MR. LASKI has steadfastly refused to accept the label of "Marxist," but it is doubtful if anyone, with the permissible exception of John Strachey, has yet written a more brilliant defense of the general Communist position. Though on matters of dialectic and detail, he differs noticeably from the orthodoxies of the Third International, his basic convictions are unmistakably Red. For this reason it is not too likely that "Democracy in Crisis" will replace the King James Version on the sitting-room table of the great American Boor. But those who agree with the conclusions the author has reached will feel an impulse to burst into song and shout, while even Mr. Laski's conscious opponents cannot avoid being impressed by the relentless argument he builds up, point by point, with more than his usual power of analysis and expression.

The major theses of the book are three. The first is that political democracy, so far as it exists, is wholly at variance with economic dictatorship. The principle of democracy is equality, but capitalist society is dependent on the institution of inequality. The second is that the recognition of this discrepancy--which is the essence of Socialism--has grown to such proportions that the inevitable struggle cannot long be postponed. The third is that this struggle admits of no compromise, for history and all current signs indicate that the ruling class has no intention whatever of abdicating gracefully from its seat of power. As Mr. Laski states regretfully in his Preface: "I am aware that my argument is a pessimistic one, . . . but the obligation to follow the compulsion of the facts is inescapable." It was hard for the author, as one can readily believe from his earlier writings, to come to the decision that parliamentary institutions are doomed to be discarded when the final question of the public or private ownership of property is brought to the test. The choice, he points out, lies squarely between a Fascist or a Communist seizure of authority.

To those who persist in repeating the old formula that England is known far and wide for its propensity to compromise, that its people are a law-abiding nation, that democracy has reigned uninterrupted since 1688, Mr. Laski has two replies. One is the clear fact that no serious, fundamental issue has since been forced to the attention of the country; the two parties have been able to agree to disagree, simply because they are agreed on what Madison termed "the only enduring source of faction--Property." The other answer is that until now the continued economic success of the capitalist system had offered the disinherited at least some hope of material betterment in the near future. But with the collapse of national and international capitalism, with the evidence that even the so-called Social-Service State cannot long be maintained, it becomes ever more obvious to the Have Nots that the position of the Haves is completely unjustified. And when the former find that the latter are not inclined to acknowledge their right, by virtue of a vote-majority, to change the fundamental assumptions of society, strife is unavoidable and democratic forms will be tossed aside by both sides.

Mr. Laski has paid particular attention to the English situation, but he maintains that the broad arguments he has put forward are equally applicable to other countries, and his reasoning is hard to refute. But whether or not "Democracy in Crisis" moves one to brandish the hammer and the sickle, it is a book which can find few contemporary rivals for the vigor of its prose and the shrewdness of its thrusts.