"The case for socialism" (0)

The case for socialism
Four National faults
Economic Inequality. The distribution of income and property is amazingly unequal. The most recent investigations suggest that 10 per cent of the population recieve over 45 per cent of the national money income, while 90 per cent recieve the remaining 55 per cent. The distribution of property is even more uniequal. 1 per cent of the population own 60 per cent of the saleable assets of the nations. Individual incomes range from £1 000 000 a year to £50 per year. This extreme degree of inequality is due to the right of inheritance at present vested in the legal institution of property. Large individual fortunes are, for the most part , made up of inherited property. The rich , as a class , are born with silver spoon in their mouths and the economic privileges that they enjoy were not acquired by the possession or exercise of great talents, but by the accident of birth.
Social inequality. The apparatus of social hierarchy is amazingly complete . It is manifest in the Court with its great expense and elaborate display; the country house with its ancient associations and dependent village; the segregation of a group of schools (ironically called „public“ schools) to provide each new generation with the manners and habits of ruling class; the clubs and social life of London; the columns of „Society“ gossip in the newspapers and the differences of clothing and accent by which members of the „ classes “ can instantly recognise one another . We should respect our fellow creatures because they are good or clever, gifted or wise – not because they happen to possess advantages of wealth or power . In so far as we accept these false standards (of wealth and class) we make ourselves less than free men. We deny the eqality of our common humanity.
Vandalism. The worsest vice, because the most senseless, peculiar to our own time has been the destructive vandalism with which we have treated our physical heritage in our town and country. The period between the two European wars will stand out as one of the most destructive epochs in our history. The land is strewn with the wreckage of what was once beautiful. In point of fact the crime has been made possibly more by stupidity than by wickedness. Three-quarters of the damage could have been avoided without diminishing the national housing programme by a single jerry -built villa. The destructiveness must be checked.
Lack of imagination. Imagination is the power to see what is not there , to experience what has not yet come to be, to walk in the past or in the future. The English people have little time for visions, they have no leisure in which to dream. The man in the street must see a society that is strong and safe in the comfort of a wide association of states, a community in which no man is poor or unemployed, in which there is no servility to the pomp of wealth and no which children are the free and happy citizens. This society does not yet exist , but only because we do not see it. There is nothing in this humble vision of a better social order that exceeds our physical or our intellectual power to create. We fail to secure these infinitely desirable ends because we do not see them , the world we can have for the asking . No vested interest and no political minority could long stand in the way of the united and informed imagination of a free nation .
A Better Society – Socialism and the British Tradition
Author believe most profoundly that we can remedy economic and social inequality, our vandalism and our unimaginativeness. We can extend the help that we give to one another until we have built, unwrittingly, a better society. The most fruitful central idea for future is to be found in the main doctrine of the British Labour Party . Author is convinced that the faith of the Party in a moderate and democratic form of Socialism is a natural outcome of our slowly growing faith in human liberty , equality and brotherhood and represents the next step in our social emancipation.
The main evil from which we suffer and the main barrier to social progress is the disgraceful inequality in the distribution of income and property that we still tolerate. We can only remove this evil by abolishing property as a main source of income for anyone . To do this, it will be necessary to modify the right of inheritance so that it is only possible to pass comparatively small sums of money or nothing at all from generation to generation. Private monopolistic control will bring into existence a better balanced and a more securely progressive economy .
A socialised industry should be owned by the State and its technical management remain responsible to the nation. But it should retain all the advantages of small enterprise: plants that are small enough to be managed efficiently.
With knowledge would come power. Better educated men and women , freed from the bonds of social subservience, would see more clearly the society in which they wished to live and guide more firmly the conduct of democratic policy by which alone their hopes can slowly be established in the practice of the nation. Economic planning and social equality are the ideas upon whose slow growth the purification of our social order chiefly ends.
Before we can gather harvests or walk through open doors, we mus fight , endure and win this war. Victory is essential to social progress for two reasons . In the first place a continuity of our national freedom is a necessary condition for the healthy development of our society. Secondly we must preserve our democratic form of goverment if our community is to secure a richer life for all its members.
Democracy and socialism in Great Britain
Practical political discussion in Britain to-day centres upon two questions . Can we prevent another European War? Can we transfer economic power to the state by purely democratic methods?
The difficulty of achieving democratic Socialism by peaceful means consists in devising a programme for the Labour Party which will fulfil three conditions :

It must include a transfer of a substantial increase of economic power to the Goverment, otherwise it will represent no real advance towards the astablishment of a socialist democracy.

It must not provoke the opponents of Socialism to appeal to force or frighten them into an uncontrollable financial panic. In either case there would be a breakdown in the normal processes of peaceful goverment.

On the other hand it is equally essential that the programme of the Labour Party should retain the loyality of a very large proportion of its followers. A strong and united party organisation is essential for the execution of a complex programme.
The importance of planning
The term is used in current speech to describe widely different types of economic reforms. It is necessary to distinguish between:

Planning, meaning simply the intervention of the Government in a particulat industry at a time when the greater part of the economy still remains in private hands , and

Planning which results in the general supersession of individual enterprise as the source of economic decisions .
Summary
The issue of planning prompted some of the fiercest debate in mid-twentieth century economics . Politics of Economic Planning collects together a number of papers from journals and contributed books that examine the problems of economic planning in a free society.
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