Journal Article

Original Sin vs. Utopia in British Socialism

Hacker, Andrew

1956

Overview

Since the end of World War II, Great Britain has provided a happy hunting ground for students of politics, whose chief prey has been the British Labour movement. Perhaps it is because some considered the Labour Government of 1945–51 to be an “experiment,” and experiments of any sort ought to be watched closely. Or it may be that here was a party with a mass backing which, at the same time, had a corpus of theory which it professed to be implementing; hence the consistency between the words of the ideologues and the actions of the politicians could be measured. Yet for all the consideration of Socialist theory, Labour ideology, and Transport House practice, scholars have tended to neglect the psychological and metaphysical bases of the movement's approach to politics. An examination of the presuppositions regarding the nature of man is vital to the understanding of any political theory—or, for that matter, any practical program of action. While studies of nationalized industries, foreign policy, the bureaucracy, and the internecine warfare of party factions are desirable and of interest, if we are to put our observations in philosophical perspective we must base our investigation of British Socialism and the British Labour movement on its views of human nature.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press,University of Notre Dame
• Subject: Great Britain / Human nature / Labor movements / Labor parties / Labor party (Great Britain) / Marxian economics / Original sin / Political philosophy / Socialism / Utopian fiction / Utopian socialism / Utopias