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LONDON LETTER
enthusiastic tribunes, flaunts his red cape before the bull until the beast
gets raving mad; then, in the decisive moment, it appears that he has
left his sword at home, and he is carried out on a stretcher, past the
booing .crowd which throws cushions and rotten eggs at him.
In other words, a socialist government cannot escape the fatal
choice either to break the power of the old ruling classes, or to come
to a modus vivendi with them. Every single social-democratic movement
in Europe which has come to power since 1918 has tried to evade this
choice, and each fell victim to its attempt at evasion. It can be argued
against this that British social history is a succession of unique com–
promises. But the geographical, political, and psychological factors which
account for this development have ceased to exist, and the belief in
the miraculous healing power of the "British compromise"-between
the coal miners and the City, between internationalism and the Foreign
Office-is on a par with the belief in the unchangeable value of Dread–
noughts, and of homemade herbal cures against radioactive clouds.
The dilemma of how to deal with the bull without resorting to
radical means is inherent in the dilemma of social-democratic reformism.
In this respect, the predicament of British Labour is merely a particular
example of the predicament of democratic socialism in general, and the
muddled policy of the Government may partly be regarded as a conse–
quence of the inadequacy and datedness of socialist doctrine itself. But
no such excuse can be claimed for the treatment of the petite bourgeoisie
-the storekeeper, artisan, small businessman, white-collar worker. The
requirements of socialist policy towards this amorphous, politically op–
portunistic mass, with its decisive influence on public atmosphere and
opinion, and its decisive "floating vote," are clear and unambiguous:
they have to be won, brought over to the side of the People, to which
they belong. Experience both on the Continent and in this country has
proved that the industrial working class alone, without middle-class
support, can neither obtain a stable parliamentary majority, nor the
necessary favorable
ambiance
of the street; it cannot govern. That is
why the results of the last municipal elections are so significant and
distressing. That Labour lost two-thirds of the contested seats could be
regarded as a mere momentary oscillation of the political barometer–
were it not for the way in which they lost them. The elections were
fought not on the lines of municipal, but of national politics, for or
against the Labour Government. In consequence, the percentage of
voters reached the record figure (for municipal elections) of 56% ;
that is 13%, or round two million voters, more than last year. Among
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