New Left Review I/37, May-June 1966

Bob Rowthorn

Capitalism and the Modernizers

The last twenty years have seen a boom of unprecedented size in the capitalist world. Never before has capitalism grown so fast for so long. This boom has been accompanied by far reaching institutional changes. Big business is becoming increasingly rational and calculating. It is beginning to plan far into the future—for five, ten or twenty years. State intervention by means of taxation, subsidies, or forecasting is now common throughout the advanced capitalist world. These changes have thrown the Left into intellectual, if not organizational, disarray. Many who had identified socialism with full employment and planning are confused. We have full employment. We have planning of a kind. Yet we do not seem to be any nearer to socialism. It is, therefore, important that the role of the State in the modern capitalist economy and the nature of capitalist prosperity should be understood. Yet apart from a small number of writers who inhabit a marxist underworld, comparatively few attempts have been made to do this.

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