Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN THE STRANGE WORLD OF SECRETARY of Defense Melvin Robert Laird picked himself a good man when he asked Profes sor G. Warren Nutter of the Uni versity of Virginia to become his chief adviser in the Pentagon on the economic potential of those nations which we must assume will be our enemies should any maj or war develop. The latest proof of Nutter's soundness as a thinker and researcher is a little book called The Strange World of Ivan Ivanov (World Publishing Co., $5), which contrasts the life of an average head of household in Soviet Russia with that of John Doe, average American. The book has a score of good features, not the least of which is Professor Nutter's love for a hu morous story. But what makes it really noteworthy is that Profes sor Nutter is not fooled for a min ute about the meaning of the So viet menace. The Russian economy creaks and groans at every joint; it can't satisfy human desires for the good life. But this same econ omy, which turns out a gross na444 tional product that is about a third of our own, manages to sup port a fearsome military estab lishment. Professor Nutter is able to report both sets of facts, the economic and the military, to his boss, which means that nobody in high executive place in Washing ton should be misled about Soviet capabilities.

Ivan Ivanov, the Russian com mon man, gets the short end of the stick precisely because his rulers regard intercontinental bal listic missiles, an ABM system, submarines, tanks, MIG planes, and a huge standing army as top priority matters. But it is an old story that totalitarian govern ments can only produce for war. You can't plan to produce for peace, for peace assumes almost as many personal 'objectives as there are human beings. One man will want a car, one a special kind of house, one the leisure to go fishing instead of behaving like an economic man ..There. is no way of catering to this sort of thing except by a free market system, 1969 THE STRANGE WORLD OF IVAN IVANOV 445 which, by definition, a totalitarian state cannot tolerate and still hold on to its monopoly of power. Being a Mont Pelerin econo mist, Warren Nutter understands this thoroughly. He isn't sur prised that the Soviet economic strength, or lack of it, is a poor gauge of its military power, and vice versa. He tells a story about a Western military aide watching a Soviet aircraft battery in action in World War II. The man was fascinated by the accuracy of the guns and the skill with which they were handled. When the action was over, the aide tried to light his pipe with Soviet-made matches. A dozen of them broke.

Throwing the remaining matches to the ground, the exasperated fellow turned to his companion and asked, "How can people who make and man guns like those produce matches like these?" This is the Soviet economy in a single joke. It's something to worry about in war. But it will never, never catch up with the West in times of peace. Tied to the Land Agriculture in Soviet Russia is incredibly inefficient. It uses a labor force nine times that of ours, yet manages only to produce an output some 70 or 80 per cent as large. There are one hundred acres of arable land for every tractor in America as compared with four hundred in Russia. The Soviet peasant keeps the Russian cities fed from his little private plot, which he is permitted to keep by a Communist Central Committee that knows famine al ways follows when the private plots are abolished. Countrymen in Russia are not permitted to move into the cities without special per mit; if they were not, to all in tents and purposes, serfs, bound to the soil as much as any peasant in the times of the czars, there would be a mad rush to get out of the villages. Only the industrial workers in Russia are allowed to quit their jobs. The result is an annual turnover of 22 to 30 per cent. The Soviets can't admit there is any unemployment, since everyone is supposed to work. But in the large cities there is actually an unemployment rate of 8 per cent, while 25 to 30 per cent of the population are, normally with out jobs in the small and medium size cities.

The "general welfare" of Ivan Ivanov is a travesty of the phrase. By our standards, says Professor Nutter, Ivan lives in a slum and enjoys a standard of life halfway up to the U.S. poverty line. The U.S. has 1.4 automobiles· per family; the Soviets have two cars for every 135 families. In Amer ica there are 480 telephones per 446 THE FREEMAN July thousand persons; in Russia the figure is 30 per thousand. How Freedom Is Curbed Material wealth, of course, is not everything. But Ivan Ivanov does not enj oy the blessings of liberty in his slum. If he wants to write, he is up against a state monopoly of everything from newspaper presses to book pub lishing companies, to say nothing of the forests that provide the ma terial for paper. Russian authors who permit their work to be pub lished abroad without Central Com mittee permission are still jailed, even asin the days of Stalin. If Ivan Ivanov wants to join his fellows in a crowd, it had better be for a government purpose, such as dem onstrating before the Red Chinese Embassy or assembling on May Day to watch the soldiers file past.

Attendance at church is permit ted; but if Ivan Ivanov is not an atheist, he can't hope to join the Communist Party. Ivan has a democratic right to vote, but the candidates he is asked to support are all designated by the govern ment. Ivan's son goes to school, but his textbooks are centrally se lected, and his literacy permits him only to read the party press and such ancient classics as are deemed politically safe. (He can, of course, listen to foreign broad casts, but he had better not act on anything he hears.) Since neither Ivan nor his son can have any private property beyond a few bonds and personal effects, no pri vate defenses can be rigged up against the state. The upper classes in the Soviet Union, meaning the big bureau crats, army officers, and party functionaries, get the best of ev erything, from country villas to choice seats at the ballet. But Ivan Ivanov can only look at the good things of life from afar. He must shop at the state stores, he must apply for housing from the state, he goes to state schools for education. If Ivan Ivanov lives in a city, it will be in a space that is unbelievably confined. On an aver age, there are 2.3 persons living in each room in the Soviet cities.

So it goes inside Russia. It is small wonder, then, that the satel lite countries such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia hunger to re turn to their old Westward orien tation. The Soviets are bound to extend their tyranny outward, or the communist bloc would com pletely disintegrate. If it were just a matter of eco nomic competition, the West would have nothing to worry about. Un fortunately, the Communists know how to subvert. And they have achieved "nuclear parity" with us, which means that we can't laugh them off. ~ 1969 OTHER BOOKS 447 ~ EDMUND BURKE: A GENIUS RECONSIDERED by Russell Kirk (New Rochelle, N. Y.: Arlington House, 1967), 255 pp., $5. ~ THE SPECIOUS ORIGINS OF LIBERALISM: THE GENESIS OF A DELUSION by Anthony M. Ludovici (London: Britons Pub lishing Company, 1967), 192 pp., $4. Reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz No BOOK about Burke is a substi tute for reading the man himself; but it is helpful to have a manual which supplies a ground plan, so to speak. We need to know some-· thing about Burke's life and ca reer; his education, intellectual lineage, and major preoccupations.

Russell Kirk has written a fine primer, which may also be read with profit by anyone wishing to assess Burke's contribution to the stock of Western thought about man and society. Burke's genius was evoked by the events which engaged his professional political interest; by the growing tension over the American Colonies, by the British in India, and especial ly by the revolutionary events in France. Burke was a public man and most of his literary efforts were in the form of speeches occasioned by issues which no longer concern us; but to the examinatton of these issues Burke brought a pow erful mind, a set of enduring prin ciples, and a richly stocked back ground of historical knowledge. His Speech on Conciliation with the American Colonies is part of our history, and so is the Speech on American Taxation; but they are of more than historical in terest. Viscount Morley once ob served that these two speeches, plus Burke's Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, "... comprise the most perfect manual in our literature, or in any literature, for one who approaches the study of public af fairs, whether for knowledge or for practice."

Then there is the long and pre scient work on the French Revo lution. Many people, then and now, view the upheaval in France as a movement of emancipation, and Burke, too, championed liberty. "It is our inheritance," he wrote. "It is the birthright of our spe cies. We cannot forfeit our right to it but by what forfeits our title to the privilege of our kind." Why then did he oppose the French Revolution with all the vigor .at his command? Because he viewed these events as unleash ing a set of ideas which are hos tile to liberty. Majoritarianism or popular sovereignty appears to re move the-old shackles which have hamstrung "the people," only to replace them with new restraints 448 THE FREEMAN July on individual persons - in the name of "the people" ! Thus emerges totalitarian democracy with tyranny over each in the name of all. Burke opposed the theoreti cians who regarded society as a mere mechanical arrangement of parts, to be disassembled at will and slapped together again. ac cording to some late model spec ulation. He did not, however, slip into the opposite error of suppos ing society to be· an organism; but society is somewhat analo gous to a living thing in that so cial change is not to be accom plished on the instant by a kind of surgical transplant technique. We of the modern world have had suf ficient experience with revolution, one would think, to know that this crude method at best gets rid of a few rats by burning down the barn. People are involved in any kind of social change; and if per sons are not to be violated, development and progress in society must be accomplished prudently and by almost imperceptible de grees under the radiating influ ence of ideas. This insight, and the patience that goes with it, is what Burke instills in a reader.

If we were to paste today's label on the system Burke opposed it would read "Liberalism." This body of doctrine has been ably criticized in recent years, but Mr. Ludovici manages to drive in a few shafts from his own unique perspecti vee This man, in his ninety-first year, and with a score of books behind him, is a much neglected thinker. He's an· aristo crat who is critical of European aristocracies, an artist who has watched the world grow uglier, an individualist in an age of mass man. The modern world will not like what this gifted man says about it, which is one measure of the importance of hearing him out. ~ the Freeman VOL. 19, NO.8· AUGUST 1969 Floating Exchange Rates J. Enoch Powell 451 The case for reliance on the market rather than exchange controls as the guide to international trade. Capital Gains George Hagedorn 461 It's not real income being taxed, but the principal of the thing.