To the Finland Station

THIS ‘study in the writing and acting of history’ traces the emergence of the idea of communism from Vico to Lenin, by means of historical and biographical narrative, criticism, and analysis of documents. It shows that history can by no means be interpreted exclusively in terms of economics, and the main question it leaves in the mind of the reader is whether revolution is brought about by revolutionists or is an organic process, of which they themselves are only a manifestation. Vico’s apothegm that ’governments must be conformable to the nature of the governed, governments are even a result of that nature,’ furnishes the theme, and the discrepancy between men’s theories and their actions might be called the plot. The long line of actors — Babeuf, Saint-Simon, Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Bakunin, Lenin, Trotsky — give the impression of being both illuded and illusionists, riding a wave which they thought they guided. For the general reader, the book is a fascinating chronicle of the progress of this wave, interspersed with brilliant and often moving portraits of men and women caught up in it.