State of the Masses

THE book’s subtitle, ‘The Threat of a Classless Society,’ gives its theme. It is a treatise on the social value of groups or classes, and the social peril of their conversion into a homogeneous mass. It is a turgid affair, a posthumous publication, the work of a refugee German professor, telling little that one does not already know, and what little it does tell is of no great value. The author’s basic notion that an unstratified society is a unique phenomenon peculiar to the totalitarian régimes of our day seems to us a curious error. Drawing on our own history alone, one finds Mr. Jefferson remarking the same phenomenon among our Indians, who he said had nevertheless a high type of social organization. Parkman remarked the same phenomenon; so did Schoolcraft. Probably a pretty plausible case could be made out for the Mormon state of Deseret as showing a classless society. Going through a book like Mr. Lederer’s is a tedious business, and as unrewarding as it is tedious.