Socialism
97
Western socialist parties have been reformist in practice, if not always in theory. In some cases they long retained a formal commitment to fundamentalist goals, as in theUKLabour Party’s belief in ‘the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’, expressed in clause IV of its 1918 constitution. Nevertheless, as the twentieth century progressed, social democrats dropped their commitment to planning as they recognized the efficiency and vigour of the capitalist market. The Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party formally abandoned planning in the 1930s, as did the West German Social Democrats at the Bad Godesberg Congress of 1959, which accepted the principle of ‘competition when possible; planning when necessary’. In the UK, a similar bid to embrace revisionism formally in the late 1950s ended in failure when the Labour Party conference rejected the then leader Hugh Gaitskell’s attempt to abolish clause IV. Nevertheless, when in power, the Labour Party never revealed an appetite for wholesale nationalization.
TENSIONS WITHIN . . . SOCIALISM (1) Communism v. Social democracy scientific socialism ethical socialism
revisionism
fundamentalism
reformism
utopianism
evolution/gradualism
revolution
‘humanize’ capitalism
abolish capitalism
redistribution
common ownership
ameliorate class conflict
classless society
relative equality
absolute equality
mixed economy
state collectivization
economic management
central planning
parliamentary party
vanguard party
political pluralism
dictatorship of proletariat
liberal-democratic state
proletarian/people’s state
The abandonment of planning and comprehensive nationalization left social democracy with three more modest objectives. Social democrats support: z z The mixed economy , a blend of public and private ownership that stands between free-market capitalism and state collectivism. Nationalization, when advocated by social democrats, is invariably
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