CORRESPONDENCE
RECOMMENDATION
Sirs:
I would like to call attention to a
book which affects everybody, and
which it is the business of everyone
to read who is seriously concerned with
the art or freedom or politics of the
future of human values. This book is
Jerzy Gliksman's
Tell the West,
pub–
lished by the Gresham Press, New York
City. It is a straightforward
description,
without any sermonizing or political
commentary, of the author's experi–
ences in the prisons and forced labor
camps of the Soviet Union. Whatever
the reader's
parti pris,
this authentic
first-hand account, exciting yet severely
factual in its details, will challenge him
to reconsider his assumptions about
man and society. Here is the raw ma–
terial that perhaps only a Dante could
do justice to. Gliksman is a lifelong
Socialist, a democrat, and Jew who
writes without hatred, without a new
program for salvation, without any
hope or faith except that other hu–
man beings may be interested in learn–
ing the truth. No one who fails to read
this book can understand what the
world may be like tomorrow for him
and his children, what the world
now
is for millions and millions of his fel–
lowmen. No one should write another
line until he has read this book from
beginning to end.
It does what arguments, exhortation,
and warnings seldom do: it makes us
see what we have not seen before.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Sirs:
Sidney Hook
In his comment "Disillusionment and
Partial Answers" (PARTISAN REVIEW,
May, 1948), Philip Rahv writes: "A
729
series of immense blunders, mainly on
the part of Roosevelt in his dealings
with the Soviet government, have put
capitalism in so perilous a situation
that despite all fears and doubts it
must extend its support to the semi–
socialist economies of western Europe.
It must perforce accept democratic so–
cialism if it is to repulse totalitarian
Communism."
This, it seems to me, is a dangerous
half-truth and emphasizes an evasion
of which one becomes increasingly
conscious as Rahv's thesis unfolds. He
nowhere deals with the question of war
and militarism which is central to our
time.
If
U.S. policy were concentrated up–
on stopping Russia
without war,
there
is little doubt that increasing collab–
oration with "the semisocialist econ–
omies of western Europe" would be
necessary. But the facts are that it is
gearing itself for war. To say this in
no way absolves the Soviet regime for
the course it is pursuing which is a
primary factor in strengthening the
hand of the militarists throughout the
world.
If
the present armament race is al–
lowed to continue and develop, how–
ever, it is futile to talk of democratic
socialism. You cannot saddle the peo–
ples of the world, Communist and
non-Communist, with such expendi–
tures and at the same time increase
their living standards. You may get
some form of state capitalism in west–
ern Europe in the midst of an arma–
ments race; you won't get a strength–
ening of the tendencies toward demo–
cratic socialism.
Until Rahv deals in some effective
way with this question, his answer too
will remain a distinctly "partial" one
and little more "realistic" than those
attitudes he criticizes.
Travers Clement
New York City
