Abstract
The most protracted and open struggle between the two major forms of capital in Britain occurred during the 1960s. At times the conflict became acute and (perhaps as an indication that productive capital was near to achieving hegemony) pervaded all the major institutions of British society. The broad issues in the ideological ferment were the same as in the past: ruling class traditionalism; the liberal elitist educational system; outmoded forms of bureaucratic administration, particularly at the highest levels; and the existence of a technologically backward industrial structure.
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Notes and References
For a clear presentation of recent data, see A. Gamble, Britain in Decline, (London: Macmillan, 1981) pp.17–23.
The following brief outline of the Anglo-American discussions relies on Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy (New York: 1969); Fred Block, The Origins of International Economic Disorder (Berkeley: University of (i.e. industrial) plan were therefore subsumed under the Treasury. ‘This marked
Quoted in Wyn Grant and David Marsh, The Confederation of British Industry (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977) p.23. See also pp.69–70 for similar views expressed by the industrialists the authors interviewed.
Sam Brittan, The Treasury under the Tories, (London: Penguin, 1969) p.332. Lereuz’s commentary on Neddy and the later DEA is most instructive. Throughout his account he continually draws comparisons between these two bodies and the French Commissariat-General du Plan, which was a state ministry. With Gallic incredulity at the British attempt ‘to plan without increasing the capacity of the state to intervene in the economy’, Lereuz considered it ‘remarkable’ that Neddy contained no representative from the City but just industrialists and labour leaders: see Lereuz, Economic Planning ch.4.
See for example, A. Shonfield, British Economic Policy since the War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958);
and T. Balogh, Unequal Partners (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963).
A. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967).
Anthony Howard, Sunday Times (21 February 1965): quoted in Roseveare, The Treasury, p.344.
Yet, in Balogh’s opinion: ‘No-one would be mad enough to advocate the periodic interchange of dentists and surgeons, solicitors and barristers, engineers and musicians. Yet surely the problems which most of these professions encounter are simple in comparison with the complexities of the social and economic system of the modern state’: ‘The Apotheosis of the Dilettante: The Establishment of Mandarins’, in Hugh Thomas (ed.) Crisis in the Civil Service (London: Anthony Blond 1968) p.87. The essay was originally published in 1959.
Quoted in Peter Kellner and Lord Crowther-Hunt, The Civil Servants: An Inquiry into Britain’s Ruling Class (London: Macdonald & Jane, 1980) p.46.
Nairn has written: ‘Mrs Thatcher’s “experiment” is no more than an attempt to utilize the recession to hasten the complete dominance of finance-capital’. The unintended consequences of Thatcher’s ideology are to strengthen the City’s position, just as those of Huskisson and the other radical liberal Tories did in the early nineteenth century; but now (as then) the government cannot simply be seen as the City’s instrument. The explicit targets of the present government are working class expectations for ever increasing economic gains and the restoration of confidence in the market as the mechanism for wealth creation. Both are seen as being most effectively accomplished by monetary stabilisation. Like Ricardo and the ‘currency school’ of the 1820s and 1830s, the present government see money as an independent ‘force’ and not (as Attwood or Marx) simply as a functionally useful token or representation of real economic activity and processes: Tom Nairn, ‘Into Political Emergency: A Restrospective From the Eighties’ in The Break-Up of Britain, new edn. (London: New Left Books, 1981) p.391.
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© 1984 Geoffrey Ingham
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Ingham, G. (1984). Postwar Mercantile Revival and Industrial Decline. In: Capitalism Divided?. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86082-1_10
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