Volume 5, Number 3 · September 16, 1965
Gold Diggers of 1965
By Robert L. Heilbroner
Arms, Money and Politics
by Julius Duscha
Ives Washburn, 210 pp., $4.50
Our Depleted Society
by Seymour Melman
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 366 pp., $5.95
Here are two very different books on what is surely one of the most important and frightening subjects in the world—the American 'defense' economy. One is mild-mannered, one passionate; one anecdotal, one analytic; one essentially written from the viewpoint of the establishment, the other from that of the disestablishment. Yet for all their different emphases, the books complement and confirm each other to a large degree. For both are concerned with the same phenomenon—the interpenetration of the military, political, and economic interests of the nation—and both report the same conclusion—that the activities of this military-political-industrial complex make it difficult not to classify America among the more morally corrupt, politically irresponsible, and socially callous nations on earth. These are my words, however, not theirs, but they point up a final note of similarity between both diagnoses. Neither quite faces squarely the implication of its own argument—a fact that does not impair the very great usefulness of these works in other respects.
Review, 2423 words
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