knew (as many no-nuke partisans nowndo not) that temporal existence is notnthe supreme human good and that thereforendeath is not the worst evil, many acceptedntheir cruel fete with dignified resignatioanBut none expressed gratitude tonthose who labeled, treated, and slaughterednthem as animals. They wanted tonlive, and for distinctively human reasons.nHints as to the character of this aflSrmativenhumanness are simply but engaginglynsuggested in Tzili by Aharon Appelfeld,nan Israeli who escaped as a boy fi-om annazi concentration camp in Ukraina. Tzilinis the story of a rather unintelligent, unattractivenJewish girl who survives thenwar years in eastern Europe by denyingnher Jewish identity explicitly and by denyingnher humanity implicitly, adoptingna near-bovine existence as she wandersnthe countryside, working winters fornpoor and disreputable peasants. Butnthrough reflection upon life with hernmurdered femily and even more throughnexperiences with Jews who either escapenor survive the camps, Tzili slowlyngrows into a consciousness of the positivenmeaning of her human identity. Asnshe hears other Jews repeatedly aver,n”Man is not an insect,” “Woman is not anninsect,” Tzili likewise learns in a climacticnmoment of self-discovery: “1 am notnan animal. I am a woman.” TTiis is hardlyna subtle insight, but in the age of Darwinnit bears artistic restatement.nOf course Jews, like everyone else,nare subject to animal cravings, irrationalnfears, crazed longings, and, too, despair.nIndeed, despair hovers in Appelfeld’snnoveUa like a suffocating cloud, threateningnto extinguish the very flame of life.nBut unlike Moravia’s languid nihilistsnwho identify despair as the acme of theirnhumanness—3. peak from which to thrownthemselves—Appelfeld’s characters perceiventhat despair and self-destructionnderive from the loss of our unique humannidentity, not its cultivation: “We lost ournhuman image,” laments a Jevwsh fethernremembering how he had abandonednhis wife and children and how he hadnfought over cigarette stubs in the campsn—then he drowns himself.nJrortunately, most Jews managed tonretain at least a tenuous grip upon theirnhuman image and their will to live. Thus,nthough only flickering in their manifestations,nlove, compassion, imagination,nand conscience persist in Tzili Heedlessnof the icy currents, several men try tonsave the suicide. Haggard refiigees sharenfood with Tzili and voice concern fornthe unborn child she is carrying. Andnwhen that fetus dies within Tzili, a prostitutenrallies a ragt^ band into singingn”torchbearers” as they bear her on anstretcher to a relief center. It was surelynthis smbbom humanness diich inspirednnascent hope in the thousands who, likenTzili, left Europe after the war for a landnwhere long ago their forefethers heardnthe voice of Yahweh declaring thatnamong creatures made of dust, man alonenbears the image and likeness of God. DnEconomics Made Radical—^and StaticnMancur Olson: The Rise and Declinenof Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation,nand Social Rigidities; YalenUniversity Press; New Haven, CT.nMarshall I. Goldman: U.S.S.R. InnCrisis: The Failure of an EconomicnSystem; W. W. Norton; New York.nby William R. HawkinsnMancur Olson has vsritten a feir-sizednbook and spun oflf several journal articlesn(many of which have been coUectednin a companion volume. The PoliticalnEconomy of Growth, edited by DennisnMueUer) in support of a position mostnpeople would find intuitively obvious.nOlson argues that the reason economiesnslow down over time is because specialinterestngroups accumulate in stablensocieties until their combined weightndrags the economy under. Each specialinterestngroup distorts the economy as itndiverts resources to its own enrichmentnand away from the common good. Then”common good” is defined as high economicngrowth which is produced by thenefficient use of all resources through thennatural workings of the free marketnIndividuals can gain in two ways. Theyncan gain a larger slice of economic pie ifnthe pie expands, or they can get a largernslice if they add part of someone else’snProfessor Hawkins is with the departmentnof economics at Radford University.nnnslice to their own. At any point in time,nthis second process may provide thenlarger gain. A glance at the issues whichndominate economic poUcy reveals thatndistributional issues outweigh growthnissues. Politicians maximize their ownngain by providing identifiable benefits tonspecial interests while hiding dispersedncosts from the general public. By the samenlogic, general benefits are not as usefulnto the politicians because the averagenvoter cannot as readily link them tonthefr local representative.nOlson uses the term “distributionalncoalition” to describe any collectivenlobby, whether cartel, union, or guild.nHowever, his most persuasive examplesncome from the behavior of labor unions,nwhich he discusses from the standpointnof macroeconomics, using ideas fromnlabor economists like Albert Rees. Businessnfirms may try to arrange price-fixingncoalitions, but they lack the ability tonmaintain the sort of binding organizationsnthat labor unions form. The lure ofn”monopoly” profits wiU always attractnnew entreprenuers into a market to erodenthe cartel’s position. It is this process,ncredited to Joseph Schumpeter, whichnOlson claims is the real meaning of competition.nOlson, however, leaves a majorndistributional coalition out of his formalnanalysis: the welfere underclass that explicitlyntrades its votes for income redistributionnprograms from the public sector.nThe diversion of capital from investmentnto entitlements financed by deficitsnil3nOctober 1983n