Revisionism Reconsidered: 'Property-owning Democracy' and Egalitarian Strategy in Post-War Britain

Revisionist socialists of the 1950s and 1960s are typicallydepicted as advocates of the ‘Keynesian welfare state’route to economic equality. This article argues that this isan oversimplification: while the revisionists supported thewelfare state, they also aimed to promote equality by redistributingprivate property and expanding social ownership, endorsing anegalitarian version of a ‘property-owning democracy’.The article first discusses the political ideals and calculationsthat motivated the revisionists’ interest in this modelof egalitarian strategy and then examines in turn the threemutually reinforcing strands of policy that this goal generated:greater progressive taxation of wealth; measures to diffuseprivate property ownership and access to marketable skills;and the expansion of novel forms of social ownership.