enhanced by the experience of war, that in the absence of any other agency of regulation or distribution, only the state now stood between the individual and destitution. But contemporary enthusiasm for an interventionist state went beyond desperation or self-interest. The vision of Clement Attlee, the British Labour leader whose party defeated Churchill’s Conservatives in the dramatic election upset of 1945, nicely captured the contemporary mood: what was needed now were ‘well-planned, well-built cities and parks and playing fields, homes and schools, factories and shops.’ There was a great
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