Sheer Attlee

In the early thirties John Strachey was the most persuasive of the fellow-traveling Pied Pipers who led English and American intellectuals up to the Communist mountain. He played the most seductive variations on his time in the book, The Coming Struggle for Power, which became a best-seller in both high and middlebrow markets. Its success was not undeserved. The then young Mr. Strachey, against the background of remembered war and present depression, had translated the dull principles of Marxism into a literate English made lively by relevant example and modish allusion. He brought Proust, Joyce and Eliot rather than Plekhanov and Engels as witnesses to the crisis of our time. And there was a real verve in his style.

The Moscow Trials and the subsequent Hitler-Stalin Pact turned Mr. Strachey’s face away from Moscow but not from Marx. He served his country in the war, part of the time as Wing Commander in the RAF. Thereafter he settled into Labor Party harness. A Member of Parliament since 1945, he was in the Labor Government as Under Secretary for Air, Minister of Food, and Secretary of State for War.

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James Burnham

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In the early thirties John Strachey was the most persuasive of the fellow-traveling Pied Pipers who led English and American intellectuals up to the Communist mountain. He played the most seductive variations on his time in the book, The Coming Struggle for Power, which became a best-seller in both high and middlebrow markets. Its success was not undeserved. The then young Mr. Strachey, against the background of remembered war and present depression, had translated the dull principles of Marxism into a literate English made lively by relevant example and modish allusion. He brought Proust, Joyce and Eliot rather than Plekhanov and Engels as witnesses to the crisis of our time. And there was a real verve in his style.

The Moscow Trials and the subsequent Hitler-Stalin Pact turned Mr. Strachey’s face away from Moscow but not from Marx. He served his country in the war, part of the time as Wing Commander in the RAF. Thereafter he settled into Labor Party harness. A Member of Parliament since 1945, he was in the Labor Government as Under Secretary for Air, Minister of Food, and Secretary of State for War.