The End of Man Is Man:
SCHAPIRO, J. SALWYN
The End of Man Is Man Basic Values of Western Civilization. By Shepard B. Clough. Columbia. 132 pp. $3.00. Reviewed by J. Salwyn Schapiro Professor Emeritus of History, CCNY; Author, "The...
...Marx, legitimate father of Communism, had condemned it as "bourgeois" morality...
...and systems of government and of law are designed to protect the rights of the individual...
...This question has become an insistent one as a consequence of the conflict between East and West...
...By its terrorism, tyranny and disregard of human rights, totalitarianism has created an unbridgeable chasm between East and West...
...The author states that Western culture can be maintained only by exporting its values to other parts of the world...
...Clough defines culture as "a way of life shared by members of a human society or group of societies...
...elementary education is made universal and compulsory...
...Author, "The World in Crisis" "Liberalism' What are the basic values of Western culture...
...In line with this objective, the Western family is restricted to its "immediate" members, and tends strongly to limit the number of offspring through birth control...
...What caused the Communist states in the United Nations to abstain from voting for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not their perverseness but their repudiation of the Western values on which the Declaration was based...
...However sharply they have differed amongst themselves, Jews, Catholics, Protestants and freethinkers are one in upholding this traditional moral code of the West...
...A social revolution would destroy the only society dedicated to the preservation of the values of Western civilization...
...So firmly grounded is this principle that any violation of it, even a serious one such as disfranchisement of Negroes, is regarded as a deviation from, not as a repudiation of, the "credo of the West...
...Clough examines and evaluates the social, cultural and political institutions organized to further the welfare of the individual...
...And Nietzsche, spiritual father of Fascism, had spurned it as "slave" morality...
...The book contains an excellent chapter glorifying progress as "the very embodiment of our value system in action.' Every idea, every policy, every institution is evaluated according to its usefulness in promoting progress...
...The "end of man is man...
...These values have as their guiding principle the "rights of man," according to which the welfare of the individual "is considered to be above the welfare of any one group or any human situation...
...Communism and Fascism, identical twins psychologically, have stridently repudiated Judeo-Christian morality...
...By emphasizing the virtues of honesty, truthfulness, compassion and sincerity, Judeo-Christian morality has shown deep concern for the integrity of the individual under any and all circumstances...
...Cultural, as well as political and economic, values are being subjected to a revaluation the world over...
...Judeo-Christian morality has no place in a totalitarian regime, Communist or Fascist, under which the individual is nothing, and the state, everything...
...Since the Industrial Revolution, Western culture has broadened to encompass the economic aspect of life, through what Clough calls its "notion of rewards and incentives...
...Hitherto, the Western lands had of themselves been sufficiently powerful to maintain them...
...The economic surplus created by the great technological advance has enabled the West to experiment with the object of improving the social order...
...This irreconcilable conflict has another aspect, that based on widely differing concepts of moral imperatives...
...Because of its conciseness and clarity it succeeds in presenting abstract ideas in concrete terms, and hence is more meaningful to the general reader...
...And it is...
...Clough is of the opinion that "if we would keep our value system intact, we should maintain our organization of society...
...In this sense Western Europe and its offspring, America, have a common culture because of their classical heritage, their religious tradition and their democratic ideals...
...According to Clough there is no possibility of a reconciliation between East and West, because a conflict between cultural systems embodying deeply rooted ways of life, unlike that between transitory politico-economic systems, permits no compromise...
...Clough's book is a forceful reminder of the basic values of Western civilization...
...But the challenge of Communism has changed the situation by ranging onethird of the world against the West...
...If anything, each has claimed to be a more consistent supporter of its tenets than any of the others...
...It now seeks to better the life of the individual on earth by creating more wealth and distributing it more justly...
...From this culture are derived the basic values of Western civilization...
...Such an analysis by a student of economic history should be especially interesting...
...This "ideal of abundance" has found expression in the Welfare State, the most recent creation of Western culture...
...In his book, Professor Shepard B. Clough of Columbia, the wellknown economic historian, pursues this task by providing a philosophic analysis of "our way of life...
...The most Western of all ideas is the idea of progress...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 3
