Timbangan Buku

Professor Campbell's purpose is to educate Cie intelligent reader (American and to edify the non-speciaiis college student with a description of how the Soviet economic system performs. Explicitly in a great many places the USA and the USSR are compared. This is geneial'y done with care and adequate recognition of the hazards involved in too crude comparison of unlike systems. Less frequently the comparison implicitly involves an idea'ized version of a .private enterprise economy such as that of the United States, and it is here Cha the major weakness lies. On the whole the book is disappointing, for it is intended to accomplish more than can be done is the chosen mode, that is, to provide a simple expositica of relationships which are frequently complex. More importantly, this simplicity fails to illumina e a number of subtle differences between two superficially extr mely different sys ems. Part of failure is found in the lack of historical insigL; which would at several crucial points relate the particular phenomena discussed JO their historical millieux. It is his shortcoming which involves many of the subtle differences lost in the at empt so educate the non-specialist reader.