The Price of Victory, by R.W. Thompson

[p020] _ The Price of Victory, by R. W. Thompson. Constable, 25s. The Second World War deserves study as the most critical manifesta- tien of the capitalist crisis. That LABOUR REVIEW—Spring, 1961 would probably help to combat Strachey-type dogma. Thompson might have provided useful facts and insights. He pro- mises, ‘ This is not a “ war” book: it is a book about the world we live in’. According to the blurb, he shows that ‘for Britain, the price of victory was the loss of accumulated wealth and her reduction to a_ second-class power ’. Unfortunately, the author’s lack of conceptual clarity makes the book confused and confusing. What we are given is little more than military history. It seems that the Americans were divided on the conduct of the war. Roosevelt and others stressed the smashing of Germany while another group wished to concentrate on the Pacific zone. Apparently the latter’s effort adversely affected British interests and contributed to this country’s exhaustion. Another conse- quence was that the USA had to be given clear recognition as the senior partner before Europe could become the major objective. There are hints that if Germany had been conquered before Britain’s resources ran out so far, then ‘the shape of Europe’ today would have been different. Just how we are not told and there is not overmuch evidence adduced for that thesis. _In_ political matters, there is nothing new in the book. No secrets are revealed or fresh analysis offered. Had there been a revolutionary force, capable of exploiting the crises and uncompromised by class collabora- tion, the confusion which this book reflects might have been exacerbated and mortal blows dealt to capitalism in Western Europe. But the voice of reason was too small and histories continue to be written in Thompson’s way. Capitalism muddled through because the alternative could not be presented strongly enough. working class are successfully urged to side with one capitalist faction against another the same thing will happen again and again. This book is very badly written and the only real gain to be got from it is a great deal of confirmation for the view that military commanders, high and low, are incompetent. Of course, in that respect, each side had enough officers to nullify the other’s blunders; and victory, such as it was, went simply to predominance of men and If the — . to which they are subject. materials. The US War Cemetery in Normandy bears witness to wilful ignorance and stupid prejudice .in high places. R.E.T. Clause Four Nationalized Industry and Public Ownership, by William A. Robson. _ George Allen and Unwin, 50s. It has been a feature of political discussion during the last ten years that those socialists who have been most insistent on the need for more nationalization have also been the most conscious of the shortcomings of the existing nationalized industries. The paradox is, of course, only an apparent one but it underlines the _urgency, if the strongest possible case is to be made against revisionism, for a systematic appraisal of the post- 1945 nationalized industries. Professor Robson has made a sub- stantial contribution to the task in the 500 pages of this book. Begin- ning with a survey of the background of the undertakings concerned and the motives involved, he shows that both in the selection of industries for public ownership and of the form which that ownership should take (the public corporation) the Third Labour Government were working within a basically capitalist frame of reference. ‘The elimination of private owner- ship was a surgical operation which had become necessary to save the life of the patient. But the removal of a diseased organ is not, by itself, necessarily sufficient to restore a sick patient to health.’ There follows an examination of the organization and management of the existing public corporations, their labour relations, their finance policies, their research and development pro- grammes, and the political influences Much of this diagnosis covers familiar ground but the author has systematized the material available and an occasional new development is pinpointed, as in the N CB’s current practice of carry- ing out research on mining machinery to the prototype stage and then hand- ing over to private manufacturing firms for production. In a final chapter Professor Robson is concerned both to evaluate and to trace the origin of the revisionist

[p021] BOOK REVIEWS attempt to abandon nationalization in favour of equity shareholding. His culprit is clearly Gaitskell, who ‘as long ago as 1953, writing in Political Quarterly . . . sought to disengage the Labour Party from its long- established commitment to nationali- zation ’, and Robson’s rejection of the Crosland-- Jay - Gaitskell (which he equates with Italian state capitalism) is the more telling in that he is prepared to meet them on their own ground and to show that the proposals are consonant ‘ neither with socialist philosophy nor even with a sound Welfare State policy’. Although Robson criticises both the revisionists and the existing