BOOKS
445
This is truly bewildering. What has happened to the contradiction
between the forces and relations of production? And why cannot
Great Britain, which is much further advanced along the lines of a
welfare econollliy than the United States, likewise escape thralldom to
Laski's formula? So far as I can see Laski attributes this momentous
difference in historical possibility primarily to the personal difference
between Roosevelt and Churchill. Churchill "is blind to the real na–
ture of this war"; Roose.velt is not.
Perhaps the most disquieting section of Laski's book is his dis–
cussion of freedom in a planned society. He thinks it is sufficient to
show that capitalism threatens the existence of the limited, and hard
won rights and liberties of the majority of the .population. But he
offers nothing-absolutely nothing-to refute the contentions of skillful
opponents of socialism that in this respect it may be even worse than
capitalism or just as bad and therefore not worth the tremendous
costs of upheaval and revolution. He ignores the problem of strength–
ening
specific
freedoms in a socialized economy, contenting himself
with the vague assertion that "the substance of freedom; requires re–
definition in every historical situation." The question, of course, is not
one of redefinition but primarily whether the specific freedoms we know
and cherish, here and now, which are imperilled by certain tendencies in
capitalism and destroyed outright by fascism, can be m,aintained in
llhe social system Laski envisages. Freedom can be redefined in such a
way as to make it possible to call the inmates of a concentration
camp free, too. Apologists for capitalism usually redefine freedom to
prove that the worker would he economically free were it not for his
trade-union. Laski is a perfect 'fall guy' for such apologists and for
critics of every variety of socialism. Discounting .and extenuating the
substance of Russian autocracy, redefining terminological shadows to
prove that there is nothing alien to the democratic ideal in its :;tate–
practice, is possible only to a person who has no genuine passion for
freedom. And when we speak of freedom we do not mean the freedom
to buy oheap and sell dear but the freedoms without ,..,.hich the
socialist movement could not ha,·e grown and without which its
philosophy would be hardly distinguishable from that of fascism.
How explain Laski's cavalier disposal of all the genuine prob–
lems of freedom in a socialist society? It is a forfeit he pays to an
unexamined dogma. He assumes
that
once material welfare (which
can also be redefined to show that we enjoy it under capitalism!) has
been provided for the community, cultural and political freedoms will
sooner or later come into their own. For are not values set by the
proportion between .the forces and relations of production? And is
not this proportion harmonious in a planned society by definition?
Laski's dogma therefore explains his threefold certainty: that the
processes of history must solve the problems of material welfare, not
