The Executioner Awaits

THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (785 pp.)--Harold J. Laski--Viking ($6.50).

Britain's bookish radical, Harold J. (for Joseph) Laski has spent most of his 54 years looking at the world through pink spectacles. Born in Manchester of Hungarian immigrant parents, he looks like a young Henry Van Dyke but often talks like poor Poll with elephantiasis of the ego.

Like many left-wingers, Laski has taken varying attitudes toward the U.S.S.R., ranging from piously articulate fellow-traveling to skeptical hostility (his Secret Battalion, published in 1946, was a blistering attack on the British Communist Party). But he has never for a moment lost his faith in the idea of a planned society nor his energy in tub-thumping for one. Much of his writing, like many of his public utterances, has been neat propaganda, smartly concocted and adroitly delivered. But periodically he has written studies in which his intelligence and historical erudition have loomed much larger than his slicker qualities.

The American Democracy is such a study. Readers are not likely to rank it (as his eager-beaver publishers do) with De Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835) and Lord Bryce's American Commonwealth (1888). But they will find that it stands head & shoulders above the kind of superficial once-over exemplified by, say, John Gunther's Inside U.S.A. (TIME, June 2, 1947).

Wit & Wind. Running to almost half a million words, Laski's book is both a general political history of the U.S. and a detailed analysis of American professions, trades, culture and state and federal governments. Every aspect of American life is judged from the standpoint of the militant, orthodox socialist who believes that government planning must replace free enterprise as the cornerstone of democratic life. A dependence on stock socialist phrases thus flaws many parts of the book. The American Democracy, for all its numerous flashes of donnish wit, is also windily repetitive, and some times dated in its judgment.

The American Democracy has no hero, only a villain--the American businessman. He is not, says Laski comfortingly, any more villainous than his European counterpart (whose predatory impulses are merely concealed under "greater elegance of form"). But he has, Laski believes, unknowingly "adapted . . . the main doctrines of Machiavelli's Prince." He regards the world primarily as "a market which the combined power of high-pressure salesmanship and cheap mass production will open to him . . . Massively energetic in action," skeptical of theories, he considers most politics as "a wanton interference with the natural laws by which businessmen govern society."

Business Over All. In matters of education, Laski believes, the businessman is the trustee who can (and does) seat and unseat college presidents, purge faculties. He dominates radio; his stake in Hollywood virtually ensures movie mediocrity because he will not risk his enormous investment by risking "offense to any large source of profit." He supports the church, but often, says Laski, because his conception of religion is like that of the late Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts, who said: "In the long run, it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes . . . Godliness is in league with riches." In social issues, the businessman automatically identifies "acquisition with justice," radicalism with ignorance or impudence.

Respected Villain. Laski insists that he has written this book "out of deep love of America." He admits that the businessman's energy, skill and audacious vitality are (like the qualities of the best U.S. newsmen) "unsurpassed." He even concedes that the big businessman's faith in free enterprise is shared by such a large number of lesser U.S. citizens that labor has not even been able to build a political party worth the name. Therefore a successful anti-capitalist revolt is impossible unless the U.S. businessman is willing to lend a hand in arranging his own execution.

The more Laski indulges his distaste for the American businessman, the more reckless he grows in boosting the merits of a collective economy and in minimizing its dangers. His bland references to the U.S.S.R. as "the great experiment" which threatens free enterprise with "successful socialism" are likely to chill the spines of many who otherwise might hear his opinions with respect.

As a history of American civilization, The American Democracy is, despite its strong bias, a highly instructive book; as a crusade against "the curse of Midas" it is not likely to convince any but the converted that the cure is not worse than the curse.

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