Pre WW2 Life Under The Soviets By Alexander Wicksteed Published In 1929

For sale is a Pre WW2 Life Under The Soviets By Alexander Wicksteed Published In 1929.

The introduction to This book states:

“The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics has many enemies and few friends. All the other Governments of the world are against it. The newspapers of Europe and America, with insignificant exceptions, de- nounce it. The learned professions, the estab- lished Churches, the vast majority of scientific men and administrative and industrial experts in other countries condemn and deride it. This far-flung hostility may be partly due to the fanatical fervour with which the Soviet Government, or at any rate the "Third In- ternational," has sporadically fomented and subsidized, in nearly all the countries of the world, social discontent, disorder and civil war. Unfortunately, for our own self- complacency, it is open to question whether this subversive activity would have arisen if the Allied Governments had not tried, not merely by propaganda but actually by force of arms, to hand back the land from the peasant to the lord, and to replace the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" by the old, effete, corrupt and cruel government of Czarism. But however that may be, there are men and women of goodwill who have risen above this turmoil of abuse and counter-abuse; and have preserved towards the U.S.S.R. an im- partial judgment tempered by beneficence. Among the most notable examples of this better outlook stand, in England, the Baptist Union and the Society of Friends. We may perchance discover in the following pages how came this tie of sympathy between an Atheist Republic, based on the materialist interpreta- tion of history, and these devoted but un- pretentious followers of Jesus of Nazareth and his Gospel of Love. For it was as a member of a delegation from the Society of Friends, welcomed by the Soviet Government for relief work during those dark days of war, pestilence and famine that followed on the revolution of October, 1917, that the author of this little book first became acquainted with Soviet Russia. At this point I may be permitted to explain that my only title to preface a study of Russian Communism (about which I have no more knowledge than any other " intelligent woman ") is an enduring respect and affection for the author's father. The late Philip Wick- steed was one of the most distinguished men of his time; whether regarded as an eloquent exponent of Dante to popular audiences, as a learned editor of Greek Classics, as a modernist theologian, or, what was more germane to my own career, as an original thinker in Political Economy. Perhaps the most lovable trait in Philip Wicksteed was the combination of intellectual curiosity and appreciation with an all-pervading charity and humility when criticizing persons or institutions that were foreign, or even unsympathetic, to his own outlook on life. This trait I recognize in the survey which his son here affords of Life under the Soviets. Mr. Alexander Wicksteed has had an incomparable opportunity of watching this life for the better part of a decade, not as a mere tourist, not even as a professional in- vestigator, but as a normal inhabitant and citizen of Moscow, unconcerned with politics, but taking part, year after year, in the daily work of the Russian people. Further, in his capacity as teacher of English in school and college, he has had a unique chance of observ- ing the effect of the strange new creed of Russian Communism on the life and character of the rising generation of intellectuals.

I wonder whether other readers of this simply worded but vividly realistic account of present-day life in Russia will agree with me in a widely paradoxical conclusion. The new rulers of Russia, professing a crude nientific materialism, have done more for the soul than for the body! Lenin and his disciples believed that they were going to abolish the of starvation, overcrowding, sickness and pre- poverty of the poor in its worst physical aspect mature death. It was, of course, only to be expected that this great ideal should not be fully attained even by the end of the first decade. But it also seems at least open to doubt whether the people of Russia are as yet better fed, better clothed and more spaciously housed than they were under the Czarist regime.

What is not open to doubt is that they have, peasants as well as town workers, a larger measure of personal freedom and a greater sense of personal dignity. For the first time in history, Mr. Wicksteed tells us "the common man feels that the country belongs to him, and not to a privileged class who are his masters."

Further, though the standard of life in respect of physical necessities is still low-lower than in Capitalist countries-the mass of the workers no longer feel that this poverty deprives them of all opportunity of enjoying the higher and better things of life. Music, the drama, art and literature, philosophy and science-all that is rare and distinguished in the world-is to-day in Russia as effectively open to the unskilled labourer as it is to the highly placed official or busy professional. In Moscow the opera, the theatre, tre, the classical concerts and the popular entertainments are enjoyed not merely by those who can afford to pay for them, but are by a remarkably wise and far- sighted Communism made actually accessible to the workman and his family. In the villages, the cinema, the popular concerts and the lectures are equally open to all without payment. Very elaborate arrangements seem to be made to ensure that the Universities and the technical colleges should not be even predominantly resorted to by those not belong- ing to the proletariat. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of a national system of education, in which not reading and writing and craftsmanship alone, but also music and the arts find their place deliberately directed, from the bottom to the top, with the purpose of making, not a chosen few, but the whole people, partakers of all the culture of the age. I suggest that the underlying principle of this impassioned insistence on social equality, on the spiritual no less than on the material side of life, is the determined separation of power from private wealth and personal luxury. by which men live, and of the unexpected sympathy with Soviet Russia manifested by such religious bodies in our own country as the Society of Friends and the Baptist Union. Lenin and his followers have repudiated the "Scale of Values" and the industrial psycho- logy on which the economic organization of Capitalist States is based. This has been well put by a group of American observers in a recent work. "Instead of industrial goods being furnished automatically by the activity of thousands of private individuals hoping to make a profit, as is the theory of America, they are furnished by a deliberate and co- ordinated policy on the part of the State.

The Russian experiment is based on the theory that there is more to be gained by co-ordinating industry to a functional plan and so eliminating the waste of the business cycle, duplication of plant facilities, over-exhaustion of natural resources, high-pressure salesmanship and the rest, than can be lost through failure to stimulate individual initiative, animated by the private profit motive." Very naturally, a whole decade has not sufficed to make the nobler motive of public service a complete substitute for pecuniary self-interest. The Communist bureaucracy accepts low salaries, submits to stern discipline, and carries on a perpetual campaign against the chronic Russian failings of dishonesty, unpunctuality and incessant talk. Soviet Russia is reported to have already begun to outdistance the Czar," in "fostering economic wellbeing but it cannot yet begin to be be compared with the more advanced capitalist nations in the volume of its industrial output." 1

It is exactly this choice of a Scale of Values, entirely different from that of Capitalism, and this basing of the whole national organization upon the motive of social service that attracts the Society of Friends, as it may well presently attract all who are sincerely Christian. But there is one "stop in the mind" among Western friends of Soviet Russia, which will doubtless be dismissed as "Bourgeois ideology."

The Communist oligarchy openly avows the view that the outstanding social advantage of its aim and purpose justifies, not only its uncom- promising dictatorship, but also the employ- ment of any amount of force, and even of drastic oppression of individual dissentients, whenever this seems required for success. This rule of conduct has so far been acted on with an amazing ruthlessness which is repugnant. “

This is in good condition and has the original paper dust cover. 

This will be sent via Royal Mail tracked 24 and dispatched within two working days.