Book Reviews : The Open Society and Its Enemies. By KARL R. POPPER. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1950. Pp. xii, 732. $7.50.)

• DOI: 10.1177/106591295100400316
• Published date: 01 September 1951
• Date: 01 September 1951
• Author: James H. Meisel
• Subject Matter: Articles

498
recognizes that the human psyche is a complex structure in which human
drives, if blocked in one direction, will seek expression in another. Con-
sequently, he argues, unless social organization can find adequate and so-
cially desirable outlets for the competitive and possessive as well as the
creative drives in men, our civilization will not survive. Third, where Mill
saw the chief threat to liberty to lie in popular intolerance, Russell sees
the current threat to lie in the excessive organization of our activities-
political, economic, and social. The answer is sought, therefore, not in
the modification of popular attitudes, but in a change in our organizational
patterns so as to allow more creative expression among the individuals
and small groups who form the elemental units at the base of our or-
ganizations.
This is a lucidly written and yet meaty little volume. Though Russell
does not attempt a detailed analysis of how the specific difficulties in our
situation are to be overcome, he does set forth some of the big prob-
lpm~ in x th011P’ht..nrovokim:r fashion.
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CHARLES R. NIXON.
University of California, Los Angeles.
The Open Society and Its Enemies. By KARL R. POPPER. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press. 1950. Pp. xii, 732. $7.50.)
Ever since its first appearance in England in 1945, this modern
Summa of iconoclasm has established for itself a singular reputation-
singular, in that it manages to offend such diverse schools as Platonists
and Marxists, Aristotelians and logical positivists, the sociologists of
knowledge as well as the admirers of Arnold J. Toynbee. Yet Dr. Popper’s
scholarly performance is formidable enough to impress even the uncon-
vinced. Such a well-balanced author as W. Y. Elliott, for instance, cites
him in his Western Political Heritage no less than ten times, almost-
but not quite-accepting Popper’s evaluation of Plato as the First of
Fascists.
In putting his reader on the defensive (cf. G. C. Field’s admirably
reasoned...