編者簡介

FOREWORD ON BEHALF OF THE AUTHOR

If the author of this book, Peter Drucker, were still alive, faced with the reality of the current rifts in American politics and society, I believe he would warn and advise us all, particularly the young and enthusiastic among us, with the following words from the preface of The End of Economic Man, reprinted in 1969:
But can we still be sure? Or are there not signs around us that totalitarianism may re-infest us, may indeed overwhelm us again? The problems of our times are very different from those of the ’twenties and ’thirties, and so are our realities. But some of our reactions to these problems are ominously reminiscent of the “despair of the masses” that plunged Europe into Hitler’s
totalitarianism and into World War II. In their behavior some groups—they racists, white and black, but also some of the student “activists” on the so-called Left—are frighteningly
reminiscent of Hitler’s stormtroopers—in their refusal to grant any rights, free speech for instance, to anyone else; in their use of character assassination; in their joy in destruction and vandalism.
In their rhetoric these groups are odiously similar to Hitler’s speeches and so is the dreary nihilism of their prophets to hatred from Mao to Marcus. But above all, these groups on the “Right” as well as on the “Left,” like the totalitarians of the generation ago, believe that to say “no” is a positive policy; that to have compassion is to be weak; and that to manipulate idealism for the pursuit of power is to be “idealistic.” They have not learned the one great lesson of our recent past: hatred is no answer to despair.
Understanding of the dynamics of the totalitarianism of yesterday may help us better to understand today and to prevent a recurrence of yesterday. It may, I hope above all, help young people today to turn their idealism, their genuine distress over the horrors of this world, and their desire for a better and braver tomorrow into constructive action for, rather than into totalitarian nihilism as their predecessors did thirty years ago. For at the end of this road there could only be another Hitler and another “ultimate solution” with its gas chambers and extermination camps.
Those words not only embody the book’s practical significance today but also the historical importance it will have in the future.
Editor
November 2, 2020, American Presidential Election Eve
Los Angeles, USA