toward state control and laissez faire was just as much a French as it Wasa German "characteristic."

The exaltatien of the state that Bavored German idealism and hereconomie and political theory also played a great part in French history."The protective spirit had been deeply planted in the French character,"writes R. H. Dabney, "therefore it was not strange that there were writerslike Necker, Mably, and Morelly,49) who saw the means of improving theconditions of the people, not in laissez faire, but in what they consideredbeneficerit regulation 'by the state."50) This attitude never left Frenchthought or, for that matter, the ideas of men anywhere.

Nor was this attitude new; it was always newly revived and adaptedto the fashions of the moment, but it could nourish itself on practicallythe whole of human history. Plato's Republic, the "ideal state" of Aristotle,the countless visions of remembered and forgotten .utopians expressed dis-satisfaction with things as they were, and longed for conditions as theyought to beo They expressed, too, suppression and exploitation, the inabilityto change conditions at will, the isolation of groups and individuals, socialfrictions and the impossibility of overcoming them, the escape from theouter disharmony into the inner harmony of the imagination; the hope thatsome one - the messiah, some force, the state - would straighten thingsout, would solve the overwhelming problems of mankind in the face of whichthe greatest humility still looked like utter conceit.

Within the capitalist structure, however, the exaltation of the statewas always an expression of the inner contradictions and the historical limit-ations of capitalism itself. 1t was a declaration of bankruptcy on the partof those who praised the profit motive as the creator of all thing valuable,who spoke with pride of the self-regulating features of their marvelous mar-ket-mechanisrn, of the liberating demoeratic forces inherent in commodityproduction. For them it was a "return" to a previous, more primitive ~tateof affairs, a set-back, a temporary retreat from the new, the better, thelimitless, the unsurpassable capitalist society. If they called upon the statefor help, they did so shamefacedly, always ready to bite the hand that hadjust fed them, always attempting to put the state - its servant ~ in itsplace. But the state was a feature of capitalism that could never totally beremoved because of the existing class and property structure and 'which couldthus, and at times had to, become the dominating feature. The danger was

49) Morelly. lor example. published in Paris in 1775 a book called "Code de laNature" that advocated a sort of slate-communism. He said that "nothing in societyshall belong as individual property to any person. Private property is detestable.and he who should attempt in the luture society to re-establish it will be imprisonedlor the rest of his Iile as a violent madman and enemy ol humanlty. Each cilizenis to be supported. mainlained. and employed by Ihe publlc."50) The Causes of the French Revolution, p, 257.

66

always there th at some day it might destroy the bourgeoisie which supportedis most staunchly and at the same time had the greatest contempt for it.

If for the optimistic bourgeoisie the state was rather unnecessary asfar as the economie Iife of the nation was concerned, for the pessimist icbourgeoisie this independent economie life seerned just as unnecessary becauseof the existence of the state. Though the lat ter remembered that progresshad been described as the emancipation of capital from the state, they couldconceive equally well the emancipation of the state from private property.To them the whole bourgeois revolution appeared as a mere intermediaryphase in the development from an unsatisfactory state to a better one thatreally represented and even was identical with society as a whole. Capitalists,full of despair during economie depressions, on the verge of ruin in thetumult of the crisis, unsuccessful in their climbing towards the top, possessedby the fear of being hurled into the proletarian abyss; intellectuals waveringbetween oid and new loyalities, experimenting with the ideas of the day,divorced from the bread-baskets of the aristocracy that had fed them to-gether with jesters, jugglers, and dancing bears, not appreciated by the sus-picious, miserly, accumulating bourgeoisie of thefounding period, unacknow-ledged by the beastly exploited and thus "beastly proletarian scum" thatfound its happiness in cheap whiskies and its salvation in the mumblings ofstill cheaper priests; politicians conspiring for power and positions; revolu-tionists looking for "radical" solutions and "shortcuts" to a better society- in brief, all those who opposed the "successful" within the atomizedcapitalist society based their hopes and programs on that sole feature withinthe capitalist society th at seemed to be the single social element in the an-archic scramble of individual interests and activities.

Hobbes' Leviathan of the future was expected to be of a beneficialnature; it would con trol but also secure a .more blessed life. Hegel's "divineidea" of the all-powerful state was no Frankenstein either. And now, afterthe first experiences with a capitalism quite grown up, a state was envisionedth at might preserve its good side, i. e., its productivity and abolish all itsbad sides: exploitation, crisis, and possibly even wars. The "true socialists"of Germany who were grouped around the idealist, Moses Hess, thoughttheir way into the future in a direct line from Hegel to the communiststate. Fourier's phalanstére and all the utopian experiments based on sim-ilar ideas, expressed paralleling tendencies in France. The idea of -the futurestate th at was to be society appeared in speculations such as Bellamy'sLooking Backward. The government of the FrenchFebruary Revolution,as well as th at of the little Napoleon, emphasized once more the identityof state and society. The earlier German labor movement under LasalleWas equally convineed that state control was the key to all sociat questionsand so was their class enerny and friènd-in-arrns, Prince Bismarck.

To be for the state was to take a communal as 'against an egotisticalstand; it seemed to be equivalent to a choice between capitalism and social-

67

ism. Scme of the bourgeoisie turned into "socialists" 61) merely by beinggood nationalists. This was the counterpart to what in England had beencalled "Tory-Chartism," and wh at had turned Napoleon's adventures into"peoples' wars." The temporary "alliances" of opposing classes such asthose bet ween tories and workers, bonapartists, capitalists, and workersliberals and socialists, Prussian Junkers and the laboring class were time~conditioned opportunistic moves made possible by the continuous shifts ofeconomie fortunes and political power positions of various groups and inter-ests within the general development of the capitalist nations.

Those who bound their hop es ro the further development of the cap-italist forces of production necessarily favored further centralization ofeconomie control ; and thus, in order not to lose the achievements of thebourgeois revolution, they favored astrong "social state" to combat theinevitable result of capital concentration - the dictatorial plutocracy.To make possible the capitalist mode of production with its promised eco-nomic abundance and also the liberty that had inspired the revolutionarybourgeoisie, a state was needed which would guarantee these liberties thatwere progressively destroyed by the process of capital accumulation. Butthe. "return" to the dominanee of the state did not need to be demanded.It was ene of the results of capitalistic development.

To oppose an increasing control by the state would have been possibleonly through the stabilization of conditions as they existed prior to andduring the French Revolution and the American Wat for Independence.As pointed out before, the J acobins had not been the "true" representatives ofthe French Revolution for their dictatorship had been directed against neces-sities. Their social vision did not go beyond a demoeratic peasantry, adecentralized static economy of insignificant enterprisers who had more orless equal competitive strength and we re th us able to prevent the rise ofmonopolies. The Jeffersonian dernocracy, too, had been defeated long be-fore it celebrated its political successes. The American constitutionwasdesigned as an instrument to help the industrial and mercantilist interestain the East to counteract and overcome the pressure of the agriculturalmajority that constituted Jefferson's followers. To have the kind of demo-cracy th at was in the mind of the people during this period, it would havebeen necessary to caH a halt to aH further development, to "freeze" societyonce more as it seemingly had been "frozen" in medieval society. But thiswas not possible. The Federalists won in America and Robespierre diedunder the guillotine because the future belonged to big business and largeindustry, to Capital.

The concentration and centralization of capital destroys the socio-eco-nomic basis of even that limited kind of democracy that may exist in class

51) In a letter to Marx (845) describing a "socialist workers meeting" F. Engels wrote:"The whole of Elberfeld and Barmen was present, from the money aristocracy downto the épicerie, onlv the proletarians were missing." (Briefwechsel, Vol. I, p. 16).

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and slave societies. Thus it can be pointed out, for instance, against peoplewho adjudge the American South as an essentially fascist regime comparedwith the industrial East that the opposite would be much nearer the truth.The South was rather, as Donald Davidson remarked, "as complete a real-ization as we have any right to expect of the kind of society that Jeffersonvisualized, the society in which democracy could flourish and remain itselfwithout artificial stimulation."62)

Indeed, most of the hitherto existing social theories opposing the statehave ad he red to socio-economie concepts that were in opposition to the realdevelopmental tendencies of capitalism. Not only Proudhon but almost allrhe anarchist creeds looked backward when constructing their blue-printsof the future. The "individualism" of the bourgeois. revolution was retainedin the Bourses du Traoail, in the English "Guild Socialism" and came tolight even in the "counter-utopias" opposed to those conceived in the spiritof state control as, for instance, in William Morris' "News from Nowhere."This much was obvious, however, that capital developrnent led either to aplutocracy th at made the state the servant of small groups of titans engagedin the exploitation of all, or that the state destroyed the plutocracy by makingitself master of society. 53) In either case there was reason to fear thatliberty, fraternity and equality would soon be ended.

(To he conlinueel in Ihe lollowing issues ol New Essays)

52) Mr. Cash and th« Prolo-Dorian Soulh. The Southern Review. Summer, 1941. p. 15.

53) Before the turn of the century even the socialist program was simply a demandfor state ownership of the means of production. In fairness to Marx and Engels,however, It must be said thaLboth sought state power to eliminate the power of thestate. The "administration of things thot was to follow the government over men, theysaw merely as a branch of the production and distribution process of no greaterlrnportance than any other. Practical politicians, however, aspired to Uttle more thanthe replacement of individuol capitalists by governmental administration. The post-Marxian theories of socialism resurrected the divjsion of society into controllers andcontrolled. Georges Sorel observed rightly that the "authors of all inquiries into mod-~rate socialism were forced to acknowledge that the latter Implies a division of societyInto two groups: the first of these a select body, organized as political party; theSecond is the whole body of producers. This division is 50 evident that generallyno attempt is made to hide it." The first .world war led to an extended state controlOVer production and distribution. All socialÎzation theories developed during and~~er the war leaned heavily on the war-time example as Lenin's for instanee. As

le Halévy has said: "The whole post-war -socialism is derived from this war-timeorganization more than .from Marxism."

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BOOK REVIEWSAnd Keep Your Poeader Dry! An Anthropologist looks at America. ByMargaret Mead. William Morrow & Co., New York, 1942, X and 274pp., $2.50.

There is more in this stimulatingbook than is revealed by its some-what thartial title. Yes, there is alot of p rwder in the "American ehar-acter", and the author is just theright person to bring out th is im-portant asset of the Ameriean peoplein the present war. If we assume.in a preliminary way, that "powder"in a character-study means aboutthe same as "pep", there is no doubtthat the author herself has broughta generous share (Jf th at vital in-gredient to her study of the stuffthe Ameriean people are made of.Her book reveals, furthermore, afair amount of that good marksman-ship which does not necessarily gowith a superabundanee of powder.As old Leatherstocking advised hisyoung friend of the Mohiean tribe,"I teIl you, Uncas, you are wastefulof your powder, and the kick of therifie diseoneerts your aim ! Littlepowder, light lead, and a long arm,seldom fail of bringing the deathscreech from a Mingo f At least suehhas been my experienee with thecreatur's."

Without losing sight of the essen-ti al conneetion between the manifoldsubjects treated from various anglesin the different parts of the book, wepropose to deal with its ma in con-tents under two separate headings,of whieh the first should read,

Coming of Age in AmericaThe au thor does not claim th at

she, or any other student of primit-ive soeieties, can approach moderneivilized society with the high de-gree of detaehment achieved in thestudy of remote and strange societiesand still remain a norma!, part.icip-70

ant member of that society. The veryfamiliarity of the language, institu_tions, ideas and mores seems to ex-clude the "detailed objective record_ing in human behavior" which is theaim of anthropological research.

Here is, indeed, a very contradic_tory situation. The greatest praisethat Franz Boas could bestow on hisgifted pupil in the Foreword to Mar;garet Mead's best known book, Com,ing of Age in Samoa, was that shehad been able "to identify herself socompletely with the Samoan youth."For this purpose the anthropologisthas to step outside his culture andhis century. _There is a chance thatin face of such different moral stand-ards and theoretical concepts, he mayeven be able, within certain limits,to forget about the equally acciden-tal and conventional \Talues whiehare part and parcel of his own cul-ture, deeply ingrained in his and hiskin's behaviour. Yet if he turnsback, as Margaret Mead has at-tempted to do in a few importantchapters of her recent hook, to applythe same methods to his own ci~iJi~a-tion, the trouble is not that it ~s ddf-ficult for him to identify himselwith this particular culture, but th~the is already too completely identdfied with it. Even if he succee~ein the contradictory task of steppJn3'outside and remaining inside the s~-ciety which is the subject of hlSstudy, his readers might miss the ~s-sential point since the anthroPo~O~ral record will lack "the whole mC "ental paraphernalia of strangen~SSwhich in other cases are aIl the tlIJI~reminding them of the "othernes~of the discribed situations. That IS,as we may note in parenthesis, eX-

Bctly the same diffieulty whieh forlong time prevented the true un-

derstanding of the Marxian criticismof the fetishist nature of modernc8pitalist "commodity production" .

In spite of such difficulties, Mar-pret Mead sets out valiantly to solveher self-imp'osed task. Chapters VIand VII deal with the typieal at-titudes towards "achievement" and"success" whieh in American life arederived from the partieular relation-ships between parents and childrenon the one hand, and the infiuencesexerted on the growing ehild by hissiblings, near relations, nurses on theother hand. A high point of thiskind of investigation is reached inthe ninth chapter (The Chip OD, theShoulder,) which might indeed havebeen an excellent section of the au-thor's unwritten book, Coming ofAlfe in America.

Before dealing with the conclus-ions the author derives from her an-thropological investigations we pointto a certain ambiguity in her owndescription of the aims of the newanthropological approach. There isno reason to deIiy that, as the authorsays in one place, "one way of un-derstanding the typ ieal characterstructure of a culture" is to fo11owstep by step the way in which it is"mediated" to the child by his par-ents and his brothers and sisters.Vet there are other statements inwhich she raises 'a stronger and more~xclusive claim. She contends thatlUst this particular method is theon.ly way to "understand" the regul-arlty of the particular behavior ofP~rtieular people in a particular pe-riod, while a11 other hitherto accept-~d scientific approaches lead at besto a mere "description". Since it is

pr~bable that the incongruity of this~ al~ d?es not lie exclusively or prt-

anly In the somewhat spurious use?f the two terms which we have put~~l~uotas, we reprint the passage in

"rd 0 the lamily we must turn lor an un-8~rstanding ol the American charactere r.ucture. We may describe the adult Am·r:1can, and lor descriptive purposes we

ay reler his behavior to the American

scene, to tho European past, to the stoteof American industry, to any other set olevents which we wish; but to understandthe regularity ol this behavior we mustinvestigate the lamily in which the childis reared." (37)

From th is and many similar pas-sages it seems to follow that for suchproblems as the war and the ensuingpeace the reference to the underly-ing historica I, economie, and othermaterial conditions ("any other setof events"!) is expressly cut out tomake room for the only relevantquestion "how babiea become Am-ericana". The author does not dis-tinguish between the investigation ofthe dynamic changes of a given his-torical structure of society, and thatof the comparatively statie ("time-less") conditions which are commonlysupposed to be characteristie of theso-called primitive societies. She ex-pressly excludes any possible attemptto approach the investigation of theorigin of the American character bya question which looks towards "afew historical causes" (80-81), or toexplain the "betrayal" of the Liber-ation of Europe after the first WorIdWar by "statements about interna-tional banking, the big interests, thefe ar of Communism in the bourgeoismind."

There is no doubt in the review-er's mind that from a strictly scien-tific viewpoint we must accept this(or any ether) methodological re-striction of a given pièce of invest-igation. It is quite possible, e. g.,to deal with sueh events as the WorldWar and the Depreasion merelv interms of "believing in" and after-wards "betraying" a "Cause", and ofan ensuing "punishment". Thoughthe reviewer is not much impressedby this or any other particular formof "phrasing the worId", he admitsth at an anthropological "theory ofcharacter structure" on these Iines,as opposed to the traditional "theoryof history" may serve its purpose.In the author's words, it may helpto make this war "make sen se to us,as a people, if we are to fight it andwin it; and th en work to keep aUth at we have gained."

71

Unfortunately, the author has notreached her results, even in the moreespecially "anthropological" chap-ters, through a strict adherence tothose methodological postulates.There are deep insights into the pee-uliar dynami es of American life andits basic driving force, the eravingfor success. There are brilliant for-mulations of the inherent contradie-tions of the American mind, its am-bitions and fears, its incessant ef-forts to measure up to an unknownand unknowable standard, and theresuIting anguish of a desperate un-certainty. Yet it is a delusion thatthese results have in fact been ob-tained without connecting those pee-uliar traits of the American charac-j er with' definite historical, êconomicand societal conditions. This be-comes unmistakably clear if we turnfrom the author's analysis of thefamily relationships as such to herdiscussion of the particular rolewhich has been and is being playedin tl:e development of the Americancl.araeter by the incident of immi-gration. It is here that "históry"creeps back into all the author's de-s-ripticns of the particular dynamicsof the ever changing Americanscene. The general trend of th is in-cessant movement is derived fromthe quasi-historical phenomenon ofa permanent infiux of newcomersand their gradual adaptation. The"first generation" tries to overcomeits European heritage (the au thornever mentions the analogous pro-cesses of the Asiatic immigration l)The "secorid" and all subsequentgenerations strive to overcome thevarious intermediate phases of a nev-er completed process of Americ~n-ization, until in a somewhat elusivelast phase the whole non-stop move-ment seems to turn backward in acircular curve since there is nothingleft to which one might still adaptoneself. The only way out of thissituation is, as the author proceedsto show in the second part of thebook to turn from American isola-tion 1:0 a world-wide extension of theAmerican society, complemented bythe valuable elements of other cul-tures, other peoples, and other civil-72

izations. This last and greatest op_portunity is offered t? th~ Americanpeople, in the au thor s view, by thcpresent war.

Phr asîng the WGrid for War

"Winning the War" is written inlarge letters, as it were! all over thcauthor's book. She dedicates to thispurpose not .only ~er great t~lent offactual investigabon but, bemg thekind of person who must go .the wholeheg in all she does, throws m a num,ber of most atrocious prejudices-such as the reviewer fondly believesshe would not have seriously consid_ered even a few years ago. There is aterrible exaggeration in the mannerin which she lumps together, in onefoul pool of "miasma", aU that thebest type of the last generation ofAmericans thought and feIt af ter thetriple shock of the W~r, the Pros-perity, and the Depression. The lasttwenty-five years are told as thestory of "a generation who betrayedtheir own ideals, whose moral mus-cles went fiaccid", and who exposedthe whole succeeding generation to"a moral peril such as no group ofAmericans had ever been exposed. tobefore". There is only one good po~ntto this whole situation. The bodlesand souls of the offspring of thatlost generation, the unfortunatechildren of the "moral debauches ofthe last twenty years" were savedfrom incurable moral decay by thefact that their would-be defil~rs, ortop of their other failures, fatled ~hso in sufficiently infecting them WI dtheir own cynical failure. ~ny: reaofer who suspects th is descnpt~on thebeing overdone should read In.ffer-chapter Are Today'. Youth Dl en-ent?, the hum bie a~ology of thedïbleerafion who committed th~ ho thecrime. This is what, according t:antauthor, they should sa~ if they .to look their children In the eye.

d some-"We admit Ihal we have one WeIhing which mighl have cripp1ed ~ou. Ihallaughl you 10 believe Ihàl everylhmg wewe loughl lor was a mirage a~d that Wewere dopes 10 have lallen fOT 11 • • . raldid lai1 in Ihal we withdTew our rno deliort =». Ihe job, and in Ihal we sloPpe

trying. We had pul our hands to tbep10ugb and turned back. FOT Ihat wemust asJe iotqiveness, We fai1ed you be-c;ause we lied to you, lorcing ourseivesaDd you to believe that we had DO partin the way in which the wor1d was get-ting steadily worse. Still we ~n saywUb deep thankfulness that we bave lail,ad to break you, failed to rob you ol yOUTArnerican inheritonce . . . In ·this OUT lino]lailUTe. to put upon our cbildren OUT ownweaJeness. we have failed also, thankGod." (pp. 127-128)

This repentant mood of the au-thor, like a magnifying mirror, re-fieets a state of mind which of latehas become increasingly common a-mong the American intelligentsia. Itis for this reasen mainly that wehave dwelt on it although, if we lookat the book as a whole, it does notrepresent its main tendency.

The true aims of Marga1"et Mead'swork are much better expressed bythe fact that it is presented as "enepart of the program of the Councilof Intercultural Relations which isattempting to develop a series of sys-tematic understandings of the greatcontemporary cultures so that thespecial valnes of each may be or-chestrated in a world built new."The anxious question whether th isgoal can be reached by a consciouseffort of the American people as itis today ("There is no time to re-educate us -- even to the degree towhieh re-education is possible") un-derIies the careful stock-taking ofall the strengths and weaknesses ofthe American charaeter which takes~p the greater part of the book. ItIS highly interesting to observe tbemanner in whieh the author mar-shals the of ten widely divergent and~ven eonfiicting results of her var-10US investigations and reasonings to~he one purpose of presenting the~meriean task in this war not as aInere world conquest but as a muchInore diffieuit, more daring and,~herefore, a much more worthwhileJob for the Americans.

"BUilding a new world" -- what~ task for -God's chosen people!Amerieans should make good lead-

el's in such an undertaking" (p.

121) . The very eontradictions be-tween the American character andthe American situation: the all-de-vouring impetus toward suceess. inevery young American and the rm-possibility for "the fourth-genera-tion Ameriean who is the fourth ofa line of suecessful men" to go onsueeeeding, going plaees, onwardsand upwards (76 ff.); the secretknowledge that this whole need foran everincreasing success which sincepioneer times has been an indispens-able element of the American wayof life, is after all suited only to anever expanding world (261) -- allthese contradictions inherent in pre-sent-day American demoeracy leadthe- author, herself an American, tothe ardent conviction that the onlyworthwhile aim is to blend these eon-trasting features of the Amerieancharacter " for a New World whichlies not in the New World, is notentirely of it, and yet could not havebeen without it" (79).

Even more revealing is the "pre-cedent" on which the author basesthe details of her American plan of"building the world new." As a goodAmerican she claims for America thewhole credit for the historical pro-cess by which during the last twohundred years the old craftsman-ships and specialized hereditary skillsof Europe were replaced by mach in-ery. It was not the Duteh, the Eng-lish the German and, in the lastpha~e, also the American, who to-gether performed th at tremendouschange of the whole eeonomic struc-ture of society which was describedby their historians as the IndustrialRevolution. It was the American a-lone who, by three successive stepsof one gigantic effort, moved awayfrom the European system of spe-cialized personal skills and, throughthe pioneer stage when each man washis own Jack-of-aB-trades, moved onto "our present age of machinetools and assembly lines" (220). Itwas the American who with his char-acteristic mixture of strengths andweaknesses, imported all those valu-able skills from Europe, yet did notlearn them himself, but instead setabout studying the underlying opera-

73

tions and made machines to do whattill then the European skilled work-ers had done (222-24).

Of a similar nature, the authorcontinues her argument, is the newparticular task th at lies ahell;d of theAmericans at the present juncture.Again, the task is not to invent anew culture for the whole world dennv">. "lf we wish to build a worldwhich will use all men's diverse gifts,we must go to school to other cul-tures, analyze them and rationalizeour findings. We must find modelsand patterns which, orchestrated to-gether on a world scale, will makea world as different from the old asthe machine world was from therraf't industries of the middle ages"(235).

The whole plan as presented,. andthe historical "precedent" on whichj f- Î" based, confirm that this is es-sentially an international task andnot merely or primarily the job ofa particular nation. Just as deTocqueville one hundred l'ears agodealt with American Democracy aspart and phase of a world hlstoricalprocess which he described as themarsh of revolu.tion, so we must re-cognize today the buil ding of a newsociety not as the enter prise of onenation but as the outcome of a world-wide movement. The author herself,af ter having neglected this aspect inthe eartier parts of her book, dis-arms our criticism on the concludingpage. Af ter having fully prese~~.edthe importance of the task from In-side" her own American culture, sheadds that "this is not a job for one

nation alone" . Though for immed_iate purposes it is necessary to "seethis job as America's", we must seeit in a wider aspect if we want totransform the fulfillment of the jobat hand into a first step towards afuture state of society "where therewill be neither war, nor the absenceof war, but a world that is not war-oriented at all."

The present reviewer has no quar-rel 'with this lofty ideal. Yet froma methodological point of view it ishard to discover any but the mosttenuous link between those ultimateresults of the bock and the anthro-pological investigations from whichit started. Thus it seems that thebook as a whole does not bear outthe author's claim that if we wantto win this war and to build theworld anew af ter, the war, we mustknow what American mothers aretelling the four-year-olds at thebreakfast table. This deficiencydoes not invalidate the author's at-tempt to apply to the modern A:n-erican scene those methods and skillswhich during the last seventeenyears she applied in studying theprimitive societies of South Sea. Is-landers and Indians. Many SIgnSpoint to the increasingly importantpart that such "unhistorical" ap-proaches as those of anthropology,psychology and technology will p~ayin dealing with what in the reced~ngpast of the Euramerican civilizat.lOnwere regarded as purily histoncalsubjects. A detailed discussion ofthis larger problem is beyond thescope of this review.

K. K.

ESCAPE' PROM FREEDOM. By Erich Fromm. Farrar & Rinehart.New York. (305 pp. j $3.00)

This book begins with some ex-tremely dubieus statements. WhenFromm writes "The familiar pictureof man in the last century was oneof a rational being" and "One feItconfident that the achievements ofmodern democracy had wiped out allsinister forces," he forgets th at upto now civilization has been confinedto a few Islands in a vast ocean of74

barbarism, ignorance and corrup~io~.Even in the more advanced natIo~hthe "enlightened citizen" of the 1 .. nun-century has always been In a thisority; and we now realize that ov-worthy citizen was tremendously hiser-confident, largely because of inible 1 -• unconsciousness of the te~ 0-security of his historical pOSItJOn.~a-day the .probiems posed by the re

tions of white and colored races inthe East and by the changes goingon inside backward countries requireof us a more critical, that is to say amore revolutionary, attitude towardthe struggle for freedom.

In general. however, ESCAPEFROM FREEDOM is a valuable con-tribution to what might be calledour "intellectual rearmament." Pastconcepts of freedom have by nowlost much of their validity. Therewas always a good deal of hypocrisyabout bo.urgeois democracy, whichcorresponded too naively with the in-terests of arising capitalist class j

and the old socialist and anarchistdoctrines were themselves too muchcolored by the 'society in which theywere born. A revision of our know-ledge and our ideals is indicated -or perhaps rather a clarification.This is what Fromm undertakes, insome ways most successfully.

"Nazism is an economie and polit-ical problem, but the hold it has overa whole people has to be understoodon psychological grounds." The keyis furnished by the distinction be-tween "freedom from" and "free-dom to." The individual, as theshattering of feudal forms by risingcapitalism makes him increasingly in-dependent of the social group, feelshimself increasingly helplees in themidst of an organized chaos whichthreatens to shatter him as a humanbeing. The alienation of man, to useMarx's well-known expression, leadshim to give up this terrifying negat-I~e "freedom from," which is quitedIfferent fr om that positive "freedomto" which expresses itself in spon-taneity, creative work, human solid-ar~ty and intelligence, T)e autorit-arlan regimes at once invite and re-quire the individual to reject his~u~anity, exploiting his despair andeehng of insecurity. This humsnity,

as Fromm weIl shows, is an embar-rassment anyway under capitalistdemocracy, which debauches the in-riv~dual and leaves him only the il-uSlOn of thinking. His ideological

and spiritual nourishment is forced

on him by the same kind of hi;;l1-powered advertising methods as areused to promote a new tooth-paste.Fromm's analysis brings out the dan-gerous kinship of the sick demoera-cies and the total dictatorships ofour time. The social conformism ofthe former, induced by the capital-ists' control of the press, the radio,the movies, and the educational sys-tem, and the state-imposed uniform-ity of the latter-these are shownto differ quantitatively rather thanqualita tively.

Fromm explains the psychology ofthe masses who accept fascism by theneed to escape from a "freedom"that has become intolerable becauseof the insecurity, both economie andspiritual, which accompanies it un-der capitalism. This is, of course,quite true; and his analysis of theorigin of fascism is extremely valu-able. But the totalitarian experiencecontinu es, and we can now see itdeveloping a new kind of insecurityeven worse than the one that it re-medied: the German and Russianmasses no longer live simply underthe rule of an aIl-powerful centralauthority, which has its psychclogfe-ilattractions, but rather in an atmo-sphere of permanent catastrophe.Will fhis not force the subjugatedhuman being once more to reasserthimself and take his destiny into hisown hands? Many years of exper-ience in a totalitarian society withsocialist tendencies have taught me,furthermore, that a collective econ-omy requires the initiative and thefreely-expressed criticism of the mas-ses of producers, that is to áay. free-dom of thought based on feeling ofhuman solidarity and on the develop-ment of the individual. The sup-pression of this freedom causes anenormous waste, which seems to meto be one of the chief weaknesses ofauthoritarian regimes. Here may befound the economie basis for a newliberty in the collective economiesof tomorrow.

Victor Serge

75

Make This the Last War. By Michael Straight. Harcourt, Brac~ andCompany, New York. (417 pp.; $3.00)

The author believes that the Unit-ed Nations are engaged in a Iife-and-death struggle with a rebellion a-gainst mankind. To forestall an Ax-is victory and a subsequent de"truc-tion of civil society, the United Na-tions need not only a powerful armyunder a single command but, mostof all, a new vision. This new visionmust break away from the prewarconcept and practice of segregatedpower politics and monopoly imper-ialiern. The millions of soldiers andwor kers engaged in this liîe-and-death struggle abroad and at homemust be told that they are fightingand dying for a new equ-ilitariansociety. a society whi-h will reallvbe free from want and fear. Up tillnow, Mr. Straight charges, none ofthe war aims released by the UnitedNations has given us such guarantee.On the cdntrary. the much heraldedAtlantic Charter contains the seedsfor further segregation and even fas-eist development. The most danger-rous weakness in the Charter is Ar-ticle Three because it provides thatthe si-matortes of the Charter "res-pect the right of all people to choosethe form of gove-nment under whichthev wiII live". This guarantee con-stitutes no guarantee at aIl. Thereis no case in modern history wherea people have volutarily chosen fas-cism as a form of government. Thereis also no case where a dictator hasnot claimed that he was in fact chos-en by the people. Article Three maybe the forcing wedge for the returnof fascism to the worId.

Another major source of frustra-tion Straight sees in Artiele Fourwhich wiII endeavor "with due res-pect for existing obligations to fur-ther the enjoyment of all States ...on equal terms to the trade and rawmaterials of the world which areneeded .for their economie prosper-ity." If we intend to return to theinternational property relations of1938, Straight complains, it wouldhe far better to say so now. Further-76

more, the Charter does not containassurances to oppressed peoples thatthey will be freed, and whenever am,plification has been sought we haveremained ominously silent.

Mr. Straight makes this la ck ofclarity in the formulation of our Waraims the central theme of his plea fora new vision and for coordinated ac-tion towards the realization of hisnew society. To substantiate his ar-gument that prewar society was bad,he delves into the recent socio-eco_nomic and colonial history of GreatBritain and the United States, re-veals the reasons for the alienationof colonlal peoples, shows how wecontinue to exploit the Chinese evennow and why, on account of this pol-icy, fascist tendencies are makingrapid headway in China. He chargesthe government with inefficiency inthe execution of decrees convertingindustry from peace- to war-produc-tion. and the blame for these short-cornings he pins on the administra-tion's inability to curb the activityof powerful individual interestswhich hope to restore, aft er the war,the econ rmic and social structure of1935. Equally vehemently Straightattacks the appeasers who cluster a-round Professor Nicholas Spykman'shandy guide of American imperial-ism. "Am erica's Strategy in WorldPolities". whose strategy, allegedlyinspired by the most permanent fac-tor in the world - geography -calls for a friendly attitude towardsGermany and Japan and a ho~tileattitude towards Russia and China.Fortunately, Mr. Straight rejoices,we are now realizing our mistakesand we are beginning to move. in ~heright direction. We are coordInatIngour technical and man power resOur-ces we have set up price ceilingsand are rigidly enforcing rationi~g,we freeze wages and limit salarlesto $25,000 annually, we encourag~voluntary savings through increas.esale of war bonds, we establish min-imum standards of nutrition and en-act laws towards greater social secU-

rity; in short, we are moving towardsthe equalitarian society. But that isnot enough; we must now work outin detail the form of society thatis to emerge af ter the war.

The author visualizes a worId inchaoS. Large parts of Europe willhe devastated. Millions of peoplewill be starving. Two thirds of thechildren may face death or lifelongdisfigurement. AU former institu-tions will be destroyed, and "almostno organizations will be in existenceeapable to provide a .government."During these chaotic conditions theEuropean Federation wiII be bornand the United Nations must provideleadership and help. In Mr. Straight'sopinion three fundamental problemswill have to be solved :

1) The Proviaion of Capital forbackward or devastated nations is tobe secured by the organization of aUnited Nations Reconstruction Fin-ance Corporation which is to workin close collaboration with similargovernment agencies of the affiliat-ed countries;

2) Tbe Control of the Term. ofTrade will have to be regulated by at!nited Nations Commodity Corpora-bon which is to fix the price forprimary products and the rate of in-terest on capital loans;

3) The Planning of World Deve-IOPlDent is to be left in the hands

of a United Nations Resources Com-mission which is to guide a) a coun-try's national development and b)prevent overdevelopment of certainindustries through the uncoordinatedrush of industrialization that hasself-sufficiency as its objective.

If these pro bl ems can be solved,as Mr. Straight believes they can,then society will reeover from thewounds of the war. The new society,based upon planned trade on a worId-wide seale, wiII eliminate unemploy-ment and privation, the people willbe happy and free again, and thusthe present war wiII go down in his-tory as the last war.

There is no need to discuss in de-tail the author's particular demandn.In spite of his wish to mobilize a11progressive democratie movementsof our time: the labor movement.the New Deal, Communists, "and allthose who are fighting for greaterfreedom and worId conscience inChina, in India, in all nations," hedoes not really cut the link betweenhis Free World Asaociation and theforces in control of the United Na-tions today.

The book contains much valuableinformation but it does not makegood the author's promise to providea "new vision" for the strugglingforces of democracy.

W. B.

THE SILENT WAR. The Underground Movement in Gerrnany. ByJ. B. Jansen and Stefan WeyI. J. B. Lippincott, N ew York. (357 pp.;$2.75).

t The authors of this book belongto. the group, New Beginning, which;Ied to revive the Social Democratiet.arty of Germany af ter its destruc-o~on by the Nazis. Exiled membersth the group kept in contact with

~h ers that remained in Germany.f ey were able to receive inside in-orrn t·n' a IOn almost up to the begin-

t.lng of the war beeause of the con-blnuous stream of immigrants andl·eca~se they could re ad German pub-1Cattons which revealed in court and

police reports that the Nazis werenot able to stamp out aIl opposition.The bulk of the book, however, dealswith the history of the opposition ofthe labor parties before Hitler's as-cendancy to power. Most of what itstates for the ensuing period arefaets, experiences, and observat ionsalready publicized by the exiled So-cial Democratic Party and the In.ideGermany Report. of the English andAmerican "Friends of German Free-dom." Although there is no reason

77

to doubt the truth of these reports,what they reveal does not justify thespurious title of the book.

The book deals not so much withthe .ilent war against the Nazis aswith the fact that organizationsonce established die very hard. Italso shows that such organizationswill 'do anything to regain their loss,in this partienlar case, by subscribingto the war plans of the allied na-tions which coincide with their owndesire to remove apolitical competit-or. The "silent war" is offered part-

Iy as their contribution to the cOlt)mon cause and partly to justify the'-present and future claims -to a sha 1tof the results of a victory Over li;eIer. Hitler's fear of a home-fro~iof which the authors speak has, how,ever, reaIly nothing to do with thopposition to which they point noewith one which they would be abl

r

to envision. The opposition will comenot from political forces of the pas~but from the contradictions of thepresent.

M.

THE PR!NCIPLE OF POWER. The Great Political Crisis of History,By Guglielmo Ferrero. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, (333 pp.; $3.50).

In this - his last book - the lateProfessor Ferrero elaborates uponhis earlier established theory of le-gitimacy in gove-nment and connectsit with the present war. Accordingto Ferrero the cause of the frightfuldisu-der to which Europe has suc-cum bed is not the disturbance of in-ternational relations among the var-ious states, but the result of the in-ternal crisis that completely upset aIlthe Old World States. Responsibleare the revolutions which, since 1917,have convulsed practicaIly the wholeof the European continent. Oncemore a revolutionary governmentunleashed a general war for the samereason and in exactly the same man-ner as the French Revolution. Whatwe are witnessing on a world-widescale are Napoleon's adventurestranslated into German. If war res-ults from revolutionary governments,peace can be estalished and ma in.tained only with thebelp of legitim.a':e government and thus Ferrero de-mands a new "Congress of Vienna"wl-i+h may be able to save the wor ldas it saved Europe in 1815.

This outline, contained in the pre-face, comprises the whole of his thes-is. The rest of the book merely il-lustrates it. The historical illustra-tions and anecdotes, however, makethe book readable despite lts unreal-istic proposit ions. The peculiar state-78

ments are based on attributes of "hu-man nature" such as "fear" and on"necessities" such as the "historicalconstant" th at authority comes fromabove and legitimacy from below.Sovereignty implies superiority butalso the consent of the governed.Their consent, the "principle of le-gitimacy", in Férrero's view, is al-ways "in harmony with the customs,the culture, the science, the religion,the economie interests of an age;'For him the relationship between rul-ers and ruled is similar to that be-tween father and child. Though"government is condemned to live interror because... it makes use ofphysical force and violence; yet, de·spite its fear, it will always be stron-ger than aIl the revolts that wiIlbreak out against it, because its ex-istence, like its fear, is conformabieto human nature."

Unfortunately for humanity menonce forgot what is conform'able to their nature. "Because to-ward the end of the eighteenth cen-tury," Ferrero writes, "one of theforemost peoples in Europe refusedfor six weeks, only six weeks, to ob-es, a sort of revolutionary apocalYl?S~was thereby brought about, WhlCfhas lasted for a century and a haJnow, af ter having devastated EuropeJthreatens to spread over aIl the WO!!gand destroy everything." Hang~nhin mid-air between monarchy, WhlC

"as no longer possible, and demo-e""cy, w~ich was not yet po~ble, indesperatlOn people turned towardsreyolutionary government. The Wei-JIlar Republic, too, was not a legitim-.te goyernment because too manyGermans refused to accept republic-.n institutions. But a revolutionarygovernment is not sure of its super-iority and cannot rely on its people.possessed of fear it keeps on armingitself the more frightened it becom-es and in the reflecting game of fearth~ true origin of war may be found.

Aside from a11the contradictions inwhich Ferrero involves himself, histheory amounts to saying that if

there is a revolution there is a rev-olution, if there is none there .is none.A government is legitimate if it isnot overthrown, it is revolutionaryif it succeeds a previous government.Wh at Ferrero says is that he doesnot like revolutions and that conse-quently governments should preventrevolutions and that the ruled shouldab~tain from revolution because theybnng about general disorder andsolve nothing. He insists on the cor-rectness of his thesis by saying thatrevolutionary government "did agreat deal of harm to me, my fam-ily, and my sons."

M.

CONDITIONS OF PEACE. By Edward Hallet Carr. The MacmillanCompany. New York. (282 pp.; $2.50).

For Mr. Carr the present war isan episode in a revolution againstliberal democracy, national self-de-termination and laiuez faire econom-ics, It can be neither explained norwaged in purely national terms,There is also no return to pre-warconditions. "Hitler has consummatedthe work, which Marx and Lenin hadbegun, of overthrowing the nine-teenth-century capitalist system."~hat is now under attack, however,IS not "democracy as such, but liber-al democracy in its specificaIly nine-teenth-century form." That demo-cracy of property owners crumbled:a~ with the rise of organized eco-t mie power. In the new democracypo com~, "liberty" must be re-inter-t}~~ted m economie terms. To makeb IS Possible, economie power musttre 1brought under government con-

ot,

ti The rights of nations, like thetoght~ ?f men, are hollow if they fail"'h ead to economie weIl-being4 Us t" 1 .lt) na iona self-determinationheUst also be understood differentlyco~ause . "interdependence has be-\rÏ\T ~ ,~n mescapable condition of sur-ti~a. Those concerned with intern a-•. nal relations of the future must.ecog .th rnze tha neect for a larger unit

an the present nation and realize

that national self-determination canbe valid only within a new frame-work of mutual military and econom-ic obligations.

The economie crisis underlying thepolitical crisis led to the/ present re-treat from the money economy andto a re-integration of society by wayof coIlectivisation. The solution ofthe economie problem is planned con-sumption. Initiated in Germany andRussia by revolutions, it is now fos-tered everywhere by war, unfortun-ately only in its simplest form, thatis, as armament production. AI-though the profit motive has faHedus, we have not yet discovered amoral substitute for it other thanwar; nothing but war seems suffi-ciently worthwhile.

For Carr the economie crisis is inessence a moral crisis. The absenceof a moral .purpose explains ther'pop-ular demand, not for unrestrictedliberty, but for more authoritativeleadership." The popular demand ismet by the shift of power from thepopular representative assembly tothe popular responsible leader, whichdoes not represent a diminution ofdemocracy as such, but a change inthe form and character of contem-poraty democracy. The transfer ofpower fr om the legislative to the ex-

79

ecutive branches of government isevident also in the United States,where the presidency is likely to bê-come more important than Congress.

Carr's idea of a moral crisis un-derlying al! the problems of today,is a necessary prerequisite to hisoutline of policies for the comingpeace. AH his specific recommenda-tions, sueh as planned consumption,public works, social minimum, con-trol over industry, in order to becarried out and to lead to the resultsenvisioned, presuppose that the rul-ing class is determined by nothingother than a moral law designed toguarantee the well-being of all hum-anity, He admits, however, that thetwo existing moral principles thatsupersede war, i. e., Christianity andcommunism, cannot serve to lendpurpose and meaning to modern life.A new faith must be found.

Meanwhile one must recognize thechanges that have taken place. Brit-ain's balance-of-power policy, for in-stance, has come to a close. She canno longer stand aloof from Europe.American interests, being bound upwith the survival of security of GreatBritain, are identical with British in-terests in maintaining British powerin Europe. Both must accept per-manent military and economie re-sponsibiIities beyond their own bor-ders. As to Germany it is difficult"to imagine any effective policy for

80

her dismemberment, which would notinvolve the break-up of the econotniunity of Central Europe." Thus 'Wcmust help to build up the Gertna~economie system into a larger Unitunder different forms of control. Re.conciliation will follow by way ofco-operation. Carr suggests the set.ting up of a European Reconstruc.tion and Public Works Corporationand a European Planning AuthOrityThey will be heirs to two going con~cerns; the centralized econotnicmachinery of Hitler's New Orderand the machinery of Allied wartitnecontrols. Thére is no choice but tobuild on them, and perhaps recastthem in the pro cess of building.

While reading all this and moreof the same stuff, one cannot helpwondering what the war is all about.Apparently the only difference be-tween Carr's schemes and Hitler'sare differences in terminology. Carrgoes so far as even to be willing todo for Germany without Hitler whatHitier tries to bring ab out. He ob-jects to Hitler's ideas because theyare based on the "hypothesis of Ger-man predominance." His own ideas,however, are based 9n much less,that is, on the hope that a new moralpurpose will arise. ActuaHy both arein full agreement as to what oughtto be done; they differ only on thequestion as to who is going to do it.M.