The New Leader Book Paqe
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
The New Leader Book Paqe The Condition of Survival By JOSEPH T. SHIPLEY THt CONDITION OF MAN. By Lewit Mumford. Hmreourt, Br met d) Co., Nam York. 1^ * massive (slid monumental trilogy...
...Prom the 14th to the wars of the 20th century spread this era of expansion, which encouraged the growth, at an increasing pace, of capitalism, militarism, acientism, and mechanization, with the "counter-movements" of protestantism, romanticism, and democrscy...
...To th* wisdom of sn orderly aad discerning mind is added th* charm of aa apt and fluent expression...
...Th* Culture af Cisaes," 1988...
...This, too, is s present dsnger...
...he then attributes the Bacchic mysteries and Messianic dreamt of th* centuries before Christ to reaction against the Creeks' rigid rule of reason...
...Any general lurvey must make aim pi i ftentions...
...He even elevstes the largely discarded dream symbolism into a lif«-motif, as when he declares that "the formal staircase may have been in origin what it now is in dream— a symlKil of the sexual act...
...On the whole, one gathers that the labor movement Has nevertheless made greater strides toward equali-tarian policies than other institutions with comparable standing...
...More objectively than most, he lays bare the parochialism of Plato's ideals, which leave "the chief sacred cows of the world, slavery and claaa rule, contentedly chewing their cud...
...Joseph T. Shipley drama reviewer far The New Leader, m editor of "The Americas Bil.jla* »sM af-ther «f ssversj mmmM aaWator...
...Yet he is wise enough to recognize that unions are part of a social and economic millieu and reflect its prejudices...
...Northrup tries to fill in a segment of the total picture by doing a thorough analysis of the relationship of the Negro worker to the organized labor mo> ment...
...Beginning with the ancient Greeks, liumford seeks the essence of the various contributions to western culture, their values and their limitations...
...It is therefore obvious that Negro workers who want unions to continue their fight for equal opportunity must join and support the unions...
...Recently he edited "A Dictionary of Literary Criticism...
...In the midst of a second World War, many feel a crying need for faith...
...obvious that the mean exists not through observance but as a mathematical space between opposite unbalances...
...Mumford seems to accept this dangerous doctrine, when speaking of the centuries after Jesus he declares that "the fact of agreement was -lore important than the dogma that might be agreed on...
...PERHAPS I have simplified Mumford's point...
...author makes a painstaking analysis of ihe building trades, the railroads, textiles, longshoremen, iron snd steel, automobiles, aircraft and shipbuilding...
...these at timet sweep one into overstatements...
...Union leaders, rank and filers and all the rest of us who regard the labor movement as a progressive social force will do well to ponder over its analysis...
...but l.a presses it simply...
...Northrup is simply adhering to a t -edition among academic economists who have unduly emphasised the importance of structure...
...More lengthily, he traces the shiftings of emphasis within Christianity until the bleak of the Middle Ages—a discontinuity effected not by ideas but by disease: the Black Plague that, beginning ia 1847, killed almost one-half the population of Europe...
...1 would be irclined to stress somewhat leas then the author does the philosophical preconceptions of union leaders a* a determinant of racial policy...
...But Mumford himself has told the story of Utopias, and knows their visionary nature too well to let them deeply color hi* present study, .save as indications of the direction* for man's climb...
...expansion must *ome a "period of humanlsation, "wherein —for salvation or indeed survival—man must achieve a balanced economy and • balanced personality: a dynamic equilibrium...
...1^ * massive (slid monumental trilogy ("Technics and Civilization," 1934...
...It but applies to our tinea, hs tfjtfa, the ancient Chinese principle of harmony and equilibrium...
...Our thinkers, no less hum our jittery or our jitterbug youth, era toe prone to date wisdom from the birth ai Freud or of Marx...
...Indeed, he says, "It is dullcult to understand how Negroes can improve their lot without the aid of organized labor...
...Harpert...
...ia our cry, in science aa in news...
...The excellent pamphlet published by the New York State War Council "How Management Can Integrate Negroea in War Industry" is an illustration of the kind of practical insight which union leaders would find useful in coping with the problem...
...3.50...
...it makes impossible distinction between gang loyalty and civic devotioi., between Jesus and Hitler...
...The rise of capitalism from this medieval stew is traced not in Protestantism but within the Catholic Ch urch itself, as Thomas Aquinss saw it...
...such words as "id," "a negative suger-ego," show that Freudian concepts inform Mumford's thinking...
...The claim, widely made beyond this book, that ours is a dying time, an age of decay, seems to me the result of a lingering amid battle statistics, of th* too exclusive pondering of such works (stressed by Mumford) as Mann'* "Magic Mountain," Eliot's "Waste Land," Joyce's "Ulysses...
...Yet "without the perpetual rediscovery snd reinter-pretstion of history, without free access to that reservoir, the life' of any single feneration would be but a trkkie of water in a desert...
...The racial policies of a union are viewed as an outcome of the economic environment and the social philosophy of its leaders...
...In some detail the...
...for couched in a figure or cradled in a balanced rhythm that lulls us to acceptance might be ideas undeserving of credence...
...but her*, when one breaks the spell that bears the thought, to examine its bases, one generally finds these—within the scop* of this reviewer's judgment—both sound snd sternly monitory...
...But it is obvious that in no large group has reason ruled...
...Egypt, that one-horse shay of culture, was about to collapse...
...Rich as this vol urn* Is, it is mad* more rewarding by th* dignity, th* grace, the color of its style...
...Another sign of Muniford's temporality is his pervasive Freudianism...
...The exaltation of faith without regard to the validity of the ideas in which men have faith, leads to the destruction of values...
...and perhaps also (despite his immediate self-conscious disclaimer) the elevation of Patrick Geddes into the "new mutation," "the Bacon and the Leonardo, perhaps the Galileo, of an idolum that w'" re~ plact the half-world of th* period of expansion...
...A proper evaluation and evolution ^>f our time is more likely, in proportion as men wisely consider "The Condition of Men...
...Mumford is singularly free from such rath generalisations...
...A KTER the era of...
...None of thme latter comments should detract from the fact that this is an important and useful book...
...If I have any critical comment to make on Dr...
...There ia nothing startlingly nonl in fata doctrine...
...It probably requites no great quality of discernment to recognize that the problem of the Negro in American life is the most persisting and fundamental social question of our time...
...On* of the chief errors of "modem" ^Mumford emphasises, is his sole tern with contemporaneousness: •What's the latest...
...Every farm has its silo, where "decay" produces fertiliser and fodder...
...Some phrases are separable, gems in the coronet of a chapter: "latent elements that still swim, like blind eyeless fish, in the deepest waters of the unconscious...
...In this time, too, nationalism broke the bonds of the church (catholic means universal), planting rival orchards of which We now eat the bitter fruits...
...Th* *s^n|JaWord'a study lies in its documented gathering from the past to point the way ahead...
...Organized labor does not come off too well and there can be no disputing the facts from which Dr...
...The vital lies of the Christian creed" were more effective than "the numb truths of the pagan philosophers...
...The Condition of Man," 1944) Lewis Mum-ford has taken the measure of civilization, and by examining its growth ss wall as its present condition has set forward the essentials of its vital progression...
...The last of the three volumes, Just published, considers tke condition of man in terms of the rival tags g*f body, misad, and spirit, of the antipodal strains of society end the in-dividaal...
...Northrup draws his conclusions...
...others ere embedded beyond extraction in the movement of s thought...
...His work takes form as the most comprehensive single analysis of the Western World from its ancient beginnings to our time...
...He points out the "sure instinct for attack" in Jesus, breaking With the strong points of Jewish culture: Sabbath observance, diet laws...
...Equally simple, but more brilliant, is his indication of the perpetual tension between the life-forming impulses in the self (the new formative idea), and the community processes that while prolonging th* existence of th* idea tend to harden if not to kill it* original living spirit...
...thus l.udwig liewisohii, speaking of poetic creation, says that any faith, even a false one, is better than no faith...
...only rarely do they spot the surface of his thought...
...By Herbert R. Northrup...
...This was followed, not by a spiritual regeneration, but by a grasping for opportunities as with the carpetbaggers of our ruined South and an escapism as among the flaming youth —end matrons—of our jazz age...
...To this we may attribute hi* emphssis on women and sex "mysteries" in the account of the shift from Greek to Christian thought...
...His specific suggestions for the future—garden markets in the cities, population spread through regional planning—are wisely less political than social...
...b* may have intended to recoid but not approve...
...Contrasting the Persian opposition of good snd evil with th* Greek doctrine that both extreme* are bad, virtue lies in the mean, Mumford adds that even the mean may be in-temperately pursued...
...Northrup's account it is that he does not adequately describe the techniques and approaches which have been found successful in making for interracial cooperation in unions, "or example, I know from personal experience that the Laundry Workers '' New York could serve as a valuable case study...
...This utterance, and the remark that Machiavelli made political uae of the Oedipus complex, may be passing jocosities...
...These forma required a different justification, fa* "Property has natural limits: limits of nae, beyond which more property is a harden...
...In the author's judgment the situation of the Negro in the labor movement ia improving...
...its examinatloa ^>f the past, its survey of the present, its prescription for the future, furnish a brilliant light and a challenging fire...
...his chapter on the Renaissance is entitled, with a psysical thrust, "Uprising of the Libido...
...What age is without its wars, its satirist, its decadents—or its truces, and its seeds of future growth...
...though indeed Mumford reminds us that Protestantism dM not wait for the 18th century and Luther, but appeared in the 12th century, took form in the Waldensian movement, organised by a repentant business man...
...The New Leader Book Paqe The Condition of Survival By JOSEPH T. SHIPLEY THt CONDITION OF MAN...
...One almost expects him to add, the Christ...
...but the psychoanalytic terminology is at times obtrusive...
...In some, this might b* dangerous...
...The Black Worker By JACK BARBASH ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE NEGRO...
...In this regard, however, Dr...
...Plato's "rule of reason" lies within his dream Republic, as later in Butler's picture of Nowhere ("Erewhon") where what we deem crime is treated as disease and what we deem disease is treated as crime...
...Such a characterization of an age marks one that is embedded in it...
...But capital has no limits whatever" Thus the standards Machi-avelli set for the ruler are reshaped for the merchant prince of an era of ex-pansion...
...Nowhere else is it possible to find in one place the details of the Negro's participation and lack of participation in the organized labor movement...
...Moreover, I think that the author ia not on firm ground in empbn-izing industrial unionism as an essential condition of union interracial cooperation...
...To say that faith in a "lie" saved the world—for Mumford's next words are: "nothing less than faith would enable the survivors of this world to go on"—is to suggest that we have saved the world but lost our own souls...
Vol. 27 • July 1944 • No. 30
