SOVIET PERSPECTIVES
Soviet Understanding. By Richard Terrell. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) MR. TERRELL has written a nalve, inconclusive, irritating, uneven, but rather original, book. He has made one excursion to the Soviet Union (he seems to have travelled more widely elsewhere), and has dabbled extensively in Marxist and near- Marxist philosophy. He did not, he tells us, go to the Soviet Union in order to discover the Truth ; and indeed much of what he tells us about that country is palpably not the truth. But he is young, and has tried to think ; and these two qualities make the interest of his book. He remarks, rather con- descendingly, that Sir Walter Citrine's I Search for Truth in Russia is "a good book to read because it gives one an insight into the kind of mentality possessed by a typical leader of the English Labour movement" One is inclined to turn the tables by remarking that Mr. Terrell's book is valuable for the 'insight which it gives into the mentality of what he himself calls the "middle pocket" members of the Left Book Club.
Mr. Terrell's powers of observing external facts are frankly small. He assures us, for instance, that, under Soviet collectivism, the object of the economic system is to supply "people's wants." The most cursory visitor to Leningrad and Moscow can discover with very little trouble exactly what most of the people want. They want, above all, decent clothes and boots ; and these they do not get because the authorities have decided (perhaps quite rightly—but that is not the point) that it is better for them to have tanks, and tractors, and aeroplanes, and canals. Then Mr. Terrell quotes advertisements as a conspicuous example of capitalist waste. Probably nobody drew his attention (and he does not appear to understand Russian) to the advertisements of sausages and margarine which appear on the hoardings and in the Metro in Moscow. It looks after all as if advertisements will 'have their place in the planned economy.
But what Mr. Terrell has tried to do is to analyse people's states of mind about Soviet Russia. "When I see a tired, hungry workman, badly housed, fed and warmed in Italy," he writes, "I bum with a terrible rage and hatred of Fascism. When I see a tired, hungry workman, badly housed, fed and warmed in the Soviet Union, I do not burn with rage at all." This is obviously true of many members of our contemporary intelligentsia. Yet how many of them have the self-knowledge to perceive it, or the frankness to avow it ? Mr. Terrell, in a chapter called " Historical Perspectives," dissects various group-attitudes towards Communism. The dissection is rather crudely done, and is not always accurate. One would not, for example, have said that most "nonconformists regard Russia as an unthinkable Bedlam of Sin," or are specially unsympathetic to what is going on there. But the fact of these " perspectives " is beyond question ; and one only regrets that Mr. Terrell has not carried his analysis a little further and tried to explain, in terms of economic and cultural background, the " perspective " of the near-Marxist intelli- gentsia in this country.
This difficulty is, however, inherent in the Marxist philosophy. You recognise that the point of view of your opponent is merely the " perspective " determined by his material antecedents and the moral outlook engendered by them, and that it can therefore have at best only a relative value. But you refuse to admit that your own point of view is similarly determined, and claim that it shall be recognised as not relatively, but absolutely, right. Most Marxists refuse to face this issue altogether. Mr. Terrell faces it, and argues that Communism, in contradistinction to all other ways of thinking, is "scien- tific." The conflict between Communism and Fascism he defines as a conflict between " science " and non-science." But this escape can help only a Determinist, which Mr. Terrell is not. Communists admit that men act and think unpredict- ably, i.e., non-scientifically ; and with that admission disap- pears the claim of Communism to be exempt from the law of relativity which it so eagerly recognises in other ways of think- ing.
In a further chapter on Ethics, Mr. Terrell wrestles with the problem of reconciling the relativist theory of ethics inherent in Marxism with the recognition of absolute values which is, as he rightly says, implicit in "all views save those of nihilism and of impotent detachment from the passionate element in historical development." Much that he says is to the point. But he has barked up one wrong tree. Many of those who are
shocked by what is now going on in the Soviet Union are shocked from the standpoint, not (as Mr. Terrell supposes) of Idealism, but of Communism. Marxists assure us that ideals divorced from action are meaningless ; and if this is true, one cannot excuse M. Stalin for building up a new class society by a policy of salary differentiation on the ground that he theoretically believes in the " ideal " of a classless society. Mr. Terrell has made a start. But he will need to do a lot more hard thinking before he has disposed of all the problems pre- sented by Soviet Russia in its present phase.
One concluding reflection. This volume is an excellent illustration of the way in which Marxism has become the favourite playground of our young progressive intellectuals. But it is a strange destiny for what purports to be a philosophy of proletarian revolt. Unhappily, the proletarian will tend to be indignant at the sight of "a tired, hungry workman, badly housed, fed and warmed "—even in the Soviet Union ; and he will not be impressed to learn from Mr. Terrell that this is something quite different from the satrA phenomenon in a Fascist country. In one place, Mr. Terrell appears to regret that the English working class is not " dietetically conditioned" for revolution. This regret is a simple measure of the gulf which separates the Marxist intellectual from the working-mart. The view of an English Labour leader narrowly peering into wages, cost of living and housing conditions may not appeal to Mr. Terrell. But Mr. Terrell is not a member of the
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