- A senior Labour politician who served as a cabinet minister during the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s.
- Public/common owner ship has gone far enough. He thought that common ownership was not the aim of socialism, it was just a method of achieving it.
- The true objective is equality which could be achieved in a capitalist economy.
- Capitalism has changed after it became the norm in Western Europe after 1945.
- Advanced societies could now enjoy permanent economic growth and full employment without requiring any serious extension of public ownership.
- Society could now enjoy steady expansion of the welfare state which in turn, would remove inequality and would now advance socialism.
- Economic change means that society has become less “binary” and less polarised between employers and employees and ‘infinitely more complex than Marx could ever have imagined’.
- Crosland spoke of a “new class” such as managers and “technocrats” whose perspectives were likely to be difference to those of traditional workers.
- Socialism requires a “mixed economy” which would mainly comprise a private enterprise and private ownership alongside key services and a small number of industries owned by the state. This remained true whilst Crossland was in the government in the 1950s.
- The future task of socialist government was not more public ownership but more public spending and better public services.
- Fused on other issues affecting society such as education. He argued for a new form of state education known as comprehensive education which would end segregation of publics at the age of 11 and create new schools catering for all abilities.
- Believed these comprehensive schools would break down class divisions better than any extension of public ownership thus ensuring that all pupils had equality of opportunity.
- Comprehensive education become the norm after Crossland’s death.
What
Arguments & Points Can We Make To Analyse What Webb & Marx
Said:
- Crossland had a belief in evolution rather than revolution hinted at by the fact that he wanted the steady expansion of the welfare state.
- Whilst Marx would have argued that more needs to be done to combat inequality. Crossland believed that by expanding the welfare state socialism could moved on to achieving its primary goal of equality NOT common ownership.
- He criticised Webb by stating that poverty can be solved (i.e equality can be reached) through trade unionism and state intervention by arguing for a mixed economy with some public owned and some private intervention enterprises. This was the way forward for socialism in the future.
- He further criticised Webb by stating that capitalism was going to remain at the forefront of the State for a long time and it should instead be embraced. Advanced societies such as the UK should now focus on gaining employment for everyone.
- He was worried that a new class would be created but traditional workers may still be key
- Class consciousness is not as huge as issue what Marx has said but the insurance of capitalism may lead to a bigger number of employees becoming less polarised and entrenched into a certain social class.
- To Crossland, it was now possible for class to change. He aimed to do this via the desegregation of people in schools after they reached the age of 11 to allow for everyone to have a equal equality of opportunity where everyone is at the same “base” in terms of education. For Crossland, it allowed for someone who was in a working class background when they were born to become middle class after they had educated themselves.