Current History

Two incisive articles, which have the briefness characteristic of this monthly published by the New York Times, pose the Alpha and Omega of modern economic theory to readers of the March issue. The between cover and above-board fight between the article entitled "The Technocratic Terror," by T. N. Carver, David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy, emeritus, and the essay "Marxism After Fifty Years," by Harold Laski, reputed "barin" behind the former Labour party in England, and previous to that, professor of Economics at Harvard, leave only to be decided which is the Alpha and which the Omega of the theories, Laski, whose radical activities resulted in a hasty Hegira from this vicinity many years ago, sees the ultimate doom of capitalism--unless something unusual should happen, of course. He shows Marx's appeal to the underdog as the reason for this, an appeal outweighing Marx's theoretical inadequacies. He finds Russia to be the only country today in which a feeling of exhilaration can be detected. As a political theorist he places Marx in the top-most ranks.

"The Technocratic Terror" in a short space attacks Technocracy, Communism ("only a development of Marxism with a slight change of terminology"), and vigorously defends capitalism, private property, competition, and especially profit--the motivation of a perpetual capitalistic industrial advancement. Unemployment is explained thus, "under the market economy those who have only muscular power to sell must sell it in competition with mechanical power." Technocracy is the explanation of those who have not the brains to do what a machine cannot do, and Communism is the system made to foster these classes and keep them in power. Obviously the machine will overthrow such a class.

A weakness in Professor Carver's vigorous "offense-is-the-best-defense" essay is his attack on immigration, so common to this well-known writer's interviews. It is a mute indication that this article was written with only this country in mind. Importation of cheap labor is surely only a local phenomena, and does not exist in England or France to any extent.

A survey of German developments in the past few weeks entitled "Hitler-Chancellor of Germany" by S. B. Fay '96, professor of History, is hidden near the back of the magazine. It explains the present political and financial turmoil in Germany and Hitler's attitude toward it.

The American Mercury

Professor Carver's article in Current History blames a good part of the business depression in the Southwest on cheap Mexican labor. He will be pleased to read of the unofficial, but efficient deportation of 200,000 peons from Los Angeles in the last year in the Mercury's "The State of the Union" department. Los Angeles and its environs are exhaustively treated in a semi-Menckenite strain, somewhat more hard-boiled than usual, in another article entitled "Paradise".

News Week

Out last Friday was News-Week, garish, cheap-printed imitator of Time, weekly news-magazine. Edited by New York Times' S. T. Williamson '16, it copies popular Time almost slavishly. Adjective-loving News-Week lacks advertisements, photos of its own. Harvard men have seen most of these pictures before. News is sorted out under headings, "Sports," "Foreign." "Art" etc., like Time, but its pictures are not captioned by flippant Time-style quotations.