the ikons which the Aldermaston generation isbreaking are the very ones before which Mr. Gaitskelland Mr. Crosland bow down: the permanent ColdWar: the permanent dependence of Labour uponaffluent capitalism: the permanent defensive ideologyof defeatism and piece-meal reform.

What lies beyond these conventions? Where is thepoint of breakthrough? Breakthrough into what?

If the image of power must be re-made at the base, itmust also be re-made at the top. The Clause 4 debate

within the Labour Party provides every day freshexamples of the way in which concepts of power areconcealed within the cloudy metaphors of rhetoric,which attempt verbal reconciliations between tradi-tional socialist loyalties and actual accommodationto capitalism. A clear statement that the party remainscommitted to capturing . . . the commanding heightsof the economy the New Statesman editorialises(5 March, 1960)is the formula on which Mr.Gaitskell could surely re-unite the National Executive.

We cannot pretend to prescribe a formula whichwill unite the National Executive. But it should benoted that the image of the commanding heights(without exact qualification) offers more than itdefines. To some, it may indicate the power of a LabourChancellor to influence the Bank Rate; to others, thepower to introduce a Five-Year Plan covering theoutput of Icelandic cod, Somerset cider-apples andScunthorpe steel. Are the heights those of MonteCassino or of Hampstead Heaththe one required acertain effort to storm, and its storming was the turning-point of a whole campaign, the other can be reached bytube from Westminster. And are we, by some suddenforced march (the nationalisation of steel andchemicals?) to find ourselves occupying the command-ing heights of the economy, while at the same timeleaving the Monte Cassino of the mass media, with itssurveillance over the means of communication, informa-tion, controversy, in the hands of irresponsibleoligopolists?

Mr. Gaitskells and Mr. Croslands play with theterms means and ends is more obviously specious.It is true, of course, that the replacement of productionfor profit by production for use is (from one stand-point) only a means to the attainment of a Society of

Equals. True also that it is only one means amongmany. But what is obscured in this argument is thatwithout the displacement of the dynamic of the profitmotive all other means will prove ineffectual, andit is the definition of this as an essential means whichdistinguishes the socialist tradition.

This does not mean that nationalisation by Statemonopoly is the only alternative to private ownership;the debate on other forms (municipal, and co-operative)is fruitful. Nor does it mean that there is someautomaticrelationship between social ownership and socialistinstitutions or moral dispositions: that the super-structure of a good society must grow in a certain

way once the basis has been established. Indeed, it isone distinction between socialist theory and the outlookof the Fabian administrator that the former recognisesthat the Society of Equals cannot be made without arevolution in moral attitudes and social practices toofar-reaching to be reduced by even an enlightenedNational Executive to a formula.

But here also we must guard against the speciousappeal to morality, the posing of values outside thecontext of power. Socialism, Mr. Crosland tells us,

3

Revolution

E. P. Thompson

This is the final Chapter of Out Of Apathy, a collection of New Left Essays, edited by E. P. Thompson,and the first of a series of books to be published by us. Out Of Apathy will be out at the end of May.The next number ofNLR will carry a series of comments based on this Chapter.

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denotes a belief in the pre-eminence of certain values,such as equality or co-operation or collective welfare orinternationalism. But such values are not absolute. Theycannot be held rigidly and uncompromisingly, any morethan can the opposite conservative values of hierarchy orcompetition or individualism or patriotism.

(he Future of the Left, Encounter, March 1960)

We are back at the game of Happy Families: we canpair off opposite values (which are not absolute),and look for the good society somewhere in the maritalblur in the middle. If, however, we were to pair offexploitation and mutual aid, the encouragement ofliving culture and the mass production of commercialculture, the businessmans expense account and therailwaymans wage, advertising and education, nucleardisarmament and Blue Streak, we could have reacheda different result. The true contradictions and antago-nisms of our society would have become apparent: andMr. Crosland and capitalist values would have beenfound on one side, socialist values on the other. For thecontradiction which expresses itself in opposed values isgrounded in the private ownership of the social means

of production. The profit-motive remains at the core ofour social order, engendering new conflicts which bytheir nature may be controlled or mitigated but cannotbe resolved. Nor is this the most important thing. Acontrolled antagonism may be endurable: they existeven within Happy Families. We might put up with theOpportunity State, knowing that welfare services pro-vide a set of rooms at the bottom for those who dontgo up. We might put up with the profit-motor, knowingthat the unions are still strong enough to jack up therailwaymans wage above the poverty-line. But con-trolled antagonisms are constantly breaking out in new,uncontrolled ways: the compensation received by coal-owners burgeons into profits in light industry: the

housing schemes of well-intentioned municipalities sinkunder the earth beneath accumulated interest-repay-ments: money searches continually for new ways tobreed money. And, at the end of it all, we have a societygrounded on antagonism. We remain for ever removedfrom a Society of Equals.

Accommodations and AntagonismsWhen Mr. Crosland offers us, in the same essay, the

Sermon on the Mount (a favourite evasion of PhilipSnowdens) and quotes with approvalit may be bettersimply to say with William Morris that Socialism isfellowshipit becomes difficult to know at what pointa serious discussion may be entered. We might startwith Morris, who was a revolutionary socialist. In hisearly propagandist years, Morris thought somewhatnaively of an insurrectionary revolution, on the modelof the Paris Commune. In 1893 he had come toenvisage the final conquest of power as taking placeby parliamentary means; but his concept of the revolu-tionary transition was little changed:

The first real victory of the Social Revolution will bethe establishment not indeed of a complete system ofcommunism in a day, which is absurd, but of a revolu-

tionary administration whose definite and conscious aimwill be to prepare and further, in all available ways,human life for such a system . . . (W.M.s italics).

In the year before his death he still feared that thetransition would be accompanied by violence of somekind:

We are living in an epoch where there is combatbetween commercialism, or the system of reckless waste,and communism, or the system of neighbourly common

sense. Can that combat be fought out . . . without loss andsuffering? Plainly speaking I know that it cannot.

Morris was not writing in ignorance of the Fabianalternative which found its first mature expression in theEssays of 1889. He conducted the argument with theFabians in lectures, journals, club-rooms; and since somuch of our Labour history has been presented inFabian guise it is worth recalling the terms of Morrisdissent. Shaw proposed that there might be a gradualtransition to Social Democracy, effected in the mainby steady municipal encroachment upon private enter-prise; the gradual extension of the franchise; and thetransfer of rent and interest to the State, not in onelump sum, but by instalments. Morris objected that

this ignored the essential antagonism at the heart ofcapitalist society:

The barrier which they will not be able to pass . . . (is)the acknowledgement of the class war. The Socialists ofthis kind are blind as to the essence of modern society.They hope for a revolution, which is not the Revolution,but a revolution which is to ignore the facts that have ledup to it and will bring it about . . . (W.M.s italics).

The Quasi-Socialist MachineryIt was not the necessity of a violent revolution upon

which Morris was insisting, but the necessity fora critical conflict in every area of life at the point oftransition. Transition from the system of reckless

waste to that of neighbourly common sense couldnot be effected by some administrative or fiscal coupdetat. A merely parliamentary socialist party mightfall into the error of moving earth and sea to fill theballot boxes with Socialist votes which will not representSocialist men. If the evolutionary road were followed,he repeatedly asked how far the betterment of theworking people might go and yet stop short at lastwithout having made any progress on the direct roadto Communism?

Whether . . . the tremendous organisation of civilisedcommercial society is not playing the cat and mouse gamewith us socialists. Whether the Society of Inequalitymight not accept the quasi-socialist machinery . . . and

work it for the purpose of upholding that society in asomewhat shorn condition, maybe, but a safe one . . .The workers better treated, better organised, helping togovern themselves, but with no more pretence to equalitywith the rich . . . than they have now.

With the foundation of the Labour Party it seemedthat the Fabians had won the argument. The Webbs(G. D. H. Cole commented in 1913) were able socompletely . . . to impose their conception of societyon the Labour movement that it seemed unnecessaryfor any one to do any further thinking. Fabian theories

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(Mr. Strachey added, in 1938) not merely false, butalmost absurdly inadequate . . . to cover the complex,stormy, dynamic social phenomena of the twentiethcentury were allowed to become the theory of theBritish working-class movement. On the credit side,the advance in the strength of organised Labour, theencroachments of the welfare state; on the debit side,the division of Africa, the slump, two world wars. By1930 the debate raged once more. It is not so certain

today as it seemed in the eighties that Morris was notright, commented Shaw in his preface to the 1931edition of Fabian Essays. Throughout the next 15 yearsthe two outstanding non-Communist theoreticians ofBritish SocialismHarold Laski and G. D. H. Colewere discussing constructively the nature of the tran-sition in Britain, and the ways to circumvent capitalistresistance. But, after 1945, it was not capitalist oppo-sition which was circumvented:

People who talk too much soon find themselves upagainst it. Harold Laski, for instance. A brilliant chap . . .but he started making speeches at week-ends. I had to getrid of him.

. . . G. D. H. Cole was another brilliant chap. A veryclear mind. But he used to have a new idea every year,irrespective of whether the ordinary man was interested init or not . . .

Thus Lord Attlee on What Sort of Man Gets to theTop? (Observer, 7 February, 1960). With that sort ofman at the top, the system of neighbourly commonsense might well seem unattainable.

To present the argument in this way is to foreshortenit, and, in the later stages, to caricature it. We haveomitted, among other matters of substance, the con-structive additions of syndicalists and Guild Socialists;the injection of the Russian example and of Leninisminto the whole debate; the more sophisticated elabora-tions of post-Keynesian evolutionary theory; and the

bedevilment of the whole argument by the ugly practicesof the dictatorship of the proletariat on the Stalinistmodel.

A Transition to SocialismBut what we mean to direct attention to is the extra-

ordinary hiatus in contemporary Labour thinking onthis most crucial point of allhow, and by what meansis a transition to socialist society to take place? ForMr. Gaitskell the problem may be irrelevant. Thepolitical see-saw is its own justification. The Britishprefer the two-Party system, he informed a conferencecalled (in Rhodes) by the Congress for Cultural Freedomin 1958: They understand team games and they know

it gives them stable, strong government. For Mr.Gordon Walker (it may be) the goal is clear:

In the antechamber outside the Cabinet room whereMinisters gather before meeting, there is a row of coat-pegs. Under each peg is the name of a great office of state. . . Only Cabinet Ministers hang their hats and coatsthereand only in the prescribed order

or so he informs the open-mouthed readers of Encounter(April 1956), and we have no special reason to disbelievehim. But there remains a subtle difference between

speculation as to which peg you may hang your coat onand which point will disclose the moment of revolution-ary transition. Mr. Dennis Healey and Mr. Crosland areanxious to disabuse us of this belief: power (they tell us)is all: when the coats are on the pegs, we may leaveit to them:

There is much talk (though rather more in Chelsea andOxford than in Stepney or Nyasaland) of the dangers ofsacrificing principle; what is forgotten is the sacrifice of

Socialist objectives, not to mention human freedom andwelfare, involved in a long period of impotent opposition.(Crosland in Encounter again)

It is not clear which specificallysocialist objectives (otherthan values which are not absolute) Mr. Croslandhas in mind. Nor do other potential peg-hangers offerus much more enlightenment. The Liberal and LabourMovements of the West, Mr. R. H. S. Crossmanassures us, have triumphantly falsified the predictionsof Karl Marx:

They have used the institutions of democracy to beginthe job of resolving the inherent contradictions ofcapitalism, evening out the gross inequalities, and trans-forming the privileges of the bourgeoisie into rights of

every citizen. (Also Encounter, June 1956)The Conventions of CapitalismBut how does one resolve an inherent contradiction?And if the job has been begun, at what point does it end?And if the contradiction ends in a socialist resolution,which predictions of Marx will this triumphantly falsify?

And yet the only sustained approach to such enquiriesis in Mr. Stracheys Contemporary Capitalism. Last-stage capitalism (he tells us)

will be succeeded not by still a third version of thesystem, but by something which it would be manifestly anabuse of language to call capitalism at all. (p. 41).

We should certainly be reluctant to abuse language.

But meanwhile last-stage capitalism abuses our lives,and it would be of interest to learn when the succession(or transcendence, as he says elsewhere) is due to takeplace. Democracy (he tells us) can hope to bit andbridle last stage capitalism, and then to transform it,ultimately to the degree that (it) is no longer capitalism(p. 281). It seems that we must await a further volumebefore we may learn what underlies the terms trans-form, ultimately, and degree. Perhaps Mr.Strachey is inhibited by echoes from the past?

It is . . . impossible for the working and capitalistclasses to share the power of the State over a wholeprolonged period of social evolution . . . Class antago-nisms are far too fierce for such diarchies, or conditionsof divided power, to be possible for more than brief periods,

and then always precariously. It is an illusion, in particular,to suppose that the capitalist class will passively allow thepolitical power of the workers to grow and grow, whilethe Labour movement pursues a steady policy of socialisa-tion and other encroachments upon capitalism.

(John Strachey, What Are We To Do, 1938.)The absence of any theory of the transition to

Socialism is the consequence of actual capitulationto the conventions of capitalist politics. And the politicalaccommodation is complemented by a social and moralaccommodation which spreads out into every region of

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life. Ursula, in The Rainbow, regarded with horror themining town of Wiggiston where her Uncle Tom wascolliery manager, with its rows of houses each with itssmall activity made sordid by barren cohesion with therest of the small activities:

There was no meeting place, no centre, no artery, noorganic formation. There it lay, like the new foundationsof a red-brick confusion rapidly spreading, like a skin-disease.

But is this place as awful as it looks? she asked heruncle. It is just what it looks, Uncle Tom replied.Why are the men so sad ? she asked:

I dont think they are that. They just take it forgranted . . .

Why dont they alter it? she passionately protested.

They believe that they must alter themselves to fit thepits and the place, rather than alter the pits and the placeto fit themselves. It is easier, he said.

The dialogue reminds us of Mr. Croslands incompre-hension before The Glittering Coffin: Smashing Thingswas the title of his review. True, the miners have alteredtheir environment, to a greater degree than most other

workers. True, the smoke-stained squalor of red-brickgives way before the garish squalor of neon and whitetile. But the accommodation continues, there is nomore organic formation or active, liberating socialcohesion than before. The point is not that we assentto all of Ursulas emotional Luddism (We could easilydo without the pits), but that conventional Labourpolitics have narrowed to a region of legislative manipu-lation where Ursulas protest is met with blank incom-prehension. However the offices were distributed in thelast Labour Cabinet, one feels that Uncle Toms coathung from every peg. Mr. Gaitskell has writtenbrotherhood and fellowship into Labours Con-stitution (it was there, without the writing, in the days

of Morris and Tom Mann). But the Utopian protest,the vision of new human possibilities constrainedwithin old forms, which is an essential part of thesocialist dynamic, has become extinguished in the wearyself-important Philistinism and the myopic realismof the capitalist parliamentarian. Between televisionappearances, brotherhood and fellowship canscarcely be thought to have their incarnation in theParliamentary Labour Party or the T.U.C. Betwixtpolitical and moral accommodation, we remain be-calmed.

Models of RevolutionTwo models of the transition (if we may simplify)

are commonly on offer. The first, the evolutionarymodel, of gradual piece-meal reform in an institutionalcontinuum, until at some undefined point some measurewill be taken (a bit more nationalisation? More Statecontrols over the private sector?) when the balance willtip slightly in favour of the socialist resolution: andwe shall acclaim this moment with a change in ourterminology. The main participation demanded of thepeople is to cross the ballot-paper 13 or 14 million times.This model must be rejected if the evidence and argu-ments presented in the first part of this book are valid.

It should not be assumed, however, that the modelof revolution presented by some Labour fundamentalistsis therefore acceptable. It is not only that its very termscarry an aroma of barricades and naval mutinies in anage of flame-throwers. It is also that the antagonismsof capitalist society are presented in a falsely anti-thetical mannerwithout any sense of the contradictoryprocesses of change. An imaginary line is drawn throughsociety, dividing the workers in basic industries fromthe rest. The class struggle tends to be thought of as aseries of brutal, head-on encounters (which it some-times is); not as a conflict of force, interests, values,priorities, ideas, taking place ceaselessly in every areaof life. Its culmination is seen as being a moment whenthe opposed classes stand wholly disengaged from eachother, confronting each other in naked antagonism; notas the climax to ever closer engagement within existinginstitutions, demanding the most constructive deploy-ment of skills as well as of force. It is their Stateversus our (imaginary) State; their institutionswhich must be smashed before ours can be built;their society which must be overthrown before the

new society can be made. Communists and Labourfundamentalists of the statist variety tend to placeemphasis upon an hypothetical parliamentary majoritywhich, in a dramatic period of breaking-and-making,will legislate a new State into existence from above.Trotskyists tend to place emphasis upon industrialmilitancy overthrowing existing institutions from below.

The Cataclysmic Model

This cataclysmic model of revolution is derived fromthe Marxist tradition, although it owes more to Lenin,Trotsky, and Stalin than to Marx. Two points onlycan be noted here. First, Marxs concession that

Britain and America might effect a peaceful transitionto Socialism was negatived by Lenin in 1917 on thegrounds that in the epoch of the first great imperialistwar Anglo-Saxon liberty had become submerged inthe filthy, bloody morass of military-bureaucraticinstitutions to which everything is subordinated.Hence, the necessary preliminary for every real peoplesrevolution is the smashing, the destruction of the ready-made state machine. This dictum Stalin ossified (in1924) into the inevitable law of violent proletarianrevolution.

From this follows a wholly undiscriminating assimi-lation of all institutions to the military-bureaucratic.Certainly, no approach to Socialism today is conceivable

without breaking-up the Cold War institutions towhich everything is subordinatedNATO, theAldermaston Weapons Research Establishment, andtheir multiform ramifications. But the point here is thatwe must discriminate. There is substance in Mr.Stracheys thesis of countervailing powers, providedthat we are willing to take up the argument at thepoint where he fuddles it over. Since 1848, 1917, andnotably since 1945, many of our institutions have beenactively shaped by popular pressures and by the adjust-

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ment to these pressures on the part of capitalist interests.But it is at this point that we encounter the secondcrippling fallacy of the fundamentalist. Since alladvances of the past century have been contained withinthe capitalist system, the fundamentalist tends to arguethat in fact no real advance has taken place. Theconceptual barrier derives in this case from a falsedistinction in Leninist doctrine between the bourgeoisand the proletarian revolution. The bourgeois revolution(according to this legend) begins when more or lessfinished forms of the capitalist order already existwithin the womb of feudal society. Capitalism wasable to grow up within feudalism, and to co-exist withiton uneasy termsuntil prepared for the seizure ofpolitical power. But the proletarian revolution beginswhen finished forms of the Socialist order are eitherabsent, or almost completely absent. This is because,with the exception of marginal co-operative enterprises,.it was supposed that forms of social ownership ordemocratic control over the means of production wereincompatible with capitalist state power. The twosystems could in no way co-exist, since socialism could

not grow within the womb of capitalism:The bourgeois revolution is usually consummated withthe seizure of power, whereas in the proletarian revolutionthe seizure of power is only the beginning. . . (1).

Interpenetrating OppositesFrom this conceptual inhibition, many consequences

flow. From this, the sterility of the usual Fabian-Marxist debate between reformism and revolution,which has scarcely advanced since the days of Hyndmanand Shaw. From this, the caricaturing of social advancesas bribes to buy off revolution, and the attributionof supreme cunning to the capitalist system, which by asuperb Marxist logic is able to anticipate and deflectevery assault by the working class. From this also, thehypocritical attitude which concedes the need to strugglefor reforms, not for the sake of the reform but for theeducative value of the struggle. Hence, finally, thealienation of many humane people, who detect in thedoctrinaire revolutionary an absence of warm responseto the needs of living people and a disposition toanticipate the coming of depression or hardship withimpatience.

But if we discard this dogma (the fundamentalistsmight meditate on the interpenetration of opposites)we can read the evidence another way. It is not a caseof either this or that. We must, at every point, see boththe surge forward and the containment, the public

sector and its subordination to the private, the strengthof trade unions and their parasitism upon capitalistgrowth, the welfare services and their poor relationstatus. The countervailing powers are there, and theequilibrium (which is an equilibrium within capitalism)is precarious. It could be tipped back towards authori-tarianism. But it could also be heaved forward, by

(1) The examples here are taken from Stalins On the Problemsof Leninism (1926); but the influence of this concept is to befound far outside the Communist tradition.

popular pressures of great intensity, to the point wherethe powers of democracy cease to be countervailingand become the active dynamic of society in their ownright. This is revolution.

There is not one, abstract Revolution, which wouldhave assumed the same form in 1889, 1919, and 1964.The kind of revolution which we can make today isdifferent from any envisaged by Marx or Morris. It isas different from Lenins model as the English CivilWar was different from the French 1789. Our comingrevolution could be a consummation of some things,a beginning of others. Nor is there only one kind ofrevolution which can be made in any given context. Arevolution does not happen: it must be made bymens actions and choices. During a period of excep-tional fluidity and heightened political awareness,institutions may be built or re-moulded which becomeset for many years. A revolution which is botched ormuddled into will entail consequences which reach farinto the future.

It is not the violence of a revolution which decidesits extent and consequences, but the maturity and

activity of the people. Violence does not make anythingmore real. 1789 was not more secure because it wascataclysmic, and 1917 was not more socialist becausesocialists seized power by force. It is possible to lookforward to a peaceful revolution in Britain, with fargreater continuity in social life and in institutional formsthan would have seemed likely even 20 years ago, notbecause it will be a semi-revolution, nor becausecapitalism is evolving into socialism; but because theadvances of 194248 were real, because the socialistpotential has been enlarged, and socialist forms, howeverimperfect, have grown up within capitalism.

The point of breakthrough is not one more shuffle

along the evolutionary path, which suddenly sinks thescales on the socialist side (51 per cent in the publicsector instead of 49 per cent). An historical transitionbetween two ways of life cannot be effected by an entryin a ledger; it involves the dislodgement, not only ofcertain interests, but of entrenched institutions,customs, superstitions, and moral codes. Nor is itinconceivable, in the age of automation and nuclearenergy, that the capitalist State might acquire acommanding role (even 51 per cent) within the wholeeconomy, without any subversion of capitalist society:the status-struggle, the Directors meetings, the Eton-Harrow match, theNews of the Worldall would go on.

Revolution of ContentCertainly, the transition can be defined, in the widest

historical sense, as a transfer of class power: the dis-lodgement of the power of capital from the command-ing heights and the assertion of the power of socialistdemocracy. This is the historical watershed betweenlast stage capitalism and dynamic socialismthepoint at which the socialist potential is liberated, thepublic sector assumes the dominant role, subordinatingthe private to its command, and over a very great area

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of life the priorities of need over-rule those of profit.But this point cannot be defined in narrow political(least of all parliamentary) terms; nor can we becertain, in advance, in what context the breakthroughwill be made. What it is more important to insist uponis that it is necessary to find out the breaking-point, notby theoretical speculation alone, but in practice byunrelenting reforming pressures in many fields, whichare designed to reach a revolutionary culmination. Andthe point of breakthrough is not a narrow politicalconcept: it will entail a confrontation, throughoutsociety, between two systems, two ways of life. In thisconfrontation, political consciousness will becomeheightened; every direct and devious influence will bebrought to the defence of property-rights; the peoplewill be forced by events to exert their whole politicaland industrial strength. A confrontation of this orderis not to be confined within the pages of Hansard; itinvolves the making of revolution simultaneously inmany fields of life. It involves the breaking-up of someinstitutions (and the House of Lords, Sandhurst,Aldermaston, the Stock Exchange, the press mono-

polies and the National Debt are among those whichsuggest themselves), the transformation and modifica-tion of others (including the House of Commons andthe nationalised Boards), and the transfer of newfunctions to yet others (town councils, consumerscouncils, trades councils, shop stewards committees,and the rest). The form of a revolution may dependupon forms of power; but, in the last analysis, itscontent depends upon the consciousness and will ofthe people.

The Monopolists and The People

As the kind of revolution which is possible haschanged, so has the kind of potential revolutionarysituation. We need no longer think of disaster as theprelude to advance. In one sense, we are now constantlyliving on the edge of a revolutionary situation. It isbecause we dare not break through the conventionsbetween us and that situation, that the political decayof apathy prevails. But such a revolution demands themaximum enlargement of positive demands, the deploy-ment of constructive skills within a conscious revolution-ary strategy, the assertion of the values of the commongoodor, in William Morriss words, the making ofSocialists. It cannot, and must not, rely exclusivelyupon the explosive negatives of class antagonism. Andthis is the more easy to envisage if we cease to draw

that imaginary line between the industrial workers andthe rest. The number of people who are wholly andunambiguously interested in the defence of thestatus quois small, despite Ralph Samuels warnings of the growingretinue of the corporations. Alongside the industrialworkers we should see the teachers who want betterschools, scientists who wish to advance research, welfareworkers who want hospitals, actors who want a NationalTheatre, technicians impatient to improve industrialorganisation. Such people do not want these things only

and always, any more than all industrial workers arealways class conscious and loyal to their greatcommunity values. But these affirmatives co-exist,fitfully and incompletely, with the ethos of the Oppor-tunity State. It is the business of socialists to draw theline, not between a staunch but diminishing minorityand an unredeemable majority, but between themonopolists and the peopleto foster the societalinstincts and inhibit the acquisitive. Upon thesepositives, and not upon the debris of a smashed society,the socialist community must be built.

How the New Model Might Work

And how is this to be done? At this point a newvolume should begin.

The elaboration of a democratic revolutionarystrategy, which draws into a common strand wage-demands and ethical demands, the attack on capitalistfinance and the attack on the mass media, is theimmediate task. It demands research and discussion:journals, books, Left Clubs. It demands organisationfor education and propaganda. It demands the exchange

of ideas between specialists and those whose experiencein nationalised industry or in local governmentenables them to see more clearly than the theorist thelimits of the old system, the growing-points of the new.

It demands also a break with the parliamentaryfetishism which supposes that all advance must waitupon legislative change. Most popular gains have beenwon, in the first place, by direct action: direct actionto increase wages, improve working conditions, shortenhours, build co-ops, found nursery schools. We do notneed a formula from the NEC of the Labour Party,before we can form tenants associations or socialistyouth clubs, write plays or force upon the Coal Board

new forms of workers control.Nor should this be seen as an alternative to the workof the existing institutions of the Labour movement.The defenders of Clause 4 are, in one sense, holdingfirm to the concept of socialist revolution. Too oftenthe concept is defended out of religious loyalty, anavowal of faith that the Clause might perhaps, in ourgreat-grandchildrens time, be dusted and put to use.What is required is a new sense of immediacy. Socialistsshould be fighting, not a defensive battle for anambiguous clause, but an offensive campaign to placethe transition to the new society at the head of theagenda. In this, the new protest of the Aldermastongeneration against the conventions of politics, and the

traditional loyalties of the Labour rank-and-file couldalthough they will not automatically do socometogether in a common agitation.

In the end, we must return to the focus of politicalpower: Parliament. It is here that the prospect appearsmost hopeless, the conventions of capitalism moststrong, the accommodation most absolute. But we neednot despair. It is the greatest illusion of the ideology ofapathy that politicians make events. In fact, theycustomarily legislate to take account of events which

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have already occurred. (Did Lord Attlee really freeIndia? Did Lord Morrison of Lambeth wrest the pitsfrom the coal owners?) Of course, more socialists mustbe sent into Parliament. It is through such a movementof agitation from below that new leaders of genuinecalibre will mature. But, in the last analysis, the contextwill dictate to the politicians, and not the reverse. Andsocialists must make the context.

Meanwhile, our local problems are contained withinthe larger context of nuclear diplomacy and imperialretreat. From this, an opportunity and a challenge. Theopportunity for a revolutionary breakthrough might aspossibly arise from international as from local politicalor industrial causes. Should the protest in Britain gainsufficient strength to force our coutry out of NATO,consequences will follow in rapid succession. TheAmericans might reply with economic sanctions. Britainwould be faced with the alternatives of compliance orof a far-reaching re-orientation of trade. The dilemmawould agitate the consciousness of the whole people,not as an abstract theory of revolution but as an actualand immediate political choice, debated in the factories,

offices and streets. People would become aware of thehistoric choice presented to our country, as they becameaware during the Second World War. Ideological andpolitical antagonisms would sharpen. Non-compliancewith America would entail winning the active, informedsupport of the majority of the people for policies whichmight bring with them dislocation and hardship.Hardship would involve the fair distribution of resources.The dogmas of the sterling area would fall. Stringentcontrols would have to be imposed upon the banks andfinance-houses. Curragh-like intrigues by members ofthe military ruling caste might raise the question ofsmashing the military-bureaucratic institutions. Onechoice would disclose another, and with each decisiona revolutionary conclusion might become moreinescapable. Events themselves would disclose to peoplethe possibility of the socialist alternative; and if eventswere seconded by the agitation and initiatives ofthousands of convinced socialists in every area of life,the socialist revolution would be carried through.

This is not offered as a prediction but as animpression of one possible way in which a revolutionarysituation could arise, resulting not from disaster butfrom an active popular initiative. And the challengeis this. Of all Western countries, Britain is perhapsthe best placed to effect such a transition. Theequilibrium here is most precarious, the Labour

movement least divided, the democratic socialisttradition most strong. And it is this event which couldat one blow break up the log-jam of the Cold War andinitiate a new wave of world advance. Advance inWestern Europe, and, in less direct ways, democratisa-tion in the East, may wait upon us.

How Long Can We Wait?

Is it useless to wait? Will Iceland or Italy breakthrough first? Will Britain founder under old habits,

rotting institutions, its hull encrusted with nostalgia,drifting half-waterlogged into the twenty-second century,a bourgeois Spain among the socialist nations? It wouldbe foolish to be sanguine. But foolish also to under-estimate the long and tenacious revolutionary traditionof the British commoner.

It is a dogged, good-humoured, responsible, peaceabletradition: yet a revolutionary tradition all the same.From the Leveller corporals ridden down by Cromwellsmen at Burford to the weavers massed behind theirbanners at Peterloo, the struggles for democratic andfor social rights have always been intertwined. Fromthe Chartist camp meeting to the dockers picket line,it has expressed itself most naturally in the languageof moral revolt. Its weaknesses, its carelessness oftheory, we know too well; its strengths, its resilienceand steady humanity, we too easily forget. It is atradition which could leaven the socialist world.

9

Housing is the centre of the problem, since

eviction of a family for non-payment of rent isusually the start of a hopeless struggle to findnew accommodation. Last year five millionpeople were waiting for new council housing,two million of them classed as urgentneeders; in 1956 the LCC had only 300 three-room flats to offer to nearly 72,000 familieswho required them.

The Observer