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before President Kennedys assassination the poor record of the Alliance (the
fantastic succession of right wing coups, a flight of North American capital from
Latin America etc) had caused such prominent officials as former presidents Alberto
Lleras Camargo and Juscelino Kubitschek to resign. In fact Needler appears
convinced that the huge continent is convenient pasture for economic colonization,
provided sufficient guarantees can be provided by United States Foreign Policy.
Nevertheless, Needier makes some interesting comments on aspects of Latin
America that are frequently omitted by foreign authors; e.g. the legitimacy vacuum,
(pp. 3739), the university students movement a very interesting phenomenon (pp.
5963), the army and political violence (pp. 6488); unfortunately Needler fails to
make a clear distinction on this latter topic between real revolutions and mere coups
dtats. The author calls the Cuban revolutionary rgime a single-party dictatorship
(pp. 120) and that is all. He also displays an understandable reticence about the
United States rle in overthrowing the freely elected left wing government of
Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Alberto Ciria
The Communist Foreign Trade System. F. L. Pryor. Allen & Unwin,
293 pp, 40s.
This scholarly and painstaking work on the structures and evolution of the other
common market shows how far the Comecon countries have to go in order to
evolve a common strategy which takes account of the individual interests of each
country. Well into the mid-1950s the incompetence of Communist planning re-
mained its most striking characteristic. An imprortant point which arises from the
work are fears of countries like Rumania that Russian-dominated planning works to
keep under-developed Communist countries as under-developed suppliers of raw
materials to the more advanced Communist countries in a sort of Soviet tutelage
expressed by a pricing system based on capitalist world prices which notoriously
disfavour primary producers. One point which is made is that the position of the
weaker Communist countries is strengthened to the extent that they manage to
diversify their trading relations outside the Comecon area. A basic work for those
interested in the economic development and relations of the Communist bloc. T.w.
Corruption in Developing Countries. Ronald Wraith and Edgar Simpkins.
Allen & Unwin, 208 pp, 30s.
The authors of this interesting work on a delicate subject are concerned to avoid
easy moralizing on the subject of the scarlet thread of bribery and corruption that
runs through the fabric of public life in newly independent States. To do this, the
bulk of their work is, in fact, not concerned with contemporary developing nations
but with one of the earliest developing nationsBritain up to the 1880sin order
to discuss the lessons which British development towards an uncorrupt society
has for countries like Nigeriato which the other part of their book is devoted.
Understandably enough, their recommendations remain at the level of bourgeois
commonsense and within the perspective of British (i.e. capitalist) development. In
a list of cures for corruption at the end of the book, we find, apart from the
passage of time, and the spread of education, the further growth of the professional
class and the strengthening of elements in the middle class. Apart from the fact that
demographic pressure makes a slow capitalist solution economically unviable and
politically impossible, one should point out the very rapid and very radical elimina-
tion of corruption in what was one of the most corrupt societies on recordChina.
Fixing their eyes on Britain, the authors are incapable of this. They have produced
valuable descriptions of corrupt societies but the scope of their political and socio-
logical imagination by no means measures up to Dumonts Afrique Noire est Mal
Partie (reviewed NLR 19) to which it provide a useful (Anglophone) supplement.
Students of English history will find it perhaps more useful than will students of
contemporary Third World history. T.w.
Dickens and Crime. Philip Collins. Macmillan, 258 pp, 40s.
Dickens and Kafka. Mark Spilka. Dennis Dobson, 308 pp, 45s.
These two books more or less representliterally and metaphoricallytwo con-
103
tinents of criticism, linked only by the English language. In their different ways, both
are valuable. Collins documents with extreme thoroughness Dickens attitude as
writer and father towards children and their education. He examines the actual state
of 19th century education and convincingly depicts both the fullness of Dickens
interest and the limitations of his reformist schemes. At the same time, despite the
welcome conjunction of litterary and sociological interest, the book reveals a certain
lack of imagination. Spilkas book, by contrast, is an original tour de force. Biography
for Collins is simply an integral part of his documentation; for Spilka it is an (often
audacious) method of critical substantiation. The child is the theme of Collins
research; for Spilka too it is the bridge between Kafka and Dickens. But where it
remains object for Collins, childhood is seen by Spilka as a dynamic determinant of
both Dickens and Kafkas vision as novelists. Dickens and Kafka write from the
arrested sensibilities of childhood; this at the origin of their preoccupation with the
grotesque (the world is seen by the child from a literally oblique perspective), their
evasion of sexuality and their view (covert or overt) of the differing nature of sin and
guilt. Spilkas analysis of Dickens benefits dramatically from being worked in terms
of the later, conscious methods of Kafka, and the post-Freudian Kafka only loses
marginally from fitting the Dickensian pattern. Spilka successfully establishes
Kafkas debt and similarity to Dickens; the only weakness of his statement of the
crucial Kafka themes is his failure to allow that Kafka may present the reader
simultaneously with several possible values for his symbols.
The divergent currents of criticism that these books represent is neatly illustrated in
their respective prefaces. Collins, author of a book on Dickens and Crime, disclaims
any intention of writing an infinite series of books on Dickens and . . . Spilka
underlines the apparent incongruity of his mutual interpretation. The English
critic is nervous of the weight of his documentation, the American of the explosive
character of his scheme. . . J.M.
The Car Makers. Graham Turner. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 25s.
This survey covers most aspects of the motor industry: history, organization, em-
ployment conditions, Union action, technical advance, place in the world market,
expansion plans. Turner is critical of managements for not creating conditions for
workers loyalty and critical of the workers for being materialistic. He is rather
naivefor instance, his worried description of Communist strength at Fords ends:
Perhaps widespread lack of interest in religion has something to do with the mild
assessment of Communism at Dagenhambut his book contains willy-nilly much
of interest to socialists. Among the points that come out clearly are: 1. The advanced
stage of integration between component producers and car manufacturers; 2. The
appalling work conditions on the assembly line (Its just another form of Yogism
they automate your mind as well.) 3. The expansionism of the industry, with all that
entails vis-a-vis the need for overseas markets, the grave danger of over-production,
the likelihood of still further integration. There are many odd snips of information:
half the cars sold in Britain go to company fleets and these fleets are disposed of
regularly by large second-hand dealers who disperse them round the country;
collaboration is in embryo between car and oil companiesbranded oil is advertised
on filler caps, etc. The Car Makers is exactly the kind of book which ought to be
written by socialist journalists. We badly need lucid accounts of Britains key
industries. Meanwhile, socialists would do well to read this book. Henry Lester
Genghis Khan. Ralph Fox Background Books, 10s. 6d.
The Builders of the Mogul Empire. Michael Prawdin. Allen & Unwin, 32s.
There is a picture, in Prawdins book, of Babur, the founder of the Mogul dynasty,
sprinkling the Mongolian horse-tail standards with Kumiss. He was saluting a past
which was still very much with him. Fox describes how the sweep of the Mongol
armies throughout Asia cleared the way for an immense series of revolutions.
Mogul rule in India, inaugurated two-and-a-half centuries after Genghis Khan, was
the last of the series. For, as Fox emphasizes, the Mongol achievements which the
decaying feudalism of the East failed to profit by (and here the Mongols themselves
must bear the responsibility for their own devastations) . . . gave the impulse to a