A History of Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir

[p026] A History of Sex. By Simone de Beauvoir, translated from the French and edited by H. M. Parshley; A Four Square Book, 3s. 6d. This is Volume I of Le Deuxieme Sexe; Volume II has already been published here, entitled The Second Sex. It is a valuable addition to works on the Woman Problem, as the subject is considered from the stand- point of biology, psycho-analysis, history and ‘myth’. Careful study should be accorded to the material which is summarised from a wide variety of writers. Simone de Beauvoir writes from the standpoint not of Marxism but of existentialism, and is concerned with the aim of ‘transcendance’ for the individual reaching out always for fresh liberties. The conclusion is that men should recognise in every woman a human being, rather than a mystery, an ‘object’, the ‘Other’. B.H. Misunderstanding ? The Cold War—and its origins— 1917-1960. By Dr. D. F. Fleming. Allen & Unwin, £4 4s. Doctor D. F. Fleming, the Ameri- can historian, has certainly packed his 1,100 page tome with an enor- mous amount of useful facts and material for those of us who have to constantly use historical facts, both pre-war and post 1945, in our work. Much of Fleming’s material has been recorded elsewhere; much con- firms all the Marxist analyses of situations like the Korean war, the Chinese and colonial revolutions, although Fleming would not agree with Marxist conclusions. Fleming is a bourgeois liberal. As such, all the historical facts that he produces on Western imperialism’s drive to war on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, are coloured by his. political bias throughout the book. To him, the Cold War, the 1918-22 attempts to smash _ the Russian workers’ state by armed force and all the antagonisms be- tween the wars—are due to mistaken policies by Western capitalism. It is always a question with him ‘if only they had done this and not that’ 23 things would have turned out better; the Cold War would have been muted, Korea may not have occurred, and so on. To ‘convince’ the American imperialists that a turn is necessary (according to Fleming), the historian puts much of the whole of 43 years’ record straight. .He therefore makes a refreshing contrast to Cold War writers who for years have poisoned American workers’ minds with witch- hunt propaganda against Communism based on the most blatant lies or dis- ‘tortions of facts. Fleming shows that the Russian. Stalinist bureaucracy really has tried for peaceful co-existence with im- perialism especially after the ‘dream- ers of world revolution like Trotsky’ were defeated. An anguished cry throughout —‘why did you _ not realise this ?—-is the basic theme. Because of this he is very favourable to the Stalinist bureaucrat. He thinks that they would peacefully co-exist if only we would see this. At the end of the book, on ‘The Future’, Fleming can only put forward the rehashed clichés—more ‘planned’ capitalism, ‘a super-United Nations community’ and so on. He misses entirely that the driving force of imperialism for war is the chronic economic contradiction, of a decay- ing system. However, as we wrote earlier on, the wealth of historical facts con- tained in the book makes it a useful reference store. A few of these stand out: the smashing of the Greek workers’ revolutionary movement at the end of the war by British im- perialism whilst Stalin carried out faithfully his bargain with Churchill of non-interference, is recorded in detail. The Korean war—3,000,000 killed and maimed to back up the corrupt Syngman Rhee bloody dictatorship; the role of American imperialism in this; with the UN as a tame US rubber stamp. _ China—the sordid deals between American imperialism and Chiang kai-shek; arms, money to smash ‘communism’—but ‘democratically’"— according to US millionaires. Chiang lost because he could offer nothing - but oppression. The McCarthy witch-hunt in America—the drive towards a police state—the fact that under the guise *

[p027] 24 of anti-communism this oppression is still present in America. These, and such facts as the de- tails of the early attempts to smash the Soviet Union andthe ferocity of imperialist attacks on Russia in 1918-22, really bring out the con- clusions that Fleming himself cannot see. Imperialism has no choice. Its policies derive from its need to settle accounts with this vast non-capitalist world. It has to have expansion to exist even though the process of obtaining new areas of imperialist exploitation by war will mean non- existence. Only the working class led by revolutionary parties over- throwing imperialism completing world revolution can take humanity out of its impasse. - HL, Council of action