716
R. H. S. CROSSMAN
be revealed by the Conservative forces that control capitalism.
These forces, as we now know, are ready to accept even radical
changes, such as those recommended by Keynes, in order to pre–
serve their power. As a result, just a hundred years after the writ–
ing of
Das Kapital,
the Western world has resolved the central con–
tradiction of pre-war capitalism. But this has only been achieved at
the cost of producing a new and equally dangerous contradiction.
This new contradiction
can
be resolved, as its predecessor was re–
solved. Indeed, the main function of the Socialist in the 1960's is to
explain how this can be done, and the main function of the Labour
Party is to do it. For once again it is perfectly possible to cure what
looks at first sight like an inherent and incurable weakness in our
economic system by political action, designed to adapt our demo–
cratic institutions to the needs of the times.
There is an urgent need for political economists and sociologists
to follow up Professor Galbraith's brilliant initiative by driving his
analysis to its real conclusion and also by describing in detail the
British variant of the Affluent Society.4 All I can hope to do here is
to list in summary form the main features of the central contradic–
tion that now confronts us; to indicate why that contradiction, un–
less it is resolved, will inevitably make us the losers in peaceful com–
petition with the East; and finally, to suggest the measures necessary
to get Britain out of her special impasse.
Our analysis must start by noting two central features-one a
strength, the other a weakness-which all the Western democracies,
despite the differences between them, have in common and which
separate them from Communist governments.
The strength of the
democracies
is
the existence of civil and politic,al liberties as organic
parts of the State structure. Their weakness is the complete failure
to subject irresponsible economic power to public control.
One of
the most alarming symptoms of Western decadence is the modem
tendency to treat the liberties of the citizen as a "weakness" of demo–
cracy and to explain the successes of the Kremlin by pointing to the
"obvious" advantages any Communist leader has as the unques–
tioned head of a totalitarian State. The reverse, of course, is true. All
the weaknesses of Communism derive from the crude brutalities of
the one-party state and the absence of the institutions of civil liberty
