And Once as Farce

Mrs. Thatcher has more than once expressed her wish to see socialism dead and buried. The media, rather unimaginatively, have taken this to mean that she wants to see the British Labour Party finished for good and either replaced by a center party or not replaced at all—a grand dream of dynastic Thatcherism. In either case, her wish was not to be taken seriously.

But the wish was not about the Labour Party but about the end of socialism, both as a system of intellectual ideas and as a moral impulse. This is far from fantasy. Few thinking people in Communist countries believe, any longer, in socialism. In the West, it is popularly discredited and survives largely among intellectuals and “personalities in the arts.” Of course the Left parties survive, along with their politicians. But increasingly their actual policies owe little to socialism.

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Mrs. Thatcher has more than once expressed her wish to see socialism dead and buried. The media, rather unimaginatively, have taken this to mean that she wants to see the British Labour Party finished for good and either replaced by a center party or not replaced at all—a grand dream of dynastic Thatcherism. In either case, her wish was not to be taken seriously.

But the wish was not about the Labour Party but about the end of socialism, both as a system of intellectual ideas and as a moral impulse. This is far from fantasy. Few thinking people in Communist countries believe, any longer, in socialism. In the West, it is popularly discredited and survives largely among intellectuals and “personalities in the arts.” Of course the Left parties survive, along with their politicians. But increasingly their actual policies owe little to socialism.