FOR THE GOOD LIFE
HUITT, RALPH K.
For the Good Life The Paradoxes of Democracy, by Kermit Eby and June Greenlief. Association Press. 219 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Ralph K. Huitt THE paradoxes of democracy, if I understand this...
...Unfortunately, the problems are easier to pose than to solve...
...If he is "different," people will think he is funny and a committee of Congress may inquire how he got that way...
...Faithful to his own basic premise, Eby would trouble the conscience of the individual, give him the tools, and leave him free to work for democracy and the good life in his own way...
...Without it, talk of "blood money" and organizations "supposedly" standing for ethical values may seem harsh to members of churches and trade unions...
...Self-employment is a snare and small business an anachronism in an economy of mass-production enterprises...
...Discontinue preparing for war, even without general disarmament...
...The solution, then, is religious...
...If he insists on democratic participation in its affairs, his group will lose to better-disciplined enemies...
...Eby says that his one desire as a teacher is "to produce tough-minded and functioning idealists" who would know what they believe, get a base in organization, and go to work...
...For instance, working-men are said to have "shared in the blood money of the Korean War, even though many of them understood that it was blood money . . ." Then, more generally: "And the American churches, like American unions, are caught upon the horns of the moral dilemma: they would stand, supposedlyi for ethical values, and yet remain a living part of a rich America relentlessly preparing for war...
...To protect himself politically or economically, he must belong to an organized group...
...The authors of The Paradoxes of Democracy, a professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago and his assistant, bring to their statement of the dilemma a warm concern for the individual human being and a mature awareness that the problems are made by social forces and not bad people...
...These alternatives are not considered nor even suggested, though some such process would seem to be called for if we are to face fairly this "paradox of democracy...
...All this has been said before, but it is none the less urgent for being familiar...
...What should we do now besides what we are doing...
...The mass media do his thinking and his neighbors set his goals...
...only the method is social science...
...To ask the authors to do so would be unfair, but the obligation to frame alternatives and consider their consequences is not...
...The rhythm of his life is set by the time-clock...
...Refused to work...
...It should be said, in all fairness, that this criticism probably misses the point of the book...
...In the last chapter the authors assert that "we cannot separate the democratic idea from the Christian concept of life," and the book closes with Kermit Eby's own affirmation of faith...
...Now what should the working-man have done while we fought in Korea...
...His work could be done better by a robot—and with automation, soon will be...
...Continue to prepare but abolish profits and work for subsistence wages, or curtail consumer goods, to avoid being rich while we prepare...
...Reviewed by Ralph K. Huitt THE paradoxes of democracy, if I understand this book, all stem from the basic paradox of a social system dedicated to the enhancement of the individual personality, in which the machinery of life makes the preservation of individual values every day more difficult...
...Or worked for nothing...
...Consider the life of the ordinary American...
Vol. 21 • March 1957 • No. 3
