OOKS OF THE DAY
The Industrial Future he Future of Industrial Man. A conservative approach. By Peter F. Drucker. (Heinemann los. 6d.) 1928 a body called the Liberal Industrial Enquiry (Sir Walter yton was its chairman and Lord Keynes and Lord Samuel were ong its members) published a report under the title of Britain's ustrial Future. Fifteen years later, taking a wider scope, Dr. ucker has published a work on the general future of industrial an. It is far less concrete ; but it is full of vision. Indeed, Dr. Drucker possesses what the reviewer once heard ascribed to a nr fish statesman—" an aeroplane mentality." He has written an :ble book, in which he travels through all philosophies and a great seal of history—sometimes forgetting his quest, which is, in his own ords, " to find a non-revolutionary unbroken transition from the ate and functioning mercantile society to a free and functioning dustrial society." The quest is an admirable quest ; and when he ttends to it Dr. Drucker says admirable things.
The chapter on " the industrial reality of the twentieth century " full of information and suggestion • and the final chapter, with its turd remarks on the true nature and proper limits of planning, is ost as good. It is indeed a problem—perhaps the problem of cur times—to escape from the control of industry by the market ithout falling into the control of industry by a centralised bureau- • acy ; and the one way of escape, as the author argues, is " to Dui d genuine local self-government in the industrial sphere." (That as said—and not only said, but illustrated and explained—in :ritain's Industrial Future.) Dr. Drucker has a good grasp of this stoblem ; and, what is more, he relates it to a relevant philosophy the philosophy of the proper relation of State and society, or, as expresses it, of the proper " separation of political government
d social rule." He is a thinker ; and a thinker of remarkable ge. It adds to the power of his thought that he has a basis practical experience. He has worked in the City of noon in the business of international banking ; he has also, he s us, had journalistic experience, and reported on American • elopments for English readers during a number of years.
All that is to the good ; and there is_ much that is good, and very ch that is stimulating, in Dr. Drucker's book. One who has ught, and even attempted to write, on some of the themes which handles, is bound and happy to make that confession. But the
t remains that the book may justly be subjected to criticism. It overlaid by a general apparatus of philosophy whiCh distracts ttention from its central theme. Much of that philosophy is subtle ; me of it is sound ; but it presents great difficulties to English e ders. Dr. Drucker moves simultaneously in three worlds of al nought—an American world ; a continental world ; and an English tg rid. It is a large range ; and it results in some cloudiness. The nglish reader gets tantalising glimpses through the clouds ; but he a rids himself often befogged. The " conservative approach " of the iter (sometimes reminiscent of the general attitude of Dr. r ..uschning) adds to the fog. It turns liberalism into the parent- .). • d at the same time the ineffective enemy—of totalitarianism • it a akes France and the French Revolution the bite noire of modern • .e•elopment ; and it ends by turning upside down any ideas of the t caning (and even of the facts) of the English history of the t ighteenth century which the reviewer—an old teacher of history—
• as ever entertained. There is a chapter, entitled " The Conservative 'enter-Revolution of 1776," which is a cento of historical riosities. When one 'reads that the American colonists "defeated
e Enlightenment in the person of George III," and that the merican Revolution, "in intention and effect, was a successful unter-movement against the very rationalist despotism of the lightenment which provided the political foundations for the tench Revolution," one can only take off one's spectacles and rub en vigorously. Indeed, Dr. Drucker's excursions into history- cient or modern—are erratic. Socrates, we are told, paved the y for the real totalitarians, the Thirty Tyrants, who " accepted Socratian basis without the Socratian rationalism "; but " it is hly probable that they would have been forced to kill him had not been killed earlier by the alliance of traditional reactionaries
relativist anarchists." One can only remark that the Thirty rains fell in 403 s.c., and that Socrates was executed in 399 B.c.
But does all this matter (the reader may ask), and is not the sroblem of "genuine local self-government in the industrial sphere," reperly planned on the true lines of planning ably advocated by e ei e a
the writer, the real thing? The answer is, " It is certainly the real thing ; but Dr. Drucker has let it go for the greater part of his book" He has seized the issue, and has set it in the relevant philosophic framework ; and then he has clouded it, and even befogged it, by general divagations into Americo-Anglo-Continental political and social philosophy and by historical aberrations. Un livre manqué. And it might have been so good. Indeed, in its essential part, it is so good. But the would-be-better has been the
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