THE LAW AND THE PROPHET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 492, 26 November 1948, Page 12

THE LAW AND THE PROPHET

KARL MARX: HIS LIFE AND ENVIRONMENT. By Isaiah Berlin. Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Prass. ENGLISH CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY. By S. B. Chrimes. Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxtord University Press. ‘THE simultaneous appearance in the Home University Library’ of one book on Marx and another on the British Constitutfon-the former in its second edition-is a temptation to the spirit ironic, as well as proof of the catholicity of the editors. For though many exponents of the British Constitution go their way as if Marx had never been, it is impossible to doubt Mr. Berlin’s opening assertion that "no thinker in the 19th Century has had so direct, deliberate and powerful an influence upon mankind as Karl Marx." Mr. Berlin wisely’ forearms his readers against Marxism without Marx by presenting two subtly interpenetrated studies of the man and his doctrine. So far as the reviewer knows, there does not exist in English a more satisfactory biography of Marx’s mind, unless it is in Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station which is more impressionistic and wider in its scope. Only the English school of Hodgskin, Thompson, Gray and their fellows seems to receive less than its due. Mr. Berlin, who entertains neither animus nor adulation, is qa master of the

swift, but not cursory, delineation of a social and intellectual milieu, and he inspires the confidence which comes from a knowledge that an author is holding a good deal in reserve. Here we have the whole Marx-paterfamilias, friend and foe, thinker, political organiser and tactician, a sedentary rebel, who at once repels affection and demands respect. This book adds nothing to the Marxian exegesis, nor is it intended to. It does not attempt a rounded account of the doctrine, but it succeeds, almost brilliantly, in its task of introduction, of inviting to further inquiry. Whatever may be the case with Communists, nonCommunists cannot afford to be ignorant of Communism. Mr, Berlin’s book, together with Professor Laski’s Communism in the same series, and the Communist Manifesto itself, would form an excellent work-out for the inquirer before he tackles the steeper gradients of Popper or Eastman, It is not easy to make a useful survey of English constitutional history in less than 200 pages; but the thing is done, and, on the whole, well done. It is true that the flash-back technique-a first section on the Constitution as it is, followed by a longer explanation of how it became so-is dubiously applicable to this living monument. But, if: Dr. Chrimes does not quite approach his subject with the trembling hands recommended by Burke, no one can complain that he fails in proper reverence for it. He is a competent guide, and he misses nothing of importance. His book is no lucky dip, like the comparable History of England written recently by Professor Woodward, and the student will not be surprised by any unexpected facts, or even by any familiar facts in unexpected wrappings. Dr. Chrimes is a resolute pedestrian. He avoids the beckoning by-ways, saunters through the Middle Ages, and strides briskly-much too briskly-through the last century or so. One reader would willingly have foregone ‘something of the Curia Regis to learn more of how British political institutions. have fared under the impact of universal suffrage, extended social services, the radio and total war. It is not necessary to believe that all is dross that is not Marxian in order to agree that constitutional history should be related more closely than it’ commonly is to the material conditions of existence. Was it, after all, in vain that Marx turned Hegel "right side up"? One has the feeling that many constitutional historians would be better tradesmen .(whatever their specialities) if some academic martinet had compelled them in youth to ponder the influence on the British Constitution of, say, the trade union, or the telephone, or the typewriter, or (come to that) the totalisator, The day has its own peculiar problems. The past should illuminate the present of our institutions; it should not overshadow their present any more than it can exhaust their rationale.

N.C.

P.