Bertrand Russell on Nuclear War, Peace, and Language

 Reviews BERTRAND RUSSELL ON NUCLEAR WAR, PEACE, AND LANGUAGE D B Philosophy Dept. and Peace Studies / Central Connecticut State U. New Britain,  ,  @.. Alan Schwerin, editor, “under the Auspices of the Bertrand Russell Society”. Bertrand Russell on Nuclear War, Peace, and Language: Critical and Historical Essays. (Contributions in Philosophy, No. .) Westport,  and London: Praeger, . Pp. xxv, . .. his volume contains seven essays on Bertrand Russell, mostly based on Tpapers presented to annual meetings of the Bertrand Russell Society, and now made available to the general public in a hard-bound volume of  pages. The editor, Alan Schwerin of Monmouth University, has divided the book into two parts: () “On Nuclear War and Peace”, with the emphasis in two of three Reviews  papers on Russell’s complicated and changing attitude toward the Soviet Union, and () “On Language”, with most, though not all papers focusing on Wittgenstein’s critique of Russell’s views on ordinary language. The volume is well edited and the essays thought-provoking, making this a valuable addition to any Russell scholar’s bookshelf.     ,    Two of the essays in Part  deal with Russell’s political positions in the late s and mid-s, dates separated by less than a decade but characterized by two very different strategies to promote and achieve peace. Ray Perkins, in “Bertrand Russell and Preventive War”, analyzes the period from the late s to the early s, focusing on a  incident when Russell, in an address to students at the Westminster School, was widely believed to have advocated preventive nuclear war against the Soviet Union. Perkins’ position is that this charge is exaggerated, and that what Russell put forward—in this and most other writings of the period—was the conditional proposition that the West should wage war against the Soviet Union unless the Soviets agreed to international control of atomic energy and weapons, and that the  would likely comply. However, a combination of public misunderstanding of the conditional nature of Russell’s proposal, and the publication in  of a clearly belligerent private letter of Russell’s, sent in  to a Berkeley, California psychiatrist named Walter Marseille, led many critics, including I. F. Stone, to assume that Russell had defended a preventive war strategy all along. This was complicated by erroneous admissions and denials on Russell’s part about what he had actually said, which Perkins attributes to “faulty memory and a desire to draw attention away from the bellicose nature of the Marseille letter” (p. ). Perkins’ article is important for its clear exposition of the conditional nature of Russell’s argument, which Perkins was the first to stress as significant. Readers interested in this controversy should also consult Perkins’ articles in two debates in the pages of this journal: a previous debate with Douglas Lackey over the moral assessment of Russell’s approach, and a subsequent debate with the author of the present review over the characterization of Russell’s conditional strategy.  I. F. Stone, “Bertrand Russell as a Moral Force in World Politics”, Russell, n.s.  (): –.  Douglas P. Lackey, “Russell’s Contribution to the Study of Nuclear Weapons Policy”, Russell, n.s.  (): –; () Ray Perkins, Jr., “Bertrand Russell and Preventive War”, Russell, n.s.  (): –; () Lackey, “Reply to Perkins on ‘Conditional Preventive War’”, Russell, n.s.  (): –; () Perkins, “Response to Lackey on ‘Conditional Preventive War’”, Russell, n.s.  (): –.  David Blitz, “Did Russell Advocate Preventive Atomic War against the ?”, followed by  Reviews By the mid-s, Russell’s strategy had changed, as he realized that the use of the hydrogen bomb in war could spell the end of humanity. This period, focusing on the events leading up to and immediately following the  Russell–Einstein Manifesto, is ably analyzed by Andrew Bone, editor of the recently published Volume  of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell which covers this period. Russell had moved, as Bone subtitles one of the sections of his essay, from “coercion to coexistence” (p. ) as a result of the changes in the Soviet Union in the post-Stalin period, and the development of the hydrogen bomb as weapon of choice in the arms race. Now, Russell had to decide what to do with anti-war forces that were openly in sympathy with the Soviet Union—in Bone...

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