مسائل انگلستان سوسیالیستی

FOREWORD FEW things are harder than to preserve, in a time of practically chronic crisis, a sense of perspective. Passengers travelling at full speed on a highly unsafe switchback are not likely to carry the principles of engineering firmly in their minds, nor are the headlong development of political and economic events and their interaction likely tQ appear in their true proportions and relationships to those whom they most closely affect. On the other hand, the outsider who proverbially sees most of the game is apt to ignore just those things which seem most important to the players ; he may have an Olympian, long-run rightness, but so far as present feeling-tones and immediate stresses are concerned, he is quite likely to be maddeningly wrong-and consequently unconvincing. To achieve at once the objectivity of a historian and the sense of actuality of a participant is a very rare feat indeed. M. de Jouvenel unmistakably accomplishes it. His study of postwar England, its ideals, its economic and intellectual bases and problems, its personalities, its atmosphere and colour, recognizably shows what Englishmen have themselves seen and experienced. He does a reporter's job, an interpreter's job, extremely well. But M. de Jouvenel is not only a reporter and interpreter; he is also a distinguished political theorist and student of, history, and so his descriptions and his analyses are lit and deepened by a more than contemporary significance. In narrating and clarifying the particular problems of Socialist England, he casts a light on the crisis of Western democracy, on the problem of power as its effective exercise passes from the hands of an oligarchy, subject only to periodical electoral checks, to those of an as yet imperfectly educated, and inconsistently motivated; popular majority. For this majority he has nothing but sympathy and good will, and a guess at his politics would put them well to the left of centre. But the slogans of the Left have for him only a symptomatic interest. He has no axe to grind. One can think of many members of the Government to whom reading this book would do a power of good, but it would be no less admirable on an Opposition reading list. If the spirit which informs Problems of Socialist England were to become general, the problems would indeed remain, but the prospects for their solution would be most notably improved. GEOFFREY CROWTHER Editor of The Economist Foreword by Geoffrey Crowther Introduction I. THE ENGLISH POLITICAL SCENE: AUTUMN 1946 1 The Socialists in Power 2 The Labour Party 3 The Role of the Opposition 15 4 At the Blackpool Conservative Party Congress (1946) 5 Mr. Churchill's Anxiety 6 The Great Retreat of the Europeans 7 England on the Chess-Board 8 The Intellectual Influence of the Great Depression 9 Beveridgism lO The Keynesian Revolution II. THB GREAT MATERIAL PROBLEMS 11 Intentions and Problems 12 The English are a People of Traders 13 Malthus and the British Standard of Life 14 The Balance of Payments Crisis 15 The Drama of Coal 16 Industrial Re-organisation 17 The Re-organisation of the Cotton Industry 18 Directing the Flow of Incomes 19 Allocating the National Resources II I. THE MORAL PROBLEMS 20 The Drama of Socialism 21 The Problem of the Trade Unions 22 The Human Problem 23 First Lessons from the English Experiment IV. THE CRISIS OF THE SUMMER OF 1947 24 Precursors of the Crisis 25 The Internal Disorder 26 The Convertibility of Sterling 27 The Cripps Plan 28 Full Employment or Rational Employment V. EPILOGUE 29 England re-visited in the Autumn of 1948