A GUIDE TO MODERN POLITICS
By G. D. H. and M. I. Cole
In knowledge and competence, as in productive facility, the Coles are astonishing, and this book (Gollancz, 6s.) may well prove to be more serviceable to their large public than any volume in their series. Politics, they note, is a province becoming ever larger. Government is now the concern of the whole people; if the ordinary citizen cannot learn that, he may be quite certain that others will take him in hand, probably to his hurt and disgust. In a compact volume of 500 pages the authors survey the whole area : the chief systems of the world, the varieties of political machinery, the dictatorships and parliamentary forms, the principles upon which States are professedly and actually based, the outlook for democracy and social freedom. They write with almost complete detachment, notwithstanding their own emphatic position. As leaders in the once active movement of Guild Socialism, they foresaw the drift towards functional representation, and naturally they underline the significance of its recent conquests. In discussing the doctrine of equality they are less exact in statement than usual. It cannot be true that Nazism and Fascism " retain all the old economic inequalities and class distinctions." Obviously "real democracy is not, and can never be, consistent with any large degree of economic inequality," but it is not equally true to say that the Fascist State is aiming at inequality. Its doctrine of leadership and responsibility implies something very different from the old forms of privilege : that is no small part of its power 'over the small bourgeoisie-. The authors hold that the advocates of democracy and equality must somehow find an emotional force not less powerful than that now being exploited by the dictators. Undoubtedly they must ; but it is exceedingly difficult to see how they can.do this in a country such as Britain where, as we are constantly reminded by the public behaviour, the heart of the nation responds, spontaneously and infallibly, to the contrary appeal.
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