Are the issues that were involved in the split in the American trade union movement still at stake, or is the continuance of the split due to other factors than those that caused the break? The prospects for the American labor movement in the years to come apparently depend on the answer to this question. If the fundamental issue involved in the split was that of industrial unionism, and if there has since been no perceptible change in the position of the two parties toward this problem, prospects for the restoration of unity are but slim. If other factors, such as organizational inertia or personal power policy, are the only obstacles to reconciliation, prospects may be brighter in view of the increasing pressure from without in the direction of reunion.
There can be no doubt that the only important immediate economic advantage resulting from the enlargement of Germany’s borders will be the increase in the supply of labor. Apart from that the Sudeten territory will represent, like Austria, another minus item in the economic balance sheet of Germany. Since political considerations call for rapid recovery measures in the area which has "come home" to Greater Germany, the costs of pump priming are likely to increase the burdens of the Reich’s finances. Therefore the achievement of complete economic hegemony in southeastern Europe as a by-product of the Sudeten victory becomes all the more important. This latter accomplishment is only the last step toward a goal at which Germany policy has been aiming for some years. Half a year ago the 'Drive to the East' appeared endangered by the common efforts of Great Britain and France, after the political surrender of Vienna, to prevent an economic conquest of Bucharest, Belgrade, Budapest, Sofia and Athens. The diplomatic retreat of the western powers from southeastern Europe has now withdrawn the last line of defense which existed against the German economic drive in this region.
The Austria of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg liked to be regarded as a corporative state, that is, one founded on corporate bodies comprising both the workers and the entrepreneurs of the same trade or profession. Still, an objective discussion of the corporative experiment in Austria must be preceded by the sober statement that such a corporative state had not yet actually taken shape when the German troops marched in. In Austria there was occurring a repetition of the experience of Italy and Portugal--that it is one thing to proclaim a corporative state and another realize it, even though it is supposed to be founded on the natural order of society. Mussolini’s stato corporativo gave us an example of a corporative state existing for twelve years without corporations, the corporazioni being launched only in 1934. Salazar’s Portugal is another striking example of this strange phenomenon.
What is just, what is unjust? Sometimes a voice within us claims to know. Whether or not we are trained as lawyers, that voice likes to announce, at times even to cry out: this is just, this is unjust. Not always, it is true, will this inner voice speak so decisively. Sometimes it will remain indifferent, or waver, or even hold contradictory answers in readiness. But in many cases it will respond clearly and distinctly to a fact. What voice is this? Is it god who speaks? Is it nature? Is it reason, passion, soul, conscience? What is the "idea of justice" or the "feeling of justice" that announces itself in this way? In examinations of these old questions a modern school of relativity has evolved during the last three or four decades, in this as in other fields of the social sciences. This school has advanced the doctrine that justice, the idea or feeling of justice (or, as some would say, the idea of right, or the ends of law and justice) are conceptions or phenomena of a relative character, because the postulates of justice cannot be ascertained apart from the system of values accepted in a certain period and locality by a certain person or group of persons.
When the critics had maintained that a socialist economy must break down under the weight of its own arbitrariness, its theorists had countered that it could use for its orientation the same objective standards as the private market. The ideally free market has often and rightly been described as a plan imposed upon producers by the entirety of consumers (income recipients); it is the consumers that hoist the price signals for reduction. And this remains true in a socialist economy which adopts the same mechanism. It follows that such an economy would partake not only of the rationality of an ideal static market but also the disproportions and crises of a real dynamic market. The more the analogy to the market is stressed, the more a very different principle is required to raise the socialist economy above the level of the crisis-stricken market.
Review of book by Sir John Hope Simpson. Issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. New York: Oxford University Press. 1938. 233 pp.
Review of book by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger. Foreword by Fritz Morstein Marx. McGraw-Hill Studies in Political Science. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1938. 203 pp.
Review of book by Morgan A. Young. New York: Morrow. 1938. 328 pp.
Review of book by Harry Elmer Barnes and Howard Becker. Vol. 1. A History and Interpretation of Man's Ideas about Life with His Fellows. 790 pp. and Vol. 2. Sociological Trends Throughout the World, 385 pp. New York: DC. Heath 1938
Review of book by Crane Brinton. New York: W. W. Norton. 1938. 326 pp.
Review of book by Cesar Saerchinger. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1938. 393 pp.
Review of book by Nathan Reich. New York: Oxford University Press. 1938. 293 pp.
Review of book by Milton Harrington. Lancaster: Science Press. 1938. 459 pp.