HAROLD LASKI'S DOUBLE STANDARD

...It gave to its devotees something to live and die for (Indeed I'm inclined to suggest to Mr...

...It is precisely because Mr...

...Russia has given us much to think about but emphatically she has not supplied that faith...

...Islam marvellously aroused the Arab world...

...Russia and Germany about equally disproved the orthodox capitalist contention that the dominance of private profit was necessary for technological progress, but both countries had done it by substituting in varying degrees and varying ways the authority of the state and its bureaucracy for the authority of private owners in exploiting the people...

...Reviewed by Norman Thomas IT IS BY NOW fairly old stuff to describe Communism as a religion, to compare its victories with the victories of Christianity, and its organizational structure with the Roman Catholic church...

...Even if one should grant a larger measure of truth to some of Mr...

...Laski's method, consider the following sentence: "After 1933 in Berlin, he [the common man] was taught to think of Moscow as the root of all evil...

...What Mr...

...Laski is himself a Socialist and a writer of power that he owes it to himself and his readers to give them more substantial grounds for a better faith than are to be contained in rhetorical assertions alone...

...Precisely because I so largely agree with Mr...

...Indeed, the confusion and inconsistencies of Communist propaganda are even greater than in the example we have cited...

...Laski's analysis of the acquisitive society and share his conviction of the necessity of a great social faith for the building of a better world, I am deeply concerned with the validity of his claim that the Russian revolution has given us that faith of which it is the triumphant expression...

...Laski's authority his argument is persuasive, otherwise it fails completely to the ground...

...Evils in Russia, some of which be acknowledges in general but never in specific terms, are merely regrettable "excesses," examples of "ugly Byzantinism," to use one of his harsher phrases...

...Despite the Arab awakening, it is fortunate that Islam did not overrun the western world...

...Laski's dogmatism...

...Not Hitler but Stalin is the pioneer in all the techniques of Machiavellian deceit and ruthless oppression upon which mpdern dictatorship depends...

...He contents himself with rhetorical assertions couched in very general terms...

...If the reader is willing to accept them simply on Mr...

...Laski still abhors...

...Evils of- the world outside the U.S.S.R...

...I believe that Russian Communism, especially in its earlier days, had many of the values of religion, and that probably it released and guided the immense forces of a great people who undoubtedly are on the road to becoming the most powerful nation in the world...

...No, the world needs a noble faith, consonant with reason, to achieve real civilization...

...He is a political scientist and economist of standing...

...But the Russia which I saw in 1937 was anything but a country which had achieved the Christian ideal which Mr...

...NO book review can afford space for an examination of the real facts about the Russian revolution...

...are of the essence of its social system...

...Laski in denying...

...By the same token, the burning of Moscow in 1812, the months when Britain stood alone, and the great American achievements in the Battle of Production after Pearl Harbor would prove the adequacy of Russian serfdom or British imperialism or American capitalism—propositions which I should agree with Mr...

...His great learning appears in his wide range of quotations, but when he examines the Russian revolution not only does he refrain altogether from factual economic analysis, but there is an amazing lack of any quotations, literary or historic, from Russian or non-Russian sources, to enrich his argument...

...To argue as does Mr...

...If democratic socialism was not perfectly achieved in these countries, if indeed no system and no faith could save such little countries in a war-cursed world, at least they gave some ground for hope in a nobler social faith than the Russia of man-made famine, purges, and the slavery of the concentration camps...

...He believes that the basic failure of our present society is in its handling of its technological equipment...

...Various commentators on Mr...

...So great were the differences in reward for labor in Russia that no one could honestly claim that approximate equality of income gave some sort of compensation for the most complete denial of civil liberties in the modern world...

...Laski's new gospel have observed that the extraordinary determination of Russian resistance in this war (in which Stalin was Hitler's quasi-ally, until the latter attacked him) is about the only definite proof that the author brings forth to support his claims for the religious quality of the Russian revolution...

...It was a country which was making great technological progress and which had pretty well conquered unemployment...

...Laski's belief in the impermanence of Soviet dictatorship...

...And there was no evidence before the war to justify Mr...

...from the Summer of 1939 to the Summer of 1941 the root of all evil became the source of eternal friendship ; while on June 22,1941 that source of friendship became again the root of evil to which he had been so painfully conditioned...

...Laski and other amateurs in a theology in which they admittedly do not believe, that they might try their hand at drawing parallels between Mohammed and Stalin with rather better results than between Jesus and Stalin, or even his nobler predecessor, Nicolai Lenin...

...It takes more than the victory of Stalingrad to answer the facts which have been given us by writers like Souveraine, Serge, Koestler, Utley, and Chamberlin...

...Laski's method of presenting his case is so extraordinary as to deserve description...

...Yet not even in his analysis of that society does he give us any economic facts and figures...

...Laski's statements than I find possible, his argument would be greatly impaired by his curious double standard...

...On reflection I should qualify this statement...

...Laski fails to tell us is that by a simple transposition of the words Berlin and Moscow it is an equally accurate description of Stalinist propaganda which, according to the author, is for our age what early Christianity once was...

...Germany had done the same, and both of them by the method of concentrating on preparation for war...

...It is dubious business to try to establish the quality of religion by the courage of its followers in war...

...In spite of some democratic language in the Russian Constitution, the power of the dictator grew year by year and democracy, even within the Communist Party, steadily declined...

...Stalingrad is the resolution of a problem" that our whole generation "must solve or die...

...Laski describes and praises as "the passionate affirmation of the right of each human being to fulfill his individuality...

...Laski gives this theme an emphasis and a rhetorical—but somewhat repetitious—eloquence which are his own...

...Of itself, this is an accurate description of Nazi propaganda...

...The Communist who owes blind allegiance to Stalin, if he lives in America, is now compelled to support, at least for the present, that capitalist system under the guise of "free enterprise" which the Russian revolution drowned in blood and which Mr...

...One can only copy Mr...

...Laski that in the period between the two wars the Russian people had achieved a working faith which set them in happy contrast to the rest of the world is to ignore the fact that by all the tests of the good life the comman man was far better off in all the Scandinavian countries, including Finland than he was in Russia...

...TO appreciate Mr...