INSIGHT WITHOUT CORE
Lens, Sidney
Insight without Core This Is Our World, by Louis Fischer. Harper. 522 pp. $5. Reviewed by Sidney Lens LOUIS FISCHER dedicates this book, his second "autobiography," to "the Gandhians of all...
...In obstructing the rise of Asian nationalism," he concludes, "Western imperialism became the breeding ground of Asian Communism...
...Where, for instance, do you read such observations as: "Feudalism is an excellent clue to the puzzles of the present world situation...
...The Soviet Union, he thinks, will change for the better under contact with the West and education...
...But it ought to be read with political bifocals, one part for the brilliant individual observations and the almost poetic style, and the other for the cliche conclusions...
...yet he sums it up with a weighty endorsement, with the usual modifications, of that prevailing policyThe world Louis Fischer sees may have its defects, but we are moving in the right direction...
...Nor does Fischer see the related evil, that America's social program abroad is subordinated to the military, rather than the other way around...
...Fischer sees the United States as a country galloping forward in a "permanent revolution," sired by such diverse revolutionaries as General Motors, Alcoa, and Walter Reuther, and a country which intrinsically "stands for revolution...
...The lion's share of our aid goes to reactionary governments and entrenches them...
...It will take time, but "peace is the mother of time...
...Most of what he says flies in the face of American foreign policy...
...His pen glides wkh the angelic grace of a ballerina, yet the ambivalence between his observations and his conclusions, and the consequent lack of a connecting theme, often make the book difficult to read...
...Where you find feudalism there will be Communism...
...Reviewed by Sidney Lens LOUIS FISCHER dedicates this book, his second "autobiography," to "the Gandhians of all countries...
...It is a pity that a book so packed with brilliant insights should be so lacking in a hard central core...
...As a nation we ought to act more like partners than dictators to our friends in the Western alliance, and we ought not to give aid to "oppressive and unpopular" governments...
...Fischer sees the world in revolution...
...Or the one about Thailand being not one but "several dictatorships existing side by side with rival accumulations of power...
...Or the one about Italy: "The Italian disease is imbedded in the feudal elements of Italian capitalism which make it stubbornly static...
...Turn where you will, there are penetrating insights- Aid to Asia, he points out, has been woefully inadequate...
...The book belongs on every bookshelf...
...Page after page, as he takes you around the world, Fischer sees scores of things which miss the eye of all but a handful of writers...
...We are definitely not going to have a war, because our planet has "entered a phase in which all governments have a stern mandate from their people to avoid war/' (This was said before World Wars I and II and will no doubt be said before War IV, if we last that long...
...Such cosy concepts make it possible for Fischer to believe that our military policy has saved us from the danger of a hot war, and that we may expect the continuation of the cold war but with considerably "warmer relations" between the powers...
...To the extent that Italy, China, and India are feudal, Communism flourishes...
...Our aid is meant to give us bases and military superiority...
...Again what a pity—to see the world so clearly, in spots, and yet not recognize the folly of American foreign policy...
...He sees feudalism as the enemy-But he can not for the life of him record that the United States has in large measure been responsible for propping feudalism, and for inhibiting the revolution in underdeveloped countries...
...It has been the bastion of the status quo—a primary reason for its growing unpopularity in so many areas...
...Beyond that Fischer's program is a fairly good facsimile of that of John Foster Dulles...
...This is a lyrical endorsement of Deutscher's thesis that the Soviet tyranny will evolve towards democracy...
...Herein is reflected the strange confusion of this fascinating work—for the author does not see anything amiss in honoring the non-violent Gandhi and in praising the hydrogen bomb and NATO as the "ultimate war deterrents...
...These blind spots in his evaluation of world affairs mar what otherwise might have been a classic...
...By aiding its colonialist partners, by standing aside in such struggles as Algeria or Kenya, by aiding such reactionaries as Chiang, Bao Dai, and Rhee, the United States, far from being a country that "stands for revolution," has stood for the status quo...
Vol. 20 • July 1956 • No. 7
