SOCIALISM AND COLD WAR
707
most decisive way possible the victory of nationalization over free
enterprise. At first the technological and economic achievements of
the Communists were blandly disregarded. Now that it is impossible
to deny their reality, three arguments are employed in order to de–
preciate their importance and allay the alarm they have caused. We
are told ( 1) that, while the "great leap forward" is natural enough
in backward economies, starting on the early stages of industrializa–
tion, this rate of increase is bound to slow down as the absolute
strength of the Communist States approaches that of the West;
(2)
that the Russian sputnik and other achievements in rocketry are the
results of quite abnormal concentration of effort, such as a totalitar–
ian State can always make and from which no conclusion can be
drawn about the general efficiency of the system; and, finally,
(3)
that, as living standards improve and education spreads, a new pub–
lic opinion will be created in the Communist States, with liberalistic
demands for extensions of freedom and a shift of balance from
production to consumption industries. Provided, therefore, that nu–
clear war can be avoided, we are assured that we can look forward
for the next fifty years to a period of peaceful competition, in which
the intrinsic differences between Communism and Western capital–
ism will become less and less marked as the backward Communist
nations gradually find fulfillment in a Western "pursuit of happi–
ness."
I am not surprised that, with the change in the balance of
power, the fulminations against the wickedness of Communism and
the aggressive menace of the Kremlin's designs have been replaced,
in
Washington as well as in London, by such comforting predictions.
But what does surprise and alarm me is that some Socialist econo–
mists should have joined in peddling these complacent illusions. For
one of the main objectives of a fighting Socialist Opposition must
be to expose the false assumptions of our Affluent Society and so
force the British people to face honestly the challenge that con–
fronts them. Far more than the revision of its constitution or of its
electoral program, the Labour Party needs today a new Socialist
critique,
applied both to the Western and to the Eastern economies,
which would enable us to foresee and prepare for the "creeping
crisis" that will confront the West before the end of this decade.
