by Terry Eagleton at UnHerd
A number of people are uncertain about whether the new Labour government is socialist or not, including those in the new Labour government. Keir Starmer called himself a socialist during the campaign, while Rachel Reeves refused the title. As for Tony Blair, even as a social democrat he stayed mostly in the closet, trying to keep the markets sweet by behaving as though he wasn’t one. Other Labour leaders have called themselves socialists to curry favour with their rank and file; but it’s generally understood that “socialist” is code for social democrat, and won’t provoke the displeasure of the Masters of the Universe. It’s fine to be a socialist as long as you aren’t actually one.
Social democracy has ended up as a compassionate form of capitalism. The problem with compassionate capitalism, however, as with seat belts or Save the Children, is that it’s hard to find anyone who’s against it. Campaigns for bleeding the workforce dry or shackling them to their benches don’t go down well with the electorate. The father of English liberalism, John Locke, believed that three-year-olds should be put to work in factories, but today this wouldn’t be acceptable, even in Tunbridge Wells. Even Left-wingers would prefer the present system to behave as humanely as possible as long as it is in business. Those ultra-Leftists who abstain from supporting humane reforms because it helps to prop up capitalism were accused by Lenin of being afflicted by an infantile disorder, and most of them would seem to have died out as a result of it. In that sense, the choice between reform and revolution is spurious. In fact, social democracy started life in the late 19th century as a current within the revolutionary socialist movement, agreeing with its aims but arguing that they could be achieved by reformist means…
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