Book Reviews: Propaganda, Marxism and the Open Mind, What is Justice? Parliamentary Sovereignty and The Commonwealth, Lloyd George's Ambulance Wagon: The Memoirs of W. J. Braithwaite, the Machinery of Local Government, French Electoral Systems and Elections, 1789–1957, Germany's New Conservatism: Its History and Dilemma in the Twentieth Century, Islam in Modern History, Party Politics in India: The Development of a Multi-Party System, Pakistan: A Political Study, Politics in an Urban African Community, the Historical Thinking of Charles A. Beard, Parliament, An Encyclopaedia of Parliament, Bipartisan Foreign Policy, Myth or Reality?
| Author | Colin Leys,W. H. Morris-Jones,E. Harrison,C. J. Hughes,James Joll,P. A. Bromhead,F. G. Carnell,Norman Wilson,H. G. Nicholas,Leonard Schapiro,Geoffrey Marshall,Madeline Kerr,Peter Campbell,Geoffrey Sawyer,P. M. Williams |
| Date | 01 June 1958 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1958.tb00810.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1958 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS
PROPAGANDA.
By
LINDLEY
FRASER.
(Home University Library
No.
230;
This small book contains valuable chapters relating Soviet and Nazi broadcast propaganda
to the moralities of their respective systems. But the author is uniquely well informed about
British wireless propaganda, and therefore the chapters on the experience
of
a parliament-
ary country-Great Britain-are the ones which will be read with most interest by the
student of government.
As
it turns out, the student must content himself with reading
‘between the lines’, for the topics of institutional interest are not directly discussed. The
U.S.A.
is
not considered at all.
In
particular, no attempt is made to relate the policy of the BBC to the methods by which
it is ultimately controlled by, and responsible to, informed public opinion in Great Britain.
One receives an impression, startling if it is true, of a service of technicians operating in a
political vacuum. ‘The BBC at that time, reflecting perhaps the genera1 trend of British
opinion, felt
.
. .
.’
The policy of the British Broadcasting
Corporation
is everywhere con-
trasted with the Reich propaganda
Ministry.
Is
not one of the lessons to be learned from
propaganda in two wars a lesson about the method by which propaganda should be con-
trolled by, or left independent of, politicians? The only reference to this topic is the implica-
tion of the book that the BBC waged war entirely
on
its own account.
Like Machiavelli, Mr. Fraser’s experience is as a public servant of not quite the highest
rank. Public opinion, in his view, is only a thing to be manipulated. His political vision is
not complicated by the effective contact with statesmen and politicians which the very
highest public servants must experience. But even this incomplete viewpoint can, as in the
past, produce its classic work; and Mr. Fraser is in virtue of his double career as a Professor
and
a
propagandist quite exceptionally qualified to do
so.
Readers should wait for the day
when the author uses the last chapter of this book as the first chapter of
a
modern classic
on
statecraft written from the standpoint of propaganda.
Oxford
University Press.
Pp.
218.
7s.
6d.)
University
of
Leicester
C.
J.
HUGHES
MARXISM AND
THE
OPEN MIND.
By
JOHN
LEWIS.
(Routledge
&
Kegan Paul.
Pp.
xviii
+
222.
25s.)
In this volume Mr. Lewis has collected
a
number of his essays and lectures
on
various
aspects of Marxism.
A
follower of Marx’s doctrines himself, he is at great pains to
emphasize for the benefir of his non-Marxist critics that he prefers thinking for himself,
even at the risk
of
being charged with unorthodoxy.
As
one such non-Marxist critic,
I
hope
I
can be
of
some comfort to Mr. Lewis in assuring him that
I
for one have been unable to
find anything very unorthodox in his not very original essays. Indeed, the essays belie the
promise contained in the Preface.
For
here Mr. Lewis not only boldly criticizes the Soviet
Union for its intolerance
of
dissident opinions, but suggests that the theory
of
Marxism is
itself in need of re-examination when it comes to the question of safeguarding democratic
rights.
To
this interesting subject, however, Mr. Lewis does not return. The essays
on
the
Marxist view of freedom and ethics, for example, merely reiterate the familiar argument
that in order to be free, to ‘leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom’,
man must be equipped with greater knowledge of the scientific laws of social development;
while in ethics, if Marxism teaches that the means are justified by the ends, this, according
to Mr. Lewis, is
no
more than what
is
practised by all societies.
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