The Home Front:
BOBN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT Browsing Through Recent Pamphlets By William E. Bohn PAMPHLETS came before news papers--and they have never stopped coming. My desk is cluttered with them. Conscience forces me to...
...advocates an overall blueprint plan for the community, but most of us now assume that the Government can and must play a constructive role...
...English...
...Social Security, unemployment insurance or the Federal Trade Commission, he would find it infinitely harder to get any of his friends elected...
...Danes...
...French...
...The author now and then refers to Britain or West Germany or the Scandinavian countries as if they were examples of what he is talking about, but I am sure he did not intend to say that they have socialism in any of those countries...
...And no one would say that the industrial systems in those place run better than ours...
...He is full of enthusiasm for many features of it...
...During his long life, he has expended his strength and his talent teaching working people, organizing working people and living with working people...
...If he tried to abolish the TVA...
...And he has not merely taught workers, lectured to them, shouted at them...
...East Nineteenth Street, New York City...
...But what Mr...
...Some time ago...
...Belgians...
...The pages are filled with tales of kindness recalled by a few of the 15 million Germans who were uprooted from their homes and thrust helpless into an inimical world after World War II...
...A good share of what he has learned he has managed to crowd into these 60 pages...
...He also has obvious faith that the good features will increase and the bad ones diminish...
...Starr has to say about socialism and socialist ideas is sound...
...Starr speaks of our present way of running things as a pragmatic system, a mixed system...
...That they are a part of the nature of things is proved by the fact that they have burgeoned under Republicans as well as Democrats...
...But when he comes to the overall planning which was--and is-characteristic of socialist thought, he shies off: "No one in the U.S.A...
...Conscience forces me to pick a few off the top of the pile and do some sort of justice to them...
...The doers of the good deeds are Amerieans...
...I devoted my page to a remarkable German book...
...Even when he describes their shortcomings, he speaks of them with love and understanding...
...It has now been translated and is published by Harper's under the title Documents of Humanity ($2.50...
...Limping Capitalism, by my old friend Mark Starr...
...First, here is Creeping Socialism vs...
...Despite its title, the booklet is a sober, rational and realistic discussion of a few of the things which are happening to our economic system, There is little in it about socialism and practically nothing to show that capitalism is limping...
...He has constructed a bridge between the university and the trade-union movement...
...Albert Schweitzer writes an introduction which begins, "This volume is one of the most significant to appear in modern times...
...What it is really about is the increasing concentration of capital control and the mounting need of Government intervention to keep things going and protect the interests of the majority of people...
...Here is something to build on for the future...
...They call him by his first name...
...and ends: "May this unique testament serve to liberate man from the still-powerful bondage of hatred...
...He describes the psychology of the different groups--how they feel, what they are after, how to get hold of them...
...Czechs...
...Poles and--yes--Russians...
...Dok-umente der Menschlichkeit...
...Next on my desk is a 60-page booklet, Understanding the Worker, by August Claessens...
...I recommend his work to college professors, to trade-union organizers and to anyone else who wants to find out what goes on under working-class skulls...
...They did not introduce socialism anywhere They merely distinguished them selves by honesty and intelligence...
...There is no preaching, but human nature stands out as basically good...
...The greater part of his space is taken up by a carefully phrased discussion of the relation between Goveminent and business in this country The advancing part played by Government is not due to any socialist influence...
...It runs to 35 pages, costs a quarter and is to be had of the Union for Democratic Socialism, 112...
...He has many times covered this country up and down and across...
...The Socialist party in the days of its prime dominated only a few city governments and had a few members in Congress...
...And this man knows his psychology...
...sold for 50 cents by the Rand School Press, 7 East Fifteenth Street, New York City...
...He is on solid ground,too.in his discussion of the current Republican cliches about "creeping socialism" and "Big Government...
...Gus Claessens is a remarkable man...
...What President Eisenhower and others refer to as "creeping socialism" is a series of laws, institutions and habits forced upon us by our changing ways of producing and distributing goods...
...For all his use of shop-worn phrases, President Eisenhower shows no tendency to do away with social-welfare measures...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 45
