Idea: Socialism

In the staid old London Times last week appeared the clearest exposition to date of an old program which, since the war, has appealed to more & more Britons as a new idea. The idea: State control of industry and trade unions, the abolition of all party politics.

Begetter of the idea was white-thatched, pink-cheeked Sir William Beveridge, Master of Oxford's University College. Schooled in the Civil Service, he was a food and munitions expert in the last war, headed the London School of Economics for 18 years. His World War II jobs are to supervise coal, gasoline and electricity rationing, to study the armed forces' use of skilled labor, to formulate plans for post-war social services. In all his 63 years Sir William has never joined a political party. (Socialism is a program, not a party.)

Labor & Management. "The time," said Sir William, "calls for two changes--first, for the State . . . to control vital industries and the distribution of income; second, for the assertion of the principle that service rather than personal gain should be the mainspring for the war effort, in industry as in fighting.

"Trade unions are an essential element in British democracy, and for peace I . . . want trade unions after the British model--autonomous associations pursuing sectional ends. . . . But is it too much to suggest that in the war, and for the war only, our trade unions should become, after the Russian model, conscious agents of national policy?"

Party Politics. Though Sir William considers the recent Cabinet changes "a long step forward towards more effective conduct of the war," he thinks even more could be accomplished if Winston Churchill had resigned the leadership of the Conservative Party and formed a new non-party Government. "The organization of parties," Sir William argued, "is a necessary element in peacetime. A one-party state is not democracy. . . . Party organizations . . . must be kept alive during the war, but a war government should not be based on them."

Post-War Problems. Economist Beveridge believes that now is the time for the Government to plan to abolish "the evils of peace-poverty, squalor, preventable disease, inequality of opportunity, waste of abilities. . . . [Cabinet] members should look neither to their own futures nor to those of their friends. . . . They should be a suicide club prepared to die politically that Britain and civilization may live."

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