Oscar" in the field of stupidity.
In the January 14 issue of the London Economist, the main article is devoted to what is considered to be the principal lesson of the "cultural revolution" in China. Under the title "The Last Revolution" we are told: :
"What has been happening in China since the summer is the end of the road that started in Paris in 1789. We are seeing the last stages of the revolutionary cycle that began in France, was checked in central Europe in 1848, and picked up impetus again in Russia in 1917. It continued its eastward march in 1949, when it reached China, and it is in China that.it finally seems to be working -itself out."
; Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the editor of 1'Express, made his own bid for the glittering trophy awarded in each field for outstanding performance. In the January 16-22 issue he wrote:
; "With the dislocation of Chinese Communism, the last one, no cloud remains on the horizon of industrial capitalism, no fear. The fifty-year-old war is about to be won. The grandchildren of Rockefeller and Ford are triumphant; those of Lenin and Trot-
sky are in disarray everywhere."
The Economist probes further into the matter. In its opinion Kosygin and Brezhnev are the successors of the revolutionary leaders. The British business magazine is happy to note that "with one or two exceptions, like Yugoslavia, the communist governments of Europe are now quite astonishingly conservative." It offers the Chinese leaders some free advice, telling them that rather than entertaining revolutionary thoughts, they “ought to be...stimulating their industrial managers with the lure of profits."
For good measure , The Economist adds: "Men who want to better their lot will compare the performance of revolutionary regimes with that of their non-revolutionary rivals by the strictly practical test of how they deliver the goods.'
Strictly practical test? The peasants of the underdeveloped countries in comparing India and China use different standards from those of the bourgeois journalists, much better standards it should be added. ;
The editor of The Economist, who must have frequented Oxford, Cambridge or some other lofty establishment of the kind, is a bit loose in his history. He forgets that before 1789 there was. an English revolution in which a certain Cromwell had a king decapitated. He also forgets, more recently, the movement of the revolution towards the west -- clear up to Cuba.
The author of this monumental stupidity ought to give up his stubborn support of the policies of Johnson-MacBird in the war in Vietnam, if he is really convinced that the era of revolutions has. finally worked itself out in China. |
The era of revolutions is not even close to being worked out, although it appears that at least two editors were fairly well worked out when they composed their contributions to the week's speculations.