Although Comrade Rab had been invited to write this by Kerr Company, it was not published until now. They asked Rab to make so many changes that, in the end, he refused. About John Keracher John Keracher was born in Scotland in 1880. He spent rhe early years of his adulthood in England, whete he was exposed to the ideas of the Social Democratic Federation. Thus, his entry into the Detroit Local of the Socialist Parry of America in 1910, soon afrer his arrival in rhe Unired States in 1909, was a natural outgrowrh of his background. As a...
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Herbert Spencer’s concept of Survival of the fittest…Pseudo Scientists, in Economics, Anthropology, History, etc., have have probably erected more obstacles to the clear understanding of reality than any other group, for their misconceptions are tinted with the gild of scholarship. Herbert Spencer, with his Social Statics, was perhaps the most outstanding of those scholars whose opinions and conclusions were accepted on a large scale by peoples on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain he developed quite a following, but nowhere so avid and devoted desciples as among the burgeoning tycoons in the U.S.A. Following the American Civil War,...
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MUTUAL AID. By Peter Kropotkin, with Foreword by Ashley Montague, and including “The Struggle for Existence” by T. H. Huxley. Extending Horizons Press, Boston, 1955, pp. 362, $3.00. This new issue of Kropotkin’s work on Mutual Aid, first published at the turn of the century, not only satisfies the need for its continued availability but — in some measure — also helps to combat the current neo-Malthusianism and the renewed, though futile, attempts to present capitalist competition as a “law of nature.” Provoked by Huxley’s belief that in nature and society the struggle for existence is one of all...
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Monopoly in America: the Government As Promoter. By Walter Adams and Horace M. Gray. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1955, 221 pp. $3.50. This latest addition of the enormous literature on monopoly and competition brings the story up to date without adding anything essential to the problem and its “solution” save the warning that monopoly will lead to totalitarianism unless stopped by government intervention. Like most authors in this field, Adams and Gray see nothing wrong with capitalism but condemn alleged violations of “proper” capitalist practices. In their view, monopoly is bad because with competition it destroys our democratic...
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The Present As History. By Paul M. Sweezy. Monthly Review Press (376pp., $5.00); Mr. Sweezy, an editor of Monthly Review and author of a highly regarded but quite muddled Theory of Capitalist Development, presents in this book a collection of book reviews and essays written firing the last fifteen years. Aside from three short and insignificant papers, all the reprinted material is still available in its original publication in various magazines. Its reappearance in book form is difficult to understand, particularly because the review, the editorial, and even the space-restricted essay are not the best media for the consideration...
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THE WESTERN SOCIALIST, Jan-Feb 1955 Review of WHERE WE CAME OUT, Viking Press, 1954 Four years ago Richard Crossman edited a work in which six intellectuals, three members, and three sympathizers, of various Communist Parties, elaborated on why they had been attracted to these Communist Parties, and how they had become disillusioned with them. For some reason or other, Granville Hicks, one of the fair-haired boys in the literary circles of the Communist Party of America in the last half of the 1930’s was not included in this “symposium,” participated in by such well-known writers as Arthur Koestler, Andre...
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Stalin’s Frame-Up System and the Moscow Trials. By Leon Trotsky. With a Foreword by Joseph Hansen. Pioneer Publishers, New York, 1950. (144 pp.) This booklet, published on the tenth anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination, contains Trotsky’s closing speech at the Hearing of the Dewey Commission of Inquiry first printed by Harper & Brothers in 1937. In his foreword, Joseph Hansen finds this reminder of the Moscow Trials particularly apt because of the series of trials of prominent Communists, such as Rajk and Kostov, since the end of the second world war. “Without knowing the truth about the Moscow trials,”...
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Living With Crisis By Fritz Sternberg In this, his latest work, subtitled “The Battle Against Depression and War,” Fritz Sternberg has written another provocative exposition of his theory of the “Progressive Left.” In doing so, he not only again throws down a challenge to revolutionary socialism he also poses the dilemma of social-democracy on an international scale. However one might disagree with Sternberg’s theses, and that we do so strenuously will be shown below, there is no denying that he does an excellent job of accumulating statistics and representing his material. However, a good style...
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Review of Stalin and German Communism. A Study in the Origins of the State Party. By Ruth Fischer, Harvard University Press, 1948, 687 pp., $80; The post-war situation with the new imperialist rivalries brought forth an American boom in anti-bolshevik literature. The latest of several big volumes, starting with Trotsky’s Stalin biography is Ruth Fischer’s work on the relationship between Stalin and the German Communist Party. To deal with Stalinism in this manner us particularly apt, as the competition between America and Russia concerns control over other countries. The “rape” of smaller nations by greater powers is a modern...
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Man, The Enigma
From The Western Socialist, January, 1948 A strange animal – man – until we get to know him. Brilliant, in a sense, he has developed systems of production, exchange, communication, and transportation that make the other animals look rather stupid. But, on the opposite side of the scale, he suffers deficiencies that enhance the prestige of every competing organism. While not the only animal that works, he is the only one that looks for work; the only one that works for wages, the only one that the boss can afford to leave alone while working. The only one subject...
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