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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 8. 1966.

Modification

Modification

Letters

Far from throwing "ideology" and "doctrinaire Socialism" to the winds and opting for "pragmatism," Labour is merely slightly modifying the Labourist ideology it has in effect been preaching for nearly thirty years. Socialism for Labour meant Labour in power, as it did for Labour's opponents, but to view the creation of the welfare state as more than the perpetuation of the petty bourgeois is illusory. Labourist ideology is a reality, and it is based on a mixture of Protestantism, liberalism, statism, glossed in [phrases like "fair share for 'all" and the "brotherhood of man."

Labour did. in fact, effect a complete absorption into a society dominated by rural interests, the ideals of the small businessman and the 'Labour aristocracy. Labour's failure to create a hegemonic Socialist ideology is because it alienated the farmers by a policy of inefficient industrialisation and import substitution. Moreover, Labour was itself absorbed into a political system based on the ideas of the ruling class: how could it; do no more than offer, as Professor Airey has noted, "a working solution for a particular set of circumstances"; in other words, a truly corporate party.