BOOKS

The open society

THE OPEN SOCIETY, Paradox
and Challenge: by Stanley Ry-
erson, Progress Books paper-
back, $1.15.

ET the reader be forewarned
that this is not a review of
Stanley Ryerson’s book; it

is a discussion of some of the
ideas in it.

Some time ago I was involved
in a lively argument with a busi-
ness friend on capitalism — the
-profit system and the nature of
exploitation. My acquaintance is
in the junior echelons of indus-
try, the manager of a distribut-
ing firm, in,ordinary language a
salesman.

We found we were able to
achieve general agreement on a
broad range of topics, such as
the role of the United States in
Vietnam, civil rights, the useful
role of economic planning in
combatting recessions; the prob-
lems we will face when automa-
tion is introduced on a wide
scale; and so on.

But eventually, as in almost
all similar discussions, whether
with businessmen or workers,
we focussed on democracy in
our country and in the Soviet
Union, everybody’s classical ex-
ample of living socialism.

The questions he and others
ask are simple, but not easy to
answer.

Does the citizen of a socialist
country have the same freedom
of travel as the citizen of Can-
ada? (Yes, I know Communists
were denied travel rights in the
U.S.; but that doesn’t answer my
question.”)

Can a newspaperman in a so-
cialist country criticize the in-
ternal or external policies of his
government? Why is only one
candidate put forward in an elec-
tion? Is there censorship of art?

These. are also topics one
could expect to find in a book
called “The Open Society.” In

fact, Ryerson does examine in
detail whether the term “open
society” discribes the real status
quo in the West. And he does
face up to the problem in the
socialist countries. Unfortunate-
ly, when it comes to these coun-
tries, he deals with the problem
in a general way, without get-
ting down to the specific prob-
lems.

Here it how Ryerson explains
the general problem: “The ‘so-
cialist experiment’ was launched
not in advanced, highly indus-
trialized countries, but in rela-
tively or even extremely back-
ward, underdeveloped ones. This
scarcely predictable twist of his-
tory has afforded the propagan-
dists of capitalism material for
a steady flow of cheap (if dis-
honest) sneers — as _ though
backward conditions in Eastern
Europe and Asia were the pro-
duct of the new. system, rather
than the heritage of the old.”

Added to this were the “cults”
of Stalin and Mao, which, the
writer says, “were the product,
not of the nature of socialism
but of impediments in the way
of its achievement. They ex-
press, not the logic of socialist
society, but the challenge it has
to meet and overcome.”

Then Ryerson pays tribute to
the fact that “it was the Soviet
leadership and people them-
selves who initiated the process
of eradicating the ‘cult’ and its
consequences.” He calls this

- “courageous ‘self-criticism in ac-

>»

tion.

This is fine as far as it goes.
But the Canadian reader may be
tempted to ask who else but the
Soviet people could have initiat-
ed this process. in their own
country? Or if you recall that
for years before the exposure of
the personality cult, the West-
ern, bourgeois press wrote about
the “dictatorship” of Stalin.

I raise this problem in this

‘Hiroshima,’ by Wyndam Lawrence, a
work on exhibit at the first outdoor
sculpture show held in conjunction with
the Stratford Shakespearean Festival.

sharp way in order to contrast
this description of how the “con-
sequences” of the personality
cult are being tackled with an-
other description by a Hungarian
writer, Laszko Boka, in the Feb-
ruary issue of the New World
Review.

Boka gets into the problem in
an article in which he shows a
penetratinfi understanding of the
“revolt” of the young people in
Hungary, and of the contradic-
tions ‘between the generations.
Listen to what he says:

“When the young people of
Hungary are individualistic .and
clamor for freedom, they do not
want to restore bourgeois liber-
alism and bourgeois. democracy.
They are demanding the kind of
socialist freedony and commu-
nist personality first brought to
their knowledge by Marxist-
Leninist theory. This was absent
under the Stalinist leadership of
Rakosi; and it is the affirmation
of this freedom which they now
consider too slow.

“When the young revolt
against hypocrisy, they are in
revolt against
methods of leadership too often
taking the place of socialist col-
lectivism, against the too fre-
quent appearance of petty bour-
geois homilies under the guise
of socialist morality, against the
slightest discrepancies between
theory and practice .. .”

Then he says: “If Western
youth in revolt today are called
angry, we are full justified in
calling ours impatient.

“The young are prepared to
believe that defects will disap-

‘pear, but why so slowly, they

ask. ‘If we can go to the moon

with the speed of a rocket, why -

on earth have we got to walk
from the bad to the good? Life
is too short to be patient,’ said
a young man to me.”

Does intolerance with the

administrative

slowness in eliminating vestiges
of the personality cult in any
socialist country contradict vig-
orous support for socialism and
its development in that country?
I firmly believe that it does not.

One can fully agree with Ry-
erson when he says: “What
stands~out, actually, is the sus-
tained courage of those peoples
who in the face of incredible
hardships, wars and threats of
war, have demonstrated the his-
toric fact that social ownership
not only can be made to work,
even under the least favorable
conditions; but that, working, it
can compete with the challenge
even the world’s most richly
endowed and technically ad-
vanced capitalist country — and
this, both in the economy and
in the cosmos.”

At the same time, the fact
that socialism exists, that it of-
fers a living pattern, makes it
necessary for those who strive
to win socialism in our own
country to say so frankly when
they see something that is un-
desirable in the pattern that is
offered.

And one can agree too that it
is even more important than
this to develop a socialist cri-
tique of our own country, and
on its basis to begin building
our pattern for the socialist de-
mocracy that will emerge here.

In my opinion, Stanley Ryer-

July 16, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUN

son has made a very worthv
contribution to the cove
of Marxist thought 1 ‘on |
by opening up the discuss
these topics. If I say he
not go far enough, ther
doubtless others who may™
he has gone too far.

In my view one of the a
valuable parts of his boot
part in which he deals 4
possibility of changing
cial status quo and 0 fi
forward into socialism west
is valuable from the
experience in democracy:

“Bourgeois democracl
holds within itself the P®,
for fundamental chang?
writes. “It is possible for
and allied democratic fo! i
win a firm majority COM.
in favor of public owners
genuinely planned operat ag
the economy; and to fas”,
majority coalition as thé s
cal instrument of such 4 iol
and win power in an ele

SS
S08

“Having secured 4 tive
representation in the ele“
stitutions, however, the 9°)
dical government mig
find itself faced with Mo,
resistance on the part 0
feated parties of big
The issue then would ‘
one of democracy — 1 ne
mentation or its subvers!?

0

A large part of “Thea
Society” is devoted t0 -
amination of the system 4
in — capitalism — ne
to discovering just no
is. The reader will find valu
references here as to 0
ious sociologists reg4?
Western world.

ea

~Ryerson’s book is worth i
ing. And -it is worth dis
far more extensively than pee
article, which is just 4 —

ning.

a!
ers