L. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution. English

translation, 3 vols., New York, 1936 (also a single-volume edition). This will probably be Trotsky’s masterpiece. A vivid narrative, heightened by excursions into Marxist interpretation, mostly very keen and even sensible. Chamberlin and Trotsky, read together, make the best introduction possible to the study of the Russian revolution. Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed, New York, 1937, is a bitter and interesting attack on the present regime in Russia, which he himself has christened “Thermidorean.”

S. and B. Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation?, 2 vols., New York, 1936. For American readers, this is probably the best and most persuasive defense of the present regime in Russia, and may be recommended as an antidote to the writings of disenchanted liberals and angry Trotskyites. But it is a very soft and academic book, and the Webbs are surely at least as much doctrinaires as others who have written on Russia.

II. The Wisdom of the Ages

The formal study of revolutions as a part of the science of sociology is a very recent thing. But revolutions are not new, nor is serious thinking on revolutions new. From Plato and Aristotle on one can collect a very valuable set of remarks on different phases of revolution, mostly from books not primarily concerned with revolutions. We have not here attempted to do more than give a random sample of what might be done with this sort of thing. Most of the men we have chosen to cite below were not purely intellectuals in anything like the modern sense, and it would seem that, unsystematic though this section of our bibliography is, it contains more wisdom about revolutions than our fourth section, in which we list a few contemporary works formally concerned with the sociology of revolutions. Most contemporary writers on matters sociological are of course intellectuals.

Plato, The Republic, especially Books VIII and IX.

Aristotle, Politics. Book V is the famous discussion of revolutions, but the whole work, and especially Book II, is almost as pertinent.

Polybius, History. Book VI contains the well-known account of the reasons for Roman political stability, which by contrast throws a good deal of light on our subject, political instability.

Thucydides, History. Book III, 82.2 begins one of the best clinical reports ever written on what we have called the crisis of revolutions.

Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Almost every chapter contains something of use for the student of revolution. Book I, Chapters XXV and XXVI, are especially recommended for the light they throw on differences between revolutions like those of England and France and those of contemporary Turkey or Italy.

Sainte-Beuve, “Le Cardinal de Retz,” in Causeries du Lundi, vol. 5, especially the passage beginning “ces pages de ses Mémoires qu’on pourrait intituler: Comment les révolutions commencent.” The interested reader may well wish to follow this up by reading De Retz’s own memoirs, which are easily available in numerous editions in French. There is an English version in Everyman’s Library.

Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. This by no means dispassionate work none the less contains a good deal that no student of revolutions can neglect.

Bagehot, Physics and Politics. This book, together with Maine’s Ancient Law, sets forth a point of view about social change which denies the possibility of achieving large-scale reforms by revolution. Like the work of Burke, which they supplement and clarify, they must be met and understood before the objective study of revolutions can be carried very far.

Pareto, The Mind and Society. This is a study of general sociology, almost all parts of which are germane to our purposes in this book. Chapters IX and X deal especially with the problem of social stability and instability, but are hard to understand without reference to the rest of the work. A careful study of L. J. Henderson, Pareto’s General Sociology: A Physiologist’s Interpretation (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1935) will help get around this difficulty. Pareto is cited here as in a sense summing up, clarifying and codifying views about revolution contained in this section of our bibliography. All such views—neither “anti-intellectualist” nor “conservative” adequately describes them—are anathema to most Marxists and “liberals” in present-day America. But they have been held so long and so firmly by men who were not altogether fools nor villains that the least the liberal can do is examine them.

Le Play, L’organisation de la famille; also the volumes of Les ouvriers européens. Le Play and his school merit our attention for much the same reason as does Polybius. Le Play studied the family with great care, and came to certain conclusions about the persistence of certain sentiments and actions among men which no student of attempted social change can afford to neglect.

F. S. Oliver, The Endless Adventure. Oliver was a conservatively minded Englishman who in this volume wrote about one of the least revolutionary of statesmen, Robert Walpole. Again it is useful to us because if we do not understand social stability we cannot hope to understand social instability. Walpole himself is as perfect an example of the man fitted to preserve an old society as Lenin is of the man fitted to guide a new society.

III. The Marxists

There is no doubt that Marx and his followers have made great contributions to our understanding of revolutions—contributions almost as great as those they have made to the making of revolutions. We cannot, however, regard even the best Marxist writing as an altogether satisfactory approach to the scientific study of revolutions. Indeed their use of the sacred word “science” resembles in many ways the use made of the same word by the disciples of Mary Baker Eddy. Marxist thought is a mixture of useful and genuinely objective observations properly framed as uniformities, and of prophecies, moral exhortations, theological and philosophical speculation, and other elements we may loosely call propaganda. The concept of the class struggle, for instance, belongs to the first sort; in itself, it is a fruitful notion, and one which has enriched sociology, in spite of the exaggerations and simplicities with which it has been applied by many Marxists. The notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat belongs in a sense to both sorts; it is a useful lead in the study of past revolutions, but it is also in Marxist hands an ideal, a goal, a prophecy. Finally, the notion of the classless society is almost wholly a bit of theology or, more specifically, eschatology.

In any given work by a Marxist, the disentanglement of what we may call the scientific elements from what we may call, with an equal desire to use good rather than bad words, the moralistic elements is almost as difficult as a similar operation on the work of the classical economists. In each case it has to be made separately. We need here only caution against certain of the more specific forms in which Marxist moral fervor and good intentions may be found distorting their work as scientists.

First there is pure fervor, writing obviously intended for the faithful, writing which from its very form is clearly a kind of rhapsody. Then there is writing definitely aimed at achieving a specific revolutionary end, writing closely aimed at action, writing not even meant by the writer to be detached and objective. There is the much-too-simple application of formulas and clichés to specific situations. Much of this writing is sincere and earnest, and the writers really believe that they are applying scientific methods to sociological problems. The narrow application of the economic interpretation of history is a very frequent example of this kind of thing. All human action is by the more innocent Marxists interpreted as the logical application of economic interests to a concrete situation. It must be said in fairness to Marx, Engels, and their greater followers that they are not themselves usually guilty of such unrealistic simplification.

Finally, current Marxist writing is confused by the number of sects that have developed within the movement, each one claiming to be orthodox. Of the sect which in a de facto way can most clearly claim orthodoxy, that established in power in Russia today, one may say that it represents a kind of hardening of doctrine, a fixation of theory into dogma which may in the long run permit a good deal more actual open-mindedness and experiment than is now possible. In the meantime official Marxism has become a conservative and established belief—which may well explain why in America good rebels like Mr. Max Eastman and subtle but conscientious theorists like Mr. Kenneth Burke are so worried over its inadequacies; have, indeed, begun a more radical “revisionism” than any yet attempted.

The literature is enormous, and we do not intend to do more than list below a few general elementary discussions of Marxism, and a few of the more important works of the great men in the tradition. We have deliberately chosen, wherever possible, works in which the concrete discussion of actual revolutions is more important than pure theory.

M. M. Bober, Karl Marx’s Interpretation of History. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1927.

Max Eastman, Marx and Lenin: The Science of Revolution. New York, 1927.

Sidney Hook, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx. New York, 1933.

H. J. Laski, Communism. New York, 1927.

A. D. Lindsay, Karl Marx’s Capital: an introductory essay. New ed. Oxford, 1937.