lOOKS
m
program
of domestic refonn worked out for America, instead of having
to
be
content with the slogans of the New Frontier and the timid and
limited proposals beyond which even the more liberal Democrats seem
incapable of going.
Crosland's program is largely an extension and updating of the
one he advanced in his previous book,
The Future of Socialism.
His
exposition, however, has improved in the direction of greater crispness,
economy and elegance, perhaps because most of the chapters of the
present book were written as magazine essays in which he politely but
mercilessly deals with his critics on both the right and the left. Crosland
wants to increase Britain's lagging rate of economic growth-the lowest
in the Western world-by greatly expanded public expenditures. He
proposes new redistributive taxes, greater control of commercial ad–
vertising, educational refonn that would transfonn (without abolishing)
the still undemocratic "public" schools, and urban planning. An analysis
of changes in the electorate and the trend of the Labour vote leads him
to the conclusion that Labour risks a loss of about two per cent at
each successive General Election unless it refurbishes its organization
and campaigning methods, identifies itself with new policies, and drops
its "sectional one-class image" and the associated dogma of total na–
tionalization of industry.
This realistic, intelligent latter-day Fabianism will hardly satisfy
those leftists who continue
to
proclaim themselves committed to "revolu–
tionary change," "structural transformation," or the "new utopian
society." Clearly, Crosland's refonns presuppose acceptance of twentieth–
century industrial society, which is neither capitalist nor socialist, though
possessing major features of both. Although he praises their cultural
criticism, he is devastating in his treatment of the ideologists of the
New Left, exposing the bad logic, faulty evidence and economic
illiteracy of their effort to apply C. Wright Mills's "power elite" concept
to England by uncovering a group of corporate "controllers" and "in–
siders" alleged to be the hidden rulers of the country. He is scathing on
the sacrificial millenarianism of the Labour Left, which would prefer
to wait for some catastrophe to bring a militant Labour Party to power
rather than compete for office by adapting to the new circumstances
of the present.
Crosland overlooks the important case to be made for the view
that intellectuals who are justifiably dissatisfied with contemporary
society should hold themselves aloof from the existing terms of political
competition and concentrate on developing wide-ranging "utopian"
visions of alternative possibilities. But
it
is hard to believe that the New
