History, Truth, Liberty: Selected Writings by Raymond Aron; Franciszek DrauReview by: Fritz SternForeign Affairs, Vol. 64, No. 5 (Summer, 1986), pp. 1118-1119Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20042819 .

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1118 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

LATIN AMERICA: DEPENDENCY OR INDEPENDENCE? Edited by Michael Novak and Michael P. Jackson. Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1985, 186 pp.

Political, economic and social themes associated with the role of multi national corporations in Latin America are sketched against the background of political theory, social science, theology and finance. The papers, ten in

number, and the discussions originated in the 1984 Summer Institute of the American Enterprise Institute. The contributors are all competent scholars and the collection is praiseworthy.

COPEL IDEOLOG?A Y LIDERAZGO. By Ricardo Combellas. Caracas: Editorial Ariel, 1985, 339 pp. $8.00 (paper).

Ricardo Combellas has written a remarkable study of the Social Christian

party Copei, one of the two leading political parties in Venezuela. The first of its kind ever written by a Venezuelan scholar, it is a significant book for those interested in the establishment and development of democratic party

politics in Latin America. It explains the ideology and organization that have aided the expansion of Social Christian ideas in Latin, and particularly in Central, America. Luis Salom?n Barrios

Western Europe Fritz Stern

NEW JERUSALEMS: THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE ECONOMICS OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM. By Elizabeth Durbin. Boston: Rout

ledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, 320 pp. $32.00. A study of how some of the leaders of the Labour Party in the prewar

period revised its traditional program to make it economically sound and

sophisticated, non-Marxist and cognizant of Keynes. The author's father, Evan Durbin, a prominent and admirable man tragically drowned at a

young age, was, along with Hugh Gaitskell, a major figure in designing a

program that hoped to achieve a socialist economy by parliamentary means

without weakening the economy or arousing the propertied opposition to

violence. In Thatcherite England?and elsewhere?their hopes seem dis credited or anachronistic but their efforts to prepare economically sound

plans for a better society in the economically depressed and class-ridden

England of the day still carry a message, as does the example that social

planning with visionary goals requires the most penetrating assessment of

economic theory and practice, and of political realities.

HISTORY, TRUTH, LIBERTY: SELECTED WRITINGS. By Raymond Aron. Edited by Franciszek Drau. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1986, 384 pp. $27.50.

Representative selections from Aron's books and essays and four articles

of a largely sociological character are translated here for the first time. The

collection is enriched by a personal memoir by Edward Shils and marred

by countless misprints. The essays?on the intelligibility of history, on Marx and Tocqueville, on the nature of modern society and war?attest to Aron's

extraordinary erudition, intelligence and concern with explicating the past while instructing the present. The book also contains some of his essays on

international politics in the nuclear age, including his defense of "the

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RECENT BOOKS 1119

morality of prudence." A man of the right who understood Marx and the

moral justification of socialism; a man of peace who understood Clausewitz

and sought to assess the sources and conduct of modern war. This is a good introduction to the range and depth of Aron's work.

THE REVOLUTION WITHIN THE REVOLUTION: WORKERS' CONTROL IN RURAL PORTUGAL. By Nancy Gina Bermeo. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1986, 263 pp. $28.50. A splendid study of land seizure and subsequent workers' control in

southern Portugal during the early stages of the 1974 Portuguese revolu

tion. The book is grounded in empirical inquiry and informed by theory,

though the author is admirably critical of all received opinion. The seizure

of land sprang from specific economic conditions and was only after the

fact exploited by the Communist Party and later hobbled by the rivalry of

left-wing parties. A sophisticated book, written with exceptional lucidity and a sense of drama, a work that transcends the bounds of its subject and

demonstrates the great potential of the scholarly monograph.

AGGRESSIVE USA? AMERIKANISCHE SICHERHEITSPOLITIK, 1945-1985. By Kurt R. Spillmann. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1985, 245 pp.

A useful summary of America's strategic policies from containment to

SDI, with particular attention to the changes in morale and weaponry from

the Carter to the Reagan Administrations. The implications for Europe's own defense are

emphasized.

SURVIVAL IN AUSCHWITZ and THE REAWAKENING. By Primo Levi. New York: Summit Books, 1986, 384 pp. $19.95. MOMENTS OF REPRIEVE. By Primo Levi. New York: Summit Books,

1986, 144 pp. $14.95. The first book combines in one volume Primo Levi's two World War II

classics, first published in Italian soon after the war. This is how it was in

Auschwitz in 1944, day after endless day, hour after hour. Levi delineates the "concentration camp" personality, passive and cunning, echoing Bruno

Bettleheim's almost identical observations in his memoir of Dachau, The

Informed Heart. In a lean, uninflected style, Levi conveys the dream-like

atmosphere of the camp, the unreality. The gas chambers are near, but remote. Then the Red Army is near, but it too is remote. Cold, hunger and exhaustion obliterate all thought, and all feeling except cold, hunger and exhaustion. The Reawakening charts Levi's incredibly circular return to

Italy via Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Here people and landscapes come vividly alive in a bizarre, often comical series of events and human

encounters; a truly remarkable tale.

The second volume, Moments of Reprieve, is new and consists of a series of sketches of people Levi remembers from Auschwitz, from the quiet Italian laborer who saved his life with gifts of food to the chilly German coworkers in the chemical laboratory where he was lucky enough to be

given work (which also saved his life). Interesting but fragmentary, it is best read alongside Survival as a sort of addendum. Together these books constitute a record of man's suffering and resilience in extremity that can

scarcely be equaled. L. D.

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