PARTISAN REVIEW
of incentives presents itself in a different form and not as overtly as
was the case after a total bolshevik revolution; but it is equally decisive
for its success or failure. As Labour policy in the nationalized and con–
trolled industries is incomparably more equalitarian, democratic, and
economically "leftist" than the policy of the Stalin regime, it can have
no recourse to the fantastic wage-differentiations, Stakhanovite privileges,
exploitation, and terror which keep Soviet industry going. Nor can it
offer the straight capitalist incentives of material betterment, reinforced
by fear of unemployment, which operate in American industry. This is
the real predicament of British social democracy-and of every social
democratic regime which, as I tried to show in my ·first letter, must
almost inevitably inherit countries handed over by the former ruling
class in a state of virtual bankruptcy. Only an exceptional imaginative
effort could enable the Labour Government to solve this problem; the
instilling of a true revolutionary consciousness into the masses; a much
greater share of initiative and responsibility invested, not in the bureau–
cratic bodies of the national Trade Unions, but in the men in the work–
shops; together with the organization of workers' clubs, holiday camps,
and other forms of recreation; in other words, the stimulation of political
consciousness and joy of life. Instead of which, the people get
WORK
OR WANT
posters, unctuous sermons, and the death-sentence of the
motor bike.
The Cabinet takes Britain in its keeping
In working partnership with sons of toil,
But there's the rub-those partners now are sleeping,
The revolution has gone off the boil, ·
The plebs have lost that hectic
joie-de-vivre
That goes with revolutionary fever.
Two more years of this, and Labour will have irretrievably wasted
its historic chance, and will have gone the way of the German, Austrian,
and French social-democratic parties.
The fatal pattern of these continental precedents is equally discern–
ible in Labour's attitude towards the upper and the middle classes. The
Weimar Republic had sufficiently scared the Junkers and the Ruhr
industrialists to make them her mortal enemies; as it kept on provoking
them with pinpricks but forgot to break the backbone of their power,
its end was inevitable. Much the same happened in Austria, and in the
France of the Popular Front. With local variations it is always the same
distressing spectacle. The young matador enters the arena, bows to the
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