Marxist or Social Democrat? 1940–44

Abstract

For many of Strachey’s communist contemporaries the publication of A Programme for Progress in January 1940 took him well beyond the bounds of what was ideologically permissible. Yet it was the case that many of the analytical themes, much of the theoretical exposition and almost all of the policy prescriptions had already been articulated in communist and other papers in the period 1938–39. This is not surprising as Strachey had begun thinking along the lines of A Programme for Progress as early as the autumn of 1937 and had written and re-written the book over the next two years.1 However in those years Strachey’s views had not produced the vials of wrath which were subsequently to be poured upon his head by communist reviewers of A Programme. Certainly there had been fraternal criticism. Maurice Dobb commenting upon an early draft of A Programme felt that Strachey ‘swallowed so much of the Keynes-Meade [line] as to give an almost Douglasite twist to the whole thing’. Also a letter from Jurgen Kuczynski suggested that he and Emile Burns were critical of A Programme ‘in its present form’.2