28
PARTISAN
~IVIBW
a force which should control and check the development of bureau–
cracy; and public opinion has shown itself of late, to the dismay
of certain Tories, to be still both lively and powerful. Its activity,
however, has been limited to the sudden assertion of some absolute
value (usually in the field of foreign affairs), obscurely grasped,
without any connection of a theoretical kind being established be–
tween the occasions. A religious and moral vocabulary
is
the posses–
sion now of a few; and most people lack the word with which to
say just what is felt to be wrong is wrong.
If
in the hope of finding such words we tum to the available
Socialist "literature" we are likely to
be
disappointed. In the old
days professional and amateur philosophizing fed the public mind
with ideas. Now, for a larger vision. we have to look back to Laski
or Tawney, or search for hints in eccentric and little-known works
by Christians or Marxists. What we have plenty of, and what we
find officially in the center of the picture, are detailed technical
books and pamphlets in which the author tells us briefly that we
need public ownership in order to bring about equality, and then
hurries on to the details of investment policy. The motive, the
passion, in much of this literature is patently that of an expert
making an efficient plan. Needless to say one
is
glad of such experts,
and it would be an impertinence in the uninitiated to criticize what
they cannot understand. But what one requires as well is a little more
pausing at the first stage, a little more analysis, in terms which are
not those of the economist, of an idea such as that of equality–
which is, in fact, in danger of becoming the only influential "gener,al
idea" of contemporary Socialism. More theoretical exploration of
the aims of Socialism, those aims to which all techniques are properly
!!ubordinate, would benefit both sides of the specialist barrier. The
expert would gain that unifying vision which
is
needed to prompt
more inspired and imaginative uses of technique. He would be less
isolated, more responsible, more often compelled to explain, and
having to explain, to connect, to translate, deepens understanding;
while the average person would gain a more complex, and hence
more influential, grasp upon what is being done on his behalf, instead
of coming straightaway up against the blank wall of economics.
It is not true that "everyone knows what
is
wrong with our
society" and diffenJ only over a simple choice of !IOlutions. What
