The provision of positive incentives to work in the new society will not be an easy task. But the most difficult task of all is to devise the ultimate and final sanction to replace the ultimate sanction of hunger--the economic whip of the old dispensation. Moreover, in a society which rightly rejects the pretence of separating economies from politics and denies the autonomy of the economic order, that sanction can be found only in some conscious act of society. We can no longer ask the invisible hand to do our dirty work for us. I confess that I am less horror-struck than some people at the prospect, which seems to me unavoidable, of an ultimate power of what is called direction of labor resting in some arm of society, whether in an organ of state or of trade unions. I should indeed be horrified if I identified this prospect with a return to the conditions of the pre-capitalist era. The economic whip of laissea-faire undoubtedly represented an advance on the serf-like conditions of that period: in that relative sense, the claim of capitalism to have established for the first time a system of "free" labour deserves respect But the direction of labour as exercised in Great Britain in the Second World War seems to me to represent as great an advance over the economic whip of the heyday of capitalist private enterprise as the economic whip represented over pre-capitalist serfdom, Much depends on the effectiveness of the positive incentives, much, too, on the solidarity and self-discipline of the community. After all, under the system of laissea-faire capitalism the fear of hunger remained an ultimate sanction rather than a continuously operative force. It would have been intolerable if the worker had been normally driven to work by conscious fear of hunger; nor, except in the early and worst days of the Industrial Revolution, did that normally happen. Similarly in the society of the future the power of direction should be regarded not so much as an instrument of daily used but rather as an ultimate sanction held in reserve where voluntary methods fail It is inconceivable that, in any period or in any conditions that can now be foreseen, any organ of state in Great Britain would be in a position, even if it had the will, to marshal and deploy the labour force over the whole economy by military discipline like an army in the field. This, like other nightmares of a totally planned economy, can be left to those who like to frighten themselves and others with scarecrows. The word "sanction" (Para. 1) is closest in meaning to
A. corrective measures.
B. encouraging methods.
C. preventive efforts.
D. revolutionary actions.
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Is Miss Lee in
A. Yes, she is.
B. No, she isn’t.
C. We are not sure.
In studying both the recurrence of special habits or ideas in several districts, and their prevalence within each district, there come before us ever-repeated proofs of regular causation producing the phenomena of human life, and of laws of maintenance and diffusion conditions of society, at definite stages of culture. But, while giving full importance to the evidence bearing on these standard conditions of society, let us be careful to avoid a pitfall which may entrap the unwary student. Of course the opinions and habits belonging in common to masses of mankind are to a great extent the results of sound judgment and practical wisdom. But to a great extent it is not so. That many numerous societies of men should have believed in the influence of the evil eye and the existence of a firmament, should have sacrificed slaves and goods to the ghosts of the departed, should have handed down traditions of giants slaying monsters and men turning into beast--all this is ground for holding that such ideas were indeed produced in men’s minds by efficient causes, but it is not ground for holding that the rites in question are profitable, the beliefs sound, and the history authentic. This may seem at the first glance a truism, but, in fact, it is the denial of a fallacy which deeply affects the minds of all but a small critical minority of mankind. Popularly, what everybody says must be true, what everybody does must be right--"Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est, hoc est vere proprieque Catholicum’ --and m forth. There are various topics, especially in history, law, philosophy, and theology, where even the educated people we live among can hardly be brought to see that the cause why men do hold an opinion, or practise a custom, is by no means necessarily a reason why they ought to do so. Now collections of ethnographic evidence bringing so prominently into view the agreement of immense multitudes of men as to certain traditions, beliefs, and usages, are peculiarly liable to be thus improperly used in direct defense of these institutions themselves, even old barbaric nations being polled to maintain their opinions against what are called modern ideas. As it has more than once happened to myself to find my collections of traditions and beliefs thus set up to prove their own objective truth, without proper examination of the grounds on which they were actually received, I take this occasion of remarking that the same line of argument will serve equally well to demonstrate, by the strong and wide consent of nations, that the earth is flat, and nightmare the visit of a demon. The author’s attitude towards the phenomena mentioned at the beginning of the text is one of
A. skepticism.
B. approval.
C. indifference.
D. disgust.
The author of some forty novels, a number of plays, volumes of verse, historical, critical and autobiographical works, an editor and translator, Jack Lindsay is clearly an extraordinarily prolific writer--a fact which can easily obscure his very real distinction in some of the areas into which he bas ventured. His co editorship of Vision in Sydney in the early 1920’s, for example, is still felt to have introduced a significant period in Australian culture, while his study of Kickens written in 1950 is highly regarded. But of all his work it is probably the novel to which he has made his most significant contribution. Since 1936 when, to use his own words in Fanfrolico and after, he "reached bedrock", Lindsay bas maintained a consistent Marxist viewpoint--and it is this viewpoint which if nothing else has guaranteed his novels a minor but certainly not negligible place in modern British literature. Feeling that "the historical novel is a form that bas a limitless future as a fighting weapon and as a cultural instrument" (New Masses, January 1937), Lindsay first attempted to formulate his Marxist convictions in fiction mainly set in the past: particularly in his trilogy in English novels--1949 (dealing with the Digger and Leveller movements), Lost Birthright (the Wilkesite agitations), and Men of Forth-Eight (written in 1939, the Chartist and revolutionary uprisings in Europe). Basically these works set out, with most success in the first volume, to vivify the historical traditions behind English Socialism and attempted to demonstrate that it stood, in Lindsay’s words, for the "true completion of the national destiny." Although the war years saw the virtual disintegration of the left-wing writing movement of the 1930s, Lindsay himself carried on: delving into contemporary affairs in We Shall Return and Beyond Terror, novels in which the epithets formerly reserved for the evil capitalists or Franco’s soldiers have been transferred rather crudely to the German troops. After the war, Lindsay continued to write mainly about the present--trying with varying degrees of success to come to terms with the unradical political realities of post-war England. In the series of novels known collectively as The British Way, and beginning with Betrayed Spring in 1953, it seemed at first as if his solution was simply to resort to more and more obvious authorial manipulation and heavy-banded didacticism. Fortunately, however, from Revolt of the Sons, this process was reversed, as Lindsay began to show an increasing tendency to ignore party solutions, to fail indeed to give anything but the most elementary political consciousness to his characters, so that in his latest (and what appears to be his last) contemporary novel, Choice of Times, his hero, Colin, ends on a note of desperation: "Everything must be different, I can’t live this way any longer. But how can I change it, how" To his credit as an artist, Lindsay doesn’t give him any explicit answer. The impact of Jack Lindsay’s ideological attitudes on his literary success was
A. utterly negative.
B. obviously positive.
C. limited but indivisible.
D. obscure in net effect.
The author of some forty novels, a number of plays, volumes of verse, historical, critical and autobiographical works, an editor and translator, Jack Lindsay is clearly an extraordinarily prolific writer--a fact which can easily obscure his very real distinction in some of the areas into which he bas ventured. His co editorship of Vision in Sydney in the early 1920’s, for example, is still felt to have introduced a significant period in Australian culture, while his study of Kickens written in 1950 is highly regarded. But of all his work it is probably the novel to which he has made his most significant contribution. Since 1936 when, to use his own words in Fanfrolico and after, he "reached bedrock", Lindsay bas maintained a consistent Marxist viewpoint--and it is this viewpoint which if nothing else has guaranteed his novels a minor but certainly not negligible place in modern British literature. Feeling that "the historical novel is a form that bas a limitless future as a fighting weapon and as a cultural instrument" (New Masses, January 1937), Lindsay first attempted to formulate his Marxist convictions in fiction mainly set in the past: particularly in his trilogy in English novels--1949 (dealing with the Digger and Leveller movements), Lost Birthright (the Wilkesite agitations), and Men of Forth-Eight (written in 1939, the Chartist and revolutionary uprisings in Europe). Basically these works set out, with most success in the first volume, to vivify the historical traditions behind English Socialism and attempted to demonstrate that it stood, in Lindsay’s words, for the "true completion of the national destiny." Although the war years saw the virtual disintegration of the left-wing writing movement of the 1930s, Lindsay himself carried on: delving into contemporary affairs in We Shall Return and Beyond Terror, novels in which the epithets formerly reserved for the evil capitalists or Franco’s soldiers have been transferred rather crudely to the German troops. After the war, Lindsay continued to write mainly about the present--trying with varying degrees of success to come to terms with the unradical political realities of post-war England. In the series of novels known collectively as The British Way, and beginning with Betrayed Spring in 1953, it seemed at first as if his solution was simply to resort to more and more obvious authorial manipulation and heavy-banded didacticism. Fortunately, however, from Revolt of the Sons, this process was reversed, as Lindsay began to show an increasing tendency to ignore party solutions, to fail indeed to give anything but the most elementary political consciousness to his characters, so that in his latest (and what appears to be his last) contemporary novel, Choice of Times, his hero, Colin, ends on a note of desperation: "Everything must be different, I can’t live this way any longer. But how can I change it, how" To his credit as an artist, Lindsay doesn’t give him any explicit answer. According to the text, the speech at the end of the text
A. demonstrates the author’s own view of life.
B. shows the popular comments on Jack Lindsay.
C. offer the author’s opinion on Jack Lindsay.
D. indicates Jack Lindsay’s change of attitude.