Reviws & Notices India

Abstract

These two publications are not books written by Dr. Lohia, but collections of his speeches and ·writings. In his Preface to Marx, Gandhi and Socialism. Dr. Lohia explains that with the best of efforts one can discover or prove only an aspect of truth and not the whole of it, and that, therefore, it makes little difference whether one's views arc expressed in the form of a closely reasoned book or a collection of speeches and writings. One may or may not entirely accept this view, but the two books do reveal a general trend of argument and considerable originality of thought. As could he expected in such cases, there arc frequent repetitions and the mixing up of incidental matters with central points. But once one has laboriously gone through the volumes and discovered the main thread of reasoning, one cannot but be struck by the sheer brilliance of many of the arguments, the depth of thought and the tremendous humanist zeal which must have inspired them. In Marx, Gandhi and Socialism Dr. Lohia, broadly accepts the Marxist prognosis of capitalism as applied /to England and Germany of Marx's time and regards Marx as basically a democrat. :Marx did not think about the economicallv backward countries in formulating his.theories and Marxism, therefore, did not apply to such countries. The author regards the assault on the institution of private property as the greatest contribution of Marxism, apparently forgetting that the assault on private property was first launched not by Marx or the Marxists, but by pre-Marxian and nonMarxist anarchists like Winstanley, Godwin, Proudhon and Bakunin. However, the author believes that Marxism was distorted by Lenin and other Russian Communists and that Communism as government has been a great deviation from Marxism. Theoretically, he utterly rejects Communism because "It is impossible to adtleve the victory of truth