Socialism Part II

In the UK socialism didn't take the same turn as it did in Sweden. I believe that this is due to two factors: one of these is that the British Labour Party was more heavily influenced by Marxism, the other being that the British Labour Party didn't gain any real power until after the working class had started to break apart.

At the turn of the last century, Britain was divided in a class structure consisting of a small number of extremely wealthy capitalists, a small middle class and a huge working class. The economy had a large demand for unskilled manual labour and only a relatively small demand for skilled labour, thus the working class was much larger relative to the middle class at this time.

Because the demand for unskilled manual labour was so great, the working class at the turn of the century was made up of people of every intellectual capacity. Thus my maternal grandfather, a well-read intelligent man, was forced to work down the coal mines simply because there were no other employment opportunities available. People of every level of capability worked together, and thanks to being dependent on council or rented accomodation they also lived
together.

In Sweden, Russia and Germany this huge amorphous mass of working class people would be the raw material of social revolution between the wars. They would be melded together permanently and proceed in lock-step towards their futures. But in Britain this did not happen - another revolution was taking place at the same time. The technological revolution. By WWII technology was changing the Western world at a breathtaking pace. The technological revolution
needed skilled technicians for its advancement, and the only place where these skilled echnicians could be found was within the ranks of the working class. Education and apprenticeships would create new opportunities for employment that simply did not exist for the previous generation.

By the time the Labour Party first gained real power in the UK in 1945 it was based on an idea that was already going out of fashion. It was an idea that belonged to the older generations of the working class. Over the next generation the working class in the UK would dissolve. A new middle class would form from the working class as skilled employment allowed the capable, aspiring working class opportunities for advancement. These people had no need for socialism. They were making their own personal advancement. Britain would not become a Social Democracy like Sweden, it would develop towards being a meritocracy.

In Sweden and Germany the working class had already accepted socialist ideas before the technological revolution took hold. Sweden and Germany had adopted authoritarian socialism to force the working class to conform to models of the ideal German or Swedish citizen. As the technological revolution unfolded these countries simply rode the revolution, feeding the new opportunities into the working class but forcing the working class to progress as a unit. The education system reflected this, with schools and colleges entirely focussed on churning out employees for the new industries. They would become industrial power houses, lead by capitalists - but at the same time the social conformity based on the working class would drastically limit opportunities for independent thought. All socialist states would, in common with communist states, cease to contribute any cultural influence. They became little more than mass-production machines, with human beings as working components. As the people benefitted from the availability of the products of the technological revolution, it was European socialists that took the credit.

This was not to be the case in Britain. The Labour Party may have had real power for the first time in 1945, but a young generation released from the military and an economy on a war footing was in no mood for authoritarianism, or being treated as components in the machine of mass-production. As the new middle class grew and demanded greater freedom, socialism in Britain was forced to re-invent itself and develop a liberal outlook, and the liberal left gained the ascendency. This was to become the dominant political force in Britain.

Of course Britain was not ploughing this particular furrow alone. The United States was following a very similar path and in the 1950s was extremely influential on British politics and culture. But Britain was developing its own culture from the growing new middle class. As it developed large numbers of people from what had been the British working class found themselves with the opportunity to express themselves in writing, in music and art. British culture became increasingly dominant in Europe as the socialist states retreated within themselves - they offered no competition. Today, one could reasonably argue that Britain has achieved cultural ascendency, overtaking even the United States in the sheer volume of its cultural output. Socialists in Britain like to claim that they were responsible for the growth in Britains culural output. From the development of "Kitchen Sink Drama" in the 50s it was easy to see how this misconception arose. Yes, these plays were about the working class - but they were written by the new middle class and it was the new middle class that was interested in them. But the real attitude of socialists to the new middle class was to be revealed in Mike Leigh's "Abigails Party". This biting satire was to define the new middle class in cultural terms- but in fact it reveals far more about the attitudes of the real socialist that wrote it than it does about the ficticious characters that it portrays. The socialists, like Mike Leigh, despised the new middle class. They realised that as it formed, the power that had been within the working class was draining away.

As Britain rejected authoritarianism and would only accept left-wing concepts on a liberal basis, the British welfare state that was intended to shadow developments in Scandinavia had none of the balances that authoritarian leftist politics could provide. As a result the inevitable happened - a large underclass started to form. This was exacerbated by the growth of the new middle class that found it now had the financial power to move away from the growing underclass and leave it effectively segregated. The underclass shunned worked and developed its own nihilistic
culture, unhindered by the influence of "liberal" politicians.

The British Labour Party was influenced by Union financed Marxism. This took the shape of nationalisation after WWII, something that never happened in Sweden which remained dominated by capitalism. The unions wished to protect their members from unemployment, and to achieve this they applied Marxist principles. Competition was to be curtailed. Companies would be brought together in huge national state-owned enterprises. Since many companies were struggling after WWII, it was precisely these companies that were first on the list for nationalisation. Whereas consolidation might have led to cost savings through redundancy to revive these industries, the government would subsidise the losses being made to protect the jobs within these state owned leviathans. This protected the jobs at the full market rate even though the employees were, in effect, redundant. The unions, realising that the jobs were untouchable, now had a free hand to press for higher wages to keep up with the new middle class. The subsidies to the nationalised industry were, of course, coming from those employed in the unsubsidised private sector. Employees in the private sector developed a deep hatred of unionism, and their industries carried a heavy burden of taxation. Naturally this system could not last. It was set up to fail, with productivity tending towards zero and more and more of the nations wealth absorbed by industries that simply could not compete on world markets. By the 1980s the situation had become untenable, and nationalisation was brought to an end. It left a terrible legacy. The employees made redundant often took the attitude that a job in a nationalised industry was a job for life and refused to do any other work. Their own children took the same attitude. They added to the growing underclass living in an unreal world where the farmers toiled to put food on everyone's table but the unemployed acted as if it had appeared by magic.


By the 1980s Socialism in the UK had failed utterly. In a last gasp of denial the Labour Party elected Michael Foot to be its leader - he was demolished by Margaret Thatcher in the subsequent general election. Even the more moderate Neil Kinnock was unpalatable to a population that had moved on. The balance of power was now held by the new middle class and they aspired to greater things - socialism was an idea that was past its prime. The choice of Tony Blair as party leader was an indication of how far things had changed. It had not changed because the people themselves had given up on socialism. It had given up because over time the demographics had changed. The aspirational working class born after WWII had made use of the technological revolution to haul itself up the social ladder since the war. The new middle class had no need for socialism anymore, and it was this class that now held the balance of power.

In the next posting, I will look at British democracy and the manner in which the failings of liberal-left policies became "baked in the cake" of British politics.