The Party of Reform in the Doldrums: The Convergence of Anglo-American Political Progressivism

Abstract

In September 1955, John Kenneth Galbraith encountered British Labour Party MP Richard Crossman at a conference hall in Milan, Italy. They went there with a clear mission: to defend their parties’ achievements from expected attacks by Friedrich Hayek and other “reactionaries” at the conference. In public, they confidently boasted about the records of the Democratic and Labour governments in prosperity, full employment, and social and welfare programs during the past decades. In private talks, however, they were less confident—and more candid. “Both the American liberal and the British socialist in the 1930s,” said Galbraith to Crossman, “assumed that capitalism was not only immoral but unworkable; it was a system which must destroy itself because of its own inherent weaknesses.” But if this assumption were not true, he asked, “would that not mean the snapping of the mainspring of the Labour Party?” Crossman instantly got the point. The clothes of American liberals were “stolen by the Eisenhower Republicans, just as ours [were] by the Butlerites,” confessed the Labour MP. The task of reforming capitalism, which had been the raison d’être of the “party of reform” of both countries, lost its urgency. An era of reform had been replaced by an era of moderation. And in this new era, their parties were clearly on the losing side—and would continue to lose until they could find a new cause to fight.