IN THE 1920's and the 1930's, intellectuals in the United States
were overwhelmingly persuaded that capitalism was a defective
system inhibiting economic well-being and thereby freedom,
and that the hope for the future lay in a greater measure of de-
liberate control by political authorities over economic affairs.
The conversion of the intellectuals was not achieved by the ex-
ample of any actual collectivist society, though it undoubtedly
was much hastened by the establishment of a communist so-
ciety in Russia and the glowing hopes placed in it. The conver-
sion of the intellectuals was achieved by a comparison between
the existing state of affairs, with all its injustices and defects, and
a hypothetical state of affairs as it might be. The actual was com-
pared with the ideal.

At the time, not much else was possible. True, mankind had

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