REVIEWS
Mills, Nicolaus & Bloomstein, Charles & Breslauer, George W. & Jones, John Henry & O'Cleireacain, Carol & G., E.
THE ZERO-SUM SOCIETY, by Lester Thurow. New York: Basic Books. 230 pp. Cloth, $12.95; paper, New York: Penguin, $4.95. ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY, by Martin Carnoy and Derek Shearer. White Plains, N.Y.:...
...This is dealt with later in a section entitled "Ono matology...
...Medem was born into a family converting from Judaism to various branches of Christianity in Czarist Russia...
...It is at this level that the book becomes compat497 ible with Thurow's...
...The major section on "Education" throws light on this thorny problem, for "since the importation of the first blacks in the 1600's into the Jamestown colony, the question of Negro education in the United States has invited controversy...
...Both of these works lend insight for the central question: what form of economic planning is going to come after the current "unleashing of entrepreneurship" fails to reduce unemployment and inflation, and fails to revitalize stagnant industries and old cities...
...Moreover, accounts of several important persons have been sacrificed at the expense of voluminous biographical minutiae...
...Carnoy and Shearer deal with the traditional components of economic democracy: control over capital...
...456 pp...
...10013...
...These objections notwithstanding, I heartily agree with Richard H. Ullman, who is quoted on the jacket of the book as saying: "If I were to refer an intelligent reader to a single work on the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Stalin's Successors would be it...
...The rival factions took to arms in "Bleeding Kansas" and elsewhere...
...The focus, then, becomes much more "micro" than Thurow's...
...Bialer's arguments are powerful but hardly conclusive...
...Certain forms of resistance will tend toward centralization and thereby strengthen the ruler, while others will devolve power away from the central authority...
...As Thurow demonstrates, "inflation seems to have had little, if any, impact on the distribution of income" between rich and poor...
...The book starts with the assumption that socialism is preferable to capitalism, and that Americans would demand a democratic form of socialism—that is, democratic planning, from the bottom up...
...His emphasis is on the broad policy picture as seen from Washington...
...African/ Legacy Survival...
...He presents four major equity decisions: [I] What is the minimum economic floor to which you would let any individual or family sink regardless of the cause of their failure...
...But the authors are aiming for more than a cataloguing of examples of democratic control over economic decisions: they are seeking to demonstrate a path for the future...
...New York: McGraw-Hill...
...can do business with the Soviet Union: Assuming that the American policy toward the Soviet Union will exhibit both a willingness and ability to resist the Soviet interpretation of what détente permits it to do militarily in the Third World, and a greater willingness and ability to assure real prospects of economic cooperation with the Soviet Union, the pressures for restraint in Soviet foreign policy, especially in seizing marginal targets of opportunity, should be much greater in the coming decade...
...Sharp is a revisionist...
...Thurow's emphasis on workers' job security must be implemented at the local level...
...Yet the book lacks a comprehensive strategy...
...436 pp...
...Why is there a macro-policy crisis...
...Part of the reason why tension may be rising in the 1980s is the confluence of economic stringency, political succession, and generational change within the Soviet establishment...
...A great ideological struggle ensued...
...declining industries...
...Bialer defines the changes in Soviet politics and policy since Stalin as fundamental ones, and he believes that an understanding of those changes is essential for an appreciation of the depth of stability in the Soviet system...
...Religious organizations of great variety and diversity are treated separately because of their "abiding and fundamental force in Afro-American life and history...
...Many such critical events and developments are touched upon only obliquely in the Encyclopedia...
...But few have been willing to be killed without trying to kill...
...There is so much confusion that (as the New York Stock Exchange survey showed) 93 percent of the American public is willing to accept the Reagan economic program even if they personally do not agree with it...
...the result is great variations in quality and insight...
...Furthermore, and again somewhat contrary to Gandhi, Sharp views the nonviolent technique as primarily coercive, not necessarily aimed at changing the heart of the oppressor...
...This reflects his excellent analysis of employment discrimination, which generates much greater inequality in earnings...
...IN A PERIOD when the South is being written off as "Reagan Country" and the North continues to be drained by runaway factories looking for cheap Southern labor, Working Lives could not be a more timely text...
...In these essays Sharp never underestimates the problems or the strength of the opposition, nor does he exaggerate what can be accomplished...
...Thurow's answers to these questions reflect both his sense ofjustice and his analysis of how the modern American economy functions...
...But in] their assessment of the relation of forces at this particular historical moment they are realistic...
...The Encyclopedia is dispassionate in its account of the misery, torture, and death suffered by millions of Africans during the dreaded "Middle Passage," with human beings packed like sardines in the holds of the slave ships while crossing the Atlantic—one of the most monstrous episodes in human history...
...Strikes, boycotts, noncooperation, and civil disobedience are sources of power that can depose an oppressor or, at the very least, moderate oppression...
...In a profession heavily populated by narrow specialists who rarely venture into plain English, Lester Thurow stands out as a model political economist, able to be understood by everyone...
...economic policy in two important ways...
...Such changes in prices used to occur over much longer periods of time, say in the period from World War I to the 1950s...
...Although they focus on different aspects of the economic policy crisis, the two books agree that American economic policy has failed to address the issue of redistribution...
...Thus workers are participating in a society where there is a high degree of risk and uncertainty...
...Baptized in the Russian Orthodox faith, he found his way to the labor movement and to himself as a Jew in his late teens...
...The presentation of all these cases in one place indeed is a major contribution...
...2) stability versus instability as alternative images of the future of the Soviet political system...
...Cloth, $15.00...
...Since the richer you are the larger corporate stock looms as a fraction of your portfolio, the richer you are the greater your losses . . . ." In addition, of course, the banking community often suffers in periods of inflation...
...Every year of the decade, except 1974, saw the duration of unemployment in double digits for more than 10 weeks...
...Specifically, it should not be confused with the ability to turn the Soviet Union into a status quo power...
...He died in America, in 1923...
...I find this proposition to be exaggerated and overgeneralized...
...This, he argues, leaves no possibility for the emergence of truly socialist or humanitarian democracies...
...Abraham Lincoln was elected president...
...Yet if the combination of the economic emergencies facing the Soviet Union in the 1980s together with the openings afforded by the approaching succession of leadership and elites do not yield serious efforts to reform the traditional economic system, then I do not know what may and will...
...Here Come a Wind," which brings us up to 1980 and explores the efforts big business has made, ever since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, to thwart Southern workers' efforts at organizing...
...The result is an anthology with an axe to grind—an axe sharp enough to put a dent in the myth of a South free from labor troubles...
...Both books recognize that other countries have traveled similar, though not identical, paths in their economic development and that there may be something out there worth learning...
...It is the direction and magnitude of trends in their favor which they have found so satisfying...
...The book makes clear that, if we are to understand the South's slowness in unionizing, we must go beyond explanations that cite Southern paternal traditions or the inner closeness of white, rural communities that never had to absorb a massive influx of 19th-century immigrants...
...Despite some forgivable duplication, the book presents a unified thesis...
...He cites dozens of basic works in political theory, from Machiavelli on, and from these he draws the assumptions that permeate the work...
...He argues for countervailing strength in the form of dispersed loci of power...
...Another basic assumption, accepted by democrats, is that unless the citizenry is informed and active in defense of its freedom, civil and political liberties will be lost, either by chipping away, coup, or revolution...
...Constitution, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, or the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1954—would have shown the profound significance of the arising antagonism between Southern slavery and Northern industrialism...
...the slaveholders, following the lead of South Carolina, began the Secessionist movement, which climaxed in the Civil War...
...the "correlation of forces" in the international system...
...He believes, however, that nonviolent sanctions can be developed, and that these can help decentralize power...
...In the decade of the 1970s, the lowest unemployment rate was, in 1973, 4.3 percent...
...His strategy was to continue the pressures of nonviolent noncooperation and resistance, regardless of the degree of violence used on the other side...
...Hence, policy paralysis...
...In the photographs he took of Carolina textile mills during the first decade of this century Lewis Hine captured the brutalizing quality of Southern industrialism with a special poignancy...
...There has long been a need for a synthetic overview of this kind...
...Workers' take-overs of even obsolete plants will continue as the first line of defense until there is a real guarantee of viable alternative jobs, not just a promise of some future "full employment...
...the steady decline of voting...
...It is the development of this legitimacy that characterizes the new "mature" phase of Soviet authoritarianism and underlies its basic stability...
...Russell Lee's 1940s pictures of a Kentucky coal-mining family are no less haunting, and in the '70s Earl Dotter's photos of brown lung (cotton dust) victims remind us once again that the South's industrialism continues to take its toll...
...paper, $7.95...
...BOTH THESE BOOKS were written for those who know that past economic policies no longer work...
...Instead of the Southern battles that have become legends, we have Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, where 2,000 workers died of silicosis on a single tunnel project...
...There are too many alternative forms of money and too many places to borrow internationally...
...and "Slavery...
...In Bialer's estimation, this will not undermine the stability of the system, but it will create pressures for policy changes, pressures of an intensity that has not been witnessed since the 1950s...
...but as long as there is greater inequality, progressive taxes are needed...
...Both rely on violence as the ultimate sanction, and neither provides a method through which a peaceful, democratic, and humane revolution can be effective...
...by Marc S. Miller...
...The control and use of power was central to the thought of both Marx and Gandhi, yet they differed sharply in their views on how power should be exercised and for what purposes, and on how to respond to violence used against their movements...
...Keynesian policy allowed for a trade-off between inflation and unemployment...
...505...
...It cannot cope, because a trade-off has developed between economic growth and economic security...
...Sharp believes that sanctions are needed to maintain stability and order, but he questions the usefulness of such violent sanctions as a police force, prison systems, and a centralized military...
...Race...
...In general, the subtlety of Bialer's insights about Soviet foreign policy allows him to destroy the arguments of those who inordinately emphasize either ambition or fear as dominant motivations...
...Part Four discusses current Soviet perspectives on key issues of international relations: the role of U.S.-Soviet relations in the international system...
...There are 125 major and 120 minor articles making up two-thirds of the work...
...Everyone wants both, but everyone cannot have both...
...495 • First, monetary policy is increasingly out of control...
...There is an equally fundamental difference in the field of psychology between a patient placed on valium to control tension, and one placed in the hospital with a nervous breakdown...
...A key contribution is a section entitled "Bibliographies/ Biographies/ Guides," which can save students and researchers much time...
...Worsening economic bottlenecks and budgetary stringency, rising interethnic tensions that could seriously exacerbate the nationality problem, slowing rates of social mobility, and problems of political succession all come in for incisive analysis...
...312 pp...
...Fortunately, Stalin's Successors transcends these debates...
...But what we need from Working Lives is much more than a concept of historical dividers...
...Mature" Stalinism was a totalitarian despotism, in which mass terror was used to keep both the masses and the elites in line, and under which mass consumer expectations were repressed and economic austerity was imposed in the name of national security...
...But even if so used, the results will not be as harmful to society as violence...
...Policy-makers used to be able to make at least one group happy...
...The replacement of any institution requires an alternate means of performing the functions of that institution, and replacing the instruments of war, for example, requires some method of providing national security...
...STALIN'S SUCCESSORS: LEADERSHIP, STABILITY, AND CHANGE IN THE SOVIET UNION, by Seweryn Bialer...
...While decentralist, Sharp accepts the necessity of political power, which he describes as the influences, pressures, awards, and sanctions that provide authority and the capacity to control...
...Thurow is writing for the economic policy-making elite—aiming to convince them to look in other directions...
...This vision of the South also characterizes Working Lives, and what follows in this collection— most of which first appeared in the magazine Southern Exposure—reflects the violence of Southern labor history...
...Can we develop such a body politic when the mass of U.S...
...Among Sharp's basic assumptions is that any government, even the most totalitarian, depends on the public's acceptance of its legitimacy and authority...
...and so on...
...Yet, as we view Poland today, can we afford to discount that approach...
...Part Three addresses at great length 502 the question of stability and instability of the Soviet system as a whole, and the likely impact of generational change on that condition...
...My complaint is not motivated by mere methodological pedantry...
...Be504 cause of these omissions the book is more readable, but also less persuasive...
...He also demonstrates the redistributive impact of a variety of other aspects of economic policy, such as the pricing of energy sources and the design of environmental regulation...
...Workers who have no in-house job security will not train new workers to be more efficient and possibly to knock them out of a job...
...His answer to the fourth question is that we need "a generous system of transitional aid to individuals but not firms...
...Because of this lack it may be easy for critics to dismiss this approach as not being able to offer an alternative policy to those who expressed their confusion in the New York Stock Exchange poll...
...Vigilance remains the price of liberty, apathy assures its death...
...In general, though, the people who worry about this problem are a different group from those who worry about the uncertainty of becoming unemployed...
...Such a view works inherently against the acceptance of any long-range status quo...
...THUROW'S The Zero-Sum Society is a pleasure to read...
...If we look at prices, we see the same kind of uncertainty...
...issues of workplace control, including technology...
...TURNING TO SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY, Bialer weaves together a tapestry of propositions about Soviet perspectives and the sources of Soviet conduct...
...Can we expect the kind of radical shift required if Sharp's thesis is to be given a chance...
...However, their tone, their approaches, their aims, and the audiences they address are quite different...
...This may well be the most important book on contemporary Soviet politics to appear in a decade...
...His writing is calm and reasonable, without flights of 501 fancy or rhetoric...
...Even if this strategy would work, can we risk the test...
...Bialer introduces an array of distinctions that allow him to define just how Soviet foreign policy perspectives look today...
...White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe...
...WHILE I GREATLY ADMIRE this book, I also have problems with it...
...In simple A to Z format, the entries are divided into three types: articles, biographies, and cross references...
...This volume has been designed as a political science text, and such use may lead to the increased attention for which Sharp begs...
...Thus the "great debates" during the 1970s have revolved around the following definitions of alternatives: (1) totalitarian versus pluralist images of the Soviet policy process...
...Such civilian-based defense, he stresses, requires planning, training, resources, strategies, and dedication...
...It touches a lot of bases—but it fails to establish connections and to tie them together...
...608 pp...
...An example is "Afro-American history," the largest cluster, containing nine major articles on "Africa...
...Cloth $15.95, paper $8.95...
...A man who had once been a glass blower or an iron puddler became a machine tender...
...Sharp asserts that nonviolence is the only suitable instrument that can empower the masses of people and change their power relations with their rulers...
...It may therefore be useful to summarize his argument...
...In the U.S., in a little more than a decade, foreign trade has risen from 4 percent to almost 12 percent of GNP...
...But in Thurow's view the main problem is the inability of the political system to cope with the zero-sum nature of modern economic policy...
...Their choice reflects the customary perceptions today among the people discussed...
...The book is divided into five parts...
...While such polarization of perspectives is natural and can be useful as a means of ordering thought and inquiry, it also runs the risk of stultifying the search for intermediate statements that synthesize the two positions conceptually and empirically...
...Evidence of the system's failure to solve its problems over a long period of time is not hard to muster...
...Can we shift our present reliance on arms and violence to an alert and active body politic anxious to defend its freedoms...
...For if more comprehensive economic planning is going to develop in the U.S., one must be concerned with it at both the top (Thurow's theme) and at the bottom (the theme of Carnoy and Shearer...
...Third World competition can be managed but not eliminated: The Soviet Union is not simply a great and global power, however...
...Notable pioneering exceptions were DuBois's A Select Bibliography of the American Negro, published in 1905, and Monroe N. Work's Bibliography of the Negro in Africa and America, published in 1928...
...Being acutely aware of the odds against him, Sharp's plea is that these ideas be investigated and explored...
...3] . . . . How should . . . . [the tax] burden be distributed...
...Music...
...Thurow notes that the American political structure does not lend itself to asking or answering any of these questions...
...Boston: Porter Sargent...
...trying to run both the world economy (through the reserve role of the dollar) and its own domestic economy, the increased "openness" of the economic system has made attempts to use monetary policy to significantly improve domestic inflation or unemployment bound to fail...
...That's a measure of the extent to which unemployment can tap a worker on the shoulder and say, "It's your turn, buddy...
...19.95...
...This last answer stems from the central element of Thurow's analysis: policy should encourage and reward change and flexibility, recognizing the individual's need for security...
...An interesting poll done for the New York Stock Exchange by Garth, Friedman, and Morris last December (after the election) reveals that 61 percent of the American people believe the U.S...
...IT WOULD BE EASY to dismiss Social Power and Political Freedom as impractical...
...These different approaches stem, at least in part, from the different audiences the authors are trying to reach...
...Second, fiscal policy, unlike monetary policy, is used to meet social needs—that's what a government budget is all about...
...Gandhi believed that violence could be rendered useless, even counterproductive, as a political tool...
...Quite apart from its value as a document in the history of the Jewish Labor Bund (a much neglected chapter of socialist and Jewish history), the reader will find this autobiography of a remarkable man most appealing...
...At an early point the reader sees Thurow as a pessimist who gives an excellent analysis of what has failed...
...We do not, as in Terkel's Working, have a single figure doing the interviews and deciding what is and is not revealing about the testimony of each essay...
...Men who had managed to eke out a living from the land ceased being farmers altogether and in a single generation became factory workers, living in mill villages, spending 10 to 12 hours a day under the supervision of a foreman...
...There the rise of modern industrialism brought about drastic changes in workers' lives...
...Unfortunately, the very virtues of Working Lives also point up its defects, and in the end the book's intentions, its timeliness, its anticonsensus concerns are far more impressive than what it delivers...
...Thurow's solution to the paralysis is to develop what I would call an agreed-upon "social compact," in the form of an explicit income distribution decision...
...In order to understand this conflict, one need only look at the recent policy debate on the federal budget, with its tremendous repercussions on state and local budgets...
...At the very least we need to know why the collection documents certain radical episodes in Southern labor history and omits others, and why the years 1900-29 are given only 60 pages while the years 1945-80 merit 167 pages...
...Finally, Part Five analyzes the current state of the Soviet economy, and the likely impact of generational change, political succession, and economic "stringency" on pressures for reform in the 1980s...
...Its leadership holds to the view that the world is divided into opposing systems of competing values...
...While old policies and old institutions are increasingly unable to cope with new, changed conditions, we have yet to develop a consensus on the new institutions and policies...
...921 pp...
...Humans have always been able to develop the moral fervor that enables them to die as they attempt to kill for what they believe in...
...CARNOY AND SHEARER CONCENTRATE on the distribution of economic power...
...A Yiddish edition of his autobiography was published in 1923, with a preface by Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward...
...Professor Portnoy has rendered a service with his painstaking translation and annotations...
...Marx, though he preferred to come to power through peaceful processes, was willing to use violence to defend socialism...
...This area of our history is among the least known and understood...
...He views foreign policy as relatively autonomous, and he does not echo those who claim that beleaguered Soviet elites search continually for "wins" abroad to compensate for lack of effectiveness and legitimacy at home...
...Indeed, two dimensions of Soviet life that have begun to receive attention in recent years—the apparent sharpening of Russian chauvinist sentiment within the establishment, and an apparent increase in the scope of the "second economy" and corruption—are virtually not discussed in the book...
...More definitive assessments of such historical developments—as the writing of the U.S...
...There is no record of any civilian-based defense that has been completely successful...
...At the same time Bialer distinguishes between problems and crises, tensions and instability, and concludes that while tensions will undoubtedly rise in the 1980s, they will in all probability remain manageable...
...The most serious omission, however, is the failure to display systematically the evidence for controversial assertions throughout the book...
...Using a multiplier of two, this means that about one-fifth to one-quarter of America's workers depend on foreigners for their jobs...
...Regarding the second, he observes that "the structure of reward that now exists for fully employed white males" is a spread of about 5:1 from top to bottom...
...414 pp...
...Thurow demonstrates that issues of income redistribution are fundamental to the macro-unemployment/inflation policy dilemma...
...Central to each book is the relationship between democracy as it has come to be practiced in postwar America and the economic system in which people live and work...
...See Tables B31-32 in The Economic Report of the President...
...Pursuing these twists, meanings, and motives is the key to an understanding of our tragic racial divisions...
...Is it possible for that willingness to exist in the populace as a whole...
...And even with respect to these, I am skeptical of the more extreme of Bialer's assertions, both because he does not display his evidence, and because they ignore the fact that Soviet perspectives or positions are often (not always...
...If nothing else, Carnoy and Shearer are addressing, individually, real problems that generate economic insecurity for Americans: plant closings...
...A nearly equal number of major articles, about 30 percent, are arranged in such clusters, one of them including the biographies of Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Booker T. Washington...
...Harlan County, Kentucky, where coal strikes are still a form of 499 warfare...
...Such an approach is in sharp contrast to the prevailing theme of neoconservatives who look backward to less complex days...
...This and major demographic and technological changes have affected U.S...
...As labor historian David Brody has noted, after 1900 the wage earner stood "wholly within the modern industrial order...
...citizens seem to be decreasingly involved with our democratic processes, viz...
...While he does 500 not take direct issue with Gandhi, he discards what he considers excess baggage in theory and practice, and sees nonviolence essentially as a method of behavior not at all dependent on motive or attitude...
...It is his contention that, with proper training, preparation, and resources, such a defense can be formidable, perhaps unconquerable...
...We go from historical accounts that are moving and unique to others that seem like fillers...
...He paints the structure of the economy with a broad brush, and such issues as whether workers should own or run Inland Steel are not viewed in his book as focal points of economic policy...
...As in many fields of inquiry, but reinforced by the sensitivity of the subject matter in American politics, the tendency in discussions of Soviet politics has been to dichotomize issues and polarize debate around extreme positions...
...Studs Terkel's Working has been the model for this collection, and the unevenness of the collection reflects the difficulty of applying such an approach to an anthology...
...Considerations of space made it impossible for us to publish a full-length review of The Life and Soul of a Legendary Jewish Socialist: The Memoirs of Vladimir Medem, translated and edited by Samuel A. Portnoy (Ktav, 70 Varick St., New York, N.Y...
...John Brown raided Harper's Ferry...
...To Our Contributors • When sending manuscripts, please make sure that you do not send your only copy • And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Soviet foreign policy is not insatiably expansionist...
...His prediction of a tense but manageable political order squares with my own estimate of the situation but rests ultimately on the unknown: assumptions about moods within the Soviet Union's working class, its conformist middle class, and its political establishment...
...People will only display such willingness to walk into a wall if they feel there are no other options...
...The major entries feature selected bibliographies...
...These uncertainties lead to further frustration and confusion over what should be done...
...As a result of these and other appeals that the regime has been able to generate, a foundation of legitimacy and stability has been created for the Soviet system: The legitimacy of the Soviet system is conditioned by its longevity, by its withstanding the test of major crises and shocks, by its identification with greatpower nationalism which unified the masses and the elites, by the successful symbiosis of the messianic doctrinal elements of Marxism-Leninism with this nationalism, by the increase in the number and weight of the strata in Soviet society which have a stake in the system and particularly in its activities, by the basic unity of its elites, and by the complex way in which the system is integrated...
...contingent on the sincerity of American collaborative offerings...
...Sharp contends that all who wield power seek to expand it...
...Frederick Douglass was most prophetic when he denounced the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill that left slavery in the Territories up to the whims of the settlers...
...Revealing the suffering of the oppressed is one technique but not the only one, and by no means the most important...
...he uses Gandhi as a springboard for an investigation of the wide variety of techniques appropriate to nonviolent noncooperation and resistance and the many areas of public life to which they could be applied...
...Whether or not imbued with love, it is aimed at achieving certain specified results...
...Now we can't even do that, and it is the most visible aspect of the economic policy crisis...
...But all such efforts to date have been spontaneous, coming after aggression and without prior preparation or organization—under the most adverse circumstances possible...
...Yet, as the above quotation suggests, where one comes down on this question has important policy implications that could spell the difference between a successful detente and an unsuccessful one...
...Underlying Thurow's suggestions for ways out of the policy crisis is a general tone expressing doubt that these suggestions will in fact be implemented...
...Of key importance in the unraveling of our racial history is the section on "Archives," which cites numerous libraries, historical societies, and "archival institutions" that contain various source materials...
...We learn nothing of the Negro Convention movement of the early 1800s, which continued into the Reconstruction period and produced some of the most eloquent and fearless men and women in the nation's history...
...By the time we read the conclusion of Working Lives it is all too easy to suspect that convenience or availability of material has played a key role in shaping the collection...
...At the outset, in their Preface, the editors acknowledge that the book's title is "a compromise between the use of two words: black and Afro-American...
...Soviet attitudes toward conflict resolution in the early 1970s (when détente was flourishing) were often contingent upon U.S...
...That would be a mistake...
...Using an average unemployment rate of 6 percent for the decade and an average duration of unemployment of 12 weeks, about 6 million people were unemployed for an average of one-quarter of a year, up to 24 million people annually...
...It was the modern industrial order—mechanized, tightly managed—that now dominated the workplace...
...Sharp proposes what he calls civilian-based defense...
...In the North the result was a loss of craft...
...With the voice of hard reality he points out, for example, that emotionally satisfying actions are not necessarily effective...
...But Bialer's perspective on Soviet stability is not one-sided...
...Under Brezhnev, in contrast (though the change had begun under Krushchev), the Soviet regime has evolved into a "mature" authoritarianism, no longer employing mass terror against either the elites or the population-at-large, under which most elite groups (including the large middle class) have been given a stake in the system, and under which mass consumer expectations have been satisfactorily managed and met through a highly developed welfare system and incremental improvements in the standard of living...
...However, "the distribution of net worth [wealth] has become more equal, because the stock market has fallen...
...4] What compensatory payments should be made when public policies cause large income losses...
...Sharp cites the comment of the Indian Gandhian socialist R. Lohia that far more important than changing the heart of the oppressor was the need to change the hearts of the oppressed, so that they would stop consenting to their own oppression...
...Each struggle helped him refine his strategy on the testing ground of pragmatic action...
...Can we afford to dismiss a view, however utopian it may seem, that offers a way out...
...Carnoy and Shearer focus on the redistribution of control over work and production...
...economy are not unique...
...For example, scholars have long debated whether Soviet leaders remain optimistic about the state of the international system...
...Reagan's policy, based on an idealized version of the past, will fail, leaving the American economy with the "crisis...
...WORKING LIVES: THE SOUTHERN EXPOSUREHISTORY OF LABOR IN THE SOUTH, ed...
...the Republican party was organized...
...He believes rather that Soviet foreign policy can be understood as a product of a combination of Soviet international ambitions and fears, strengths and weaknesses, offensive and defensive orientations, optimism and realism...
...Seweryn Bialer has undertaken a "synthetic overview" of continuity and change in Soviet politics during the Brezhnev era...
...There was less of a premium on skills that required independence of judgment and had once been handed down from generation to generation...
...This autobiography takes Medem's life up to 1915...
...There is a growing conflict between the use of government spending in order to stabilize the economy and the need to provide basic services, such as schools, health, security, and mass transit...
...He had to learn Yiddish from scratch, as he later learned Polish, eventually becoming so proficient in the language that he could write and speak it fluently as one of the leaders of the Bund...
...Yet Gandhi's tentative insights have by and large been accepted as sacred by his relatively few followers, and little further exploration has been attempted...
...Cloth, $17.95...
...When treated like an illegitimate partner (for example, in the Middle East negotiations), the Soviets first tried to gain inclusion through partial accommodation, and then resorted to obstructionist behavior when denied access...
...These, he says, are the best defense against tyranny, and indeed are peculiarly American, as was noted by de Tocqueville...
...No More Moanin'," which takes us through World War II and concentrates on the impact the New Deal had on Southern unionization...
...Throughout, the work's cross references are useful as self-indexing guides, providing additional information and interpretations...
...These are, according to Thurow, "mutually incompatible...
...There they note that "the problem of giving a name to peoples of African descent in the United States and elsewhere has been a complex and difficult one...
...ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BLACK AMERICA, edited by W. Augustus Low and Virgil A. Clift...
...and the nature of the Third World as a competitive arena, in which the great powers attempt to translate their power into lasting influence...
...paper, $7.95...
...Regarding the present and future of Soviet politics...
...But this conclusion should not be overinterpreted...
...In the New York Stock Exchange poll, 54 percent generally blamed the government for "failing to understand or control economic problems...
...Sharp here asks for a great deal more vigilance than has ever been achieved, except in moments of crisis...
...This distinction is fundamental to the analysis, although it has all too often been missed by those who prophesy doom for the Soviet polity...
...His book's central theme is expressed in the title, taken from modern game theory: what I 496 win, you lose...
...They are right...
...The 1967 dollar now is worth less than 35 cents...
...According to Sharp, neither the Communists nor democratic socialists have devised effective political techniques to achieve their objectives...
...This thesis is bound to be looked upon with skepticism—with good reason...
...It is just this combination of the traditional dynamic of an ascending power with the volatile dynamic of a power which postulates a different world outlook and inevitable competition with other powers that undermines the likely success of balance-of-power policies, that limits the scope of bilateral U.S.-Soviet agreements, and that precludes the inherent stability of long-range solutions...
...Despite Marx's belief in his grand theory as an ultimate truth, his followers expanded, changed, and modified his precepts so that there is no single present-day Marxism...
...In the South the results were more devastating...
...soaring housing costs...
...2] What is to be the distribution of economic rewards for those that participate in the economy...
...attitudes toward Soviet inclusion in the process...
...Sharp makes the assumption that centralization and liberty are incompatible...
...New York: Pantheon Books...
...Social remedy requires knowledge and a grasp of the body politic both past and present...
...A large part of the book is spent demonstrating how the political process was unable to parcel out the economic losses implicit in such issues as energy pricing, inflation, pollution, and economic growth...
...Like a ball of tangled thread, it must be painstakingly unraveled...
...Gandhi, on the other hand, never formulated any overarching theory, but he led masses of people in struggles for clearly defined though limited goals...
...One often finds oneself nodding in agreement at one assertion or another—and yet the totality adds up to an outright rejection of politics as we know it...
...There are also approximately 1,400 concise biographies of persons from every walk of life...
...The regime still possesses enormous reserves of stability, but adjustments have to be made if the system is to remain effective...
...To the first question, his reply is that no one's income should be less than "half as large as [that of] the average American," reflecting the reality that pay rates, and therefore one's sense ofjustice, are determined on a relative, not an absolute, basis...
...It depends on the general public's refusal to accept the invader's authority, through strikes, general strikes, boycotts, and other forms of noncooperation and civil disobedience, of which Sharp has catalogued almost 200 variations...
...He does not believe that disarmament, world government, or appeals to religion, ethics, or morality can end war...
...They can prevent usurpations of power, which constitutional guarantees, while valuable, cannot...
...No political party stands on a platform of explicit income distribution...
...These loci can have their sources in family life, social classes, religious, cultural, or ethnic groupings, occupational and economic ties, or other voluntary organizations, as well as in smaller governmental units...
...You don't have to be Jewish or a socialist to find this book worth reading...
...It can be used for antisocial purposes, like any other instrument of power...
...With the Bund now reduced to remants in this and a few other countries (which still meet, debate, pass resolutions), one is well reminded that at one time it was the largest socialist organization in prewar Poland...
...The turn of the century brought with it a special kind of regimentation for the American worker...
...Yet there is increasing centralization in all societies, and no one seems to know what to do about it...
...Carnoy and Shearer, on the other hand, are writing largely for community activists—aiming to present an agenda for changing policy priorities...
...With the U.S...
...And 42 percent of the public said they would be willing to stick it out four years even if the economy does not improve...
...Civil Disorders...
...The Zero Sum Society offers a cogent autopsy of the Carter administration's economic policy...
...Literature...
...No wonder then that bankers lobby hard for increases in usury ceilings...
...Slavery aims at absolute sway and to banish liberty from the Republic . . ." he said...
...He is now engaged in writing a study that will carry forward the story of Medem's life, and of the history of the Bund, its attitude toward Bolshevism (there is an interesting encounter with Lenin in this volume), and toward Zionism...
...The Federal Reserve cannot know quickly enough when changes in the monetary base take place nor use open-market operations to fully offset the effects...
...The theme of Economic Democracy is decentralized workers' control and how to achieve it...
...Both books acknowledge that the troubles of the U.S...
...The weakness of this major reference work is its inadequate interpretation of several key historical 498 developments that influenced the future of black Americans and the nation's convoluted racial relations...
...Such a defense is not without cost or risk...
...For more than 30 years he has been mining the rich vein exposed by Gandhi, and he has produced some important works—the latest, Social Power and Political Freedom...
...Another serious omission is mention of the fraternal alliances and activities of Indians and black run-away slaves...
...To quote Sharp: It is a shattering, but usually unnoticed, fact that in every country in which an avowed social revolution has occurred by means of violent struggle or political dictatorship, there exists a military establishment and system, and a police and prison system, which are more powerful absolutely in weaponry, combat strength, and in surveillance and control abilities, than were those of the ancient regime...
...Dependence on violence, he claims, leads to political stratification, with the elite class that controls the sanction apparatus inevitably dominating the economic and political structure...
...Gene Sharp is a notable exception...
...The most notable of these was the fierce struggle in Florida involving the Seminoles who refused to betray the black Maroons to General Andrew Jackson's forces, precipitating the Seminole Wars of 1817 and 1832...
...Sharp's argument is that the only way to eliminate war, economic injustice, genocide, and dictatorship is by training the masses of people in the techniques of nonviolent noncooperation and resistance, and by their being ever vigilant in the defense of democratic values...
...To the third question he replies that, if the appropriate distribution has been achieved—that is, (1) and (2) above are satisfied— a proportional tax system is adequate...
...This is not simply a matter of splitting the difference, or of endorsing an intermediate position for its own sake...
...Should actual Soviet growth and energy shortages in the 1980s fall within the range of the most pessimistic projections, the Soviet Union, without the reform and a successful one at that, is condemned not simply to a process of "muddling through" but a process of "muddling down...
...Civil Rights...
...Bialer's perspective on the relationship between stability, effectiveness, and change in Soviet politics is summed up in the closing paragraph of the book: Time is not running out on the Soviet system...
...It would . . . dishonor free labor with its hope of reward and establish slave labor with its dread of the lash...
...3) continuity versus change in Soviet politics and policy since Stalin...
...control over corporate power...
...Osceola, the chief of the Seminoles who had a black wife, was lured to a peace parley and assassinated...
...Government obviously will not make available the resources required, but academia might provide a start...
...Violence, terror, and oppression are useful to cement that authority, but without that acceptance governments fall...
...He saw his work as experimental, hoping that further development might some day yield a form of effective mass action...
...the role of military power in international relations...
...Many of the minor articles are arranged in what the editors describe as "clusters [of] . . . two or more distinct but related . . . articles usually by different authors...
...Workers who have no guaranteed job/ income security will fight plant closings, particularly in a less-than-full-employment economy...
...Zero-sum games are the most interesting and the ones whose outcomes are impossible to predict...
...Successful policy must stem from an analysis of the way the world works...
...The slaveholders indeed were not satisfied...
...They concentrate on presenting examples of attempts at economic democracy in each of these areas, both in the United States and abroad, in order to draw some general policy lessons from both the more and the less successful attempts...
...But its cost in lives and treasure is far less than that of war, Sharp asserts...
...Bialer argues that "the Soviet Union is interested in fomenting conflicts, escalating conflicts, maintaining them at a high level of intensity, and exploiting them but not in their peaceful solution, especially in their early stages, when they are most susceptible of solution...
...Sharp can cite a number of instances in which such nonviolent resistance has had at least limited success...
...The short answer is that developments since the end of World War II have led to increased interdependency of various national economies, with even large continental economies like that of the United States becoming far more open to movements of factors of production and goods and services...
...The bottom line of his analysis, therefore, is that the U.S...
...For the temptation is to set one's sights primarily on casting doubt upon the images and arguments of one's opponents—"the Soviet system is not totalitarian/ pluralist...
...increased tension and alienation at the workplace...
...Nevertheless, this is an important contribution to the study of black American history, which is, despite its imperfections, of interest, use, and relevance...
...For such readers, the role of Washington and Washington's policy concerns are minor compared to grass-roots issues around which people can organize in order to have more control over their work and living conditions...
...We simply do not know how much latent disaffection there is with the system, and how much latent potential for flashpoints lurks beneath the surface...
...SOCIAL POWER AND POLITICAL FREEDOM, by Gene Sharp...
...Since my disagreements with Bialer's arguments relate primarily to his assertions about Soviet foreign policy, I will illustrate the general problem with an example from the chapters dealing with foreign policy...
...His analysis here is, as usual, original, eclectic, and somewhat iconoclastic...
...There may be something to Sharp's position after all...
...The editors note that there were few bibliographies either by or about black Americans prior to 1950...
...Marx's position is consistent with the centralization of power, Gandhi's with its decentralization...
...Evidence shows that the public is aware of this...
...But the arguments are insufficiently documented to deal with the objections of those who worry about relative weights within a mix of motivations...
...Guaranteeing job security, along Japanese lines, offers, for Thurow, the real potential out of the policy paralysis...
...Gastonia, North Carolina, where workers braved brutal police harassment to carry on the largest and most famous of the early textile strikes...
...Bialer places much more emphasis on Soviet ambitions than do many respected analysts, but much less than does the Reagan administration...
...As a result, discussion focuses more on what the Soviet Union is not than on what it is...
...Rather, American politicians attempt to play one group against another—Thurow calls this "the ultimate in proportional representation, where every elected official is a one-man political party...
...49.50...
...Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press...
...What we should be addressing now is the form and content of post-Reagan policy...
...Bialer may be implying that he does not consider them important features of a discussion of leadership, stability, and change, but others do, and so he might have justified this conclusion explicitly...
...Yet few now are confident that our continued dependence on violence will lead to anything worthwhile—disaster seems to be the general prediction...
...The dynamic of this interaction is lost in Bialer's discussions, largely owing to his concentration on current perspectives...
...The totalitarian Soviet Union has been reluctant to use violence in the face of a seemingly united and resistant public, perhaps recognizing that this would be far more costly in the long run...
...We must look to the way Southern companies have reacted when their workers tried to organize: how they bought sheriffs, pitted race against race, cut off general credit to families isolated in mill villages...
...He recognizes the manifold problems and tensions that beset the Soviet order, and he acknowledges the crisis potential in some of these tensions...
...Part Two analyzes the nature of the current Soviet political and administrative elites: their age structure, career paths, turnover rates, policy orientations, and the coming massive generational change within them...
...But what Hine's photographs caught was not an isolated moment in history so much as a legacy...
...This book is a massive compendium of historical data on people of African descent in the United States...
...This is a collection of essays and lectures, some going back to the early 1960s and revised for this publication, others written especially for it...
...Bialer is too sophisticated 503 to make firm predictions of how the national leadership will respond to those pressures, but he will clearly be surprised if it does not seize the opportunity to try another round of economic (but not political) reform...
...Bialer's contribution is more subtle: When Soviet leaders observe a change in the relations of forces in their own favor, they think primarily in terms of change in the correlation of trends...
...I too would emphasize a mix of ambition and fear, but I place less weight on the ambition side of the mix than does Bialer...
...The same problems exist in the overall structure of Working Lives...
...both look to other democratic countries around the world for examples of how to get around the liberal policy paralysis...
...Part One discusses the nature of "mature Stalinism" (1938-53) as the base point from which to measure the scope and character of change in the post-Stalin era...
...Communists believe in violence and the acquisition of power by antidemocratic means, and while socialists prefer peaceful processes they generally agree that violence may be necessary to defend an electoral victory against armed resistance...
...4) ambition versus fear as dominant motivations behind Soviet foreign policy decision-making...
...economy is in a crisis...
...The collection has three distinct sections: "The Promised Land," which focuses on the years 1900-29 and the transition workers made from farm to mill...
...Education...
...Carnoy and Shearer, on the other hand, write with optimism about the eventual development of certain social democratic institutions and policies...
Vol. 28 • September 1981 • No. 4
