Wang Yao: The Socialization Problem of the British Labour Party: Origins, Evolution, and Future
Throughout the more than 120-year history of the British Labour Party, the question of socialization has held a particular significance. Socialization not only embodies the socialist faith and political ideals of the Labour Party—serving as an ideological guide that defines the party's character and direction of action—but it has also been the focal point of intra-party factional friction and struggle. It reflects the maneuvering of positions and political propositions between different forces, such as the party's Left and Right wings, and trade union groups and policy-making elites. Furthermore, it remains the most distinctive and representative element of Labour’s political agenda, influencing and even determining the scope of policy choices and the limits of reform for the party.
Socialization is a concept that requires constant clarification. In the process of putting socialization theory into practice, European social democratic parties, represented by the British Labour Party, have continuously enriched its connotations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, socialization was expressed as "social ownership" or "collective ownership," serving as the economic principle and goal of social democratic parties and an inherent requirement of socialism. After World War I, under the influence of the Soviet Union, many social democratic parties, including the British Labour Party, simplified the understanding of socialization as nationalization or collectivization. However, after approximately half a century of practice, most of these schemes failed. Social democratic parties gradually accepted the vision of "economic democracy," believing that socialization "should also include the partial return of planning and regulatory functions to consumers and producers themselves, while integrating enterprise production with the general interests of society"—a scheme regarded as "indirect socialization." Consequently, on the foundation of public ownership, the socialization policies of European social democratic parties incorporated elements such as the welfare system and state intervention, with the British Labour Party serving as a typical example. Since the 1970s and 1980s, the means of "indirect socialization" have basically replaced ownership reform via "direct socialization," and economic democracy has increasingly been regarded as the primary policy connotation of socialization.
Unlike other social democratic parties on the European continent, the British Labour Party developed from reformist thought. From the very beginning, its activities were closely centered on electoral politics. As its primary political goal and agenda, socialization was also incorporated into the legal institutional framework relatively early. Facing the problems of inequality and injustice in British society, the Labour Party formulated concrete socialization measures and translated them into reality based on its value demands and political philosophy, following a period of gestation within its active agencies and organizational procedures. This process constituted the modernization of the British Labour Party's socialization program and its historical transformation; it also contained an imaginative vision regarding the future of socialization and social democracy.
I. The Early British Labour Party and Socialization for the Maintenance of Labor Interests (1900–1918)
The British Labour Party was not a product of the integration of Marxism with the workers' movement, but rather an organization formed by the federation of various trade unions and socialist societies. Its purpose was to establish an independent workers' parliamentary group responsible for the political struggle of the working class within Parliament. The early British Labour Party lacked a clear program or charter. Organizationally, it was characterized by "pluralism, the coexistence of cooperation and conflict, and the trade unions as the main body." It implemented a system of collective membership—that is, the various trade unions, a portion of the cooperatives, professional associations, the Independent Labour Party, and the Fabian Society [1] belonging to the British Labour Party all joined collectively. The basic procedure was that a portion of the members or a committee of a trade union, trades council, or socialist society would propose joining the Labour Party; an internal vote would then be held, and a decision made based on the principle of simple majority. Through this mechanism, the Labour Party absorbed members indirectly. This is what Duverger [2] called a "party of indirect structure." The hidden danger created by this structure was that groups within the trade unions who did not originally agree with the Labour Party's propositions were nonetheless treated as Labour Party members. This clearly transplanted the organizational and operational modes of trade union struggle into the Labour Party, and it was also an institutional cause of subsequent disagreements and even splits within the party. It lacked a unified, institutionalized national organizational system. It was merely an electoral alliance composed of trade unions and socialist societies, not a strictly independent modern parliamentary party organization.
Organizational federation led to a pluralism of socialization policies in the early British Labour Party, including both direct nationalization and the pursuit of industrial management rights, which embodied the demands of economic democracy. On the one hand, nationalization was the primary objective of the early British Labour Party's socialization claims; it was both a common proposition of all socialists at the time and a simple political demand of the British trade union and workers' movement. In 1906, Labour MPs first proposed a scheme for the nationalization of mines and railways in Parliament. In 1908, the Labour Party passed a resolution stating that the time had come to realize the "socialization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, to be managed by a democratic state in the interest of the entire community." In 1914, the associations of British miners, railwaymen, and transport workers formed a massive "Triple Alliance" with 1.5 million members, vigorously engaging in propaganda and agitation for the nationalization of mining and railways, achieving significant social influence. On the other hand, with changes in the situation of strike struggles and the propaganda of Guild Socialists [3], the demand for workers' self-management of industry became increasingly common. The struggle for industrial management rights became another component of the early British Labour Party's socialization claims, embodying the proposition of "economic democracy" within British socialism. During World War I, the "Whitley Report on Joint Industrial Councils" and the Garton Foundation's "Memorandum on the Industrial Situation after the War" both called for employer groups and trade union representatives to resolve disputes through consultation and cooperation. From 1915 onwards, successive Trades Union Congresses (TUC) also began to use concepts reflecting higher demands, such as "maintaining the interests of labor" and "economic democracy," to call for the realization of industrial management rights. They explicitly demanded labor participation in factory management, noting that "industrial democracy is the only way to social peace."
However, there was no direct link between the socialization of the early British Labour Party and socialism. Its goal was merely to maintain the interests of labor, and it adhered to "labourism" (also known as "trade unionism") originating from the unions. This labourism, formed under specific British historical conditions, was far removed from the Marxist theory of proletarian liberation. Although it opposed capitalist exploitation, it did not demand the abolition of a socio-economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production. At that time, trade union leaders were more influenced by Liberalism ideologically, and were mostly "Lib-Labs" [4] politically. They trusted the Liberal Party in Parliament, and their strike struggles were mostly for the purpose of increasing wages and improving working conditions, hoping to achieve their goals within the existing capitalist society through "free collective bargaining" rather than by overthrowing that society. This indicates that the early British Labour Party understood "nationalization" and "economic democracy" only in a literal sense: that the means of production should be owned by the state representing the whole nation, and workers should participate in factory management and decision-making. However, regarding who should be responsible for the organization and management of the production process, through what channels workers should participate in decision-making, and how to ensure the effectiveness of worker participation, the Labour Party internal consensus was unclear, and disagreements even existed. In other words, the early British Labour Party's socialization claims were not socialist reforms in the true sense, because they had no determined ultimate goal for socialism and focused only on short-term aims—maintaining the interests of labor.
Through the struggles of the early British Labour Party, the authorities adopted a series of social reforms beneficial to labor, but these were merely concessions won by the workers' movement within the capitalist political framework. As these concessions reached the limit of what capital could tolerate, both the workers' movement and the early British Labour Party fell into a political predicament. The working class called for an independent modern party organization capable of truly representing its own interests, and the Labour Party needed to establish its party character and replaceability. Under these circumstances, the British labor movement and the socialist movement began to truly move toward integration.
II. The Rising British Labour Party and Socialization as a Socialist Goal (1918–1945)
Until the beginning of 1918, the British Labour Party was composed only of various tightly organized workers' groups and a small number of middle-class socialists. Both the Labour Annual Conference and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) were controlled by massive textile and coal mining workers' groups, while socialists did not play a significant role. As the situation of workers became increasingly difficult and the strike situation more severe, the British workers' movement began to integrate with socialism. In February 1918, the Labour Conference adopted a new Party Constitution, in which Clause IV clarified the party's ultimate goal: "To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service." This was the first time the Labour Party explicitly proposed a goal of a socialist nature in its constitution. From this point on, "the British workers' movement merged into the mainstream of the European socialist movement."
The new party program subsequently adopted by the British Labour Party, Labour and the New Social Order (hereafter "the New Program"), provided an in-depth interpretation of the connotation of socialization and its relationship with socialism. The New Program stipulated that nationalization could be achieved through two aspects: first, the abolition of private capital control and the reorganization of enterprises into state ownership according to the principle of common ownership of the means of production and the fair distribution of products; and second, the nationalization and local municipalization of surplus wealth. The New Program's stipulation of "common ownership of the means of production" was intended to incorporate the "municipalization" [5] of the Fabian Society, but in later concrete argumentation and implementation, "nationalization was equated with socialization." This indicates that at this time, the British Labour Party's understanding of socialization was relatively singular and rigid: it simply equated socialization with nationalization, viewing it both as a reformist measure to promote economic development and as an important means to achieve socialist goals, and even as the socialist goal itself. It could even be expressed by a less-than-rigorous formula: "Socialism = Socialization = Nationalization."
The New Program sidestepped another component of the early British Labour Party's socialization claims—the struggle for industrial management rights. This approach sparked heated discussion at the time: supporters believed that this demand could be achieved by trade unions, and that collective bargaining was also a way for workers to manage enterprises; opponents argued that changes in the ownership of the means of production did not play a decisive role in the realization of economic democracy. Although this economic form could limit enterprise owners and grant the working class certain economic and social rights, it was merely "workshop democracy" rather than true economic democracy, because the economic privileges of capitalists in state-owned enterprises had not been abolished. It is evident that the New Program "concealed the demand for economic democracy." At this time, the British Labour Party narrowed the connotation of socialization to changes at the level of ownership—that is, moving from capitalist private ownership to socialist public ownership, and primarily state ownership. This cognition influenced the party's policy propositions and practices as it participated in national political life, affected its understanding of socialism as a guiding ideology, and reflected the basic cognition of socialization held by European social democratic parties at the time.
Despite a certain contraction or retreat on the issue of socialization, the 1918 Constitution marked the establishment of socialism as the guiding ideology of the British Labour Party and proposed the goal of overturning the capitalist system and realizing socialism—albeit to be achieved through the gradual, permeating methods of Fabian Socialism. It gave the British Labour Party a distinct and unique ideology for the first time, expanded its space for development, and attracted a large number of talented non-labor individuals. After the 1923 general election, the British Labour Party broke the traditional pattern of the Conservative and Liberal parties alternating in power, winning its first opportunity to govern and joining the ranks of Britain's mainstream political parties.
The brief period in power between the two World Wars left the British Labour Party in an awkward position regarding socialization, and particularly nationalization. On the one hand, the working class had an urgent desire to improve their lives immediately and hoped that Labour would implement large-scale nationalization upon taking office; on the other hand, the Labour Party was unable or even afraid to propose nationalization reforms because its two cabinets were formed with the support of the Liberal Party. Support from the latter was conditional—it required limiting policies to a scope that did not attack the fundamental system of capitalism. Consequently, the Labour Party's reflections centered on how to satisfy the interests of the trade unions and the working class, advance nationalization reforms, and adhere to socialist goals, while simultaneously avoiding any threat to the dominance of private capital that might cause the situation to spiral out of control.
The British Labour Party found that Keynesian state intervention theory and Beveridge's welfare state theory [6] seemed capable of resolving this predicament. The government could control or manage the economy by regulating important economic parameters; it could protect the interests of the working class by guiding capital owners to change their modes of production and operation; it could guide consumption propensities through fiscal and tax policies or by adjusting public consumption levels; and it could correct certain market failures through income transfers and social services—policies identified with the welfare state. In this way, class antagonism could be eased, social injustice mitigated, and the demands of the working class met, all while solving the "chronic maladies" of capitalist inequality and inefficiency without challenging the fundamental capitalist system. As for the goal of socialism, it could be ignored or postponed to a distant future. Thus, the British Labour Party gradually accepted economic intervention and welfare state strategies, treating them as a "clumsy patch" for nationalization, and together they promoted social change in a socialist direction. This flexible attitude toward the dilemma of socialization indicated that the British Labour Party had begun its transition to the stage of democratic socialism.
III. The Expanding Labour Party and Socialization as a Means to Achieve Socialism (1945–1979)
In the 1945 British general election, the Labour Party under Clement Attlee won a victory on the strength of a unique political program—promises of nationalization, full employment, and the welfare state. For the first time, it secured an absolute majority in Parliament, and the British Labour Party entered an "expansionary phase," beginning large-scale socialization practices.
Nationalization, the welfare state, and economic planning were known as the "three pillars" of the Attlee government's socialist reforms. Regarding nationalization, the British Labour government brought basic economic sectors—including banking, coal, railways, road transport, civil aviation, electricity, and steel—under state ownership in a short period and established specialized state functional departments to manage these state-owned enterprises. By November 1951, the number of employees in British state-owned enterprises reached 2.188 million, and the share of total state-owned assets reached 20%, a proportion that remained constant until the 1980s. The Attlee government established the basic institutional framework of the British welfare state, creating a system composed of social security, the National Health Service (NHS), personal care services, and numerous other projects to ensure that every citizen could lead a secure life throughout their years, not falling below a national minimum standard of living. This universalist welfare based on redistribution transcended the principle of means-testing [7] found in the "Beveridge Report," embodying an expanded concept of citizenship—social rights. T.H. Marshall divided citizenship into three types: civil, political, and social rights. He argued that since social rights are a form of citizenship, welfare should not stop at eliminating deprivation at the bottom of society (poverty alleviation) but should change the entire pattern of social inequality (establishing universalist welfare based on individual needs). This represented the British Labour Party's transcendence of the welfare concepts held by the Liberal and Conservative parties. The Attlee government's economic planning was mainly concentrated on state-owned enterprises and lacked management and planning for the private sector; critics remarked: "Until 1947, he still had not formulated any decent plan for private sector reform." In fact, the "three pillars" held different political statuses: nationalization was the most fundamental and core policy, while the other two were considered supplementary measures conducive to changing capitalist private ownership and realizing socialism.
However, after the 1950s, the status of the "three pillars" began to shift: the welfare state and economic planning, previously seen as "clumsy patches," gradually replaced nationalization as the focus of Labour's policy. This shift mainly stemmed from setbacks in nationalization practices. Party theorists recognized that, on one hand, ownership was not an indivisible right that must be held entirely by either private or public authorities; rather, a mixed economy containing both private and public sectors could be established. On the other hand, ownership was not that important; it was not the fundamental element defining social attributes. What mattered was who exercised control—the right to manage production was seen as more significant than the ownership of the means of production. Under the influence of revisionists within the party at the time, the British Labour Party began to avoid nationalization and gradually abandoned the method of achieving social change through collective ownership.
Nevertheless, the success of the welfare state and economic planning also exposed an old problem for European social democratic parties, including British Labour: the disconnect between theory and practice. Formally, they still adhered to socialization and nationalization, and theoretically, they still held socialism as the "final goal." Yet in practice, they no longer pursued public ownership of the means of production, instead placing greater emphasis on the non-traditional socialization categories of the welfare state and economic planning. However, the latter served to make capitalism "more perfect" and "more humane," which undoubtedly deviated from the socialist goal. As Gøsta Esping-Andersen noted, after WWII, "all West European parties of the Left faced, in a relatively less extreme form, an increasing contrast between their socialist rhetoric and their reformist practice." To weaken this contrast, the British Labour Party in the 1960s and 1970s avoided socialization and instead played up "modernity," though this lacked the power to summarize the characteristics of the era and did not become the defining political philosophy of the party during this period. "Wilsonism" (a specific type of technocratic reformism) and James Callaghan’s turn toward monetarism appeared more as desperate short-term strategies adopted to maintain power by a party lacking theoretical innovation.
During this historical period, European social democratic parties, represented by British Labour, evolved into "People’s Parties" professing democratic socialism. Democratic socialism fundamentally distinguished between the ends and means of socialism, no longer substituting means for goals: nationalization was only one means of socialization, while the mixed economy and other public enterprises were also important—and perhaps even more effective—avenues for socialization. Socialization itself was merely one means of achieving socialism; economic planning and the welfare state were also effective means, perhaps more so than socialization itself. In democratic socialism, only basic values can be regarded as ends. Socialism is a set of value principles, the most important being equality of opportunity for every individual and the redistribution of wealth and property. The development of mass democratic politics required party policies to target the whole people rather than just the "working class" as a separate group. Policy-wise, it acknowledged the effectiveness of markets and private property but sought to harmonize individual and public interests through economic democracy, wealth redistribution, the protection of labor rights, and democratically determined macroeconomic regulation. Consequently, nationalization and even socialization became merely means to serve socialist value goals, and when proven unsuccessful in practice, they could be calmly modified or even discarded. This fully reflects the reformist essence of democratic socialism.
IV. The Labour Party in Transition and "De-socialization" (1980–2010)
After the British Labour Party fell into opposition in 1979, the party's left wing took power in a rare turn. They blamed Labour’s defeat on the compromises of the right wing and thus proposed a radical socialization program—the "Alternative Economic Strategy"—while seeking to expand the power of the left wing and trade unions organizationally to "revive socialism" in Britain. This disregard for reality was destined for failure. Subsequent moderate reformist leaders Neil Kinnock and John Smith worked to transform the party's image and bridge internal divisions. They implemented a series of measures against radical socialization, reinterpreting Labour's socialization claims by advocating for social ownership, a mixed economy, and economic democracy. However, these changes were made without touching the party's fundamental claims, such as socialist ideals and the goal of public ownership; they rejected old policies and means, but not the old goals and principles. Four consecutive election defeats made the party realize that simply changing its image was insufficient—the party needed to be fundamentally reconstructed. This raised the curtain on New Labour’s "de-socialization."
The core of the "Blair Revolution" was the renewal of Britain’s democratic socialist political tradition, centrally reflected in the process of "de-socialization." Blair went directly for the theoretical "forbidden zone" that moderate reformists dared not touch: Clause IV of the Party Constitution, which defined the "party's objects." Under the new Clause IV, New Labour still pursued "democratic socialism," with values such as freedom, justice, and solidarity remaining its goals. It recognized market principles, advocating for the "thriving of private enterprise" and "joining the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition with the forces of partnership and co-operation." It advocated for limiting the scope of public ownership and the role of the state, suggesting that public ownership should only be implemented—or systems of public accountability established—in "those areas where private enterprise is less effective and where the public interest requires," and that a mixed economy should predominate. New Labour was no longer merely a party of the working class and trade unions, but a "party for all the people" aimed at winning elections. These updates were concentrated in New Labour’s "Third Way" political platform: abandoning public ownership in favor of continued privatization, discarding Keynesian economic intervention, and reforming the welfare state. These propositions almost entirely overturned the "three pillars" from the party's democratic socialist era. As historian Eric Shaw summarized, the "Third Way" "released the Labour Party from its old values and goals and adapted it to existing institutional and ideological patterns." The "Third Way" brought massive political rewards: from 1997 to 2007, various British economic indicators were better than those of other EU countries, and the Labour Party won three consecutive general elections, setting a record for its longest continuous period in government. But the costs were also enormous: unclear political goals, blurred partisan identity, and an unstable electoral coalition—the effects of which persist to this day.
During this period, the British Labour Party became a "catch-all party" pursuing a "new" social democracy with the goal of winning elections. This "new" social democracy, building on the transcendence of the political philosophies of both the Old Left and the New Right, developed a new radical political agenda. This included a "new mixed economy" scheme, a "social investment" welfare state, and a focus on "social exclusion" rather than traditional poverty. Relatedly, after 1997, Labour policy documents and theoretical articles gradually replaced "democratic socialism" with "social democracy," aiming to "endow current democratic institutions with 'social' content, rather than seeking for socialism as a system to replace (capitalist) democracy or (democratic) capitalism." This marked the formal abandonment of systemic replacement; its socialist goals became purely ethical in nature. It signified another transformation of social democracy and another compromise toward market values and liberalism. However, this cannot be simply understood as the "neoliberalization of social democracy." What Blair accepted was not the neoliberalism of neoconservatives like Thatcher or Reagan, but the liberalism of the center-left. The former emphasizes individualism to the extreme, reflecting the liberal philosophies of Locke, Kant, and Mill; the latter focuses on "what society needs to do to make all people free," emphasizing the mutual supplementation and constraint of social relations, reflecting John Rawls's view of liberalism. In terms of party positioning, the British Labour Party no longer sought to represent only the interests of the working class and lower-middle social groups, but the interests of all social strata, using the political goal of winning elections as the basis for condensing internal party consensus, rather than achieving it through the implementation of the party program.
Regarding the outcomes of the "new" social democratic program, two starkly different perspectives persist within the academic community. Critics argue that the British Labour Party's achievements in office were offset by its concessions and compromises with liberalism, and that New Labour "failed entirely to induce a shift in the discourse of British political debate." Supporters, however, emphasize that Britain's center-right political forces have been compelled to accept the "new" social democratic agenda, and that the right wing of the Conservative Party has had to "bury the Thatcherite legacy." They argue that no party could win an election while openly professing right-wing policies, and thus the most fundamental fruit of New Labour’s victory was its "redefinition of the basic tone of British politics." Regardless, "new" social democracy did indeed compromise with liberalism. In the post-"Third Way" era, the British Labour Party faces the multidimensional task of rebuilding its belief system, reshaping its radical political programs, and improving its party image to regain voter favor.
V. The British Labour Party in Disarray and "Resocialization" (2010 to Present)
In 2010, Ed Miliband, representing the moderate left, was elected leader of the British Labour Party. He hoped to rectify the identity crisis caused by New Labour’s "de-socialization" and "de-socialistization" through a slight shift to the left, but achieved only minor success. He first accepted the propositions of "Blue Labour"—a position that rejected public ownership in favor of a "civil economy," viewed the state with suspicion while emphasizing virtue, and opposed welfare dependency while stressing civic self-governance. This proposition, tinged with romanticism and radical localism, was quickly replaced by "One Nation Labour." The latter emphasized both the role of the state and the responsibilities of the family and community; it raised the banner of Keynesianism while stressing shared prosperity in the era of globalization; and it adhered to universalism in welfare while maintaining pluralism in responsibility. It was an all-encompassing "theoretical hodgepodge." These two projects—too philosophical, ethical, and lacking consistency and long-term viability—failed to win over voters or unify party ideology. In the 2015 general election, the Labour Party suffered another crushing defeat. Even Miliband’s resignation was considered ill-timed; he was accused of plunging the party into a leadership struggle prematurely, thereby losing the time needed to reflect on policy and bridge divisions. Regardless of who became leader, the Labour Party faced a potential split.
Perhaps Miliband's most influential reform was the introduction of a pure "one member, one vote" system for leadership elections, which "accidentally" allowed the radical left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to seize power within the party. Yet every accident contains necessity [11]. The fundamental reason for Corbyn’s victory lay in his critique of the British Conservative government, which resonated with public opinion. He criticized their austerity policies, xenophobia, and hostility toward the welfare state, transforming these critiques into Labour’s policy platform: "resocialization." In the economic sphere, this proposition was centrally reflected as "economic democratization," calling for democracy at two levels: ownership and "economic decision-making power." He proposed that the most important way to promote the democratization of ownership was to establish a truly representative and collectivist model of ownership. In sectors with natural monopolies, where private enterprises are unwilling or unable to bear massive investment costs and risks, state ownership is required as a "foundational institution" to maintain them. In some inefficient industries, cooperative systems could be implemented, and local authorities should be encouraged to develop municipal or local enterprises, with a greater emphasis on the role of the community. Furthermore, Corbyn emphasized the democratization of economic decision-making—that is, worker participation in corporate decision-making and management. In an era where ownership and management are separated, "democracy of decision-making" seems more important than "democracy of ownership." However, under the portrayal of the media and political opponents, "resocialization" was simplified and understood merely as "nationalization." In reality, "Corbynism" did not believe that what currently constrains workers is merely specific enterprises or capitalists, but rather a series of interlocking systems of economic production and decision-making that unequally distribute increasing amounts of capital while destroying people's lives and moral character. Corbyn’s interpretation of "economic democracy" reflects the new developmental trends and political implications of the traditional issue of socialization.
After Corbyn took office, Labour’s membership doubled, making it the largest party in Europe. Supporters hoped Corbyn could bring change—improving working conditions, restoring public services, challenging the privileges of capital, and even establishing a left-wing government. The defeat in the 2019 general election shattered these illusions, as the Conservatives won a landslide victory. While there were personal factors related to Corbyn, structural social factors were more significant; the failure of "resocialization" seemed inevitable. First, Corbyn's program was itself crude and imprecise. In an era of universal austerity following the financial crisis, his plan did not convincingly answer the question of "where the money would come from," instead deepening the impression of the Labour Party as "profligate." Second, this program did not transcend the democratic socialist plans of the post-war Labour Party. It abandoned direct state intervention in the economy, emphasizing effective market regulation through law and taxation. This was actually a continuation of Miliband and even New Labour, reflecting a lack of theoretical innovation within the party—the state is a role that needs to be redefined, yet left-wing theorists have so far failed to provide a powerful response. Third, Corbyn’s "sharp left turn" was disruptive even among social democratic parties across Europe, let alone the impact it had on Britain with its moderate and incremental political tradition. Moreover, the British electoral system—the two-party system and "first-past-the-post"—acts as a bottom-line institutional defense against "accidental" political risks. Both the political culture and institutional framework constituted the macro-political environment leading to the failure of "resocialization." With Labour’s failures on the "Brexit" issue and intensifying internal splits, "Corbynism" officially came to an end in April 2020. Keir Starmer, the Shadow Brexit Secretary regarded as "furthest from Corbynism," became the new party leader.
On issues related to socialization, the center-left Starmer has not proposed any innovative schemes. He has only vaguely emphasized that socialism should be "rooted in people’s daily lives" and understood from an "ethical and moral" level, arguing that economic, social, and environmental justice are the three major paths to achieving social democracy. His focus has been on restricting the power of the radical left through organizational means, eliminating the influence of "Corbynism," and reshaping Labour's image as a "catch-all party" with a center-left stance. It is no wonder some commentators remarked: "Starmer is more concerned with expelling socialists than winning power." In fact, this reflects the breadth and diversity of reflection within the party in the "post-Corbyn era": the party's left and right wings, the elites and ordinary members, and the trade unions and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) still differ on many issues. Temporarily refraining from establishing a clear political line also helps facilitate the clash and fusion of different viewpoints. According to current polling data, Labour is likely to "make a comeback" in the 2024 general election, either governing alone or forming a coalition government with the Green Party or Liberal Democrats. Regardless, the importance and influence of socialization, state intervention, and the welfare state as traditional pillars of party competition have significantly declined. Non-traditional issues such as climate, environment, and migration will become the key points of policy contention.
Even though Corbyn proposed "resocialization" and "economic democratization," it did not change the nature of the British Labour Party's social democratic ideology. In fact, during this period, the party adopted a "conservative" approach to reshaping its own values, emphasizing the protection of tradition, a return to the past, and methods of solidarity. This was centrally embodied in the focus on socialization issues—namely, a nostalgia and longing for Keynesianism, the welfare state, and public ownership. As Anthony Giddens said twenty years ago: "Now, a conservatism that has become radical meets a socialism that has become conservative." What he meant was that when social democracy becomes fixated on tradition, it loses its natural connection with radicalism and its consistent progressive stance, meaning its ability to adapt to historical change and control the direction of that change is called into question. This is no small blow to social democracy as a progressive force. However, this does not mean social democracy has lost its value as a political ideal, but rather that the means and vehicles for achieving these goals have been constrained.
Throughout this process, the relationship between socialization and socialism also changed. Initially, social democrats viewed the abolition of private capitalist ownership and the realization of public socialization as the foundation and goal of socialism—the essential feature distinguishing socialism from capitalism. After World War I, most democratic socialists understood socialization as the primary scheme for a non-violent transition from capitalism to socialism without revolution. The dominant idea of various socialization schemes at that time was to gradually deprive capitalists of part of their power in the economic sphere and hand over corporate leadership to the workers. After World War II, they basically abandoned the replacement of private ownership with total public ownership; the welfare state and Keynesian state management became supplementary schemes to socialization strategies, and later, socialization was treated as the primary scheme. This signified a compromise by social democratic parties on socialist goals; they no longer sought the institutional replacement of capitalism with socialism. Instead, socialism became a series of values to be constantly pursued, and the socialist movement became a series of historical processes. This is Bernstein’s revisionist formula: the final goal is trivial; the movement is everything. But people will always ask: where will your movement or path lead me? Currently, social democratic parties have no answer. Because they have abandoned the final goal of socialism, the freedom, justice, and solidarity they pursue are so "universal" that almost all social movements can claim to be fighting for them. When a political party’s goals are almost a matter of social consensus, it is hard to say it still represents progress. This is determined by the reformist nature of social democracy: the more capitalism and democracy spread and develop, the more the space for its reform will be restricted and narrowed.
In short, seen historically, socialization tempered social democracy. The 19th-century labor movement led people to realize that legal or political equality alone was insufficient to ensure real equality, as new de facto privileges would always cause social injustice through other means. Private ownership of the means of production is the fundamental cause of these new de facto privileges. Therefore, property privileges must be abolished and private ownership eliminated, which can only be achieved by organizing society. This is the origin of the historical principle and socialization mission of socialist parties. Social democrats, deeply influenced by Bernstein’s revisionism, believed in actively and realistically promoting social transformation rather than waiting for "that day" to arrive on its own. Thus, they understood socialization as a "non-violent transition to socialism" and believed "the movement is everything." In the eyes of social democrats, to achieve this transition, winning power is paramount, after which they can rely on the bourgeois state and political machinery to promote relevant social changes. This socialization scheme, which possesses both transcendence and continuity, attracted lower- and middle-class voters, and social democracy subsequently became a stable fixture among European political trends and forces. Since then, social democratic parties have sought a balance between the dilemma of adhering to faith or winning power; socialization, socialism, and social democratic parties have all demonstrated political resilience throughout this continuous revision.
Does socialization still have political significance today? To social democrats, the answer is yes. To borrow the words of the late Olof Palme, former Swedish Prime Minister and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party: to a certain extent, socialization, like socialism, "is symbiotic with capitalism; the labor movement is a response to capitalism." As long as the fundamental contradictions of capitalist society exist, and as long as the tense relationship between the market, society, and democracy remains unchanged, socialization will never be an obsolete topic.
(Author's Affiliation: Department of Scientific Socialism, Central Party School of the CPC (National Academy of Governance))