Labor Lawyer

THE literary lawyers, including Mr. Tutt, have of late been running the doctors a close second in biography, autobiography, and pseudo-biography. Now comes Mr. Waldman with some interesting reminiscences and polemics, largely of Socialist Party politics, with the addition of a few exciting situations in which he served as Sherlock Holmes or Ellery Queen. There is relatively little of the courtroom, of labor law, or of labor litigation. The most dramatic legal battle is the one before a court-martial in Panama, and here the story is more of detection than of forensics.

Thus the book is quite different from what its title would lead one to assume. Appraisal of its accuracy must be left to those intimate with the inside of Socialist cleavages, though the general outlines are familiar. Those who became party Socialists largely from humanitarian impulses found themselves in bed with others who took their Marxian gospel seriously, particularly after the Russian Revolution.

The battle between these two wings of the party is reported in vivid detail, with much of personalities. Mr. Waldman demonstrates that Communists do not always act openly and aboveboard. In his opinion, it is largely due to the efforts of appeasement by the gentler, more democratic wing that the Socialist Party as a party has been reduced to negligible proportions today.

There is another factor in the decline, which Mr. Waldman also recognizes. Following the English statesman who caught the Whigs in bathing and ran off with their clothes, the Democratic Party under its present leadership has put into effect much of the social legislation that the Socialists have long favored. Thus the moderate Socialists become a voice no longer crying in the wilderness but mumbling in fields cultivated by their partial converts.

This does not make Mr. Waldman happy with the methods of the converts. He finds them too tolerant toward the principle of leadership, and points to the dangers of a Hitler or a Stalin. He joins in the protests against administrative supersession of judicial powers, and executive supersession of legislative powers. He obviously would not now be expelled as a member of the Assembly at Albany as once he was with his fellow Socialist members in one of the most disgraceful episodes of American political history. The story of this shame is one of the most telling chapters in the book.

In many quarters Mr. Waldman will be most relished for his exposition of and his intense hostility to the psychology and methods of Communists. He would have a bloodless purge of them from any participation in the procedure of other parties. His varied aversions keep him somewhat lonely, though not silent, as on a peak in Darien. He seems too idealistic even to court votes from those with ulterior aims. Nevertheless in practical, everyday political life we are likely to see a continuation of such courting on both sides. Perhaps both sides need the warning Mr. Waldman gives to one side when he says: — “The New Deal, as we now know it, is not in danger of itself becoming fascist. But unless the New Deal casts out the seeds of left-wing totalitarianism, which it fosters today, it may lead to an American variety of Communism, or, what is more likely, provoke an American expression of unadorned fascism. We cannot escape the end of totalitarianism if we accept any of its means, openly or covertly.” Dutton, $3.50.

T. R. POWELL