Books in Brief

Our Depleted Society, by Seymour Melman (Holt, $5.95). This antibook rests on a fallacy. Professor Melman observes that the United States is spending (in his opinion) too much on armaments, and that American society has gangrene. He wrongly assumes that the two processes are causally connected: that our social ills are caused by the armament spending. He goes on to urge that we dismantle the arms program and spend the money on welfare, culture, tra la

la. All this and contradictions too: 1) the “far Right” is “reacting, even more than they themselves know, to the powerlessness engendered by the depletion process within American society” (p. 181) even though (p. 183) “the politics of the far right is the politics of accommodation to depletion and powerlessness”; 2) he urges that the money saved by dismantling the Pentagon be spent on schools and colleges (p. 102) even though (p. 86) he complains that the impact of federal research programs is robbing colleges of their independence; 3) he argues that bad education produces unemployables (p. 127) who are “the young men and women who grow up physically incompetent and functionally illiterate . . . the unemployables of our highly industrialized society” even though (p. 240) our unemployed are, in his eyes, “able” and apparently quite apt for work if only industry would give them a chance. Professor Melman thinks Frankenstein was the name of the monster, and he writes, “lengthly” for “long.” The poor thing is functionally illiterate, a victim of overkill. His proposal to spend $100 million on federal swimming pools should help a lot.

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Our Depleted Society, by Seymour Melman (Holt, $5.95). This antibook rests on a fallacy. Professor Melman observes that the United States is spending (in his opinion) too much on armaments, and that American society has gangrene. He wrongly assumes that the two processes are causally connected: that our social ills are caused by the armament spending. He goes on to urge that we dismantle the arms program and spend the money on welfare, culture, tra la

la. All this and contradictions too: 1) the “far Right” is “reacting, even more than they themselves know, to the powerlessness engendered by the depletion process within American society” (p. 181) even though (p. 183) “the politics of the far right is the politics of accommodation to depletion and powerlessness”; 2) he urges that the money saved by dismantling the Pentagon be spent on schools and colleges (p. 102) even though (p. 86) he complains that the impact of federal research programs is robbing colleges of their independence; 3) he argues that bad education produces unemployables (p. 127) who are “the young men and women who grow up physically incompetent and functionally illiterate . . . the unemployables of our highly industrialized society” even though (p. 240) our unemployed are, in his eyes, “able” and apparently quite apt for work if only industry would give them a chance. Professor Melman thinks Frankenstein was the name of the monster, and he writes, “lengthly” for “long.” The poor thing is functionally illiterate, a victim of overkill. His proposal to spend $100 million on federal swimming pools should help a lot.