Current Books

Europe in living standards. In 1870, per capi- when states tried to reroute tracks to help ta U.S. income totaled $2,445 (in 1990 dollars), themselves and hurt their neighbors—hard- according to economic historian Angus Mad- ly efficient. Limited corporate liability created dison. The amount was only slightly higher economic advantages by attracting invest- than the European average, and behind the ment capital and promoting risk taking. averages of three major countries (Britain, Finally, the Dartmouth College ruling didn’t Belgium, and the Netherlands). By 1913, put corporations above the law. Rather, it American per capita income had reached said that once states granted a charter, they $5,301, a figure that exceeded Britain’s aver- couldn’t alter the terms without violating the age and was roughly 40 percent above Constitution’s protection of contracts. Europe’s. If big companies didn’t create U.S. Early American capitalism was a messy prosperity, the coincidence is certainly striking. mixture of private money and public privilege, To make the alternative case, Perrow as Perrow reminds us. Eager to protect examines the 19th-century origins of corpo- “property rights,” courts often intervened on rate capitalism by focusing on textiles and rail- the side of business. There were corruption roads. In textiles, he says, there were two and industrial strife. The system’s great models: the big New England mills, usually virtue was that it permitted continuous owned by corporations with hundreds or change, including the rise of modern indus- thousands of employees; and a collection of try. Bigger does not always mean better, but smaller firms in Philadelphia, usually owned that’s not to say there was an idyllic alterna- by partnerships and families. The New Eng- tive for pioneering and spreading mass—that land firms concentrated on inexpensive tex- is, democratic—markets. tiles, while the Philadelphia mills made —Robert J. Samuelson smaller batches of more specialized prod- ucts. According to Perrow, the Philadelphia mills were profitable, employed greater VIDA CLANDESTINA: numbers of skilled workers, and generally My Life in the . treated labor better. By Enrique Oltuski. Wiley. 276 pp. As for railroads, he says that government- $24.95 regulated networks in Britain and France were efficient, which demonstrates that INSIDE THE CUBAN large, unregulated companies weren’t nec- REVOLUTION: essary for efficiency. Large companies and the became dominant in the United States, he Urban Underground. contends, by creating political and legal By Julia E. Sweig. Harvard Univ. Press. advantages for themselves. Railroads bribed 302 pp. $29.95 Congress and the states for subsidies. Oltuski tells the story of his transformation Corporations won legal advantages over from University of Miami fraternity boy to orga- other business forms: Limited liability, for nizer of the urban insurgency wing of Fidel example, meant that owners weren’t liable for Castro’s revolutionary in the corporation’s debts. Perrow also cites the Cuba, where he contributed to the overthrow of Supreme Court’s Dartmouth College decision ’s government in 1959. Sweig (1819), which, he says, placed chartered cor- focuses on the same urban insurgency, but she porations “above the state law.” writes about the collective experience of the But little of this is convincing. New Eng- young men and women, Oltuski among them, land textile mills produced the low-cost who fashioned the movement. goods necessary for a mass-consumption Revolutionaries make revolutions, both society, while the Philadelphia mills served authors agree, and their actions are more smaller, more selective markets. Perhaps important than social and economic conditions Britain and France regulated railroads effi- in directing the course and outcome of revo- ciently, but could American politicians have lutions. But the authors differ on the relative done so? This seems dubious. Rivalry among importance of leaders and followers. That dif- states was intense; Perrow cites instances ference is one of the central issues in the

120 Wilson Quarterly theories of rural revolution elsewhere, first in the Congo and then in Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967. Oltuski and Sweig demonstrate that Guevara was wrong about revolution in Cuba as well. These books disappoint because they focus solely on the urban underground of the 26th of July Movement (named for the date of a major attack on a barracks). Fidel Castro golfed with at Havana’s Buena Vista One learns little about other Social Club, after their victory in the Cuban Revolution of 1959. revolutionary movements, such as the Revolutionary understanding of large-scale acts of political vio- Directorate and the Second Front at the lence over time throughout the world. Escambray Mountains, whose acts of violence Oltuski, who is now Cuba’s deputy minis- also contributed to Batista’s overthrow. And one ter of fisheries, remains an unreconstructed learns nothing about the state’s collapse from believer in the primacy of leaders. “I think to within. Six months before Batista fell, Fidel change, or even to evolve history, it’s not Castro and his brother Raúl commanded only enough for the popular conditions to exist,” he some 400 guerrillas. The Batista regime im- writes. “You also need the man who strikes the ploded from a combination of military unpro- spark and knows how to lead the people along fessionalism, inadequate training, weaponry the right path in the midst of as complex a sit- unsuitable for guerrilla warfare, the theft of war uation as a revolution.” In his view, Castro supplies, and inept strategic decisions. has been such a leader, and the Cuban Rev- The books are very well written, however, olution is unimaginable without him. and they convey a lively sense of battle and By contrast, Sweig, a senior fellow at the commitment, chance and tragedy, human Council on Foreign Relations, argues that the foibles and heroism. Whereas Oltuski simply late-1950s “battle for Cuba’s future was a relates his own tale, Sweig has conducted power struggle . . . as much within the oppo- impressive archival and other primary sition as against the Batista dictatorship.” research, employing documents newly Revolutionary Cubans acted in concert, she declassified by the Cuban government. Her argues, and those in the urban areas did more analysis is thorough, careful, and nuanced, than those in the countryside to weaken Ful- and the book will likely become the key work gencio Batista’s grip until about eight months on the subject. before his fall. Castro’s eventual triumph —Jorge I. Domínguez resulted from many factors, including acci- dents. Sweig acknowledges his many skills but insists that he did not tower over events all SOCIAL SCIENTISTS FOR along. Many other revolutionaries also made SOCIAL JUSTICE: this revolution. Making the Case against Segregation. Oltuski and Sweig concur on the signifi- By John P. Jackson, Jr. New York Univ. cance of the urban underground. In doing Press. 289 pp. $45 so, they dispute the position taken by the offi- The U.S. Supreme Court stimulated years cial historian of the Cuban Revolution, of debate by citing, in Brown v. Board of Edu- Ernesto (Che) Guevara, who maintained that cation (1954), a handful of social science stud- Castro-led guerrillas in the mountains were the ies attesting to the deleterious effects of legal- architects of revolutionary victory. Guevara ized racial segregation. Did the Court’s failed twice when he tried to implement his reference to “psychological knowledge”

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