REVEILLE FOR RADICALS—Saul D. Alinsky—University of Chicago Press ($2.50).
SOVIET POLITICS—Frederick L. Schuman—Knopf ($4).
The dominant problem of the 20th Century is the reconciliation of economic security with political liberty. All other problems are secondary—even The Bomb. At the present time, the divergent attitudes of Russia and the Anglo-U.S. community toward the age's No. 1 problem confront each other in nearly every area of the world, and in almost every thinking mind.
Reveille for Radicals and Soviet Politics are U.S. contributions to this great discussion. Both are in dead earnest. Both gain importance from the magnitude of the subject they deal with. Reveille for Radicals is a plea to reintegrate along the lines of a "People's Organization" the fragments of the U.S. community. In part it is an organizer's handbook for the same purpose. To some it may sound like a new name for an old enterprise-social revolution. To others it may sound like a glad shout of: everybody join the daisy chain!
Professor Frederick L. Schuman's book is probably the ablest apology for Russia ever written by an American. It is like a brilliant brief by a very clever lawyer who is fortified rather than handicapped by knowing that his client did commit the murder, and even where the body is buried.
Radicals, Awake! In 1939 Saul D. Alinsky turned his back on a brilliant criminological career in favor of a life in the Jungle—the slums that lie back of Chicago's stockyards. It was his simple faith that if leaders of the fragmented sections of any U.S. community could be got to sit down together and talk or participate in common action, democracy would be reborn.
Said he: "As I looked into the vast chasm that divides the mass of the people and our middle class attempts at charity, I realized that the only way out is a democratically informed, active, participating people who have confidence in themselves and their fellowmen, a People's Organization, whose program is limited only by the horizon of humanity itself."
Neither Conservatives nor Liberals, he felt, were suitable messengers of the new evangel. ("Time need not be wasted on Conservatives, since time itself will take care of them." "A Liberal is [a person] who puts his foot down firmly on thin air.") Society's crisis called for Radicals. The first part of Reveille for Radicals is a paean to the Tom Paine type of U.S. Radical. But even Radicals must first be awakened: "Deep in the cradle of organized labor America's Radicals restlessly toss in their sleep—but they sleep."
Reveille for Radicals is written with burning honesty. The author has glimpsed a vision which is greater than his ability to put it in practical terms. But this vision, which is no less than the revitalization of democracy, explains why Chicago's Auxiliary Bishop Bernard J. Sheil calls Reveille for Radicals "a life-saving handbook for the salvation of democracy," and why Philosopher Jacques Maritain calls it "epoch-making."