With the end of the war, which halted a wartime full employment in this country, there has come a companion feature, paradoxical in its implications--the idea that the dismal period of the Twenties, roaring boom and tragic bust, will be repeated. Fritz Sternberg not only believes that the future will follow the same cycle, but that this time the depression will provide the coup de grace of the whole capitalist world. A socialist of the German stripe, non-Communist, but more in sympathy with their viewpoint and efforts than with those of the "reactionary capitalists," it is not difficult to pick out the haven he would seek in the storm. "The Coming Crisis" points the way to a socialist state with reservations.

The argument is propped with three relatively new influences which the author thinks doom the American free-enterprise system; the repudiation of the old colonial system which will make it more difficult to dispose of surplus goods; the withdrawal of increasing sections of the world from the orbit of capitalist control into that of the socialistic states; the greatly increased productivity of the United States making inevitable and increasing the intensity of the crisis when it comes. In Sternberg's view, these factors will force a major depression with the possibilities of resolving it under the present economic system more remote than they were in 1929.

Since the progressive and anti militarist forces within this country would, in his view, be great enough to prevent a turn to a fascist dictator, the dominant capitalists would attempt to enforce a semi-war program in an effort to preserve their privileges, while assuring a moderate prosperity to the workers. This program would, when combined with a new type of imperialism allied to general reaction, lead to increased dangers of another war. To combat this danger Sternberg falls back on the progressives, urging them to expose this danger and to prepare an adequate foreign as well as domestic program, which will give them a broad basis for action when the crisis strikes.

Despite a logically constructed argument leading to his conclusions, by no means the most radical of these held by "progressives," Sternberg falls down in the crucial section of his treatise in transferring the historical treatment to a practical program While he is quite sure that the old capitalism is doomed. Sternberg's prognostication is clouded by his own uncertainties of the future. The flaws of Sternberg's own blueprints allow little optimism on the coming crisis.