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COMMENTARY
THE POLITICS OF UTOPIA

POLITICSwithout a streak of generous utopianism, a vision of a

world transformed, degenerates all too easily into a cynical acce t-
ance of the inevitability of messy compromises: an apologia k r
perpetuating the status quo. But politics informed only b utopia-
nism, a millenarian dream of men's natures transformeJ, invites
the inevitable betrayal: the appointed day comes, and the world
oes on much as before. Mrs. Thatcher's Conservative Government
[as now reached precisely this point of hopes betrayed: St. Mar-
garet's vision of redem tion through the disci lines of the market,
of the economy savelby the rediscovery of individualism, has
turned into the nightmare of rising unemployment and falling
production. The Labour Party, in contrast, is still caught in an
agony of discordant debate about its future: whether to continue as
a latitudinarian party of social reform or to become a sectarian
movement dedicated to the instant and complete transformation of
society.
It is precisely because the outcome of this debate is still in doubt
that it is worth analysing in some detail what appears to be the
text of the millenarians within the Labour Party: those whose
prophet is Mr. Anthony Benn. In its own right the " Manifesto
produced by a clutch of academics and others associated with Mr.
Benn hardly deserves serious discussion. If it was merely the p r e
duct of independent intellectuals, we would be inclined to reflect
sadly on the quality of political analysis in Britain and leave it at
that. But it needs to be taken seriously precisely because it repre-
sents what is already a strong-and could soon be the dominant-
view within the Labour Party.
Nor is it difficult to see why Manifesto will have resonance
" "

within the Labour Party. Like Mr. Benn himself, the authors have
the knack of using the right words and indentifying many of the
right issues. The vision they offer is that of a society organised
around the principles of equality, fraternity and Earticipation : of
man emancipated from the pressures of the mar et economy, no
longer a competitor but a co-operator. It is a vision which seems to
1 Francis Cripps, John Griffith, Frances Morrell, Jimmy Reid, Peter Townscnd and
Stuart Weir Munifesro: A Radical Strutcgy for Bn'ruin's Future, Pan Books 1981, EI.05.

399
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COMMENTARY

encompass both William Morris and Karl Marx and who (in the
Labour Party at least) could resist that ?
The vision is seductive; the sense of betrayal will be all the
greater when reality breaks in. For what is remarkable about
“ Manifesto ”- as it is about Mr. Benn’s own pronouncements-
is the sense it conveys of words used to conceal meaning: the
verbal self-intoxication, the corruption (no weaker term will do) of
the language of politics. The techni ue of argument is simple.
9
Problems are acknowledged but then issolved in a wave of verbal
eu horia: if policies are not feasible in the world of today, they
P
wi 1 miraculously become possible in the world of tomorrow. The
trouble, of course, is that the licies required to brin about the
g. i
great transformation have to e carried through in t e corrupt,
coercive world in which we live. The solution to this dilemma
offered b the Manifesto authors is simple. Britain must opt out of
the w o r d If Britain’s economic policies are constrained by the exis-
tence of an international economy-where national decisions are
determined by a conspiracy (as the Manifesto authors see it) of
international organisations and multinational com anies-then, self-
evidently, we must throw off these shackles. 0n fy withdraw from
the Common Market, only impose import and currency controls,
and everything becomes possible. Public expenditure can soar; un-
employment will fall. Bntain’s national income could be increased
by some 20 per cent. to 30 r cent. within three or four years, the
Manifesto authors claim, g u g h adding modestly that “ the stra-
tegy would not work miracles”. (Why the modesty? Surely a
sudden increase of 20 per cent to 30 r cent. in the national income
would be a miracle unprecedenteKn the history of the British
economy ?).
Within Britain too, the conspiracy which now inhibits the kind of
policies needed to achieve both economic prosperity and social
justice must be broken. The concentration of economic power in the
City, with its control over pension and other investment funds, must
be smashed. So must the concentration of political power in the
Oxbridge elite (to which the editors of Political Quarterly presu-
mably belong) in the civil service and other policy networks. Not
only must the sources of this power, control over large companies,
be brought under collective ownership, but the new forms of public
ownership must be made more accountable and must allow for
greater worker participation.
Again, how splendid it all sounds. Who could be against improved
accountability, more participation and greater openness ? Here,
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COMMENTARY

indeed, the Manifesto authors evoke buzz words with real reson-
ance and identify real policy issues. But they also offer a puzzle. If
we want more accountability, more participation and more open-
ness, then is more collectivisation really the answer? Or is this
simply a solution which compounds the problem?
More seriously still, the Manifesto authors are extremely ambi-
valent about power. On the one hand, they want to expand the
financial power of the State: effectively they want to concentrate
all decisions about investment in the State. On the other hand, they
argue for a diffusion of power in society in the name of “ d e m e
cracy ” : with more power to local government, more power to
parents, more power to workers. Financial monotheism goes hand
in hand with political pluralism. Economic markets are bad; politi-
cal markets are good. This is all a bit puzzling. Even leaving aside
the question of whether Governments are good at taking investment
decisions (the evidence suggests the contrary : witness, for example,
Mr. Benn’s enthusiasm for putting public money into Concorde),
there remains the much more important question of whether so
much power ought to be concentrated at the centre. Pluralism,
surely, is indivisible. The strongest argument for the market eco-
nomy has nothing to do with belief in the private ownership of
capital-it is, as Peter Jay has argued, perfectly compatible with c e
operative forms of ownership-but rests on its unique capacity to
diffuse decision-making, and so to diffuse power. The soft rhetoric
of Manifesto suggests a brotherly fellowship of participation. The
hard proposals would ensure a command economy. Indeed implicit
in the Manifesto proposals is a peculiar intellectual arrogance.
Underlying them is the belief that those who have shared in the
revelation-those who have asped the true nature of social jus-
f
tice--ljnotu what should be one. Not only can they devise an e c e
nomic strategy, but they can also devise a social strategy: read all
about it in Manifesto. The real problem, given this belief, is then
simply how to sweep away the obstacles in the way of implement-
ing the vision. The House of Lords is to be swept away. The power
of the civil service is to be demolished. Of course all this is to be
done in the name of making representative democracy more effec-
tive. But once again words conceal meaning. The words say that
the aim would be to encourage more open debate, to strengthen
Parliamentary Committees and so on. The meaning of the proposals
is that all the institutional safeguards that actually compel Govern-
ments to listen to their critics would be swept away. The Manifesto
401
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COMMENTARY

proposals are a recipe for an elective tyranny accountable only to

sel -appointed partici ators in local constituency parties: partici a-
tors who represent g e (by definition) atypical minority of e n i u -
siasts-the “ Active membership ” who, in Manifesto’s revealing
phraseology, “wants a bolder and more socialist programme in
response to the British crisis ”.
Intellectual muddle marches hand in hand with intellectual a r m
gance. An incomes policy carries the stigma of corporatism : of deci-
sions taken by an elite. “ A comprehensive, centrally determined,
statutory incomes policy would not accord with the hilosophy of
Y
democratic freedom we wish to advance ”, Mani esto grandly
declares. But two lines on we read : “ Incomes policies would cer-
tainly be necessary, including strategies for profits, pay and taxation
as well as selective rice controls to prevent profiteering ”. So quite
P
what are we to conc ude ?
We could o on, alas but to catalogue inconsistencies and inco-
herences in i e details of the Manifesto proposals is as irrelevant
as to pick out those issues where we ha pen to be in agreement with
K
the authors. The real trouble with t e Manifesto approach-and
with all it stands for in the Labour Party-dms not spring from the
fine print of the programme. It stems from the underlying con-
ception of that programme : the attempt to substitute rekgious
revivalism for politics-to substitute the politics of total transforma-
tion for the politics of adaptation (not for nothing have religious
metaphors provided a theme running through our comments). It
is an approach which is terrifying in its disregard of the stubborn
complexities of society and the unyielding nature of so many policy
issues. It is an a proach which also represents an attempt to escape
from a world wYlich is seen as corrupt, conspiratorial, and hostile:
a world which consequently cannot merely be reformed but must
be changed root and branch. It is, therefore, an approach which
must be rejected totally. The aims of the Manifesto group are
admirable in so far as they seek to create a more just society. Many
of their proposals are inspired by generous emotions. But whatever
their intentions, their rogramme threatens to create an all-power-
P
ful State in pursuit o an all-encompassing vision of what society
should be like-a State, moreover, which would inevitably use its
power ever more ruthlessly as the vision itself recedes into the unat-
tainable future.

402