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NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 1952)


The more we learn about the various modes of economic change and their interaction, the more important it becomes that we form a clear notion of the substratum of such changes. More precisely, our ultimate success in handling dynamic phenomena analytically will depend upon a full grasp not only of the change processes themselves, but also of the strategic variables of the economic system which are exposed to change. In this respect, Keynes’ contribution has been even more authoritative, though perhaps, as this paper is to show, less definitive.

In a way Schumpeter holds a middle position between the socialist and the liberal thesis on imperialism. He accepts the Hilferding thesis of a close causal connection between imperialism and "monopoly capitalism," that is, the present phase of capitalism, and repeatedly refers to this theory with great respect, presenting his own thesis as a kind of variant within its framework. On the other hand, he comes out for the liberal thesis of the peaceableness of pure capitalism, and explains monopoly capitalism, not, with Hilferding, as the normal and necessary outgrowth of the capitalist development, but as a corruption of capitalism by pre-capitalist interests in present-day society.

Agrarian policy in the Russian zone of Germany copies exactly the development in the Soviet Union. Only the tempo is modified, and this is for tactical political reasons. In the following survey of this policy, and its results, it should be noted that [S] in the accompanying documentation signifies a work published under Soviet censorship.

After some thirty years of strenuous work Santayana, at the age of 88, has published Dominations and Powers, which, as its subtitle indicates, contains his "Reflections on Liberty, Society and Government." His present "tractatus ethico-politicis" will be analyzed in the following pages without any reference to other writings of this great thinker. This procedure, imposed by limitations of space, is obviously not meant to involve any unfairness to the work under scrutiny and its author, On the contrary, it is believed that this book is one of the few by this philosopher which furnish their own scheme of interpretation.

From certain arcane of the learned, voices are crying into the wilderness of 'scientism' with which the criers fearfully see themselves surrounded. They mourn that the division of labor which qualifies modern industry now comminutes the fanes of scholarship; that in the sciences of nature and of man, most tragically of man, wisdom has been displaced by statistics or other forms of the quantitative method; and that everywhere insight retreats before specialization. Thus psychology and sociology and economics and political science and history are suffering fission into ever smaller fractions of the vital whole, with the resulting 'facts' robbed in the name of science of all human import or cosmic significance. To me, this alarm is only an ancient cry of 'Wolf!'"

Review of book by Kurt B. Mayer. New York: Columbia University Press. 1952. 336 pp.

Review of Book by Princeton Oriental Studies, vol. 12. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1951. 49 pp.

Review of book by Charles M. Haar. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1951. 213 pp.

Review of book by Richard McKeon. New York: Noonday Press. 1952. 95 pp.

Review of book by Charles S. Campbell Jr. Miscellany LIII in the Yale Historical Publications. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1951. 88 pp.

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