Suchergebnisse

In addressing oneself to the subject of "diversity and uniformity in the law of nations," it is well to suggest at the outset that these two attributes are perennially present not only in the international legal system but in many, if not all, legal systems. This is a statement of the obvious, but it merits some attention at a time when there is such a spate of writing about the changes in international law which are said to be required to meet the needs of an international society which is itself experiencing great changes.

[Mr. S. O. Myers, Principal of Condover Hall School for the Blind in England, visited schools for the blind in America last year, and subsequently wrote reports of his observations in The New Beacon. We have received generous permission to reprint that part of his observations in which he compares American and British methods of educating blind children. This is from the January 25, 1954, issue of The New Beacon. Mr. Myers notes that what he has to say is quite personal and that another visitor here "might reach far different conclusions." He deals with differences in set-up in the two countries and also with similarities.—Editor]

On one thing the Soviet and Yugoslav Communists agree: "national communism" is a contradiction in terms. "The very expression 'national communism'," say the Soviet theoreticians, "is a logical absurdity. By itself communism is really international and it cannot be conceived otherwise." Tito was just as emphatic when he told New York Times commentator, C. L. Sulzberger, that "national communism doesn't exist. Yugoslav Communists too are internationalists."That the Soviet and Yugoslav positions appear to agree on this point is no accident. Marxist theory has never acknowledged a genuine alternative to socialism or capitalism, and socialism was a profoundly international idea. But in its effort to abolish national strife, create a world-wide economic and social order, and establish political and social internationalism, the socialist movement had to start within the framework of the nation-state. In practice, therefore, socialism was mainly a national affair. The gulf between the necessary national starting point of the socialist movement and its international ideal was, to put it mildly, considerable. Though the international working class solidarity of the Communist Manifesto has been emptied of plausibility by the events of the last hundred years—not least of all by the abandonment in practice of internationalism in 1914 by the socialist movement—internationalism is a fetish to which even the right-wing socialist makes his obeisance.

With present newspaper-publishing technology, economic conditions seem to make one-newspaper cities inevitable. The author, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Chicago, explores the possibility for local diversity through newspaper enterprise and research into new technologies.