Historical Hodgepodge

...A Theory of Conflict will not convert anyone to Crozier's estimate of the nature and magnitude of the crisis the democracies now face...

...Lincoln...

...It is unfortunately not a law—although it ought to be an obligation—that they will try to rule well...

...This last is a glittering example of the "But other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs...

...the second is at least arguable...

...In short, Crozier has no theory at all to present...

...Yet the two are in close correlation: to rule well may help to keep a man or a team in power...

...Crozier seems to disapprove of almost all, but he sheds new light on almost none...

...France might well have become a Communist country within a year or two of the liberation," if de Gaulle had not instituted reforms immediately after World War II?to the astounding?Leaving aside Ireland's long history of brutality at the hands of the English soldiery, of being treated by the English as a slave people, or at any rate an inferior one, the first major error, on the British side, was probably in the drawing of the dividing boundary in 1920...

...These suggestions, too, are only tenuously connected to the events, trends and ideas the body of the text rehearses...

...He is also prone to assertions ranging from the questionable...

...It used to be a recognised principle of public morality that children, for instance, should be spared pornography—but even they cannot escape it when it surrounds them in bookstalls and is thrust upon them from public hoardings in the street" he writes, conjuring up Dickensian visions of ruthless smut merchants accosting young innocents going home from school, forcing them to gaze upon indecent photographs...

...Reviewed by Michael Mandelbaum Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University The author tips his hand when he dedicates his book "to the victims of Revolution the world over...

...Even partisans of his position may wish that it had found a more adept proponent...

...Of equal utility is a drastically condensed outline of the history of the 20th century, mentioning virtually every conflict of any magnitude that has occurred in recent times...

...By this account social conflict is likely, if not inevitable...

...The resultant hodgepodge includes a potted summary of prominent writers on politics from antiquity to the present that sets out the main facts of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's career, but is of negligible value for becoming acquainted, let alone in coming to terms with, the principle political theorists of the Western tradition...

...The first of these propositions is certainly respectable...

...school of rhetoric...

...He believes that the social upheavals churned up by radical ideas and surging expectations since the French Revolution have left more victims than beneficiaries in their collective wake, and that the tide of turmoil today threatens to submerge the liberal industrial states of the West...

...A Theory of Conflict suffers, too, from a tone of peevish alarm that is no substitute for the lack of a coherent thesis...

...Crozier concludes with some proposed remedies for the ills that afflict us: He calls for the creation of "Departments of Unconventional Wars" to track down subversives, and he wants to limit the distasteful and evidently dangerous flood of pornography that has begun to gush from the lower depths of Western societies...

...He records himself as less than wholly sanguine about man's nature, although some of his pessimism seems to be based on Konrad Lorenz' shaky, if widespread, notion that the close study of greylag geese has something profound to teach us about human behavior...

...Beyond anything else, A Theory of Conflict offers the reader lists?lists of the varieties of the state, the major trends of the last hundred years, the types of extremist movements around, the largest countries of the Revolution, the most original contributors to the techniques of guerrilla warfare, the symptoms of Western social decay, and the preconditions for revolutionary conflict...

...Yet later on Crozier cites anthropological studies of relatively tranquil communities, and admits that the circumstances that cause a conflict to arise and the forms that it takes are extraordinarily diverse...

...To begin with, his arguments are a restatement of the obvious—even for people who are not serious political students: "It is a law of politics that those who achieve power will henceforth devote the major part of their time and energy to keeping it...

...Certainly those interested in a serious attempt to sort out the vast array of recorded social conflict and produce some intelligible general statements about it will have to look elsewhere...

...These iterations might make for an impressive index, but they serve no other apparent purpose...

...But Brian Crozier fails to put the case for either with any skill...