The Future of Socialism:

...But he brushes off the record of democratic socialist performance in Britain and elsewhere with a few derogatory and dogmatic sentences...

...The result is a readable but superficial and dogmatic version of the now popular thesis that socialism—which the author nowhere defines—is the enemy of liberty, in itself incompatible with human nature...

...Present-day Communism is not socialism, but a perversion even of Marxism...

...The rethinking that democratic socialists need to do cannot emulate Eastman et al...

...If democratic socialists are laying the tracks for death, how can anyone cooperate with them...

...It is of the utmost importance for democratic socialism to proclaim its conviction that free men in fellowship can plan effectively, that such planning does not require a totalitarian state, that—at least under present conditions—it will fare best under a mixed economy, giving scope to many of the varied incentives which make men work...

...Friedrich Hayek's freedom and Eastman's would almost certainly have fallen before an American fascism except for New Deal measures in the Great Depression, measures largely inspired by socialism...

...Every great theory and theme of social organization has been frustrated in the achievement of its finest aims by the imperfections of fallible human beings...

...With this last point I would agree, though I would protest vigorously the assumption that socialism has been a principal deterrent to intelligent birth control...

...But it has to its credit successes in the conquest of poverty and the fulfilment of democracy...

...Reviewed by Norman Thomas Author, "A Socialist's Faith,'' "The Test of Freedom" MAX EASTMAN begins his book with a candid and appealing account of the process whereby he completely repudiated the idea and the movement to which he gave brilliant service for the best years of his life...

...Indeed, freedom cannot live in the modern world except as it keeps house with peace and plenty...

...To the degree that freedom was impaired or altered, it was the victim of inescapable developments of our economic and technological progress under the profit system and of our organization into absolute nationalist states...

...Marx's theory, however, lent itself to such perversion...

...Eastman has simply refurbished some magazine articles and a speech, added a little to them, and strung them together without logical progression of analysis or construction...

...Max Eastman, as Editor of the old Masses, helped his countrymen to understand that hungry men can't eat freedom...

...But always under dominant devotion to the principle that the social and individual good of man is no by-product of the search for individual profit, but must be consciously sought in a fellowship of workers with hand and brain...

...But never under the unrealistic concept which Eastman seems to accept: that all property, whether in land, resources, stocks, bonds, tools or consumer's goods, has the same moral warrant and the same importance to freedom...

...Scientific socialists, Christian socialists, democratic socialists, "socialist liberals" (advanced New Dealers), however they differ, are failures by definition...

...It has problems to face...

...It is, moreover, unrealistic nonsense to assume that such imperfect liberty as was given under nineteenth-century capitalism was modified or destroyed by socialism or socialistic liberalism...

...To some extent, the answer for socialism, as in the ease of democracy and Christianity (and capitalism), must be "yes...

...Eastman deals harshly and effectively...

...The question of whether socialism has failed cannot be dismissed by discussing the inadequacies of this book...

...At least let's take time out every afternoon,' the tooblessed citizen would say, "and see what each can grab.'" Our convert's rejection of socialism and socialists includes every type from Robert Owen to Karl Marx, from the Utopians to Lenin...

...Such an introduction from such a man would lead the reader to expect a book of unusual depth and significance...

...But if one can't cooperate with the socialists of Europe and Asia, the struggle against Communism is doomed...

...But they also want equity, justice, bread and peace...

...Men do indeed want liberty despite their frequent efforts to escape it...

...Ours is a world which must plan for increasing measures of collective ownership and control in order to use its science and technology effectively, especially since its natural resources are being exhausted...

...In criticizing Communism...

...If that sort of socialism is to fail, democracy will fail...

...But one gathers that his "radical conservative" would be a man who honors capitalism for its past performance, believes in some vague "distributive state," in the necessity of private property —with no discrimination in kind of property—to the continued existence of freedom, and finally in the extreme importance of birth control...

...in assuming that freedom is the only social god for which men ought to care...

...The same socialism which would bring in the servile state expects too much of man...

...For it is wholly impossible to create again anywhere in the world the social and economic conditions in which Jeffersonian democracy was imperfectly established...

...Democratic socialists should re-examine the question of who should own what...

...Whether they know it or not, socialists and "socialist liberals" are laying the tracks "along which another death train will travel...

...His sweeping condemnation of democratic socialism, however, is not only erroneous but dangerous...

...Eastman refuses to classify as a betrayal of socialism—he is somewhat specific...

...From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,'" Mr...

...Yet, the goal which Marx set was a fellowship of free men and free nations, and toward that goal men ought ever to strive...

...The freedom which nineteenthcentury capitalism afforded was itself a very limited thing...

...After all this criticism, our author is more concerned about "what to call yourself" than about what there is left to justify a name...

...which Mr...

...As Richard Lowenthal has been pointing out in The New Leader, today an effective democratic socialism must be socialism without Utopia—or at least a socialism which does not promise to deliver Utopia like a Christmas present...

...A society which today permits an indispensable resource like petroleum to be privately owned by men like the Texas billionaire, H. L. Hunt, sins against freedom as well as against a democratic or truly efficient economy...

...Eastman says, "sounds very just and noble, but if you use your imagination a little:—What a bore it would be...

...With the delinquent liberals, somewhat more narrowly defined as friends or apologists for Communism, Mr...

...Instead, Mr...

...That sort of socialism has not achieved all its own goals...

...And for much the same reason...

...Equally is it true that the main defense of Western Europe against Communism has been democratic socialism both directly and through its profound influence on conservative parties...