Queen Mary, by James Pope-Hennessey

[p028] Queen Mary. By James Pope-Hen-. nessy. Allen & Unwin. 42s. It seems that even Royalty have their problems. Princess May of Teck was excellently educated, as her parents always intended her to marry the heir to the British throne. Un- fortunately, the same care was not. taken with the heir. Her first fiancé —‘dear Eddy’-—was languid, fickle and useless almost to the point of mental deficiency. Within months of proposing to May, he tried to marry two other princesses and fell in love with a third woman. Queen Victoria is said to have blamed in-breeding. for this sort of carry-on. However, May never married ‘dear Eddy’, who died a month before the wedding was due. Catastrophe! All England, it ap- pears, and certainly her own family, decided she must be passed on to the younger brother. Her father embarrassed: everybody by audible mutterings to this effect before dear Eddy’s body was cold. Married life was not easy for Princess May. Her husband—King George V—was timid and_ bad- tempered. Her ‘cottage’ (a mansion to lesser folk) was ‘terribly small’ and the corridors were always blocked with footmen. Moreover it was set in grounds owned by her in-laws, and she was liable to find her furniture re-arranged by her mother-in-law. Vexation! But, despite all obstacles, Princess May, or—as she became—Queen Mary, always had a sense of duty. Thus, when the German Princess Maria became pregnant by the foot- man who put out the candles in ner bedroom, she did not turn the girl away. This footman, incidentally, managed to. wring money out of .1e princess’s family, and so became one of the few men to gain financiaily by such behaviour. Serious facts of history intrude into this book only as they affect Royal lives. But it is interesting to note that Queen Mary might have died in the Russian Revolution if she had accepted her first proposal of marri- age. And the eventual Tsarina could have avoided her fate if she had ~- cepted her first proposal—from ‘dear Eddy’. CELIA GALE.

[p029] NEW IDEOLOGIST OF CAPITALISM oo 63 out goods which it convinces people that they want, while leaving many needs poorly catered for. Some are able to consume on a fabulous scale while large sections of the populations placed by Rostow in the ‘high consumption’ range have only the bare minimum of house space and food, not to speak of the other ameni- ties of life. THE BASIC CONTRADICTION OF CAPITALISM Marxists hold that the capitalist system gives birth to its own grave-diggers, the modern work- ing class. Rostow occasionally mentions workers, but he never pauses to consider what they are, what they do, what place they hold in society—he tries to merge them into the general category of consumers (which covers all mem- bers of society regardless of class). Here is one of the essential falsities of his picture of modern capitalism. He evades the Marxist challenge by simply ignoring class differences. Yet even in periods of high prosperity with rising consump- tion levels, even when led politically and in the trade unions by men who accept the funda- mentals of the system the working class remains in practice unreconciled to it. The sums which are spent on human relations, industrial psycho- logy and ‘welfare’ by business are a monument to its failure, its failure to exorcise the class struggle, the central theme of The Communist Manifesto. Of one thing we can be sure, as long as capitalism survives the industrial relations experts will never work themselves out of a job. But Rostow says nothing about this. To con- sider man as a producer would mean examining the social relations of production and emoloy- ing Marxist criteria which would run counter to those which he adopts. Only by retainine the viewpoint of a consumer can he give his inter- pretation a semblance of consistency. Ambitious as his programme is. Rostow fails to provide adequate means for distinsuishing his ‘stages’ of economic growth. For all this erudi- tion and nseudo-science he only combines the old boureeois history, emphasising ideas. desires. sentiments, great men and status svmbols as the determining forces, with concessions to economic determinism, and then profusely illustrates his noints with all manner of doubtful examovles. His maior purnoses are Jaid bare in his more directlv nolitical statements to which this disnlav of knowledge and academic virtuosity is designed to lend support. He minsles self-complacency with inexplicable doubts and fears: he conforms. in fact he is ultra-conformist on the main issues, but he gives expression to a few private doubts and misgivings. His major fear is the Soviet Union and what the Soviet Union symbolises for him and for U.S. capitalism. He tries to cut the U.S.S.R. down to size, as it were, by empha- sising all those features in its development which resemb'e those of the United States, whereas it is the differences which are essential, whether considering the history of Russia before the Revolution or Soviet society today. For example, Rostow gives no reason except ‘reactive nationalism’, or the drive for world hegemony, for supposing that Russia is aggres- sive, any more than he supplies any evidence for the peaceful orientation of the U.S.A. He fails to see, or evades discussing, the fact that all the fears he exnresses about the American economy do not apply to the U.S.S.R. With a nationalised and planned economy there is no reason why long-run deceleration of growth curves should give rise to any problem, because resources can be deployed rationally to conform with social needs. Likewise, before this stage is reached, it is possible to make use of automation more fully and without the problems of technological unempvlovment which arise under capitalism. It is true that because of the particular distortions which have crept into Soviet society the full po- tentialities of planning have not been realised, but that is quite a different matter. There is somethings else which worries Rostow very seriously because it concerns a world chal- lense to capitalism. As we have seen, he retects —or misunderstands—the Marxist theory of im- perialism. He assumes that ‘colonialism is virtu- ally dead’, which is true. at the most, only ‘n relation to onen political centro! of colonies. Rastow is verv worried lest these former colonies and other hackward countries should follow the Soviet model. hence. like manv other publicists. he arenes that ‘the West’ should increase aid to them. in order to inoculate them against the ‘dis- ease’. What he omits to point out is that these areas are bv no means free of economic imperial- icm. Nor is there anv lack of capital. supplied throush the bie extra-territorial companies, when there is scone for the profitable openins un of natural resources fo meet the demand of the world market. What is lacking is canital for all- round develonoment. and it is this which Rostow wants to see supolied. _ Now’, canitalist States do alreadv sunvly capital to cnch conntries in Asia and Africa because of their cencitivity ta the challense of the T7.S.S.R.. hut alsa for another reason which Rostow does not mention. Foreien aid. tn India for examole. has heen necessary to enable the national bonr- reoisie to maintain itself in power: without it the

[p030] 64 Congress government would have fallen long ago. As it is, the national bcurgeoisies in semi- eolonial or former colonial countries have had to lean on foreign capitalists externally—or 10 manoeuvre between them and the Soviet Union —and on the forces of the old social order intern- ally. The main obstacle blocking faster indus- trialization is to be found in the social relations of production; the nature of the national bour- geoisie and of its partnership with landed interests inhibits faster development because such essen- tial preliminaries as agrarian reform cannot be carried through. Of course, massive aid from outside can prolong the existence of these regimes, though it cannot dispel the contradic- tions of the social structure; and it is in the interests of world capitalism that they should be kept in being. But the initiation on the requisite scale of an autonomous process of internal ac- cumulation is beyond the power of the bour- _ geoisie in these countries. Hence the dilemma which Rostow feels so acutely.?7 27‘Communism . . . is a kind of disease that can befall a transitional society if it fails to organize effectively those elements that are prepared to modern- ive.” Strangely enough. at this voint. he starts using the term ‘capitalism’, since it is the only way in which he can distineuish the economv of ‘the West’ from that of the U.SS.R. Thus ‘Communism’s hope now _ lies not in crises brought on by a strugsle to unload ex- ports, but in the canitalist world’s excessive absorption with domestic markets’. Which is an incorrect ap- praisal anyhow.