Professor Laski's Oscillations
By PROFESSOR ALFRED ZIMMERN Tins is a bewildering book. As its title indicates, it is intended to deal not with one subject but withtwo. In fact, however, it deals with more than that. The result is that, falling not between two but between several stools, it is little more than an elaborate pamphlet. But a pamphlet, to be effective, should not be elaborate. So it is not a very good pamphlet either.
This can perhaps best be made clear by an analogy. A book might be written on the theory of education. It would deal with the growing child, his possibilities and his needs. This would involve a discussion of human nature and of the relation between man and society and might lead to an appreciation or criticism of previous writers on the subject from Plato to Pestalozzi and Piaget. Another book could be written on schools or educational systems, and this might be either a history of schools in general, or in some particular country, or an account of them in this country at the present time. Such an account again might be a- pure description, such as is to be found in a year-book, or might be written from the standpoint of a particular philosophy of education. Again a book might be written about schools from the economic aspect and this might deal either with the economic motive as affecting schoolmasters or the proprietors of private venture schools or with the economic forces outside the educational world as they affect schools and their work. But Pestalozzi's theory of education is not invalidated by the existence of Mr. Squeers.
Apply this to politics. It would give us a book on political theory, discussing the perennial problems of human govern- ment. It would give us, perhaps in the same volume, a criticism of other political theorists, Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and so on. It would -give us a separate book on actual political systems, either in the past or in the present, which would require to be written from a close study of the conditions in each case. To be more than a mere catalogue, such a book should be written by a man who, like Bryce, has come to terms with political theory and holds it in the back- ground of his thought and observation all the time. Another theoretical book might be written on the relation between politics and economics, between government and the process by which the community is supplied with goods and services. The conclusions drawn from this might be made use of in a further study of political and economic forces in their inter- action in a particular country• at a particular time, such as present-day Britain. .'
Professor Laski's book is all these separate studies rolled into one. At one moment he is -a political theorist, dis- cussing the fundamental problems of government—what is the object of politics, what is the nature of freedom and justice, what is the obligation of the citizen towards the public authority. But his discussion of these high themes is so disconnected, allusive and contradictory that it is not very enlightening. There arc a number of passages from which one could only conclude that the author was a liberal of the purest water. Liberty is described (p.. 197) as " the noblest motive to action man has ever known." We are told (p. 213) that the gains which are inherent in the technique of con- • stitutionalism arc profounder, even though they are more alow, than those which are implicit in the revolutionary alternative," and, again (p. 217), that the " suspension of the
The State in Theory and • Practlee:-• By Harold J. Liiski. (Allen and linwin. 7s. fld.)
democratic process " would be " fatal to most of the spiritual
gains of civilized life." But there are a number of other passages which set ,f_nrth an entirely different view of man
and society, seeming to deny that man is capable of being inspired by noble motives or is indeed a spiritual being at all. These passages are, indeed, far more numerous than their opposite numbers, and give the book its colour for the ordinary reader. But, perhaps in compensation, they are not quite so categorical. - Instance after instance could be brought, if space allowed, to show the confusion in which a writer becomes involved when he is trying to deal simultaneously with political theory and with political institutions in the concrete. • As the author rightly says on an early page, a theory of the State must be . . . a criterion of measurement rather than a statement of reality." Would that he had kept his own initial instructions in mind I When he passes from political theory and the analysis of existing political conditions to history his touch is equally unsure. Does he believe in the economic interpretation of history ? One might think so when one reads (p. 116) that history, in a word " (in several words) is the record of a struggle between groups whose purpose is to defend claims to which they regard themselves as entitled by reason of the implications they see in the development of the productive process." But three pages further on he has a fit of remorse and tells its that " history is meaningless when read as a struggle between competing selfish interests ; so to regard it is to defame the quality of human nature." Yet no sooner has his thought thus veered than the opposing breeze catches him again and he hastens to describe history as the com- petition of ideals for survival the character of which is deter- mined by their power to exploit productive potentialities at any given time;" This, again, strikes him as being rather too emphatic, so with a passing tribute to English habits of freedom " (not apparently due solely to economic deter- minism) he tells ns that the economic factor is not the sole, but only the predominant element in shaping history. But a page later he largely nullifies this concession -by saying that the part that the non-economic factors will play " depends upon an environment the - nature of which is determined- by its system of economic relationships." Thus, after a process which can only be described as meandering, his argument, like Swinburne's river " winds somewhere safe to sea."
There is no space to discuss the substance of the book in so- far as it is an analysis and criticism of existing political conditions in Britain and in the world as a whole. It would be easy to show that the programme advocated in its closing section—a domestic revolution followed by the- co-operation of Socialist Statei in a World Commonwealth—is at least as unreal as the Liberal solutions which Professor Laski has rejected on that very ground. -
It is however, not the substance of the book but its method and spirit which-really matter. It is a tragedy that-a teacher
so generous in temper, so abundant in knowledge, so ready with tongue and pen should be allowing his talents to run to ' sand in the way that this volume reveals. One has no right
to ask him to revise his opiniond. But let him make a greater "effort to sift them so as to - be able to interpret them More clearly to himself and to others.- That however 'is perhaps to call him to a belief in the power of reason whiCh he is not now prepared to aceept.
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