friend to socialism, declared in his Capitalism, Socialismnand Democracy (1943) that free enterprise could notnsurvive in the West, adding that his verdict was “in itselfncompletely uninteresting,” being widely held among experts:nmany who hated the prospect of things to come stillnsaw the death of capitalism as utterly inevitable. GeorgenOrwell, shortly before, had remarked that nobody believednin capitalism now except a few old gentlemen in expensivenclubs. It would have been a rare prophet on either side ofnthe Atlantic, in the last years of World War II, who wouldnhave predicted popular shareholding 40 years on, or majoritynhome-owning, or the rapid retreat of the state.nBut by now all that is simply taken for granted, and youndo not have to be a liberal or a conservative to believe in it.nIn 1987 a Labour government in New Zealand announcednits own privatization program — as if anxious to prove to thenworld that the craze for individual ownership could benMarx believed that Britain would be the first socialistnstate on earth, being the Hrst industrial nation: that wasnamong the reasons why he settled here.n281 CHRONICLESnsatisfied even by parties calling themselves socialist (it evennengaged a former Conservative padiamentary candidatenfrom Britain to organize it). Meanwhile China and India,nwhich between them comprise nearly half the human race,nare actively promoting the private sector; and even thenSoviet empire is said to be stirring, at least economically,nfrom its long statist sleep.nWhy is this? The likeliest answer may lie outside argumentnaltogether, in the evidence of one’s eyes and ears.nCompetition gives people what they want — especially poornpeople. Any old woman trying to live on a tiny pensionnknows — when she takes her supermarket wire-basket innhand — that the bargains are to be found in commoditiesnwhere competition is keenest, and that monopoly—nwhether state or private — favors the rich. Why else wouldnshe travel by competitive private buses rather than bynstate-owned, monopolistic British Rail? She can know allnthat without ever having heard words like monopoly orncompetition, or being aware of what they mean. Competitionnfavors the poor, and you do not need a conceptualnintelligence to notice it. In fact, conceptual intelligence cannbe rather good at thinking of reasons for not noticing it. Ifnsocialism is naturally and inevitably monopolistic, thennsocialism favors the rich. That, some will object, is a big If.nBut there is no reasonable doubt that socialism has beennheavily disposed to favor monopoly since its earliest days innthe I840’s, and in the late Victorian heyday of the FabiannSociety; no doubt that socialist governments have creatednvast monopolies wherever, east or west, they have gainednpower; no doubt that, as in Britain today, they havenimplacably resisted any shift towards competition—whethernby way of privatization or anything else. That is what makesnthe New Zealand instance so astounding. The identificationnof socialism with monopoly is well supported by theory andnpractice alike, at least till yesterday, and socialists only haventhemselves to blame if it is widely accepted. No wonder,nthen, if the notion that socialism favors the rich has longnnnsince ceased to look like an intellectual paradox. It is whatnevery man and woman knows. (At least we all behave,nwire-basket in hand, as if we know it.)nThe deeper causes why socialism proved right-wing arennow widely and deeply explored. One reason is that,nUtopian though socialism was, it never looked far enough innits revolutionary aims. Ten years ago Sir Henry PhelpsnBrown, professor at the London School of Economics,nremarked in The Inequality of Pay (1977) that Marx and hisnfollowers were always narrow-mindedly concerned withninequalities of capital ownership rather than of pay. Theyncared enormously about who owned the land, the mines,nand the factories. It was nothing to them — east of the IronnCurtain today it is still nothing to them — that socialismnallows, even guarantees, vast inequalities of income andnprivilege. “The inequalities that mattered,” wrote PhelpsnBrown of the Marxists,nwere those that arose out of the division of thennational product between land and capital, on thenone hand, and labour on the other. Inequalitiesnbetween one worker and the other escapednattention.nThat principle of socialist inequality, as he noticed, isnfollowed in the Soviet Union to this day, where topnmanagers are paid 20 times as much as the lowest-paidnworker. (In Soviet universities the disparity of pay betweennthe highest and the lowest—between the president and thenporter—is said to be nearly 20 times as great as in capitalistnBritain.) Given a one-party state, freedom from electionsnand a judicial system that enforces obedience to a rulingnelite, socialism is by now the world’s great guarantor ofnprivilege — rather like the Bourbon monarchy before thenFrench Revolution. Most West Europeans, like most Americans,nhear enough news from eastern Europe and China tonknow that is true. Inhabitants of eastern Europe do notndoubt it for a moment. Socialist privilege is highly overt,nafter all, much as it was in the France of Louis XIV. Anfriend returning from Mao’s China once told me that highnparty officials could be recognized by curtains on thenbackseats of their chauffeur-driven cars and the deferencenwith which they were treated in public places. A highnofficial, for example, in Maoist China did not stand in linenwhen booking into a hotel: he was led to the front. Anothernaspect of the essential conservatism of socialism, bothneconomic and social, lies in the fact that it abolishes thenthreat to big capital from small capital.nThe small capitalist is the biggest threat to big capitalnthere is, and the biggest there could ever be. Socialism isnhardly a threat at all. One monopolist, after all, has little tonfear from another. That is especially true if a monopoly isnnot required to make profits. British gas and electricity, fornexample—both public monopolies since the Labour governmentnof 1945-51—are now being privatized: that willnonly help the ordinary man if these utilities compete moreneagerly to give the consumer what he wants; and they willncompete all the more eageriy if their new shareholders andnmanagers insist on profits. What is more, if small competitorsngrow up to challenge the big energy-suppliers, thenconsumer—and everyone consumes energy, even thenpoorest — will benefit from them. Privatization, then, favorsn