Book Review: Philosopher off the rails
Perhaps it was inevitable that Bertrand Russell would be asked to write in the current Penguin Special series. After all, it would be churlish to deny that he is a remarkably vigorous old man with a mind more alert and youthful than many men half his age. Anyway, he is certainly an able writer.
But there our compliments must end. We are not really concerned with the attractiveness of Russell’s personality but with whether he has any grasp of the capitalist situation in relation to the hideous problem of war. For that is something on which he has spoken loud and often in the past few years. When judged from this standpoint, he scores very low marks.
Readers will, of course, be aware of his prominence in the C.N.D. and later the Committee of One Hundred, of some of the foolish things he has said and done in the name of Nuclear Disarmament. But if you want a concise handbook of pathetic political ignorance, then Unarmed Victory (Penguin Special 2s. 6d.) is a must. This tells of the author’s frantic appeals to the various statesmen involved in the Cuban and Sino-Indian crises toward the end of last year. The short note on the back cover even suggests that perhaps it was Bertrand Russell’s efforts which really saved the world then from nuclear disaster.
There is no evidence to support this at all. The Soviets certainly took a gigantic risk (maybe a calculated one) when they started supplying missiles to Cuba. They must have realised early on that the U.S. would bridle sooner or later, but having gone so far, it is ludicrous to suppose that the cries of Lord Russell made much difference. They were, after all, quite well aware of the man in the street’s horror of war—how often have they used this very point in their propaganda—and apart from anything else, war is a costly business, not to be embarked on lightly.
It was suggested at the time by such journals as The Economist that perhaps the Soviet Union had never really intended to go to war over Cuba, that Krushchev’s advisers probably warned him that Russia was just not ready to take a showdown that far. But who knows, maybe next time they may think differently. There will certainly be other crises to make our hearts jump with fright as we face again the prospect of obliteration.
If we are to get behind this problem, we must recognise first of all that the gathering of the war clouds is not just a nasty accident. We have, in fact, to acknowledge that the Cubas and the Berlins are manifestations of a bitter struggle which is waged incessantly between the various capitalist powers. It is useless to appeal to the statesmen, because such people are caught up in the tragedy and, as spokesmen for their respective ruling groups, are not there for humanitarian reasons. They are prepared to go to war if their interests so demand.
Lord Russell certainly has not grasped this. True, he recognises the existence of American capitalist interests in Cuba and the readiness of the U.S. Government to bolster up Batista in support of them. But he does not seem to understand a new group of rulers now has the island in its grip, having risen to power on the tide of seething discontent generated by the hated Batista regime. It has happened elsewhere in the world and is a familiar story. Dr. Castro promised to “take immediate steps to resolve” the problems of housing, unemployment, education, health, etc., but instead took immediate steps to turn Cuba into an armed camp. And for the Cuban workers there was a distinction without much difference—they could now die for Castro instead of Batista.
Throughout this book are dotted examples of the confused and contradictory thinking which seems to afflict those who are tarred with the CND brush. In a footnote on page 34, the author chides the Labour Party Executive for advocating mediation through the United Nations. “. . . Whereas we may consider the UNO to be the cat’s whiskers,” he says, “most inhabitants of the U.S. consider it merely a cat’s paw.” Nevertheless, it was Lord Russell who telegraphed Krushchev only two days before, urging “condemnation (of U.S. actions) to be sought through the United Nations.”
Again, it is not disputed that “nuclear weapons are instruments of total annihilation,” but it is foolish to say in the same breath that they “are themselves an imminent threat to the peace of nations and a hostile act” (page 25). For such a statement begs the entire question—why nuclear bombs? In fact, why armaments of any kind? Such horrors do not exist in a vacuum. They are produced by society, but a society deeply divided into owners and non-owners in the means of life. It is here that we must commence our search for the way to free mankind from the terrifying prospect which faces it. Socialists discovered long ago that armed conflict is the ultimate method used by one group of owners to advance its interests against those of another. How ludicrous then to try and deal with atom bombs in isolation.
Nowhere does the author give any real consideration to this vitally important aspect. He has no inkling of what causes war and he is not opposed to it in principle anyway. To him there are some wars which are justifiable and others not (see page 11). Well, at least he is honest about it, but is it any wonder that he gets into such a mess when writing about present trends towards another bloodbath, and only a few lines later is blaming the “strength and habit of tradition ” for the strife between governments since the end of the last world war?
Having mistaken notions about the cause of war, it is not surprising that Lord Russell should have faulty notions also about its future prevention. He wants a joint statement by America and Russia:
“That nuclear war cannot achieve anything anybody would desire . . . that they have a common interest, namely survival, and that both will sacrifice this common interest if there is a war.”
What touchingly childlike faith he has in the statements of capitalist politicians, despite ample evidence of history to show how worthless these are, even granting the sincerity of those who utter them. But there is more to come. Let all states agree, he pleads, to submit their disputes to the arbitration of disinterested parties (whatever that may mean). He feels that arbitrating bodies “would acquire such moral authority that it would be very difficult for any government to flout the decisions of the arbitrators.”
Yet in the very next paragraph, he forgets this idea and advocates instead that prime fallacy of recent years, World Government. This will not rely on moral authority, because Lord Russell says it will have armed forces “. . . capable of defeating any state or combination of states that might attempt to resist its authority.” It will have to have a monopoly of all the major weapons of war and possess the raw materials necessary for weapons of mass destruction— presumably including those of nuclear origin.
Here is the final absurdity in one hundred and twenty pages, that strife can be abolished by indulging in it. For this is what the proposal really means, ignoring for the moment all the other objections which deny World Government even the remotest chance of ever being established. The strength of such an organisation, on Lord Russell’s own admission, would depend very much on its ability to wage war, the very evil we all seek to end.
As we have already said, Bertrand Russell is an able writer, but the whole of this book is a transparent illustration of his pitiful ignorance on how to solve perhaps the most terrible problem of our time.
E. T. C.