COMMUNISM AND THE WAR

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23349, 7 June 1941, Page 5

COMMUNISM AND THE WAR

CURRENT BOOKS

The Betrayal of the Left. Edited by; Victor Gollancz. Victor Gollancz, Ltd. 324 pp. (9s net.) Mr Gollancz, with John Strachey, George Orwell, ‘and Professor Laski, who contributes a preface, here sets out to examine and refute “Communist policy from October 1939 to January 1941." Essentially, they are concerned with the astonishing change of front which occurred between the first days of the war and the end of the campaign in Poland. Mr Harry Pollitt, leader of the Communist Party, declared its full support for what he described as “a just war," the cause of “the whole working class and all friends of democracy in Britain,” who could not oppose it or stand aside, without betraying "everything our forebears have fought to achieve in the course of long years of struggle against capitalism.” But Soviet Russia joined Nazi Germany in the ravage and occupation of Poland; and Mr Pollitt withdrew, the “Daily Worker” began- campaigning against the war, and it became impossible to distinguish the Communist Party’s programme of propaganda against “imperialist” war, against Britain’s policy, and against American aid, from a programme of naked defeatism and, in effect, assistance to Germany. Mr Gollanzc and his contributors are inclined to give the Communists a certain negative credit: that is. for not wanting the Nazis to win. What they do want, as the curious stage-managed “People’s Convention" showed, is a “people’s” (i.e., Communist) government, which would somehow produce peace, forcing just terms bn the dictators, or promoting their overthrow from within, or achieving it, with the aid of sympathetic Stalin’s armed forces, from without. What they want, to put it more briefly still, is Communist revolution, first and before all, and cannot see (or pretend not to see) that a policy of applied Leninism, in present circumstances, is a policy of knock-under to Hitlerism. “We cannot even speak of Socialism if we are robbed of a country in which to practise it,” said the Chinese Communist leader, Mao Tse-tung. “Do you want to establish Socialism? Then you must be ready to defend your country,” says Mr George Orwell. British Communism, in his view and in that of his colleagues, has “betrayed the left” by forgetting that, or not seeing it, and by. making Churchill the object of its immediate attack rather than Hitler. Abundantly documented and well argued, this book is all the more striking because it is the work of a group of intellectuals whose relations with Communism have been close and friendly. * MONEY An Outline of* Money. By Geoffrey Crowther. , Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.. 459 pp. (10s net.)/ No account of the monetary system, in : theory and practice, can be-' more warmly recommended to the general reader than this, by the editor of the “Economist." He expects the war and its. aftermath to “teach us. a great deal about money.” Emphasis may shift, institutions be changed. But, he says, suggesting that “to publish a book on. money, most of whose examples are drawn from the pre-war era, when that era has Already closed,” is not so foolish as it may seem. There is some reason for'thinking that the changes may not be 'so severe this time as they were in and after the war of 1914-18. Then-there Was a long-estab-lished and smoothly-working system to destroy. Now we have alread: had monetary.chaos for almost a‘decade; we have been' forced- to do a good--deal-of (hard and untrammelled -thinking;- we ;-have already been‘ faced with .problems very closely akin to those of'war;- aiid we have been compelled to look behind the formal facade of institutions like the feold standard and inquire into basic realities. I am bold enough to hope that, if this book comes to be read after - the war.... the statements of monetary principle will be found to be, perhaps incomplete,- but not incorrect. ( Though few readers will want to “skip" in this book and none will be well advised ,to do so, it may be said that the chapters on the quantity theory,’ on saving and capital, and on monetary policy are of crucial importance and are written with admirable clarity.