Socialism is what a Labour government does, pronounced Herbert Morrison, one of the titans of the Clement Attlee administration in the 1940s. It wasn’t a very good answer then to the perennial doctrinal disputes about what constitutes socialism that have haunted the party since its foundation in 1900 – and it works no better in 2024.
So what is this socialism that Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, Darren Jones and Jonathan Reynolds were all asked about last week, whose tenets they purport to follow even as the party wrangled over the “purge” of its left? Convincing, on-the-front-foot answers proved elusive.
Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, had the trickiest time. He wasn’t so much a socialist, he explained on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, but a Christian socialist – as if faith resolved the dilemma of whether his socialism reconciles the classical definition (state and social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange being the chief means to common good outcomes) with today’s Labour policy programme. Was his socialism the same doctrine as Jeremy Corbyn’s? Discomfited, he declared his was a socialism that “put people first”, promoted growth by working with business and so built a better society. But as presenter Emma Barnett reframed it, that amounted to little more than “capitalist-flavoured socialism”. The division could hardly be clearer or harder to bridge.
To the same question, Reeves declared herself a social democrat, rooting her philosophy in liberal William Beveridge’s mission of creating a cradle-to-grave welfare state. Streeting was a “democratic socialist”, which he defined as being part of the European social democratic mainstream – but social democracy, like socialism, is in difficulty across Europe because it can’t define itself attractively. Starmer described himself as a socialist and a “progressive”, which meant putting country before party. But any one-nation Tory would say the same. For his part, Jones said he rejected labels and simply replied he was proud to be “Labour” and a “trade unionist”.
All of the answers were serviceable, but all essentially defensive. The difficulty is that socialism is a loaded term representing a doctrine in crisis, which, beyond a small band of socialist faithful, too many find both menacing and unappealing. Menacing because socialism closes down individual freedoms and aspirations. Unappealing because state monopolies are inefficient, snuffing out the growth, innovation and embrace of the new that comes with capitalism. Leftwing leaders have to square a seemingly impossible circle – assuring party activists they are socialist, but defining it in a way that means they won’t threaten freedom, suppress business or unleash inefficient state monopolies. But there are good answers available, not least because capitalism, left to itself, leads to vast inequality, chronic underinvestment, monopoly, instability and exploitation. It needs superintendence and active management, which can only come from the left questing for common good outcomes. Labour must find and sustain good answers, crucial both as a compass for good government and as a foundational anchor around which the party can coalesce unambiguously as a party of the centre-left – vital to quell further descents into factionalism.
Start with Attlee’s answer in 1954, which not only turned the provocation back on the questioner, but retained the moral cutting edge that makes socialism – or more accurately the ethic of socialism – compellingly attractive if expressed correctly. A devotee of William Morris, Attlee inspiringly invoked Morris’s view that socialists “believe in the kind of society where there is fellowship for all. You can’t get that in a totalitarian society, you can’t get that while there’s great inequalities of wealth. That is the hope of the world.”
Fellowship – having each other’s back, working together better to secure common goals, sharing wealth fairly, believing in the “we”, recognising the vital importance of the social, cleaving to democracy – is at once understandable, non-abstract and an idea to which everyone can relate. It is fellowship (as I argue in my new book, This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain) that imbues the ethic of socialism with its force – and which does not need to translate into rampant statism.
That was well understood by Tony Blair who, in the run-up to the 1997 general election, went one step further. He declared an ethic of socialism – of fellowship – was the enduring foundational Labour value. But to complete the picture, this ethic also furthered a bounded individualism, creating the conditions in which individuals best flourish and better themselves, while accepting their responsibilities and obligations to society; all as enduring and as important aims as fellowship. In this sense, an ethic of socialism and progressive liberalism, accepting we have individual aspirations, were interdependent: one stood behind the case for a floor below which no one could fall; the other to offer scope for individual endeavour and responsibility, but bounded by social obligations so it did not collapse into avarice and extreme selfishness. The “floor” coexists with the “ladder”. Blair then rewrote clause IV in Labour’s constitution to express precisely this fusion and to which every Labour party member – ranging from its new ex-Tory adherents to Diane Abbott – is perforce a signatory.
This reassertion of the “we” as a crucial part of the moral universe has two crucial follow-ons. It leads directly to pro-investment, pro-green economic policies dynamised by public investment, and justifies the refashioning of the savings and financial system to serve all our ends, along with active public efforts to make housing, education, health and a solid income floor the foundation of a good society. Agile public agencies superintend partnership with business – boosting what works and closing down what does not.
The second follow-on is the moral dimension. The urge to collaborate, to share and to be fair is foundational to the human experience. Anyone who does not want to partake of the common life and society, as Aristotle insisted, is “either a beast or a god”. As contemporary society, increasingly atomised, imposes solitude and loneliness on ever more people who no longer have the consolation of faith, to assert the “we” is to offer a lifeline. In the US, what to do about the epidemic of loneliness is becoming a hot political issue. It will be the same here.
So 21st-century progressivism is about binding the “we” and the “I” and on that fusion to act purposefully to create a capitalism that works for the common good and a society that works for all. Government will organise itself around the achievement of great missions to deliver those ends. This is the philosophy, purpose and policy of Starmer’s remade Labour party, which could embrace all wings of the party. It would serve it well to say so more clearly – now and for the future.
• Will Hutton is an Observer columnist
