There is no inevitability in the drift from a mixed economy towards Socialism. On the contrary, strong economic forces are working in the other direction, eroding the massive state monopolies and opening up new areas of free enterprise. If left to themselves, they could reduce the excessive weight of the state sector in a matter of years. And economic forces include people.
The mixed economy means almost all things to almost all men. It all depends on the mixture and who does the mixing. Our reading of post-war experience is that if we are to have a workable and stable mix, the giant state monopolies and older industries must be slimmed down to permit the flow of resources into new growth industries. They—now, as ever—respond to the initiative and innovation liberated under a free enterprise system.
There are two sides of productive investment: saving labour on the one hand, creating new jobs on the other. If we use our resources—financial, material, human—to prop up out-of-date industries, to maintain over-manning, to delay change, we shall simply make it harder for the new, prosperous enterprises to grow and provide well-paid jobs. Instead of responding to the challenge of today's technological revolution, we shall remain trapped in the decaying heritage of the first industrial revolution. [end p1]
We shall be in danger of sacrificing all our tomorrows for the sake of those who want to make yesterday last for ever.
Whatever some people may say, I do not believe that the Trade Unions would deliberately stand in the way of wealth-creating economic policies, or the Party which advocates them.
They contain millions of British people with minds of their own, who recognise the need to safeguard their future employment. And they know that unless their company, or their industry, keeps abreast of change, it will sooner or later become a victim of change; that if firms do not expand they will sooner or later decline; that if they rely on government assistance to prop them up, they are liable to fall all the harder when government is forced to withdraw the prop to meet more urgent calls on its funds: or more politically pressing ones.
Change is as necessary to a successful industrial economy as oxygen is to the blood stream. But when it is too abrupt it can be socially damaging.
Instead of frustrating change, which may only make its final consequences worse, Government should try to smooth its progress and to alleviate the human suffering which can occur if the change is too great or too sudden.
If Government is seen to be active and successful in this role, trade unionists will come to lose their understandable anxiety about the short term unemployment consequences of change, whilst seeing the greater long-term benefits which change brings.
They will see that it makes good sense to thin out and prune yesterday's plants so that tomorrow's may flourish.
So we have every reason to speak up and formulate sensible policies in the conviction that what is economically necessary will be politically possible.