THE BASIS OF SOCIETY

BOOKS OF THE DAY

By HENRY W. NEVINSON

To review a book by Bertrand Russell is something like reviewing a book of Euclid. Each proposition is perfectly clear and inevitable. Each follows of necessity from the propositions that have gone before, just as in a string of camels each is fastened by the nose to the tail of the one in front, and cannot choose but follow. You cannot take one proposition out and criticise it as a book, or select one camel as a string. So in Bertrand Russell's new book, you are obliged to go on from his axiom to one point after another till his conclusion is reached, and it is useless, though tempting, to take one part here and another there for criticism without consideration

of the rest.

The writer's axiom is that, unlike other animals, man is not satisfied with the means of living and reproduction, but in many cases, perhaps in nearly all, is continually craving after power and glory in one form or another. Men's desires, he tells us, are insatiable and infinite. Carlyle said the same of a shoeblack. Long ago a Professor of Economics in Oxford

asked a young girl student for a definition of man ; she answered, "4 creature of progressive desires," and on that answer the Professor almost founded a school. Similarly this author of a " new social analysis " tells us he is " concemtd in this book to prove that the fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundathental concept in physics." He goes on to define Power as the production of intended effects, and classifies Power over human beings (and with that branch of Power he is chiefly. concerned) by the manner of influencing individuals, or by the type of organisation involved.

The manner of influencing individuals takes various forms= habit, tradition, law, rhetoric, education, and public opinion. He examines the various agencies founded on Power—the Church, derived from primitive religion and the powers of the medicine man, carried forward by tradition ; the Kingly power, also largely religious, as seen (though the author does not mention it) in our recent Coronation service, when we were reminded that Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon as the King appointed by God ; and " The Lord's Anointed " was once the battle-cry of monarchists. These forms of Power, though retained by tradition, have force behind them, unless they are upset by more forcible revolution, as once in France and lately in Russia. But the Power which Bertrand Russell calls " Naked Power " has no tradition, but is bare military force without any such excuse. It is created by some born leader like Hitler or Cromwell ; Napoleon is more justly compared to Mussolini.

Bertrand Russell has a helpful way of enlivening his thesis with examples and parallels derived from ancient and modern instances right up to yesterday. In writing of " Naked Power," for instance, he connects with it the great abominations of human history : " Slavery and the slave trade, the exploitation of the Congo, the horrors of early industrialism, cruelty to children, judicial torture, he criminal law, prisons, workhouses, religious persecution, the atrocious treatment of the Jews, the merciless frivolities of despots, the unbelievable iniquity of the treatment of political prisoners, in Germany and 'Russia, at the present day—all these are examples of :he use of naked power against defenceless victims."

Power '-"A New Social Analysis. By Bertrand Russell. (Allen and Unwin. 7s. 6d.)

To swine extent the vote in a democracy may restrain the

utmost abominations of naked power, or revolution may succeed where persuasion fails, and in this regard the author considers Christianity the most important of all revolutions, and the Quakers as the only people who really gain the power at which they aim by persuasion only, without force at the back of it. Even economic power depends on force, as in the use of land and factories by possession, the income from stocks and shares, and the State's Exchequer by the income-tax. Even the great power of public opinion is founded on force just as much as the creeds of Islam and Puritanism. Such powers have been the causes of continual conflict, and so has Nationalism,

which Bertrand Russell boldly describes as " a stupid ideal." But in the end such conflicts may be solved rather by boredom than by victory :

" If the world, in the near future, becomes divided between Com- munists and Fascists, the final victory will go to neither, but to those who shrug their shoulders and say, like Candide, cela est bien dit, mais it Taut cultiver ;Torre jardin.' The ultimate limit to the power of creeds is set by boredom, weariness, and love of ease."

Thus excessive zeal and pugnacity result in boredom or, to use the silly word lately in fashion, " escapism," but for so alert and searching an intellect as the author's that cannot be the end. On the whole he still stands for democracy, refusing the short cut of the " totalitarians " (intolerable word !) or of the oligarchs such as Mr. and Mrs. Webb favoured so strangely in Russia: The difficulties with democracy in modern States are obviously tardiness of decision, necessity of compromise, and the vast numbers involved in the constituencies. But all these objections are discussed in the sections called " Forms of Government " and " Organisations and the Individual." In these discussions we come upon sayings which may be truisms but are none the less startling, such as " There are no facts in Ethics " or " Without rebellion mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable " ; or, at greater length, " Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned ; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within

their reach." Or more distinctly : "' I am Wotan ! ', says Hitler, ' I am Dialectical Materialism ! says Stalin. And since the claim of each is supported by vast re- sources in the way of armies, aeroplanes, poison gases, and innocent enthusiasts, the madness of both remains unnoticed."

For salvation from all this fanaticism and insanity Bertrand Russell looks to the enfranchisement of the child from false deities and easy catchwords. To myself the 'tendency of his arousing and keenly analytic book is towards individualism rather than to any kind of ideology (if we must revive that well- worn Napoleonic jargon). How simple and comforting to all who believe in personality is the conclusion that " The task of a liberal education is to give a sense of value to things other than domination, to help to create wise citizens of a free com- munity, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve." Bertrand Russell is often inspiring as well as lucid, and in passages like this he rises to a height of inspiration beyond the reach of the Euclidean method. Spinoza, with whom Bertrand Russell seems to me to have much .11

common, sometimes rose in the same way.