THE generic evil, of which all other are varieties, is, according to Mr. Fruchs, the exploitation of man by man. His book is an attempt to trace its course, from its earliest appearance in primitive society, to a communistic Utopia somewhere in the distant future, in which all exploitation shall have ceased and the universal brotherhood of man shall have been accomplished. In the course of this discussion Mr. Fruchs finds occasion to inveigh against such specific evils as the over-emphasis of athletics, the philosophies of Plato and Nietzsche, the plight of the Nottingham weavers at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the place of women in modern society.

The first appearance of the generic evil, Mr. Fruchs conjectures, was in prehistoric times when one tribe conquered another, and there resulted a contract whereby the victors granted the vanquished their lives in exchange for their services. Slavery, then, is the first manifestation of exploitation and, according to the argument, all present day institutions are to be explained in terms of it.

The unequal division of slaves and the fact that some of the victors received none, forced free men into competition with slave labor, resulted in their eventual bankruptcy, led to their being hired by richer men, and so led finally to the division into capitalistic and wage-earning classes. A few of the poor free men being more ingenious than the rest, turned then talents to the manufacture of goods offered first for barter and later for sale. Here we have the beginning of the artisan class. At a later date the merchant class sprang up to facilitate the process of exchange.

Even religion and marriage are to be explained as a result of this original slave-making contract. Religion originated in veneration for former heroes always of the slave-owning class and was perpetuated by the slave-holders through the agency of a subsidized priesthood, as a means of keeping the slaves in check. Marriage owes its origin to the fact that the offspring of slaves had commercial value and for this reason were given prolonged care during childhood. This required that the parents remain together over a considerable period of time, and so led gradually to the institution of marriage.

However ingenious these speculations may appear, it is regrettable that Mr. Fruchs has not seen fit to advance any scientific data in support of them. The time has passed when it is possible for anyone to sit back comfortably and spin out a theory of the origin of institutions hoping to gain acceptance for it. Too much anthropological evidence has been gathered, too many facts have been garnered concerning primitive society, to allow the plausibility of any account which omits them. Unfortunately Mr. Fruchs' account is completely innocent of any anthropological data; his social contract is pure hypothesis and the deductions from it are entirely a priori. Worse than this, there is no attempt to work out the theory in detail and to explanation is offered for the existence of trading, religion, and marriage in communities in which there is no record of slavery.

If the preceding theories have not too greatly taxed the reader's credulity, still greater trials await him. The biblical account of the construction of the tower of Babel is used as a possible example of the cooperation of men in a primitive state before any enslavement. The fact that all worked at the tower shows an absence of any class distinctions and the confusion of tongues is to be interpreted as an indication of the strife which resulted from the introduction of class distinctions.

It is unnecessary to consider in detail all the ramifications of Mr. Fruchs' argument. His general conclusion is that the generic evil will come to an end only in some far distant communistic world-state. That the generic evil should ever be ended; that it is not necessary to progress, as such writers as Nietzsche and many capitalistic economists would maintain, is established largely by saying unpleasant things about Nietzsche and capitalists. Unfortunately, also, any proofs of the possibility of such a state, or proofs that it would actually accomplish what it set out to, are details which Mr. Fruchs does not consider.