Dear Editor
Dear Editor No Benchmark I have no desire to quarrel with the stress George P. Brockway places on full employment in his "Dismal Science" column entitled "Unemployment Japanese Style" (NL, May...
...Laski may have failed to understand how powerful an inspirational force men like himself couldbe...
...No, John Smith cannot become Adam Smith, but given the proper exemplars he might attain a distinction of his own...
...The date in the quote above should have read, "June 16, 1940...
...And I added, "Because of its hierarchical distribution of wealth and its systematic maldistribution of income, Japan cannot consume all it produces and must sell overseas...
...Tawney, who was far more confident about our potentialities without exhibiting blindness to our inadequacies...
...Mandel was murdered by the Milice on July 7,1944.—Ed...
...that merely by education John Smith won't become Adam Smith...
...And what an exemplar Laski was...
...Three weeks later Man-del was killed...
...Since so much of Japan's small business is family owned and operated, there are few layoffs in that sector as well when the times get hard...
...The Japanese consumer pays for that in heightened prices...
...Although it relies on custom rather than compulsion, the effect is the same...
...Brockway hints at this when he alludes to Japanese protectionism, but he stops short of explaining how that has "worked" by gouging the Japanese consumer...
...Again, there is no justification for quarreling with an objective of full employment and a reluctance to accept passively the existence of a "natural rate...
...Laski's Limitation Harold Laski may have "adored the humanity in humankind," as Lewis S. Feuer contends ("In the Company of Socialist Saints," NL, March 14-28), but I don't think he held out too much promise for its full intellectual development...
...In his essay, "An Experiment in Democratic Education," Tawney maintains that people seek education "not in order that they may become something else, but because they are what they are...
...In a sense, this practice serves society well, but there remains the cost of the lost production...
...Denver, Colo...
...The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...C. Thomas Bastien A distorted fax, and consequent editing error, produced the confusion C. Thomas Bastien cites...
...New York City Milton J. Ezrati Senior Vice President for Economics and Investment Strategy, Nomura Capital Management George P. Brockway replies: Milton J. Ezrati has read me too hastily...
...and the mitigation is tawdry...
...For a more detailed account (not a very pretty picture) of the Japanese economy, Ezrati may want to consult "America's Setting Sun" (NL, June 14,1982...
...Far from holding up Japan as a kind of benchmark for the U.S., I wrote that the Japanese addiction to gambling and speculating on real estate is supported "by underpaying large classes of workers, especially women, and by underfunding social services...
...But alas his socialism seems stripped of surprise, devoid of drama: He strictly defined man's educational future in terms of what had been, or what was, not what might be...
...It simply has shifted the burden away from the employers and workers involved...
...In short, people are underemployed...
...Here Laski has clearly missed the point: It is not imperative that John Smith become Adam Smith, but only more of what John Smith really is...
...So de Gaulle left instead...
...Make no mistake, however...
...the taxes are in effect paid by those who may benefit from them...
...But I doubt whether the argument looks convincing to most people...
...Major firms in Japan by custom hesitate to lay off people in recession...
...But in holding up Japan as a kind of benchmark for the United States, he reveals what seems to be a misunderstanding of Japan's employment practices and their impact on that society...
...So unlike the United States, which allows hardship on the unemployed and imposes various taxes to help mitigate it, Japan has opted for what amounts to a consumer levy to cope with the situation...
...I would clearly distinguish Laski from a saint such as R.H...
...In any case, I cannot share Ezrati's admiration for the American practice, "which allows hardship on the unemployed and imposes various taxes to help mitigate that hardship...
...In fact, official Japan has provided firms with a payback for this system by establishing regulations and practices that give them monopolistic or oligopolistic profits...
...He clung to the belief that the rump of French democracy could reorganize somewhere on French territory, perhaps in Algeria...
...What Japan has done is tantamount to imposing a mandate on employers to carry surplus labor through a recession...
...It is a mistake, though, to use Japan the way Brockway has in his article...
...Bronxville, N. Y. Melvin L. Rogers Correction In her article on "Remembering Anti-Semitism in France" (NL, May 9-23) Janice Valls-Russell writes: "The night of June 16,1944, Churchill's envoy, General Spears, tried to persuade [Georges] Mandel to leave for London...
...De Gaullethen left for England...
...Japan has not avoided the problem, as Brock-way seems to imply...
...The hardship, he may be assured, is real...
...Dear Editor No Benchmark I have no desire to quarrel with the stress George P. Brockway places on full employment in his "Dismal Science" column entitled "Unemployment Japanese Style" (NL, May 9-23...
...In a letter to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (January 12,1917) Laski laments that "leisure for 90 per cent of people is consciously unproductive and they neither have nor want to have the tug of the heart which impels a few in each generation to examination and speculation about human experience...
...If this sounds a bit starry-eyed, consider the letter Tawney sent to William H. Beveridge on December 22, 1915: "He [the British worker] has taught me a good deal, among other things that his philosophy, as much as that of his masters, is 'get as much and give as little as you can.'" Laski, in another letter to Holmes (January 10, 1917), insists "that some people can't do other people's work...
...Mandel hesitated: Wouldn't 'the Jew' then be rightly called a deserter...
...It is my understanding that de Gaulle left France in June 1940, and went to England...
...Anyone who visits Japan can see ample evidence of the phenomenon...
...Instead, large firms reassign people wholesale, and all firms simply use the existing staff to work on a reduced level of output...
...He even proposed "A National College of All Souls" that could develop "the higher possibilities of the human spirit" and would be open to "all the nation's sons and daughters...
...What a capacious mind, what intellectual vigor, what a passion for fine books, what a genuine adoration for the life of the mind...
...Japanese managements and shareholders do not necessarily bear the burden of this mandate...
Vol. 77 • August 1994 • No. 8
