80
PARTISAN REVIEW
ophy of the recent Tory past, and yet one is likely to remain rather
skeptical of its appeal to the bulk of the voting population.
It
would
seem indeed as
if
the Tories are about to lose their image of
the
national party to become the standard bearers of Colonel Blimp,
suburban rose gardeners, Church of England clergymen, and
company directors.
No serious political alternatives seem to have appeared on the
right or on the left; this accounts, perhaps, for the feeling of
dyspepsia and letdown of which I spoke earlier. For the time being,
people still seem to indulge in a last fling of self-indulgence in the
spirit of
carpe diem.
But will this last? Can it? In the shadows there
lurks the dark figure of Enoch Powell, the racist rabble-rouser from
Oxbridge; and even more menacing figures may soon crawl out from
under the woodwork. In the meantime, only one thing seems certain:
you cannot maintain a stable democracy at a twenty-five percent rate
of inflation for too much longer. To quote Dahrendorf again,
"Yesterday's rising individuals are today's declining classes . And in
history, groups which were worried about their future have been the
stuff from which illiberal politics were made . ' ,
The editors of
Partisan Review
may feel that I have not really
responded to their queries and have instead stuck to too much detail
about the English scene. But I have preferred to be concrete rather
than to indulge in generalizations about the crisis of the West.
You may ask whether the crisis is primarily political or economic.
It seems to me that at the present time politics and economics are so
intertwined that each has lost the measure of autonomy it may once
have enjoyed. In an age of administered prices and declines of the
market, government policies set the tone. But these policies, in turn,
are constrained by the state of the economy. Even in the most
unlikely event of Mrs. Thatcher's coming to power, she will have to
continue to prop up ailing industries through government inter–
vention, just like Mr. Heath and Mr. Wilson; the "socialization of
the losses" will continue, no matter who sits in Whitehall. Is the
crisis soluble within the present social and economic system?
It
all
depends what these terms refer to. I do not expect a "breakdown of
capitalism" along classical Marxist lines, but I also feel that the
present policies of muddling through have almost come to the point
of no return. Certainly, heightened class conflict and contentions for
