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book and other reviews archives 1 2 index of book reviews from abelard

socialist infiltration of american politics - the auroran sunset

The NYBooks.com has a long and fascinating review of five books relating the history of the early Soviet infiltration of American politics and that of the counter-intelligence war. All five books (and the review) refer heavily to now available records from Soviet intelligence services, either decrypted signals intelligence, particularly VENONA, or papers gained from defectors like Mitrokhin.

Refreshingly, the writer (Thomas Powers) appears more concerned with presenting the known, and yet unknown, facts, than with rehabilitating either the farcical McCarthy witch-hunts or the treachery of socialism’s useful idiots:

“As a spy hunter McCarthy was a complete failure. His elastic numbers, never the same two days running, were much derided at the time; he never found even a single genuine Communist in the government; none of those he named recklessly during his hour on the stage was ever proved to have been a spy; and none of them appear in the VENONA traffic or the documents published by Weinstein and others. A rough-and-tumble demagogue of a certain raffish charm, McCarthy never really understood the chapter and verse of Communist spying, much less the subtler play of left-right ideological struggles, which tempted many liberals of the time to deny overheated right-wing charges of subversion with counterclaims that the "Red Menace" was all being trumped up by the FBI. [...]

“The history of McCarthyism offers a fine example of dogged persistence in the defense of old interpretations, which fail to be integrated into the story of what we have learned about Soviet espionage since the end of the cold war. After all his bluster, McCarthy himself never found any spies, but Chambers, faced with Hiss's libel suit, made charges of espionage that have turned out to be true. Not all the victims of McCarthyism were harmless idealists of the left.

“It is the Hiss case in particular which is central to the unfolding of what came to be called McCarthyism, and to the tortured treatment of it by many historians now. An important factor in the escalation of McCarthyism from an aberration to a genuine crisis of democracy was the denial (mostly by the left), and the furious response to that denial (mostly by the right), of what was characteristic of many So-viet spies of the 1930s and 1940s—they were of the left generally, they supported liberal causes, they defended the Soviet Union in all circumstances, they were often secret members of the Communist Party, they were uniformly suspicious of American initiatives throughout the world, they could be contemptuous of American democracy, society, and culture, and, above all, their offenses were too often minimized or explained away by apologists who felt that no man should be called traitor who did what he did for the cause of humanity. Once the dust of the big spy scandals settled, however, the KGB concluded that it had been a ghastly mistake to recruit agents from Communist Party ranks, and they quit doing it. But the fact that some Soviet spies could in part be identified by their politics, and the embarrassed denial of that fact by liberals who shared some of their political goals, helped turn a spy scandal into a searing schism in American political life which has not entirely healed yet, fifty years later.”

related material:
Wilson and the socialist infiltration of British politics
Also see Greg Hennessey’s comment with additional background

useful idiots book

socialist religions
the ends justify the means

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charles murray promotes the citizen’s wage

In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State looks like a relevant book, as the details of developing a citizen’s wage or dividend require much thinking through of the implications and effects. A citizen’s wage is an essential for rebalancing modern society and for getting free of the disastrous effects of the fundamental errors of statist socialism.

Murray has a mind moulded in puritanism and authoritarianism, but he is also one of the few commentators around who self-corrects as he gains more data. The psychological thinking that appears to have gone into his book is vital to discussing the potential and the effects of this essential coming change in society.

This book looks like useful reading for those wishing to think further about the issues, their implementation and effects. The social/psychological effects of this change will go far and wide, and do much to welcome in the post-poverty age.

As Iain Banks approximately says, “money is a sign of a poor society”.

Self-review of Charles Murray’s new book:

In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, published this week by AEI Press.

“The Plan returns the stuff of life to all of us in many ways, but chiefly through its effects on the core institutions of family and community. One key to thinking about how the Plan does so is the universality of the grant. What matters is not just that a lone individual has $10,000 a year, but that everyone has $10,000 a year and everyone knows that everyone else has that resource. Strategies that are not open to an individual are open to a couple; strategies that are not open to a couple are open to an extended family or, for that matter, to half a dozen friends who pool resources; strategies not open to a small group are open to a neighborhood. The aggregate shift in resources from government to people under the Plan is massive, and possibilities for dealing with human needs through family and community are multiplied exponentially.”
—
“ Simply put, the Plan gives us back the action. Institutions and individuals alike thrive to the extent that they have important jobs to do and know that the responsibility to do them is on their heads. For decades, the welfare state has said to us, "We'll take care of that." As a result, we have watched some of our sources of life's most important satisfactions lose vitality. At the same time, we have learned how incompetent--how helpless--government is when "taking care of that" means dealing with complex human needs. The solution is not to tinker with the welfare state. The solution is to put responsibility for our lives back in our hands--ours as individuals, ours as families, and ours as communities.”

It looks like I may have to buy a copy and read it!

In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State by Charles Murray, AEI Press, March 2006, 0844742236 $13.00 [amazon.com] {advert} / £10.34 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}

related material
citizen’s wage, with commentary on the misconstruing of property, ownership and subsidy
The Bell Curve by R J Hermstein and C. Murray
what to do with the neets, and statistical interpretation

Thanx to td for this link.

the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/review0601.php#citizenswage_210406

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