Introduction

The Future of Socialism was a work of moderation born into a world of consensus. A rigorous reappraisal of the scope for the State, it established itself almost immediately as British Labour’s most influential manifesto since Durbin’s Politics of Democratic Socialism in 1940 if not since Tawney’s Equality in 1931. Anthony Crosland’s important contribution to the theory of the middle ground was published in 1956. Two decades late The Guardian was still describing it as ‘a great seminal work which … remains the main intellectual fount of modern British democratic socialism’ 1 and The Economist was treating it as a classic that had stopped the clocks at the moment of its birth: ‘To a shaming extent, the Labour party (or at least its moderate wing) has been living off the intellectual capital of The Future of Socialism ever since.’2