Conflicts In Socialism

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30847, 4 September 1965, Page 4

Conflicts In Socialism

Planning for Freedom. By RH. S. Crossman. Hamish Hamilton. 252 pp. For 25 years Mr R. H. S. Crossman has been one of the most eloquent and outspoken members of the British Labour Party. Last year, on the eve of the General Election which brought his party out of the political wilderness, he began collecting for publication 15 of his essays which he considered were of permanent value. The result, “Planning for Freedom,” is a revealing glimpse of Mr Crossman’s personal political development as well as a Valuable documentation of his party’s attitudes towards the problems of the mid-twentieth century. The collection begins at the time he resigned his Oxford fellowship in 1938 to enter politics in Coventry and ends as its author emerged as Minister of Housing and Local Government in Mr Harold Wilson’s Government. His topics range from an appraisal, through young, relatively doctrinaire eyes, of the history of British political theory on the eve of World War 11, up to his assessment in 1964 of the role of scientists in the administration of Britain. Perhaps with himself in mind he wrote then: “One of the most important qualities of a Minister in the future will be an ability to pick a team (of scientists) capable of carrying out the social investigation needed to undertake really sensitive and accurate planning.” From his time on the Labour Party’s 26-man National Executive Commit tee, as well as his experience as a member of Parliament, Mr Crossman has described the conflict between the Parliamentary Labour Party and the party’s executive in Transport House. “Only the personality of the party leader can hold these two wings together. The task (of party leader) can

be compared to that of an American president: each is faced with a completely unworkable constitution, and the proof of his leadership is that ne makes it work.” And drawing on his wartime activities as Director of Psychological Warfare Mr Crossman compares American and British attitudes to Communists in their respective countries. He believes the British attitude of toleration is likely to yield better results than the “anti-red hysteria” of the United States. “As long as the Communist Party is tolerated we are re-absorbing about a quarter of it annually into the free community as disgruntled ex-Communists, none the worse for having learned something about the totalitarian enemy from personal disillusionment. If you treat every Communist as a treasonable conspirator, you will merely persuade the disillusioned convert to stay in the party.” Yet in spite of the diversity in subjects there is a central theme running through these essays. Mr Crossman himself describes it by saying: “The concern of Socialism ... is not merely the raising of living standards or the achievement of equality, but the enlargement of Individual freedom. Socialism ... is not an alternative to Parliamentary democracy but an adaptation of it to the requirements of a modern rapidly developing industrial state.”

Many readers might disagree with the detail and methods which Mr Crossman advocates. Few could challenge that central belief. And Mr Crossman is well aware of how difficult this task would be. “The Socialist is confronted with an inherent contradiction, between the means of Socialism—public ownership and centralised planning —and the enlargement of individual freedom which is its end.”