Confessions of an Economic Heretic by Hobson J. A.;

Author:Hobson, J. A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter X Break-Up of Creeds and Parties

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813935-10

Even after the War, it seemed as if in this and other democratic countries, something like a restoration of pre-War conditions was feasible. The material havoc of the Great War was quickly repaired, many of the worst conditions of the Bad Peace were in process of correction: the monetary instability which impeded trade was in course of cure. Then came the Slump, worse, longer, and more general, than any previous one, and breaking upon peoples whose minds were no longer attuned to waiting for a natural recovery—after years of misery, poverty, and unemployment.

I am first concerned with the effect of this disaster upon the structure of political government, as I saw it in this country. The Liberal Party had already crumbled before the rise of a nominally Socialist Labour Party, placed in office, though hardly in power, by a popular vote largely drawn from former Liberals. The payment of Members helped to bring into keen politics the trade unions whose leaders saw their way to an honourable career in the House of Commons. The rank and file of the Labour Party are not Marxian or any other brand of Socialist, though they accept the title and send representatives to Conferences and Congresses which pass Socialist resolutions. Some of their leaders are Socialists in a secondary distant sense, their prime and immediate policy being the betterment of conditions in their own trade, with assistance from the State. A scattered minority in most cities and industrial areas have been getting education in Socialist principles from the handful of middle- and upper-class “intellectuals” whose thought and sympathies have led them to a fuller adoption of Socialism or Communism. But the wide gap in education and in personal bearing between the “workers” and the intellectuals makes solidarity of thought and policy a difficult process. Those who criticize the ineffectiveness of the Labour Party in Parliament, whether as Government or Opposition, should take account of these “class” distinctions with the misunderstandings and suspicions they involve. The basic cause of the collapse of the second Labour Government was the failure of most of its leaders and followers to realize the dangers of a financial situation which lay outside their understanding of politics and economics. The Nationalist Government which followed may be regarded as a testimony to the collapse of the older party distinctions rather than to the triumph of Conservatism which it seemed to many. For the fact is that the same opportunist Socialism which was the professed policy of the new Labour Movement permeated in milder degree the two older parties. Conservatism had throughout the nineteenth century been less closely attached to Capitalism than had Liberalism. As Sir John Marriott has pointed out, most of the State interferences with private enterprise and laisser-faire, i.e. with capitalist dominion, were carried out by Conservative Governments in the teeth of Liberal opposition. Though in later times most industrial magnates have left a decaying Liberalism for the more potent and reputable Conservatism

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