SOCIALISM AND COLD WAR.
1i3
sians to forge ahead, Mr. Eisenhower has preferred to accept defeat
in the nuclear race. As a Socialist, I do not myself believe that, by
accepting Russian dominance in nuclear weapons, the Americans
subject themselves to any very acute military risks. But the Ameri–
can politicians and Big Businessmen who refused to increase the de–
fense budget did so though they were convinced that they were
thereby putting their country in the deadliest peril. Nothing could
demonstrate more clearly than this the inherent contradiction which
ensures that, in our Affluent Society, while the individual grows
rapidly more comfortable, the community becomes even more
rapidly w<:aker and weaker. For the inherent inability of the system
to allocate ·sufficient resources for national defense is repeated in
relation to education, scientific development, health and welfare
services.
The price which the modern, managed capitalism pays for
avoiding the old-fashioned crisis of mass unemployment is the con–
tinuous sacrifice of public service, community welfare and national
security to private profit.
That is why we can predict with mathematical certainty that,
as long as the public sector of industry remains the minority sector
throughout the Western world, we are bound to be defeated in
every kind of peaceful competition which we undertake with the
Russians and the Eastern bloc. It is not that our workers are less
skillful and energetic, that our managers are less competent, or even
that our politicians do their job any worse. The truth is that, what–
ever our intentions, wishes or individual capabilities, the nations of
the Western world will be unable to strengthen themselves by de–
veloping adequate public services until the public sector becomes
the dominant sector in our economies.
The idea that we can achieve the same ends by leaving the
great concerns in private hands and controlling their development
from Whitehall is as illusory as the concept that their profits can be
taxed to pay for the Welfare State. We are faced with a sharp
choice. Either we accept the Affluent Society as we know it, includ–
ing the limitations on State activity and public spending that it im–
plies. In that case there is everything to
be
said for permitting the
Labour Party to die away and building in its place a Liberal Party
as an alternative Government within the Establishment.
Alterna-
