R. H. S. CROSSMAN
locusts" by fighting alone and so giving the Americans and Rus–
sians time to
win
a war that need never have grown great
if
we had
dealt with the disease in
good
time.
In the nuclear age, however,
war will provide no solution of our crisis. We shall have to drag our–
selves out of the comfortable sloth of the 1950's-without blowing
the world to pieces.
Churchill could enjoin a policy of blood and
sweat and demand a suspension of free enterprise and the rights of
property in order to produce the weapons with which to defeat the
enemy. In the crisis which lies ahead, we shall need a leadership
that enjoins just as arduous a sacrifice of material comforts and in–
sists just as sharply on the subordination of private property to the
national interest.
But this time there will
be
no enemy to fight and the object
will be to make the community capable not of winning a war but
of holding its own in a peaceful competition, which will decide
whether the pattern of World Government will be democratic or
totalitarian Socialism. In 1940 Mr. Churchill asked only for a tem–
porary subordination of private profit-making to the public interest,
and five years after that war was over he himself headed the
Government which reasserted the primacy of the private over the
public interest. This time the "commanding heights of the economy"
must be captured and held permanently for the public interest.
It is, I believe, for this creeping crisis of the 1960's and 1970's
that the leadership of the Labour Party should hold itself in reserve,
refusing in any way to come to terms with the Affluent Society,
warning the electorate of the troubles that lie ahead and explaining
why they can only be tackled by ensuring that public enterprise
dominates the whole economy and creates the climate in which
private enterprise works. By starting the job now, when the public
still retains its blind trust in the Tory Government, the Labour
Party may incur a temporary unpopularity, but it will
be
creating
the conditions for gaining the confidence of the electorate when its
harsh predictions come true.
«When
its predictions come true? By what right," it may be
asked, "can the future be anticipated with such gloomy confidence?
Is
not the Socialist who bases his political strategy on this kind of
prediction falling into the mistake of those Marxists who discredited
