BOOKS
619
were the central issue; provided always that full employment was main–
tained, a reformer could tum his main attention to noneconomic prob–
lems without worrying too much about the rate of growth.... We shall
turn our attention increasingly to other, and in the long run more im–
portant, spheres--of personal freedom, happiness, and cultural endeavor:
the cultivation of leisure, beauty, grace, gaiety, excitement, and of all
the proper pursuits, whether elevated, vulgar, or eccentric, which con–
tribute to the varied fabric of a full private and family life."l
I am therefore wholeheartedly a Galbraith disciple. I disagree with
some of the steps in his argument. But the great merit of his book is
that the argument has detailed steps at all. Many economists have lifted
their eyes, in a visionary last chapter, to the coming age of abundance;
even more sociologists have inveighed vaguely against the affluent so–
ciety. But Galbraith is the first writer to attempt a systematic economic
analysis of such a society. This is therefore an important and original
work, in which the author demonstrates, not for the first time, his ability
to stand back, well out of the rut, examine with a vivacious mind the
currently accepted dogmas, and inquire, at once pertinently and imper–
tinently, whether they are valid.
C. A. R. Crosland
ATTITUDES TO HISTORY
SOVIET MARXISM : A CRITICAL ANALYSIS. By Herbert M.,rcuse.
Columbio University Press.
H .50.
The main point of Mr. Marcuse's book is that Soviet Marxism
represents a coherent theory consistent with Leninism and the earlier
body of Marxist doctrine. Mr. Marcuse also argues that the lines of
Soviet development are on the whole in keeping with the expectations
of Marxian theory.
No doubt some Marxist objectives have persisted in the Soviet
Union. Marcuse is quite right, for instance, in asserting that the long
range objective of Soviet agricultural policy has been to establish "com–
plete socialist property on the land, total mechanization, and assimila–
tion of urban and rural labor and life." But such basic aims as the dis–
solution of the family, the elimination of religion, the equalization of
1. The Future of Socialism.
Macmillan, 1957.
