Collectivism on the Hook

W. W. Rostow is an interesting case. As an economist he bears the stigmata of the modern institutionalist: he likes to work with huge aggregates, and he believes in statistical correlations, not in logical inferences that depend on relating statistics to a correct theory of the nature of man. In his The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, cloth, $3.75; paper, $1.45), the correlations are interesting up to a point. But the work, though highly suggestive, falls somehow short of proving much of anything. Rostow always seems on the verge of asking pertinent questions, but his institutional apparatus continually gets in his way. He can give you the time table for the emergence of various nations from the “traditional society” into readiness for the “drive to maturity,” for this is something that can be read on the graphs. But as to first causes he is singularly dumb.

Professor Rostow was impelled to write this book because of his dissatisfaction with Marxist theory. Marx and Lenin had assumed that capitalism must make the rich richer and the poor poorer, with the capitalist nations ultimately falling out with each other over the question of exploiting the colonial areas. It didn’t turn out precisely that way. True enough, the rich got richer, but the poor got richer, too—and if the nations fought, it was more for reasons of ego-gratification than it was for anything that might be connected with economic necessity. To take power in Russia, Lenin had to jettison the old Marxist trust in the revolutionary élan of the proletariat in favor of dependence on a small band of professional wreckers. Lenin succeeded by doing the same things that Kemal Ataturk did in Turkey or Chiang Kai-shek (and later Mao) in China: he got there fustest with the mostest. Rostow sees this very clearly.

W. W. Rostow is an interesting case. As an economist he bears the stigmata of the modern institutionalist: he likes to work with huge aggregates, and he believes in statistical correlations, not in logical inferences that depend on relating statistics to a correct theory of the nature of man. In his The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, cloth, $3.75; paper, $1.45), the correlations are interesting up to a point. But the work, though highly suggestive, falls somehow short of proving much of anything. Rostow always seems on the verge of asking pertinent questions, but his institutional apparatus continually gets in his way. He can give you the time table for the emergence of various nations from the “traditional society” into readiness for the “drive to maturity,” for this is something that can be read on the graphs. But as to first causes he is singularly dumb.

Professor Rostow was impelled to write this book because of his dissatisfaction with Marxist theory. Marx and Lenin had assumed that capitalism must make the rich richer and the poor poorer, with the capitalist nations ultimately falling out with each other over the question of exploiting the colonial areas. It didn’t turn out precisely that way. True enough, the rich got richer, but the poor got richer, too—and if the nations fought, it was more for reasons of ego-gratification than it was for anything that might be connected with economic necessity. To take power in Russia, Lenin had to jettison the old Marxist trust in the revolutionary élan of the proletariat in favor of dependence on a small band of professional wreckers. Lenin succeeded by doing the same things that Kemal Ataturk did in Turkey or Chiang Kai-shek (and later Mao) in China: he got there fustest with the mostest. Rostow sees this very clearly.