DEBUNKING THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
Barnes, Harry Elmer
Debunking The World Of Tomorrow THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, by Leo Cherne. Double-day, Doran. $2.75. Revietced by Harry Elmer Barnes HERE, at last, we have an adult and realistic book which clears...
...In paying for the war, a disproportionate share of the burden will be shifted to the middle class and labor...
...Globaloney fanatics have already tried to discredit Mr...
...All of this is most relevant to the biggest of the postwar problems, that of jobs for the mass of Americans who will be unemployed after the war...
...It has no class consciousness or class program...
...Even union leaders are anticipating that the union membership will drop to a third of the present figure...
...It is rather fortunate that The Rest of Your Life was not written by an "isolationist," even if of great mental stature like Charles Austin Beard, for this would have laid it open at once to the ministrations of the Smearbundr The author is an erstwhile benign war-monger who has not only awakened from his jag but also thrown off the greater part of his hangover...
...The outlook for production and prosperity after the war is surely not cheerful and alluring...
...It will continue to turn out goods with an abundant profusion...
...Those who represent big business are dominant, but they have neither learned anything nor forgotten anything vital since 1929...
...Jobs cannot be found unless industry starts up briskly, but there is little prospect of this...
...It is deliberate, monopolistic, and especially hogtied to the ideal of scarcity and the limitation of output...
...Revietced by Harry Elmer Barnes HERE, at last, we have an adult and realistic book which clears away the cobwebs of the Globaloney of the Washington mystics...
...There seems to be no important segment of industry able and willing to seize the helm and get going at full blast even for private profit, if not for public service...
...This does not mean that the only alternative is Deacon Stalin's recipe, but it does mean that if we do not wish to follow Stalin or create an American fascism, we must find some way to combine full use of our technology with democracy and freedom...
...CHERNE sharply deflates the illusion that business is just going to hum within a fortnight after the Armistice...
...20-23, where servicemen's testimony is adduced to show that the average seasoned men in any branch of the armed service have become so tough that they would send cold chills down the backs of Al Capone's hatchet-men back in Prohibition days...
...And, when these hardened men arrive at that dreamed-of moment of homecoming, they will be greeted with unemployment, social chaos, and moral disillusionment...
...Cherne's candor and realism...
...The future of capitalism in America is undisputed...
...And the outlook for extensive Government employment is not bright under either a Democratic--Administration which has repudiated the New Deal or under the Republicans...
...Americans will stagger along under crushing income taxes for more than the rest of our lives...
...Then, Mr...
...Time devoted a special editorial to the task but could adduce no proof to sustain its attack...
...The social and class situation is no more charming than the economic outlook...
...The Cooperative Movement is the only practical answer which has thus far been made to this major economic problem of our age...
...Some 15,000,000 will be released.from the armed forces and over 20,000,000 from strictly war jobs...
...The labor union movement will be hard hit by unemployment, economic chaos, hostile public opinion, and a vast increase of the suicidal and unpopular jurisdictional strikes...
...The Government, especially the General Staffs, will restrain that portion of private industry which is eager to get going, most industry will be cautious rather than audacious and precipitate, and the people who have money to spend for goods will be timid and hesitant in the face of chaos, business and professional uncertainty, and unemployment...
...Cherne's book, word by word...
...Big business (rugged collectivism)—the great corporations, monopolies and cartels—is in the saddle now and will remain so until capitalism is overthrown...
...Cherne lists the reasons why capitalism can never rise again or succeed...
...THE lack of economic leadership will hamper raising the standard of living...
...Indeed, right in the sentences which follow this dithyramb to capitalism, Mr...
...Cherne is probably slightly on the optimistic side, and even he holds back from ultimates...
...Small business is backed in the corner, stripped and manacled...
...It could contribute nothing more than a smear...
...Yet, the chances are better than 50-50 that the Government will not use this great asset for the public benefit but will either let the plant rot and disintegrate or make a present of it to big business...
...This is as though Julian Huxley, in the midst of an eloquent lecture on evolution, should pause to pay a reverent tribute to the special creation theory...
...The Federal Government, in wartime, has acquired one-fourth of the productive plant of the country...
...It will continue to supply the dynamic energy which will run at least this most important of the world's productive machines...
...Better housing and equipment will be held back by the opposition of big business and the hesitancy of the Government...
...Public taste and big business monopolistic practices will prevent even the extensive manufacture of prefabricated houses, the one great opportunity to provide both better housing and vast civilian employment...
...Labor union racketeering in the building trades will also hamper new housing...
...Even the mental and cultural prospect is depressing...
...It is the preliminary answer to the popular and still dominant lunacy, to the effect that, if we could not move ahead progressively under the favorable conditions of peace, good-will, and orderliness, as they existed in 1940, then the solution was to work up a war which would add endless complications and confusion, take away manpower, dislocate industry, pile up an astronomical debt, promote social and moral chaos, increase racial hatreds, multiply pressure groups, and distract attention from Flynn, Kelly, and Hague to the Hottentots, Papuans, and Andaman Islanders...
...The author starts out by analyzing the meaning of Armistice Day after this war, one of its main "meanings" being that there will be no real Armistice Day, for after Germany and Japan are beaten down there will be endless minor and civil wars "for the rest of your life...
...Those American citizens who want to park their hoops and kites for a moment, leave Alice, the rabbit, and the OWI, and get at least some'faint impression of where we are actually headed should read Mr...
...But who is going to be willing to pay for the higher hourly wages ? Private industry, which has to earn dividends for stockholders and pay heavy taxes, is not likely to do so...
...Anyone who still thus lingers with the bees and flowers should read the second chapter of the book, especially pp...
...The notion that airplane manufacture and television will provide extensive employment is pure baloney...
...The middle class is the backbone of the nation, but, as Theodore Roosevelt once remarked of MeKinley, it has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair...
...Jobs might be provided by spreading work through shorter hours, yet this would accomplish little unless there is full pay for the shorter working period...
...Business monopoly will hold back the use of cheaper metals, alloys, and plastics...
...Cherne does not believe that the excess profits tax will survive the last stages of the war period...
...Cherne modestly estimates that there will be around 19,000,000 unemployed at the close of the war...
...It is doubtful if even Maury Maverick can put this Humpty Dumpty together again...
...Government production is and will be hamstrung, if not crushed altogether, by the big business lobby...
...Cherne relentlessly debunks the vicious, even criminal, simple-mindedness which contended, back in the days when Selective Service was being put over, that military training and armed service would just make us a nation of super-boy scouts, polite, considerate, and robust...
...There were 8,500,000 unemployed in 1940...
...Labor will be on the run after the war...
...Mental breakdowns and mob-mindedness are on the gain...
...For example, after having shown the insuperable difficulties of capitalism, as we have known it in the past, he puts all his eggs in the capitalistic basket: "Capitalism—on the march again...
...Racial and religious intolerance and the antics of pressure groups are already mounting in alarming fashion...
...Despite the great advances in medical and surgical science in the last few years, the public cannot profit by these to any marked degree, so long as the practice of medicine is a private monopoly...
Vol. 8 • October 1944 • No. 42
