BOOKS
The New Left
By A J. AYER
OUT OF APATHY* is the first of a series of books on political and social questions which are intended to define and popularise the position of the group of young Socialists who call themselves the New Left. The movement came officially into existence last December when the Universities and Left Review. a Socialist journal which had been started at Oxford. and the New Reasoner, a dissident Communist jour- nal, merged to form the New Left Review. The New Left Review supports the Labour Party, but it is highly critical of its present leadership on the ground that it appears to have no genuine faith in Socialism. The movement draws much of its emotional inspiration from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but its leaders hope that the political energy which has been aroused by this campaign can also be made to work for a revolution in domestic policy What form this revolution is to take in detail has not yet been made clear, but Out of Apathy is designed to give at least a general picture of the changes in the character and organisation of our society which are thought to be immediately desirable. The contributors to the book are all young men, and four out of the six are univer- sity teachers. Mr. E. P Thompson. a founder editor of the New Reasoner. who has written the longest piece in the book on the subject of the present political climate in England, as well as the introductory essay on the decay of the Labour movement and the terminal essay on the prospects of a revolution, is a lecturer in the extra-mural department of Leeds University. Mr. Alasdair Maclntyre, who is said to be a Trotsky- ite and writes on political philosophy from a Marxist standpoint, is a lecturer in philosophy at Leeds. Mr. Peter Worsley, another former editor of the New Reasoner, is a lecturer in sociology at Hull University; he contributes an essay on the transformation of British Imperialism. Mr. Kenneth Alexander, who writes on the location of economic power, is a lecturer in political economy at Queen's College, Aberdeen. The remaining two essays are supplied by editors of the New Left Review. Mr. Ralph Saltine!, who works at the Bethnal Green Institute of Com- munity Studies, writes on what he describes as Bastard Capitalism, and Mr. Stuart Hall writes on the economic structure of our society and its social consequences. The book also contains a preface by Mr. Norman Birnbaum, the general editor of the New Left series, who works at Nuffield College, Oxford, as a sociologist.
Although it is so largely written by academic persons, this book is not, in the ordinary sense, an academic work. It is a political manifesto and its prevailing tone is that of moral indignation. The authors do not deny that from a purely material standpoint it is true that 'we have never had it so good.' They do indeed point out that it is not so good as all that: there are still a great tinny people 'who are genuinely on the poverty line—the five million retirement pensioners, the 500,000 widows on special benefit, the 250.000
• Otrr OF APATHY. By E P. Thompson and dthers. (Stevens, 15s.) receiving industrial injuries and disablement allowances, the two million men and women de- pendent on unemployment benefit'; even so, the standard of living of the population as a whole is higher than it has ever been before Neither do the authors deny that this trend is likely to continue. In many ways capitalism is not what it was in the nineteenth century. or before the last world war. There have been decisive changes and 'some of these have notably humanised the work- ings of the system, checking its excesses, control- ling its operation, limiting its free play, and ensur- ing a great and welcome lift in living standards.' It cannot now be taken for granted that 'the contradictions of capitalism' will lead to the pauperisation of the workers. or even to another period of widespread unemployment Neverthe- less, the authors maintain, no form of capitalism. however bastardised. can create what they would regard as a good society. The social and moral evils from which we are now suffering are a necessary feature of the system.
These evils may be summed up in the charge that we are living in a society which is dominated by a business outlook and by business values. The private sector of our -econcimy expands, but expenditure on welfare lags behind. Four hun- dred million pounds a year are spent on adver- tising, and only £670.000,000 on education. Unilever's advertising budget of £83,000,000 is twice theamount that the Government spends on colonial development More and more motor- cars are produced for private ownership. while the public transport services deteriorate and little or nothing is done about the roads The specula- tive builder flourishes, but working-class families spend years on the waiting list for council flats. The Government is generous with its subsidies for private industry, but niggardly when it comes to spending money on public health. Respect for private interests frbstrates the half-hearted attempts that are made to remedy the ugliness of our industrial cities. In every direction reform is blocked by the prevailing belief in production for profit. as opposed to production for use.
At the same time the prestige of business rises. We are still an excessively class-conscious society, but envy of the better-born is now tending to give place to envy of the rich. To a large extent, indeed, they coincide. The English upper classes have never been averse from making money and they have not found it difficult to overcome their former disdain for trade This is also a means to the preservation of their political power. For while it is true that there has been a great increase in the degree of government control of industry, it is matched by the increase in the degree of influence that leading industrialists and financiers exercise on the Government. The rich are envied but they are also admired. Their way of life is romanticised by commercial television and by the popular press. Enjoyment of money is linked not implausibly, with enjoyment of sex. The in- tellectual may disapprove, but he too `wants his lolly, in cash, esteem or moral credit ' Even the academic world is not immune. Industrial firms finance scientific research in schools and univer- sities, and they expect their return. One of the
reasons for the current shortage of scientific teachers is the greater financial reward of work- ing for industry. Neither do the arts escape. 'We like to take boys who have learned Greek,' says, one of the managing directors of Shell; `they sell more oil.'
To some extent, this picture is exaggerated. Scientific research can be valued for its own sake, even though it is financed by private in- dustry. Commercial television may be more popular than the BBC. but a substantial propor- tion of the public chooses to watch or listen to the more serious programmes. The official record with respect to town-planning may not be very good, but it would be unfair to overlook, on the other side, the work of the Arts Council and the National Trust. Penguin Publications is a com- mercial enterprise. but it has made it possible for works of literature to reach a public which hardly had access to them before the war A society in which a translation of the Iliad can be a best- seller, and scores of thousands of ,people are ready to buy serious works on philosophy, can- not justly be said to have delivered itself entirely to commercial values. But even if this picture is exaggerated, there is still enough truth in it to cause disquiet. There are pressures which tend to weaken our sense of, community, and foster a narrowly acquisitive outlook. It may be that the spirit of `I'm all right Jack' is coming to the fore.
If this is true, what is the remedy? On this point the authors are disappointingly vague. The one thing on which they all seem to be agreed is that our present mainly capitalist economy must give way to some variety of Socialism, but how this is to be achieved and what we may expect the result to be is not made clear. The history of the Soviet Union shows that common ownership of the means of production, distribu- tion and exchange, is not in itself a panacea. What we want, of course, is to obtain all the advantages of a planned economy, and of the spirit of the early Socialists, without any serious loss of personal liberty 'Who would suppose,' writes Mr. Thompson rather wistfully, 'from Orwell's indiscriminate rejection that, with- in the rigid organisation and orthodoxy, the Communist movement in the Thirties (and For- ties) retained (in differing degrees in different con- texts) a profoundly democratic content, in the innumerable voluntary initiatives and the deep sense of political responsibility of the rank and file?' How are we to revive these values and avoid the rigid orthodoxy? MI. Thompson does not say. He implies only that his revolution will be peaceful. It will bring about 'the dislodgment of the power of capital from the "commanding heights" and the assertion of the power of social- ist democracy.' It will involve 'the breaking up of some institutions (and the House of Lords, Sandhurst, Aldermaston. the Stock Exchange, the Press monopolies, and the National Debt are among those which suggest themselves), the trans- formation and modification of others (including the House of Commons and the nationalised boards). and the transfer of new functions to yet others (town councils, consumers' councils, trades councils, shop stewards committees, and the rest).' But what powers these councils and com- mittees are to have, how the House of Commons is to be chosen, how army officers arc to be trained. whether we are simply to repudiate the National Debt, above all how these changes are to come about by peaceful means are questions that he does not try to answer. So, also, Mr. Maclntyre defends Marxism against the utili- tarians and the social engineers 'The philo- sophers have continued to interpret the world differently; the point remains to change it.' But he does not tell us how the Marxist dialectic can be constructively applied to our present dis- contents.
The first objective of the New Left must be to capture the Labour Party. The view which they are combating is that which Mr. Crosland expressed in his book on the future of Socialism: that the ,party should not seek to make any radi- cal changes in the structure of our present mixed economy, but should concentrate on social re- form. Now it may be that Mr. Crosland under- rates the evils of the affluent society towards which he thinks that we are progressing, but at least he has a political programme which there is some chance of his party's being in a position to carry out. Whereas, in default of a serious economic crisis, if the Labour Party were to adopt the policies of Mr. Thompson, it might easily match the Liberals in the speed of its de- cline. This is not to say that principles are to be determined by psephology. But the funda- mental assumption of the New Left that there can be no remedy for our social evils so long as we retain even a diluted form of capitalism has not been proved.
However, this is only a manifesto. Its aim is to arouse us from our political apathy, not to present a reasoned case; and the apathy, not least among intellectuals, is real. The revolutionary spirits of the Thirties have in many cases grown respectable; the attitude of the post-war genera- tion to politics has been mainly one of rather cynical indifference. The members of the New Left movement are at least aware that there are still problems to be solved, and that they can have a part to play in their solution. But even in politics enthusiasm cannot be made to do all the work of reason. Let us by all means have done with complacency; but moral indignation is not enough.
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