Out of the Ruins of Europe

...The most spectacular article in this book is "Russia through Western Eyes," an overview of western reaction to Stalin's Russia in the 1930s...

...For this, FitzGerald deserves our gratitude...

...With what ddja vu must Laqueur view the current ecstasy over the "discovery" of China...

...Fire in the Lake is certainly not the final word on the subject, but--if read with caution-it can provide a great deal of valuable information which can help us to understand Vietnam, the Vietnamese, and the Americans in Vietnam...

...Andreski gives examples of obfuscation or emptiness from a number of well-known men...

...Had the NPD attracted several thousand more voters, it would have gained access to a national forum in the Bundestag...

...The modern German Left is obsessed with %he Palestinian cause" to a degree that distinguishes it from radical movements in other western countries...

...Sociologist Stanislav Andreski doesn't mince his words when it comes to criticizing his fellows in the social sciences...

...It is doubtful that Willy Brandt could have conducted the Ostpolitik, or even that he could have become Chancellor under such conditions...

...A major problem in sociology is the preoccupation with details of method at the cost of content, partly because it is safer to be mathematically elegant than to step on anybody's toes...

...Corruption is hard to quantify, the participants being less than candid in their replies to questionaires, so it is not much studied, for example...

...The moment will arrive "for the narrow flame of revolution to cleanse the lake of Vietnamese society from the corruption and disorder of the American war" (p...

...The author is a living reminder of the arbitrariness of our convenient but conventional distinctions between historian and journalist, scholar and essayist, expert and popularizer...

...The study of human minds and societies deals with extraordinarily complex phenomena, further complicated bythe rapidity with which certain aspects change and the response of the subjects to what is said about them...

...The study of human beings, complex enough in subject matter, is made even more difficult because the objects of study react to what is said about them, making some statements self-fulfilling prophecies, and often making flattery profitable and criticism costly...

...Has the world'srecord concentration of psychologists and psychiatrists and sociologists produced in twentieth-century America a happier, better-adjusted, more selfaware populace than that of other countries at other times...

...They have reacted by ignoring this book, but he's not likely to care much: " . . . social and political studies have opened the gates of academic pastures to a large number of aspirants to the status of scientist who might have been perfectly useful citizens as post-office managers or hospital almoners, but who have been tempted into charlatanry by being faced with a subject utterly beyond their mental powers...

...Great harm has been done: " . . . the moral disorientation and fanatic nihilism which afflict modern youth have been stimulated by the popular brands of sociology and psychology with their bias for overlooking the more inspiring achievements and focusing on the dismal average or even the subnormal...

...The Soviet regime becomes a "goal-oriented mechanism" one of whose "inputs" was the lives of a million or so Kulaks...

...Some of the essays in this collection were written as topical articles in response to the events of the previous decade...

...At least we've got the Kulak count right...

...social Work" merits Honorable Mention...

...Repeatedly Laqueur defends the writing of what he calls "contemporary history," that form of erudite political journalism which is exemplified in Europe by Pierre Hassner and Raymond Aron but which in America is at home neither in the universities nor in the media...

...Harold Laski, for example, was able to write in 1935, "Basically I did not see much difference between 18 The Alternative November 1973 the general character of a trial in Russia and in [Britain...

...I~t the "soc sci" students beware...

...The program of modern ratiolmlism is to speak only with certainty and primarily about that which can be quantified...

...A country with plenty of capable engineers will tend to have more and better products of engineering than a country less blessed...

...It emerged from the election with its energies spent and its fortunes declining...

...What 50 billion dollar per year American enterprise turns out the shoddiest product per dollar invested compared with similar enterprises abroad...

...The difficulty of proving or disproving assertions in the social sciences is so great that it "gives a wide scope to ulterior motives, and provides immunity for the purveyors of false information...

...The Alternative November 1973 19...

...Ironically, Laqueur's farsightedness is illustrated by the very article in which Barraclough made this unfortunate remark...

...Quantification as camouflage" is Andreski's label for a device popular among those who wish to be all things to all men...

...Socialization" is widely used as a euphemism for "shaping the individual to conform to the group's desires ; ascribed is used Instead of inherited" and obscures the meaning of such phrases as '~ascribed wealth" and "ascribed intelligence...

...The book does not constitute an autobiography, although the opening chapters about the author's youth in Wroclaw (which he still--self-consciously--calls Breslau) hold out the promise of considerable autobiographic material...

...yet they still read surprisingly well...

...The unity of this collection of essays, diverse as they are in origin and subject matter, reflects the unity of Walter Laqueur's thought...

...As Duncan Williams argued in his excellent critique of modern literature and art, Trousered Apes, the emphasis on the base distracts and discourages those who might pursue the noble if their attention were so directed...

...Deviance" is so broadly used as to apply to the sadist and the saint, the nonconformist and the nincompoop...

...Victor Baras Social Sciences as Sorcery by Stanislav Andreski St...

...Claude Levi-Strauss, Talcott Parsons, and R. D. Laing are among his targets...

...Often reality is camouflaged by jargon, Andreski notes...

...Even if these farfetched claims were true, one would expect the "liberal" Barraclough to applaud the Allied policy of resistance to regimes whose security depended on military conquest of their neighbors...

...Much of Laqueur's writing is devoted to a description of the political foolishness of which intellectuals are capable...

...In retrospect it seems that Laqueur understood both the fascist character of the NPD and its potential importance in German politics...

...The author's own credentials place him above accusations of anti-intellectnalism...

...Money (government grants, book royalties) go to those esteemed by their peers . . . a Zulu proverb is offered us, "a dog with a bone in his mouth cannot bark," and it is considered unseemly to jeopardize the playing of the game, though one's co-professionals allow one to play it in a variety of ways...

...The evidence that the NLF intends to follow the totalitarian footsteps of North Vietnam, rather than the enticing promises of their propaganda Program, is overwhelming, and should make one skeptical of FitzGerald's rosy portrait...

...His writings provide not only illuminating historical generalizations but explanations that draw on a broader understanding of politics...

...By this point, few readers should be surprised to learn that FitzGerald is confident that the "good guys" (i.e., NLF) are going to win...

...Even the chapter headings reflect his iconoclastic humor: "Why Foul One's Nest?," "Manipulation Through Description," "Censorship Through Mass Production," "Evasion in the Guise of Objectivity," "Quantification as Camouflage," and my own favorite, "The Law of the Lighter Weights Rising to the Top...

...Martin's $7.95 "Even a popular weekly like Time supplies a much better insight into American society than all the journals of sociology combined...

...Self-fulfilling prophecies abound: tell someone he is likely to fail and he will likely fail...

...Shades of "alleged...

...for Barraclough bears out Laqueur's prediction that the epidemic of revisionist historiography on the Cold War was bound to spread to World War II...

...This is, of course, a simple extension of the revisionist apologia for Stalin's notion of security in Eastern Europe after the war...

...Robert F. Turner B ok R iew Out of the Ruins of Europe by Walter Laqueur Library $12.95 Out of the Ruins of Europe is a collection of previously published essays written over the course of twelve years...

...In spite of its flaws--only a few of which have been discussed above--Fire in the Lake is a worthwhile book...

...As Laqueur has recently noted, Ulrike Meinhof paid tribute at her trial to the "progressive" character of Hitler's extermination of the Jews...

...But there is no need to become alarmed--aren't all governments "goaloriented mechanisms...

...Barraclough now tells us that the Japanese, and apparently the Germans as well, were compelled by considerations of security to establish a military empire...

...The distinction is important, but Laqueur underestimates the extent to which the quality of his own work reflects his considerable ability to theorize about politics...

...Laqueur was no friend to rioting students in the sixties...

...Perhaps she is right, but, if so, it will be more a consequence of superior organization and proselytization than of moral virtue or consonance with traditional Vietnamese society...

...For years the nominally liberal denizens of West German universities were fascinated by the exploits of the Baader-Meinhof gang, a band of Maoist terrorists whose leaders personified the alliance between intellectuals and common hoodlums so characteristic of radical politics in Weimar...

...The party garnered 4.7 percent of the vote...

...Laqueur is so insistent that his work has nothing in common with bad social science that he forgets how much it has in common with good social science...

...A professor of sociology at Reading University in England, he is writing, in part, to stir the consciences of his colleagues to sift the wheat from the chaff in the profession...

...It might then have developed along the lines of Italy's MSI, now that country's fourth political party...

...yet he offers a strikingly sympathetic explanation of at least one part of their problem: "There is nothing more discouraging than to behold the proliferation of social science non-subjects in which the body of solid knowledge proffered stands usually in inverse ratio to the scientific pretensions upheld...

...Fouling one's nest" is more taboo than incest and puncturing the pomposities of one's fellow practitioners is a no-no...

...At about the same time, a similar alliance showed signs of developing in the United States...

...Sorcery...

...That Laqueur stands astride or beyond such distinctions is apparent from the themes that recur throughout the essays, often in unexpected ways...

...Andreski cites this example of "manipulation by description": "By interpreting every manifestation of warm feelings between persons of the same sex as latent homosexuality, the psychoanalysts . . . have debased and well-nigh destroyed the concept of friendship, and have greatly contributed to the painful isolation of modern man...

...A number of essays touch on the comparison of America to Weimar Germany...

...After a series of strong showings in state elections, the party marshalled all its forces in an attempt to clear the "five percent" hurdle and thereby gain national representation in the general election of 1969...

...What is remarkable, therefore, is not that the book is "uneven" (as it is), but that it holds together as well as it does...

...others consider the relationship between liberals and the extreme Left...

...In any case, a comparison between the Federal Republic and Weimar would probably benefit as much from an analysis of the modern German Left as of the Right...

...If academic sanction is not guarantee of moral purity, neither is it proof of theoretical insight...

...Frances FitzGerald is an intelligent and honest scholar, who has produced a highly readable and thought-provoking study of the Vietnam war...

...Laski described Andrei Vyshinksy, the lackey who presided over Stalin's show trials, as "a man whose passion was law reform . . . . He was doing what an ideal Minister of Justice would do if we had such a person in Great Britain...

...The final section of the book is devoted explicitly to what Laqueur still calls, without embarrassment, The Jewish Question...

...It is therefore understandable (but not forgivable) that Geoffrey Barraclough, the target of a critical but courteous review essay in this book, recently dismissed Laqueur's concern with Nazi respensibility for the war with the observation that "Laqueur, who was born in Wroclaw, can not see beyond the end of his European nose...

...This discussion of the possible reemergence of Nazism in West Germany was written in 1967, at a time when the right-wing NPD showed disturbing political strength...

...Purging themselves will not be easy, he states, because those social scientists who have not deceived themselves about much of what fills their professional journals are under pressures not to be too critical of the vacuity of some of their colleagues' "contributions...

...Although he is an intellectual, he does not share in the view that his class is the natural guardian of private or public morality: "In [the intellectuals'] seclusion there is a constant temptation to devise political constructions firmly rooted in mid-air, in which everything seems possible, in which governments and political authority in general are replaced by communes of free and equal individuals, in which society exists without repression, and domestic policies require no sanctions, diplomats always tell the truth and nothing but the truth, and a foreign policy is pursued in which the wolf lies down with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid, all presumably under the strict supervision of Professor Noam Chomsky...

...442...

...Andreski writes clearly, cleverly, and convincingly...

...While it is true that the party's leadership often sounded more Gaullist than fascist, it is no less true that the NPD was a gathering point for unreconstructed Nazis and their youthful admirers...

...as Michael Oakshott stressed in his critiques of rationalism, this means saying very little with regard to values and ethics, crucial areas in the study of men...

...He emerges as a spokesman for the the study of history rather than political theory...

...But that is Barraclough's problem, not Laqueur's...

...Whole sections of the universities could be closed down for a year or two, and the result, far from being the disaster to civilization which some appear to anticipate, would probably be beneficial/' If there is an unfortunate side to Laqueur's healthy skepticism about academic "non-subjects," it is that his animus against modern social science is such that he tends to identify bad theory with theory altogether...

...If political morality has held its own in the twentieth century, it has frequently been despite rather than because of the guidance of the universitied classes...

...If any one of the articles is vulnerable to second-guessing with the aid of hindsight, it is "Bonn is not Weimar...

...say there has arisen a new permissiveness, and the "bandwagon" effect will encourage the suggestible into promiscuity...

...Those readers who answer, "Education," move to the heads of their classes...

...The enthusiasts of the Soviet new order included not only the hapless American Ambassador Davies but also western scholars, "experts" on Russia and the Soviet Union...

...Science may be distinguished from witchcraft, Andreski suggests, by noting whether or not the stated goals are achieved by the means recommended...

...Someone wisely said that the problem with teaching sociology to collegians is that it seduces them into believing they understand a human phenomenon just because they have learned its name...