A Crippsian Utopia
THE nineteenth century produced a number of Utopia-books written by Socialists. At least three of them—Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, Laurence Gronlund's Co-opera- tive Commonwealth, and William Morris's News from Nowhere— had a distinct effect on the British Socialist movement during its pre-War propaganda stages. Only the third has worn well and may still today entrance a discerning reader. But the vogue of the other two was far greater at the time. If everybody's recollections were honest, I think it would be found that " out of Henry George by either Gronlund or Bellamy " was a true pedigree of the convictions held by nearly all the leading propagandists who set Socialism on its feet in Great Britain between 1885 and 1900. By comparison the Fabians did not convert, though they educated the converts. As for Karl Marx and his forbidding tomes, they were simply nowhere in it beside these vendors of rose- coloured chromo-Iitbographs.
Mr. Mitchison, therefore, has good warrant for casting his doctrine into Utopia form. He has produced a narrative, supposed to be written about 1980, of events in the years 1936-41. But his story differs from those of the nineteenth century in that it is a Utopia not of the goal but of the endeavour. Their aim was to describe what the world would be like " under Socialism." His is to describe how Socialism can be brought in. Rose-colour is obviously more excusable in the first case than in the second. Every believer in an ideal system is entitled to assume that, after it has been attained, things will go charmingly. Perhaps they would, perhaps they would not ; we lack data to eheck_the forecast. It is quite another matter to pretend that in England in 1936 a particular course of policy could be peacefully pursued, when there are ample data for concluding that it must provoke, in one form or another, .civil war. Mr. Mitehison has his answer ; which is that he wants to show what an imaginary Government might do, and not how it might be opposed. But in a free country government and opposition are two parts of one process, and every step that a Ministry takes must be conditioned by the way in which a free people will receive it. Cut out that condition (as Mr. Mitchison dries), and you must cut out freedom. There is no other
. _ The fact is that, under more aspects than one, our author seemed guilty of trying to have it both ways." This is how, he tells us, hostility was overcome :
" To the resistance of a belief founded on the ideals of the past the only answer was a belief in other ideals—those of the future. As that belief was translated into practice and the ideals shaped themselves slowly in the form of a new community and a new order Of life, many of those who believed Socialism to be wicked began to find in it the concrete substance of those very things of which they had believed it to be the denial."
The words which I have italicized would be perfectly fair game, if he were expounding a Socialist policy along "inevitability of gradualness " lines. But in relation to a scheme for collectivizing nearly everything in Britain within five years they are arrant poaching on the older Fabian preserves.
So again in regard to workers' control." Our author tells us, with much truth, that the managerial element in modern industry is often very restive under capitalist boards of directors. He would like them to feel that they would get freer scope in collectivized industries. But he will never do that while he gives to workers' councils, nominated by the trade unions, the biggest voice in the running of industry. The managers know, what all the wiser trade-union officials also know, that running industry is not the trade unions' job, and that nothing but disaster could result from such a confusion of functions.
One is justified in throwing forward such matters as these because they render the Utopia presented to us wholly unreal. It is a house built on sand ; the first waves of actuality would wash it away. And yet it is a very clever and intricate structure. Mr. Mitchison has put no end of work into it ; he has even drafted some of the Acts of
Parliament requisite for the Crippsian dictatorship which he visualizes, and here they are at full length in an Appendix —the Emergency Powers (Financial) Act, 1936, the Banking Act, 1937, and the National Investment Act, 1937 ! Be has gone in considerable detail into the present situation of a number of industries—coal, cotton, iron and steel, the motor industry, transport, power, and others—with a view to mapping out their socialization. It is true that he had here plenty of material in recent reports worked out by various Socialist or trade-un:on resear. h bodies. But his task has nevertheless been no light one ; and he has dis- charged it to the complete satisfaction of Sir Stafford Crippi, Mr. G. D. H. Cole and the other leaders of the Socialist Guild. Sir Stafford Cripps in an 8-page introduction and the others -"in shorter appreciations on the dust-cover do more than bless it ; they identify themselves with its text in the closest possible way. They proclaim it, in effect, the Gospel of Crippsianism, and thus .give it, even beyond its considerable intrinsic merits, a topical political importance. .
In this aspect it somewhat takes the wind out of the sails of the second book on our list, which is a reprint of this. year's Socialist League lectures. It was in the course which formed the corresponding volume of last year that the policy of a Socialist dictatorship was first expounded by Sir, Stafford and his friends. The new volume does not add anything very conspicuous, and, many of its themes are handled at more length by Mr. Mitchison. The authors of the lectures, besides Sir Stafford Cripps and Mr. Cole, are Mr. Harold Clay, Mr. W. -Mellor, Mr. L. Anderson Fenn., and Mr. J. F. Horrabin. The book ends with a thirty-page statement adopted by the Socialist League's national con-,
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