Shorter Notices
Why You Should be a Socialist. By John Strachey. (Gollancz. 2s. 6d.)
A Boot which is scarcely worthy of so able a writer as Mr. Strachey. It was originally written aS a pamphlet for the Popular Front campaign before the war, and has, we are told, been revised and brought up to date. It might have been better to have left it as it was ; for it bears the marks of its origin, and has not in essence been brought up to date, and fails to take account of recent facts which would provide a damaging reply to much of his argument. For instance, he says nothing about recent provision for social security and other social services, which are not due to trade union pressure, though, according to his argument, it is such pressure alone which has lifted the worker above the bare subsistence levett, He assumes that Socialism is the only antidote to recurrent slumps and under-consumption, but does not show why it would be any better than, or as good as, the Beveridge programme for full ern- ployment. He makes many challenging but challengeable statements such as this: "The size of the wages which.we get has .nothing to do with the amount of wealth which we produce." He admits that most of the surplus profits earned by capital go into re-invest- ment, and speaks as if that were rather a bad thing. And he seems to think it outrageous of the capitalist to seek markets for exports, a form of exploitation, in his opinion, which leads to colonies, Imperialism and war. The writing is worthy of a better argument.
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