The Future of Socialism: The Book That Changed British Politics Paperback – 14 September 2006
by Anthony Crosland (Author), Gordon Brown (Foreword)
4.5 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
Edition: 50th Revised ed.
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The 50th anniversary edition of the book that changed English Politics. With an Introduction by Gordon Brown.
It is impossible to think of the intellectual landscape of Britain today without recognising the power of Crosland's The Future of Socialism in all aspects of the political debate. Still relevant 50 years after it was first published, Crosland's masterwork was a radical reworking of the role of the post-war Labour Party.
This book sets out the philosophy for the New Labour project and also contains the key for reviving the fortunes of the Party of the future.
Also included is a piece by Dick Leonard, Crosland's Personal Private Secretary and who knew the radical philosopher well, and an afterword from Susan Crosland.
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50th Revised ed.
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"'The key social democratic text remains Tony Crosland's The Future of Socialism...' Will Hutton 'The most important post-War attempt to define a non Marxist socialism for the Labour Party.' Financial Times 'Labour's greatest Revisionist intellectual' The Independent 'Discussion of the theory of socialism still revolves around what Crosland wrote 40 years ago.' Roy Hattersley"
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The celebrated radical work that changed the role of the post-war Labour Party and the face of English politics.
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Product details
Publisher : Constable; 50th Revised ed. edition (14 September 2006)
Language : English
Paperback : 448 pages
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Customer Reviews:
4.5 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
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Jonathan Spencer
5.0 out of 5 stars Where is that road nowReviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 October 2018
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Its a fantastic read, because you realise how even in the 1950s and 60s people were just so much more socially conscious and already thinking in cooperative, communal ways. Really very left wing by todays standards although Crosland felt that some of the more emotive and psychological things, the environment, we live in , entertainment, art and design were as important if not more than the process driven Nationalisation etc.
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Conscrog
5.0 out of 5 stars Good bookReviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 August 2019
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Decent read
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Crook
4.0 out of 5 stars Dated in some respects, but are we not all ...Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 August 2015
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Dated in some respects, but are we not all? Principles remain so very strong and worth reading to chuck pooh on today's politiicans' parades
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Tanler
4.0 out of 5 stars The Future of Socialism is...LiberalismReviewed in Canada on 21 August 2018
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Why would Crosland write a book about the future of socialism when the man was not a socialist? At least, not in the way others have self-identified as such, from communists in Russia and Eastern Europe to North Korea and Venezuela. It is because Crosland came to the conclusion that the underlying principles that govern all economies must be the same, regardless of political label. So, when Hugo Chavez attempted to price fix and remove the professional management of the national oil corporation, replacing them with political cronies, he was doing things Crosland had specifically argued against. Crosland's chapter on surplus value is brilliant. The confiscation by the state of any contribution of a worker's labor beyond that needed for the cost of production merely turns workers into slaves. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor (Chavez) was not Crosland's idea of how to run a society. Everyone's contribution is valuable. Crosland was an egalitarian, but he rejected equality of outcome. He saw social hierarchy as necessary and functional. What is important, however, is that disparities should not be so great as to make social mobility impossible. He believed strongly in equality of opportunity. But he cautioned against placing so much value on intellectual ability, business acumen or political craftiness. "Why should no marks be given for saintliness, generosity, compassion, humor, beauty, assiduity, countenance and artistic ability?" Writing in the 1950's he often referenced America as the ideal of social mobility and a lack of class consciousness. Crosland would have bemoaned the America of today...the growing polarization, a society facing the challenges brought on by such issues as identity politics and immigration. Crosland was aware of feminist issues but he does not dwell on them. If Crosland was not a socialist, what was he? From our perspective, he is a center-left liberal and a social democrat. Even calling him a democratic socialist is in my view a stretch. He believed in capitalism (as an economic system), individual freedom and private property. But the government was there to help oversee the system and to step in where abuse demanded. The book is filled with financial and economic counsel, sometimes technical, but much of which has since been implemented as policy in many western democratic nations. When I started reading I was at first disappointed because I assumed the author was going to defend "socialism". Crosland does no such thing.
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Shayn Mccallum
3.0 out of 5 stars A very important text for anyone interested in the history of UK socialism.Reviewed in the United States on 27 January 2011
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It's a sign of the times we're in that this book was a bombshell on the British Left of its day, an iconoclastic, tour de force of revisionist thinking to equal 'Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus', the original revisionist text of Eduard Bernstein written at the turn of the century in Germany. Tony Crosland immediately became a saint to rightward-leaning moderate socialists and a devil to the traditional Left. His attempt to re-cast socialism for the post-war era was seen by some as a betrayal and a repudiation of socialism itself while, for others, it showed the way forward and excavated the essential values of the socialist movement out from under a host of unnecessary and destructive accretions that had attached themselves to it.
After reading the book and comparing Crosland's revised socialism with the state of much post-1990's socialist and social-democratic thinking, it is somewhat jarring to note that, were he alive today, Crosland would probably be seen on the Left of the Labour movement rather than the Right where he was in his own day. Moreover, although it has often been argued that the modern Labour Party is the living fruit of his work, I think it unfair in a way (rather as it is, to a degree, unfair to lay 20th Century communism at Marx' feet) to attribute the Blair years to Tony Crosland's legacy. The man has been misunderstood it seems by friend and foe alike. Far from being the scribblings of a craven sell-out to free-market capitalism, this book reveals itself to be the work of a highly-intelligent, principled democratic socialist trying to argue, in essence, that socialism had been misdefined by history as 'state-ownership of the means of production' whereas the true essence of the socialist movement had always been in extending democratic participation and control into society. According to Crosland, democracy and equality are the hallmarks of socialism rather than the nationalisation of enterprises. This argument (in a sense much more radical than bland proposals to put public enterprises under dull, bureaucratic administration, in no way more meaningfully 'popular property' than privately-owned firms) rests on firm ground with regard to the history of socialist ideas. The identification of socialism with the state is, indeed, largely an accident of history and the circumstances produced by the 1920's and 30's, more than a sacred principle of socialist economics (as any glance at the debates among different branches of the socialist movement as far back as Marx' time will reveal).
In coming to this not-unprecedented position, Crosland was largely paralleling the concerns and approach of Swedish Social Democracy, arguably one of the most successful political movements in the 20th Century. Capitalism, he argued, due to the political advances made by working people in the post-war period through democratic self-organisation, was no longer really capitalism at all. Capital was being subdued and tamed for the benefit of society as a whole, removing the need for the militant approach of the more traditional left-wingers. Socialism, in other words, was already bearing its fruits through the mixed economy of the 1950's.
Sadly, although Crosland may have sounded more convincing in the golden, Keynesian era that followed WWII, today's capitalism is re-discovering its old bite and is busy throwing off the chains briefly imposed on it by democracy. Crosland's book is a wonderful product of a keen mind and compassionate heart and it deserves to be read and studied by democratic socialists. Its assumptions however, now require a new revision (though not, I would suggest, of his central assertion which was true in the time of Bernstein and just as true today, that the struggle of socialists is ever the struggle for a more democratic, more participatory society). This message, long affirmed by all democratic socialists, is eloquently argued in this book and deserves to be heard again- even more now that the historical dead-end of state socialism no longer exists to distract us or confuse the debate. There may be little that is programmatically useful for modern socialists in this book as the death of Keynesianism has resurrected a much fiercer version of disembedded capitalism that Tony Crosland, in his time, had believed dead forever, yet there is much of value in the spirit in which this book is written, and much still to be admired in the values it expresses.
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===
The Future of Socialism
by Charles Anthony Raven Crosland
3.98 · Rating details · 45 ratings · 3 reviews
It is impossible to think of the intellectual landscape of Britain today without recognising the power of Crosland's The Future of Socialism in all aspects of the political debate. Still relevant 50 years after it was first published, Crosland's masterwork was a radical reworking of the role of the post-war Labour Party. This book sets out the philosophy for the New Labour project and also contains the key for reviving the fortunes of the Party of the future. Also included is a piece by Dick Leonard, Crosland's Personal Private Secretary, who knew the radical philosopher well, and an afterword from Susan Crosland. (less)
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Paperback, 450 pages
Published September 14th 2006 by Constable & Robinson (first published 1956)
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J.
Aug 01, 2021J. rated it really liked it
Dated but engrossing read, though painfully optimistic re: "the worst of capitalism is over". Very interesting and readable. (less)
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Warren
Jul 22, 2014Warren rated it it was amazing
Shelves: political-science
I can see why this book was groundbreaking when it was first published. It is also a reminder of how much has changed in the intervening 63 years since it was first published. So many things that Crosland takes for granted (for example, he assumes that capitalism has been tamed) are no longer applicable. I think the value of this book lies in reminding those on the Left of what once was and what principles should be underlying any movement back to the left in order undo neoliberalism. This book is a reminder that we have a long way in this regard to go ... (less)
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Dean MacKinnon-Thomson
Jun 22, 2013Dean MacKinnon-Thomson rated it it was amazing
Recommends it for: everyone
Recommended to Dean by: comrades of the left
Shelves: favorites, politics
5/5
Classic political literature. Anthony Crosland with this book became the new Bernstein of the socialist political left.
A must read, a book which convinced me to become a Keynesian Croslandite socialist democrat.
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