[In the following essay, Wright reviews The American Democracy.]

On the jacket of Professor Laski's book [The American Democracy: A Commentary and an Interpretation] the publishers have printed these words: "In 1838 Tocqueville: Democracy in America: In 1888 Bryce: The American Commonwealth: In 1948 Laski:The American Democracy." Now the fact is that Tocqueville's book did not appea r in 1838. The first part appeared in 1835, the second in 1840. This is a trifling inaccuracy which would not be worth mentioning if the new work fitted into the indicated pattern. I think it does not, except in coverage and in intention. But it is not a new Tocqueville, much less a new Bryce. It is an old Laski.

The scope of the book is vast, but there is relatively little of the solid, clearly set forth information that one finds in Bryce. Rather has Mr. Laski, like Tocqueville before him, written a commentary on American civilization. Political institutions receive much less attention than in Bryce's or Tocqueville's books, there being but two chapters on this subject; but there are long chapters—some of them almost of book length—on business enterprise, labor, religion, education, culture, minority problems, international relations, the professions, and press, cinema and radio, as well as introductory chapters on the traditions and spirit of the country and a concluding one on Americanism as a principle of civilization. One encounters on almost every page the point of view that Mr. Laski has often expressed, and it is for this reason that I have termed the book "old Laski" rather than "new Tocqueville"—for Bryce it clearly is not. Where Tocqueville's book came as a fresh and highly stimulating interpretation of the American experiment, Laski's commentary seems familiar and, in some degree, already outdated. In view of the insistence with which he reiterates his basis of interpretation, the title of the book might more accurately have been "The Defeat of Democracy by the Businessman"; for, where Tocqueville saw equality as the first and basic factor in American life, Laski sees inequality. Finance capitalism emerges triumphant.

After its scope and its point of view the most striking feature of the book is its size. There are 761 pages of text, well over 400,000 words. It is repetitious in detail as in point of view, and it might better have been half its present length. Nor is the style well suited to a book of this size, although there are many examples of Mr. Laski's graceful rhetoric. It is, on the whole, pretty heavy going, and most of the non-Americans, for whom the book is primarily written, will not find clarity in the hundreds of unexplained allusions. Tocqueville and Bryce were clear and lucid, and they did not substitute name-calling for patient exposition and careful justification of their opinions.

Doubtless the book is more rewarding than I have indicated. Certainly, it reflects a breadth of learning which is truly astonishing; and when I say that there is little in it that is new, I do not mean that its readers will be familiar with all the subjects discussed or with all the literature referred to. The book is not the product of one or two hasty trips via the lecture route. Professor Laski has been observing the United States since he came to Harvard in 1916. He was here for four years at that time, and he has been back repeatedly since. He knows and has known many Americans intimately. He has read widely. Yet he gives the impression that he sees what fits in with his stereotype. Or, rather, his conclusions are derived from his preconceptions, for his data and his preliminary generalizations are not always in agreement with his general interpretations. Thus he praises, with almost embarrassing superlatives, many aspects of American higher education, yet concludes that the colleges and universities are controlled by businessmen trustees who stifle dissent or originality. In almost every chapter one reads of the splendid achievements of this civilization of ours, only to discover that we have been going to the capitalistic dogs since 1865.

Mr. Laski has high regard for a good many American historians—most of them, to be sure, liberal or leftish in sympathy. Of their writings he says that one "has the sense that the whole evidence has been sifted with both delicacy and accuracy." I wish that this could be written of his book, but there are too many instances of inaccurate reporting or of distorted interpretation. John Adams was "convinced that men are so incapable of self-government that they must be restrained by force and ruled by some power beyond their reach." What the evidence for this more than dubious statement is we are not told. William James and Josiah Royce would have been surprised, though not altogether pleased, to read that they virtually agreed on basic issues. I suspect that almost every scholar who reads will find a discouraging number of such misinterpretations.

Another reason for being disappointed in this ambitious and comprehensive book is that so many of the American writings relied upon by Mr. Laski for his interpretation are largely from twenty or more years ago. This is amusingly and sometimes irritatingly illustrated by the frequency with which he refers to the two Babbitts—George and Irving—who bulked much larger twenty-five years ago than they do now. He is as uncritical of J. Allen Smith's Spirit of American Government, of Beard's Economic Interpretations, and of Parrington's Main Currents as if he had just run across them. A particularly curious example of the hold on him of the views current when he was first in the country is his reliance upon Turner's theory of the frontier as a basis for interpreting American civilization; yet in two places he recognizes some of the limitations of the theory—limitations which he has read about but apparently has not altogether absorbed into his thinking. His views on local government, on political machines, on business enterprise, and on the scope of governmental control frequently belong to that time more than to the present.

It is, I believe, characteristic of Mr. Laski's method and of his predispositions that he relies upon the radical, the Utopian, and certain of the literary or theological thinkers and either disparages or ignores writings of other shades of opinion or of other categories, which may have been far more widely read and have exercised, so far as one can tell in such matters, a greater influence. The Federalist, for example, is surely one of the most representative of all American books; it is casually referred to once. Tom Paine, who, except in religion, had almost no influence here after he had given his great assistance to the Revolution, is cited eighteen times. The Utopians of the nineteenth century are given far more emphasis than the historical evidence seems to warrant. Emerson is relied on not only as a representative philosophical and literary figure, which he was, but also as a representative political and social thinker, which he was not. And the too frequent use of "Puritan" is another disappointing substitute for description and analysis.

Since the book contains so much of criticism, and even of scolding, an American who finds it unsatisfactory may be suspected of tender and wounded patriotism. I can only say that I agree with Mr. Laski about the existence, though frequently not the causes, of nearly all the defects that he points out, and I would add others which his preconceptions obscure. My greatest source of disappointment in the book is that I do not find a substantial contribution toward the reshaping of the democratic ideal. I remember hearing Mr. Laski say, some ten years ago, that America needed, above all, a new interpretation of its history. I then thought it a very wise remark, and I believe the need is even greater today. But in Mr. Laski's incongruous mixture of praise and faultfinding, of scholarship and wise-cracking, of sympathetic explanation and superficial classification which demonstrates little sympathy and less understanding, I can find neither this reinterpretation nor the elements essential to its fashioning.

Perhaps it is unfair to Mr. Laski to judge his book, even in part, by this standard. But he has, by the scale of his subject and the sweep of his commentary, invited comparison with Tocqueville, not with John Gunther or, for that matter, with Dickens or with Mrs. Trollope; and by that standard the book is not more than a partial success. He has not, I think, sufficiently analyzed his premises, his conceptual tools, or his conclusions. He relies on a simple economic determinism, as though that answers all questions. He is apparently an unquestioning believer in majority rule; yet when he encounters examples of mass prejudice or majority decisions which he dislikes (racial discrimination, the popularity of yellow journalism, the election of a Huey Long or a Bilbo) he can only repeat the formula—"capitalistic system." We all know that governmental control and ownership have been expanding for a long time (much longer in the states than Mr. Laski is aware) and that this movement has by no means spent its force. In order to understand what this implies, we need a far clearer and more penetrating consideration than any American since Jefferson has given us of aims as well as means. But the confident proposal of a labor party in the image of the British Labour party as the solution of our problems seems singularly unrelated to many aspects of American tradition, prejudice, society, and politics. It is difficult to tell whether Mr. Laski is more impressed with the vast achievements of Soviet Russia or disturbed by the activities of the Communist parties in Europe and this country, which, as he says, are controlled by the Soviet Foreign Office. At any rate, he does not soberly discuss the price paid for those achievements, nor does he sufficiently analyze the degree of relevance in either the British or the Russian experience. Perhaps we can learn from this book not so much that we have faults—those we should be aware of—but rather that we shall need a great deal more of both imaginative and analytical thinking if we are to justify the position in the world which our resources, our technical skill, and our infamous businessmen have given us.