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GEORGE LICHTHEIM
consigned to rest beneath the tombstone of a learned apparatus which
yet, surprisingly, does not interfere with the flow of an easy, sprightly,
almost conversational, style. Who said sociology is dull? Riesman almost
manages to make it entertaining.
In an ideal world, a writer who combines this breadth of in–
formation with an intelligent grasp of Keynesian economics, Freudian
psychology, and the complexities of the arms race, would carry the
kind of authority which is actually resexved for specialists in these
various disciplines. Much of Riesman's work is in fact concerned with
the need to establish connections between separated fields of study:
specifically between behaviorist psychology, empirical sociology, and
contemporary politics. He even ventures into Sovietology, at the risk
of irritating the incumbents. I must confess there are times when I
am uncertain what he is getting at. Consider a passage such as the
following:
More generally, I have long thought that we need
to
re–
evaluate the role of corrupti0n in a society, with less emphasis
on its obviously malign features, and more on its power as
an antidote to fanaticism. Barrington Moore in
Soviet Politics,
and Margaret Mead in
Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority,
present materials documenting the Soviet campaign against
the corrupting tendencies introduced into the system by friend–
ship and family feeling-some of Mead's quotations could
have come from Bishop Baxter or other Puritan divines, and
others from American civil service reformers. While Kravchenko
shows how one must at once betray friends in the Soviet
regime when they fall under State suspicion-and here too the
Soviets are more tyrannous than the Nazis who expected
friends to intercede with the Gestapo-it would appear that
such human ties have never been completely fragmented,
whether by Puritanism, industrialism, or their savagely sudden
combination in Bolshevism. (p.
84.)
I am able to follow the general drift of the argument, but it
does not seem to me to lead to any conclusions more sensational than
the statement that human nature is pretty constant. Assuming this to
be so (though in fact I don't believe ' it), how does it help one
to
understand what has been happening in the USSR? Riesman to the
contrary, I remain obstinately convinced that the proper way to under–
stand Bolshevism is to study Russian history; the way to understand
Nazism is to study German history; the way to understand industrialism
is to study economic history. There may be a common factor, but
if
there
is,
it escapes me. I suspect it also escapes Riesman, although