Half-Baked Englishmen and a Soft-Boiled Russian
The Communist Answer to the World's Needs. By Julius F. Hecker. (Chapman and Hall. 8s. 6d.) Tun Higher Critic of A.D. 2200, who comes across Dr. Julius Hecker's Dialogue on The Communist Answer to the World's Needs will confidently identify it as a burlesque written by Mr. G. K. Chesterton, with later insertions by a Russian copyist. Mr. Chesterton, he will point out, introduced into The Man Who Was Thursday an anarchist disguised as a Major, who betrayed himself by constantly muttering " we must have blood." Well, here he is again, as a " Greater Britain Nationalist," muttering the world needs the old remedy of blood-letting." The other " representatives of the British intelligentsia " are equally Chestertonian, obviously recruited from among the more vocal and less intelligent frequenters of political summer schools. There is an Anglican Canon, for instance, who " occupies the pulpit of a large cathedral," and advocates God as one of man's " irrational needs." There is a " learned Economist of liberal ten- dencies," who admits from the outset the bankruptcy of " middle-class economies," but asks plaintively whether " there is really no place for democracy in this enlightened age ? " He shows his learning by- a reference to " some of our British Utopians—the Earl of Birkenhead, for example," and his liberalism by a confession that " I personally shrink from the idea that my butler and cook should be on the same cultural level as myself. I should feel most uncomfortable in their presence." And there are a Quaker and a Labour M.P., whose recurrent platitudes remind one of the Dormouse at an earlier Mad Tea Party. The Communist Socratov talks parlour Bolshevism about " the class nature of society " and " petit -bourgeois schemes of escape," for all the world as if he were "touring American Chatauquas under the guidance of the late Mr. Ivy Lee ; and the English duly punctuates his discourses on the Five-Year Plan, Soviet foreign policy and Soviet
cultural ideas With such adjectives as " magnificent" and " thrilling," in the familiar accents of Fifth Avenue hostesses waxing radical over the bread and butter. The point of the whole joke seems to be that consecutive reasoning about human relationships is a lost art.
This point is rather reinforced than otherwise by the solid, not to say indigestible, disquisitions on Capitalist and Com- munist Planning inserted in hard chunks into this farcical framework. But as these passages are supposed to contain the Communist answer, let us summarize their upshot. There is nothing new about the answer, except its language. The Communist apparently believes, for instance, that com- promise is an essential element in the art of government but he must be rlbwed to call it " dialectic," and to justify it by explaining that " the interpenetration of opposites " is part of the process of evolution. The appearance of novelty is obtained by contrasting Communist philosophy with obscure speculations, generally German, which have long been forgotten by everyone except academic Marxists. Thus the italicized discovery that "foreign policy actually is a function of home policy," is contrasted with a " traditional classification " of foreign policies of which no educated Englishman has ever dreamed. Again, the novelty of Soviet cultural ideas consists in their contrast with the views of one Rickert, who " excludes technique from the realm of culture." Soviet planning has to be contrasted, not with the actual facts of Western government, but with Major Douglas and Mr. Swope. Above all, the Communist State has to be contrasted with an imaginary Capitalist State wholly dependent on " the motive of private profit." For this purpose, the large trading profits of the nineteenth century have to be identified with the principle of private property— the limited liability company with the peasant proprietor. The Communist is blissfully unaware that even nineteenth- century social philosophers believed that profits must tend to a minimum, and yet regarded private property as the essential condition of material as well as moral progress. But those were days when " dialectic " still meant accurate thinking.
Even so, the Communist State can only be defended by appeals to religious hope. As is here carefully explained, the Soviet State is a large profit-earner ; in order that profits may be set aside for future development prices must be kept high and the workers must " tighten their belts." But the Communist State is only " a temporary tactical measure," not a " permanent institution" like the Fascist State. The State exists to correct human imperfections ; in Pauline language (but of course the Communist has not heard of St. Paul), " the law is added because of transgressions." But as all human imperfections are due to " a class-stratified society," and as .the Communist State abolishes classes, that State will eventually abolish itself and will give place to the true Communist society, where " the surplus " will no longer be appropriated by any government, but will " belong to the workers." Not otherwise did the priest in Dunbar's satire adjure the poor " to pay in patience what their lords demand ; for they, for their sufferance in such oppression, are promised reward in the resurrection." Only, the Com- munist has this advantage over the priest, that, by a final ." interpenetration of opposites," he is able to assure the poor that the agent of their oppression is also the agent of their salvation. Let us not underrate that advantage. Com- munist political philosophy would not take in a child of three ; but Communist religion may well threaten a Christen- dom which, if it still commands the faith of millions, has forgotten to teach them hope.
Of course, to the Communist this tribute is the worst insult. He hotly repudiates religion, identifying it with
a profit incentive of the soul," just as he identifies private property with " a profit incentive of the body." For the first time in history he " has tapped the sources of mass heroism "—perish the bourgeois who thinks that he has done this by any appeal save one to pure reason And yet, it is noticeable that, at the end of the dialogue, the only convert to Communism is. the " Anglican clergyman, of _ modernist persuasion in theology," who admits that " reason ,might tell us that we should follow your example," but regretfully confesses that " we cannot bite the hand that feeds us." On the whole, ,one comes back to the hypothesis of a burlesque ;. ,Dr. Hecker couldn't have been so funny if he hadn't meant to be satiric. Eus.rAca PERCY.
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