Talk:Ethical socialism

Spengler

I want advice on how to incorporate this into the article, Oswald Spengler described his position as ethical socialism, and he certainly has followers in the present who refer to their ideology as ethical socialism so it remains relevant. But I'm not sure how to incorporate this alternative form. There are obvious connections between Spengler's approach and that of this, but of course Spengler's Ethical Socialism is very much right-wing.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Threadnecromancer (talk) 06:42, 6 February 2015‎ (UTC)

Dubious: Tony Blair's relationship to ethical socialism

My apologies but I've never made an edit before.

The top section includes this sentence: Ethical socialism has been publicly supported by British Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald,[7] Clement Attlee[8] and Tony Blair.[6]

However, citation #6 does not actually support this statement. The source actually says this: "In Tony Blair's words, 'the old-style collectivism of several decades ago' is no longer radicalism but 'the neo-conservatism of the left' (Blair, 1994: 7)."

The citation actually says nothing about ethical socialism. Additionally, as written, this sentence implies similarities between MacDonald, Attlee, and Blair. But in fact, this source is not highlighting similarities between MacDonald, Attlee, and Blair. Rather, the citation is talking about Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution. Clause 4 called for "the common ownership of the means of production". The source is actually highlighting the differences between "revisionists" like Tony Blair, who sought to amend the Labour Party constitution to drop Clause 4, and Clement Attlee, who supported Clause 4 and actually nationalized several British industries based on Clause 4. Attlee supported "old-style collectivism" but Blair opposed it. The sentence implies continuity between Attlee and Blair but the citation says the opposite.

The last sentence of the article states: Blair believes that the Labour Party ran into problems in the 1960s and 1970s when it "abandoned" ethical socialism and believes that the Labour Party's recovery required a "return to the ethical socialist values last promoted by the Attlee Labour government".[13]

There are three problems with this. First, the quotation is wrong. The statement "return to the ethical socialist values last promoted by the Attlee Labour government" actually reads "return to the ethic of socialism's golden age as represented by the Attlee Labour governments."

Second, the sentence clearly attributes "return to the ethical socialist values last promoted by the Attlee Labour government" to Blair. However, in the citation, this statement was not spoken by Blair but is actually the author's interpretation of something else Blair said.

Third, this sentence is clearly drawing continuity between Attlee and Blair. But this is not what the citation says--the citation actually highlighting differences (not similarities) between Attlee and Blair. The full quote that is falsely attributed to Blair reads:

The present task thus appears to be to return to the ethic of socialism's golden age as represented by the Attlee Labour governments. At other times they suggest that even the ethic of this golden age requires modification if it is to serve our present needs. 'What is required today', thus appears, in Blair's words, to be 'a new relationship between citizen and community for the modern world.

And later in that paragraph, the source talks about "changes in its [New Labour] policy commitments". In other words, this citation is talking about differences, not similarities between Attlee's and Blair's beliefs.

I think that if Tony Blair is mentioned on this page at all, he needs to be in a separate section because "ethical socialism" to Clement Attlee had a very specific definition that was predicated on nationalizing industries, whereas Tony Blair explicitly disowned this idea. In other words, "ethical socialism" as understood by Blair would be unrecognizable to Attlee.

But as it is, the citations that Tony Blair supported ethical socialism do not actually say that Tony Blair supported ethical socialism, so does this mean that Tony Blair should be removed?

My apologies again--I really don't know how something like this is handled.

El Krecko (talk) 07:58, 24 April 2019 (UTC)El Krecko

I don't understand why you have deleted this paragraph, there are numerous examples of Blair advocating ethical socialism and viewing it as a continuation of the same philosophy as Attlee and Gaitksell - The latter of which also attempted to remove Clause IV and the former who wouldn't countenance further nationalisation beyond 20% of the economy. Blair's LSE Attlee lecture and his Fabian articles. You can find both here:

Giddens also wrote that the Third Way was envisioned as a continuation of ethical socialist principles too. ScouseScholar (talk) 22:18, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

References