76 SOCIAL SCIENTIST questions', your reviewer adduces in evidence my f tentative hypothesis that the experience of West Bengal suggests that parties of the workmg class should not engage themselves in the parliamentary arena as this leads to a jettisoning of democratic norms by the ruling classes!' There is no such tentative hypothesis9 in my book. I h^ve re-read the only passage which could have justified this distortion, which is on page 19. I wrote there that the deposition of the United Front governments in West Bengal by strong arm methods (which were naturalized in the emergency period), constituted an f example of the political consequences of the entry, however misguided, on to the field of parliamentary practice of political parties demons trably attempting to teprcsent the interest of the working classes. Should they go beyond, or merely seek to go beyond, mere palliatives, it is often the signal for the jettisoning of the rules of parliamentary democracy by its erstwhile proponents^. My statement is an orthodox and correct position on the way in which the norms^ of bourgeois democracy are scuttled when a ruling class is threatened. Your reviewer's distortion is somewhat more subtle than those discussed earlier, but it is'still a distortion. I have gone into this review in detail, because it is — in general— a serious assessment of my work. The review warranted attention and I am grateful for many of its judgments,. I anticipated comment find debate on other matters, as on the question of the Soviet Union and on broad problems of method. I have sought to correct, in this brief reply, errors of fact and taken issue with what I think are errors of judgment. I have used harder words of counter criticism than your reviewer—each as careless and casual—for which I may myself be criticized. But this polemic is (for me) within fraternal bounds and is designed to be useful. DAVID S^BOI^KJW