Anthony Crosland: The Mixed Economy

257 Pages·1996·15.5 MB·English

by  David Reisman

ANTHONY CROSLAND
Also by David Reisman
ADAM SMITH'S SOCIOLOGICAL ECONOMICS
ALFRED MARSHALL: Progress and Politics
ALFRED MARSHALL'S MISSION
CROSLAND'S FUTURE: Opportunity and Outcome
THE ECONOMICS OF ALFRED MARSHALL
GALBRAITH AND MARKET CAPITALISM
MARKET AND HEALTH
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HEALTH CARE
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF JAMES BUCHANAN
RICHARD TITMUSS: Welfare and Society
STATE AND WELFARE: Tawney, Galbraith and Adam Smith
THEORIES OF COLLECTIVE ACTION: Downs, Olson and Hirsch
Anthony Crosland
The Mixed Economy
David Reisman
tt
M First published in Great Britain 1997 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-333-65928-7
First published in the United States of America 1997 by
« ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-15950-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reisman, David A.
Anthony Crosland : the mixed economy / David Reisman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-312-15950-1 (cloth)
1. Crosland, Anthony, 1918-1977. 2. Economists—Great Britain-
-Biography. 3. Legislators—Great Britain—Biography.
4. Economics—Great Britain—History—20th century. 5. Socialism-
-Great Britain—History—20th century. I. Title.
HB103.C7R45 1996
320.5'312'092—dc20 96-1509
[B] CIP
© David Reisman 1997
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or-under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 54 3 21
06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97
Printed in Great Britain by
The Ipswich Book Company Ltd
Ipswich, Suffolk
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
2 Anthony Crosland 3
3 The World of the Revisionist 55
3.1 The world of the Future 56
3.2 The mixed economy 67
3.3 Gaitskellite economics 92
3.4 Crosland and Gaitskell 101
4 Ownership 123
4.1 Looking backward 124
4.2 Looking forward 135
4.3 Performance and politics 145
5 Control 153
5.1 The principles of control 154
5.2 Industrial policy 164
5.3 The environment 174
5.4 Macroeconomic policy 181
5.5 The principles of de-control 194
6 Conclusion 205
Notes and References 212
Index 240
v

Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the Estate of Anthony Crosland
and Jonathan Cape Ltd for permission to quote from The Future of
Socialism, The Conservative Enemy and Socialism Now, all by
C.A.R. Crosland. They would also like to thank Susan Crosland for per
mission to reproduce unpublished material from the Crosland Papers, in
the British Library of Political and Economic Science, and Dr Angela
Raspin and her colleagues at the Library for their interest and support.
vn

1 Introduction
The Future of Socialism was a work of moderation born into a world of
consensus. A rigorous reappraisal of the scope for the State, it established
itself almost immediately as British Labour's most influential manifesto
since Durbin's Politics of Democratic Socialism in 1940 if not since
Tawney's Equality in 1931. Anthony Crosland's important contribution to
the theory of the middle ground was published in 1956. Two decades later
The Guardian was still describing it as 'a great seminal work which ...
remains the main intellectual fount of modern British democratic social
ism'1 and The Economist was treating it as a classic that had stopped the
clocks at the moment of its birth: 'To a shaming extent, the Labour party
(or at least its moderate wing) has been living off the intellectual capital of
The Future of Socialism ever since.'2
The Future of Socialism is a political economist's analysis of the proper
balance between the individual and the collectivity, the market and the
State. It is not the only attempt that was made by the Oxford economist
turned Member of Parliament to shed light on the crucial relationship
between the self-reliance of exchange and the guiding hand of authority.
Anthony Crosland, public figure as well as prolific author, took opportu
nity after opportunity to develop and expound his vision of a pragmatic
Centre-Left, neither too greedy nor too stifling. The result is a remarkable
body of insights and theories in which the Summa of the Future is joined
by The Conservative Enemy (1962) and Socialism Now (1974), by articles
in The Sunday Times and the Tribune, Socialist Commentary and
Encounter, by Fabian Tracts and academic papers, by interviews in the
media and speeches in the House, by unpublished letters kept in Oxford
and unpublished manuscripts kept in London. Seldom has a philosopher-
ruler devoted more time and effort to the formulation of the philosophy
that would legitimate the rule.
The ideas are dispersed but still the vision is one. That vision is the
subject of this book and of its sister-book, Crosland's Future: Opportunity
and Outcome. Uniting those books is the contention that the disparate parts
are not random ad hoes but rather the inter-dependent pieces of a unified
whole. Anthony Crosland was a systemic thinker who recognised that
there could be no middle way without a reliable map. It is the task of this
book and of its sister-book to demonstrate that Anthony Crosland did
1