New Left, Old Right
By ALAN WATKINS
SOME years have passed since writing on the condition of England ceased to be a major growth industry. No longer do the publishers produce a book a week on what is wrong with such-and-such an aspect of British life. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that the activity has stopped completely. There may not be a flood of books issuing from the presses, but there is certainly a trickle, and it is a trickle which shows no sign of drying up. The modern fashion, on the evidence of two recently published books,* is for a symposium rather than for a work by a single author. These new collections, however, do manage to express a generalised way of looking at the world. It is not perhaps surprising that— Whatever editorial caveats may be entered— Towards Socialism should reflect the view of the New Left, and The Conservative Opportunity that of the Bow Group. But what is more sur- prising, and what is surely. worth further investi- gation, is that the two views should be so near each other.
Not that these resemblances are apparent on the face of it. The Bow Group is proudly practical. 'Its pragmatic approach,' writes Mr. Michael Wolff, 'analysing the problem by finding out what is wrong and why before prescribing any kind of remedy, contrasts with the doctrinaire approach favoured by socialism both in thought and in action.' (1 was recently, and probably rightly, taken to task for misusing the word 'theology.' Someone must also perform a more Urgent resale operation on 'empirical' and 'pragmatic,' which do not mean the same and Whose modern usages would no doubt have surprised John Locke and C. S. Pierce.)*The New Left, on the other hand, is devoted to theory, and one of its major complaints against Labour --here it differs from Mr. Wolff—is that the party remains so obstinately practical. Again, the Bow Group, judged by this symposium, is dedicated to a laissez-faire view of the economy, certainly mere laissez-faire than would have been thought expedient five or so years ago. The New Left, in turn, goes well beyond the most leftist of left-wing Labour MPs where control of in- dustry is concerned. But these differences conceal deeper similarities. There is, first of all, the matter of vocabulary. Both the New Left and the Bow Group are great users of jargon. It is not, to be sure, the same kind of jargon. The Socialists' terminology is derived from Marx and from a few modern sociologists; the language of the Bow Group has more in common with that of prestige advertise- ments. But both varieties are still jargon.
Now I should peihaps say here that I believe much of the criticism of modern political writing —the criticism that probably began with Orwell's essay 'Politics and the English Language'—is misconceived. It is all very well to demand plain words and concrete images and a return to Swift (one wonders, incidentally, how many of those who blithely refer to Swift have actually bothered to read him): but since the eighteenth century there have occurred the most immense changes
both in the nature of political activity and in the theoretical apparatus used to describe that activity. Abstractions may make dull reading, but TOWARDS Socintasm. (Fontana and the New Left Review, 10s. 6d.); THE CONSERVATIVE OPPORTUNITY. (Batsford in conjunction with the CPC and on behalf of. the Bow Group, 18s.) they are by definition essential if we are to arrive at any general conclusions. Let us admit, then, that it may be necessary for serious writers on politics to choose their own words. Further, let us admit that, even when this is not strictly necessary, it is allowable. True, I do not par- ticularly like the way most of the New Leftists write: but then, they ptobably do not like the way I write. Live and let live, say I.
Having conceded all this, however, it is still difficult to know what conceivable purpose is served by such sentences of Mr. Perry Anderson (the joint editor of the New Left book) as the following. 'A general internalisation,' he writes, 'of the preslations and motifs of Empire. un- doubtedly occurred.' This is a fairly mild example: when Mr. Anderson has worked up a good head of steam he is fond of using sub- mathematical language—'matrix' and 'vector' are favourite words—the only effect of which is to give a wholly spurious air of precision to what are really very wild and woolly statements. Nor is Mr. Anderson alone. Mr. Tom Nairn, who contributes a piece entitled 'The Nature of the Labotir Party,' appears to believe that he can create a meaningful political concept at will by adding '-ism' to whatever takes his fancy : thus Mr. Nairn invents `Labourism,"technicism' and 'Wilsonism.' Language of this kind is not a help to thought. It is a substitute for thought.
In the case of the New Left, however, the reason for using the language—a half-digested Marxism—is understandable. Indeed, once one has broken through a barrier, the language itself becomes understandable and up to a point stimulating. The same cannot be said of Bow Group language. This is not esoteric but com- monplace. Dynamic . . . ruthless . . . efficient . . . competitive . . . computers . . . these are the words which one comes across throughout the book. 'Certain skilled workers are getting in chronic short supply,' writes Mr. Gareth Jones, `and there is a clear imbalance in their regionS1 availability.' But which skilled workers? How short is the supply, and which regions are short by how many?
The whole difficulty is one of credibility. Just as the members of the New Left talk incessantly of 'society' and 'the working class,' and are them- selves alienated from both, so the Bow Groupers currently talk of hardly anything else but efficiency in industry. It is hard to take them seriously, on this subject at any rate. One goes to occasional Bow Group functions, and there they stand, in their dark suits, these ad-men and journalists and investment analysts and barristers, all intelligent, all charming, all with clear ideas about government, but, alas, with qnly the haziest of notions about how produdtive industry actually works.
This obsession with production in industry is not only, in all too many cases, a result of im- perfect knowledge. It is also liable to lead to conclusions which, in their implications, are profoundly anti-libertarian. In this the New Left and the Bow Group are at one. Both subscribe to the theory of capitalist crisis; and both pro- pound solutions which strike me as almost equally unpleasant. The Bow Group's answer is a 'ruth- less,' competitive' society; the New Left's answer is . . . well, this is never made very clear, but
the logical conclusion is a one-party state. The common factor in both solutions is the way in which our two groups of new young realists accept without any apparent show of reluctance the inevitability, indeed the desirability, of some people getting hurt. Take, for instance, this passage from Mr. Henry Bosch's Bow Group essay : Some of the successful businessmen who will be further rewarded will be disagreeable. They will be aggressive and ruthless. Many will not be 'gentlemen.' A few may even eat their peas with a knife. In a society which is still essentially stratified and conventional, disapproval of the arrivistes could well be widespread. In the second place, and much more important, a large number of inefficient individuals, firms and even industries will be badly hurt. Weak companies will go bankrupt or be taken over; worthy people, some of them Old Etonians with the best possible backgrounds, will lose their jobs and have to accept a lower standard of living. Pres- sure groups will struggle and there will be hard- luck stories, many of them genuine—there may even be cases of injustice.
It is difficult not to detect a note of satisfaction here. And the quotation is mirrored in several sections of the New Left's book.
What one misses, in fact, is any real concern in either collection for freedom or tolerance or kindness in society. Of course there are excep- tions. In the Bow Group book there are out- standing essays by Mr. Christopher Chataway on parental freedom in education and by Mr. Peter _Lloyd on law reform. But in the New Left's symposium the word 'freedom' is mentioned once in 397 pages. There is one rather grudging reference to J. S. Mill. The only consolation is that the New Left has never had the slightest influence in the Labour party. It is a further consolation that the Bow Group's influence with the Tories is not what it once was.
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