From the Western Socialist, #1, 1960 Why does the World Socialist Party belittle the nationalization of wealth, when it really means the same thing as Socialism? If the government, on behalf of the people, decides to take over the wealth of the nation, what sense is there in wasting our time doing the same thing? Would it not be better for us to get in and help them do it? -W.S. Reader We gather from W.S. Reader the wording of the query that our correspondent is a little mixed up in his differentiation, or lack of it, between the...
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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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Classical economy, whose beginning is usually traced to Adam Smith, found its best expression and also its end in David Ricardo. Ricardo, as Marx wrote, “made the antagonism of class-interest, of wages and profits, of profits and rent, the starting-point of his investigation, naively taking this antagonism for a social law of nature. But by this start the science of bourgeois economy had reached the limits beyond which it could not pass,” for a further critical development could lead only to the recognition of the contradictions and limitations of the capitalist system of production. By doing what could no...
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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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The Road to Serfdom. By Friedrich A. Hayek, University of Chicago Press, 1944 (250 pp.; $2.75). Full Employment in a Free Society. By William H. Beveridge. W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1945. (429pp; $3,75). Both these books are dedicated to the “socialists of all parties.” Hayek wants to discourage them, Beveridge tries to offer encouragement. Both writers speak in the name of science and deal with the reality of, and the need for, capitalistic planning. But what appears to Hayek as the road to serfdom seems to Beveridge the highway to a free society. Russia and Germany...
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The Economics of Control. Principles of Welfare Economics. By Abba P. Lerner. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1944 (428 pp.; $3.75); It is difficult to review Professor Lerner’s study, not because it is intricate, but because it seems so superfluous. As trying as it is to read this work it is almost inconceivable that Lerner could spent twelve years on its preparation and writing; particularly these last twelve years of crisis, depression, fascism and war. And yet it is quite understandable from the academic point of view, that is, from the position which with regard to economics and politics,...
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From the Western Socialist, March-April, 1942 “The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual process of life.” When Karl Marx presented this analysis to a confused world, back in 1859, he provided an explanation of cause and effect in the social world that still serves the needs of our more inquisitive minds today. The slovenly and the superficial will miss its meaning, the sycophantic drudge will seek to sabotage its lesson but, to the serious student of social affairs, it affords a meaning of untangling the snarls that disconcert his...
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The Coming New Prosperity in America UNCOUTH indeed is the hurricane that blows nobody good! Out of the great depression, at last it looks as if a Little breeze might cool the brows of our poor capitalists here in the U.S.A. Profits have been nowhere near what they ought to be, dividends falling off, taxes going up, prices going down; and you wouldn’t believe the amount of political grafting that has been going on at their expense! The tariff hasn’t been acting right, crops have been exasperatingly abundant, so that agricultural prices are, as Mr. Hoover says, “hideously low.”...
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