Crosland's future

by David A. Reisman

Anthony Crosland was a politician and a theorist. In his speeches, his articles, his books - in his classic work The Future of Socialism most of all - he made himself the ideologue of a new revisionism that took equality and welfare, not property and planning, to be the high priorities in the socialism of affluence. Crosland's Future: Opportunity and Outcome is about the equalisation of life-chances through reforms in key areas like education and housing. It is also about the equalisation of the nation's prizes by means of fiscal policy reinforced by cultural and economic advance. The book concludes that Crosland, a social democrat and not a Marxist, was a perceptive pragmatist whose theories raise issues that remain central to the debate about individual freedom and social policy.