Anthony Crosland - Author

Author

Losing his seat in 1955 turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Crosland, as it enabled him (as C.A.R. Crosland) to write The Future of Socialism, published in autumn 1956. This proved to be a seminal work for the moderate British left. (A revised 50th anniversary edition was published in 2006.) In the book he outlined the need for traditional socialism to adapt to modern circumstances — a context from which the use of the term "revisionism" has its origins in Britain, despite the gradualism associated with the Fabian Society since the end of the nineteenth century.

Crosland was himself an active member of the Fabian Society, contributing to the New Fabian Essays, which saw the emerging generation of Labour thinkers and politicians attempt to set out a new programme for Labour following the Attlee governments of 1945 to 1951. In particular, Crosland wished to challenge the dominance of Sidney and Beatrice Webb in Fabian thinking, challenging their austere, managerialist, centralising, "top-down", bureaucratic Fabianism with a more liberal vision of the good society and the good life, writing in The Future of Socialism that "Total abstinence and a good filing system are not now the right signposts to the socialist utopia. Or at least, if they are, some of us will fall by the wayside".

Two further books of essays published by Crosland were The Conservative Enemy (London, Cape, 1962) and Socialism Now, and Other Essays (London, Cape, 1974).