Revisionist socialists of the 1950s and 1960s are typically depicted as advocates of the ‘Keynesian welfare state’ route to economic equality. This article argues that this is an oversimplification: while the revisionists supported the welfare state, they also aimed to promote equality by redistributing private property and expanding social ownership, endorsing an egalitarian version of a ‘property-owning democracy’. The article first discusses the political ideals and calculations that motivated the revisionists’ interest in this model of egalitarian strategy and then examines in turn the three mutually reinforcing strands of policy that this goal generated: greater progressive taxation of wealth; measures to diffuse private property ownership and access to marketable skills; and the expansion of novel forms of social ownership.
