The Present Struggle for Power

...Nonetheless, The Pattern of World Conflict is a book that merits the attention not merely of every serious reader, but also and particularly of those who are groping toward socialist alternatives in present-day politics...

...Arnold's part, a failure to consider fully the tone and nature of domestic political life in America as it might affect such a plan...

...In this struggle the "real issue lies between libertarian revolutionaries and others who can envisage the transformation of society only in terms of the Soviet experience since 1917...

...A totalitarian party that does not shrinkfrom challenging deeply rooted traditions (e.g., the individual's primary allegiance to the family clan), and which maintains close control over the daily activities of its members, has the power to break thevicious circle of poverty, bribery andinefficiency characteristic of a backward country...

...Yet in doing so he himself succumbs to their equation of economics and politics...

...Mr...

...Within the Communist world a whole train of tensions follows upon the struggle to succeed Stalin...

...For a socialist these energies should remain a major source of concern and hope...

...By contrast, the West, to the extent that it limits itself to "short term economic advantages to foreign investors and local property owners," courts defeat in the "backward" countries— even when direct political control has been turned over to an indigenous leadership...

...Mr...

...Arnold starts with the familiar thesis of a polarized world society...

...Forl every departure from reliance on market forces, every step toward a planned and regulated economy, is potentially a step away from colonialism...

...Revolution there must be, for no movement, however libertarian in its ultimate aims, will renounce the hope of using the concentrated power of the state to end the dreadful poverty and squalor in which the bulk of mankind still lives...

...Arnold, in his estimable desire to avoid utopianism, tends to overlook the democratic and libertarian potentials that still are to be found among the peoples of Europe and Asia...

...Neither the assumption of "an international regime of free trade," he writes, nor its corollary of super-powers subjecting themselves to a "neutral agency actuated by a purely rational, i.e., purely technocratic conception of its duties" had any basis in reality...

...He makes short shrift of the "neoliberal" beliefs that were once focused in the United Nations...

...Arnold makes a cognate error in seriously underestimating the possibility of maintaining democratic processes in the newly emergent states despite the social tensions that would follow from their economic development...

...Arnold sets forth the evolution of the Western camp to its present difficult position, that is, the whole historical tendency that has made for a shift from a Pax Britannica to a Pax Americana...

...Still more important than the eco nomic-strategic aspects of the struggle between power blocs, which partly cor responds to "an ordinary conflict over spheres of interest," is the political aspect...

...In his emphasis on the need for planning within the democratic world, he rightly criticizes the failures in thinking of democratic Socialists who were committed to the economics of a "free market" in former years...

...The minimum step he suggests for the West is Atlantic Union, which could take a form ranging from "full federation to loose commonwealth ties...

...It is a particular mark of his skill that he is able to hold in balance, not allowing one to absorb the other, the view of the world struggle as a power struggle and the view that it is a battle of ideologies...

...Arnold quickly sketches the growth of the Eurasian bloc, formed through victory in European war and through revolution in China...

...The Communists propose to do this through an infallible caste of "professional revolutionaries" (i.e., a privileged elite of technological intelligentsia) and concomitant totalitarian methods of planning...

...Here one suspects an excessively rationalist approach on Mr...

...have all, though in varying degrees, lost their former status vis a vis the only two great powers left in the contemporary world, and become spectators, or at most second ary figures, in a conflict transcending the old national and political boundaries...

...Seen from a long-range perspective, the political struggle resolves itself into alternative methods of coping with the task of unifying a world society that has, by every economic and human measure, become indivisible...

...Arnold scores one of his most effective, and troubling, points: it is precisely its effective pattern of political domination that makes Communism attractive to the new elites in the backward countries as they struggle to transform their own societies: The totalitarian state may horrifyliberals and socialist democrats, but it holds a very definite attraction fornational revolutionaries in search of an instrument of control...

...let at the moment Britain hardly plays a role more significant than they do...

...Unfortunately, however, "the Soviet regime is able to exploit the historic cleavage between Western and Eastern societies, which runs parallel to the conflict of interest between industrial and agricultural countries...

...Arnold is much more persuasive, however, in buttressing his political proposal by an economic analysis that shows the inability of Europe to maintain, let alone build, a viable economy unless there is a new form of association with America...

...And together with this development Mr...

...The hoped-for stabilization is a mirage...

...would behave "like the leader of a group of nations forming a community" in which there could be a variety of social forms...

...In an account distinguished by analytical finesse, Mr...

...As a consequence of the break-up of the world market some decades ago, and because of universal tendencies set into motion by the impact of modern technology on both advanced and backward countries, we now have a new struggle for world domination which retains elements of traditional imperialist rivalry but also has new and unprecedented dimensions of ideological struggle...

...Not only can it take advantage of the Western imperialist past, but it can represent itself as the model of a nation which has by revolutionary methods successfully negotiated the process of transforming a backward agricultural society into an advanced industrial one...

...The series of wars and revoluions that mark twentieth century history show no sign of having exhausted themselves...

...In the past, one of the principal defects of European socialism was a kind of "colonialist" outlook that saw political democracy as developing only after the proper economic base was secured in the backward areas...

...It is to the credit of the English political writer, G. L. Arnold, whose work is familiar to the readers of DisSENT, that in The Pattern of World Conflict he has managed, with both skill and realism, to cut through the confusion of daily events and provide a generalized picture of the contemporary world...

...and West European economic strength is impressive—and foresees at least the possibility mat the U.S...

...And all the while, the Soviet Union and its supporting nations would be making enormous industrial advances and even liquidating some of the more inhumane features of their despotism...

...He has the kind of mind that is rare among socialist (or for that matter, other kinds of) writers: he habitually questions his own predilections and assumptions...

...Arnold has to say...

...In general, Mr...

...Keen analyst though he is, Mr...

...Arnold finds himself in the same difficulties that the rest of us do when it comes to proposed solutions...

...he is very good at showing how economics, traditional institutions and new ideol ogies relate one to the other, both working together and jarring one an other...

...he demonstrates in completely convincing terms that what is needed is not a series of hand-outs, no matter how generous, but a farreaching and integrated plan for social and economic modernization, a plan that is possible only if the advanced nations are ready to commit their own economic destiny to a common control...

...The West, lacking any single direction, has a number of choices ranging from a simple and entirely obsolete reactionary policy to the possibility of central planning through democratic leadership responsible to the peoples of the respective states...

...Still, it might be objected that a writer so critical of the "empty universalism" of the United Nations would be a little less sanguine that an Atlantic Union could avoid its own "empty universalism"—though he does show how the pressing nature of common problems should force America into the reasonable course he proposes...

...It is difficult to take issue with much of what Mr...

...Both sides are forced, willy-nilly, to face the problem of a massive tendency toward the final break-up of traditional society and its replacement by industrialized urbanism...

...Arnold is at his caustic best when he points to the in adequacy of Western liberal proposals for "more economic aid" and "more Point 4...

...If, he says, there is not a supranational market together with planned economy and full employment, the West may face a repetion of the disastrous inter-World War period with its unemployment, depression and inner decay of democratic institutions—a danger that increasingly inheres in the economic disproportion between Europe and America...

...but it can also give the socialist some uncomfortable moments, for he is a writer impatient with formulas and cant...

...Because Britain displayed enough realism to accept a position subordinate to the Americans, it avoided the catastrophe of the Germans and Japanese, whose fully imperialist policy led them to defeat in war...

...It may be very disagreeable but it is a fact that suchparties have a considerable advantage where circumstances favor a"revolution from above" and a dictatorial regime to suit it...

...Arnold writes as a moderate socialist, and his book has already caused some distress among our liberal reviewers...

...No sooner do the power blocs patch up temporary and tacit agreements for a period of "peaceful competition," than there erupt new rebellions in Africa among the unconsulted masses...

...In the West rumblings of discontent (France, Spain) continue...

...He tries to face up to the problem of American hegemony in such a structure— his own data concerning the increasing disparity between U.S...

...And in the wake of these crises, new generations seek to find their way amid the wreckage of yesterdays plans and ambitions...

...And here Mr...

...His special gift is not so much for erecting formidable new theories as for employing familiar concepts with unusual precision and refinement...

...That is, he sees exactly the depth and extent of the struggle between the two major blocs in the world today, and in a first-rate if condensed section he describes how Germany, Britain and Japan "having traded knockout blows for over a generation...

...Throughout the greater part of the world the chief political issue today is Communist or non-Communist direction of revolu tionary movements having for their aim a radical break with the pre-industrial past...

...The rejection of the primacy of profit—i.e., of private investment— is the real reply to the Communist attempt to fashion a lasting alliance between nationalist movements and the Soviet Union...

...In this struggle, the uncommitted and "underdeveloped" nations are seen as a potential power...