Part 25

H. M. Hyndman, The Evolution of Revolution. London, 1927. By one of the pioneers of Marxist Socialism in England. Not very illuminating nowadays.

G. Lebon, The Psychology of Revolution. English translation. New York, 1913. Lebon’s reputation as a social psychologist has sunk considerably. This is the work of a frightened anti-intellectualist.

Arthur Liebert, Vom Geist der Revolutionen. Berlin, 1919. A brief discussion of the rational and emotional origins of revolution, and an analysis of the crisis period.

Leon de Poncius, Les forces secrètes de la révolution. Paris, 1929. A good example of the kind of writing which attributes modern revolutions to wicked conspirators--in this case Jews and freemasons. For those who do not read French, the works of Mrs. Nesta Webster may be recommended as an adequate sample of this approach. See especially her Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, London, 1924, and The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy. New York, 1920.

C. Malaparte, Coup d’état, the Technique of Revolution. English translation, New York, 1932. An annoyingly bright young Italian Fascist intellectual writes on the only way to make a revolution. As narrow and, in a perverted sense, idealistic as any Marxist writing.

E. D. Martin, Farewell to Revolution. New York, 1935. A very able and sensible writer on political and social problems has here allowed his fears to lead him into writing a bad book. Mr. Martin, as his choice of title indicates, is writing a book against revolutions of all sorts. Hastily assembled from inadequate materials. Stands up badly in comparison with L. P. Edwards’s book above.

R. W. Postgate, How to Make a Revolution. New York, 1934. An English Leftist, formerly a Communist and now apparently just Labour, writes rather wistfully about the possibilities of a decent, respectable revolution in Western countries. A good deal of useful discussion of the techniques of modern revolutionary parties of the Left, with touches of very English humor.

Revolution from 1789 to 1906. London, 1920. Mr. Postgate has here made a handy collection of constitutions, bills of rights, manifestoes and similar documents touching the important revolutionary movements of the period.

S. A. Reeves, The Natural Laws of Social Convulsions. New York, 1933. A most ambitious attempt to apply the methods of the physical sciences to the subject. Mr. Reeves is not skeptical enough to be a scientist. He emerges with forty-five “natural” or “cosmic” laws, of which Law XLV is a not unfair example: “Man would rather Die, even in Prolonged Agony, than to Think.” The work of a doctrinaire person on the edge of the lunatic fringe, and much influenced by the position of men like Herbert Spencer, it has none the less a good deal of useful material.

E. Rosenstock-Hüssy, Die europäische Revolutionen. Jena, 1931. Written in what to an American seems the German cloud-cuckoo-land of beautiful and inexact ideas, choosing convenient and rejecting inconvenient facts, something in the tradition of Spengler, but with the kindly hopes of a man of good will. Full of interesting suggestions and flashes of insight, poetic to a prosaic nature. An English version by the author is promised.

S. D. Schmalhausen, Editor, Recovery through Revolution. New York, 1933. Chapters contributed by Louis Fischer, Harold Laski, Carleton Beals, Robert Briffault, G. Salvemini, and others. Rapid narrative accounts of the principal fields of revolutionary activity since the war, Germany, Russia, China, South America, Italy, and Spain.

H. See, Evolution et révolutions. Paris, 1929. A somewhat pedestrian examination of the English, French, and American revolutions, those of the nineteenth century and the Russian revolution. Excellent brief bibliographies for the revolutions discussed.

P. A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics. Vol. III, Fluctuations of Social Relationships, War and Revolutions. New York, 1937. Mr. Sorokin’s general position is an emotional dislike for the contemporary world, which is, he thinks, about to undergo a worse series of wars and revolutions than any the human race has yet had to put up with. This Volume III has a most imposing set of statistics to show that revolutions have been more or less endemic in Western civilization. Some such conclusion might have been made safely without all these statistics, which in detail are not altogether reliable. They tend to exaggerate the amount of violence and bloodshed since 1900.

G. Soule, The Coming American Revolution. New York, 1934. A thoughtful, temperate book written by one of the more temperate of American “liberals.” The book deals much more widely with the general subject of revolutions than its title would indicate.

INDEX

Abbott, Professor W. C., 29

Abortive revolution, 33, 34

Adams, John, 156

Adams, Sam, 53, 59, 104, 116, 124, 135, 297

Agreement of the People, The, 198

Albemarle, 250, 261

All-Russian Central Executive Committee, 207

All-Russian Congress of Soviets, 207

American Civil War, 33

American Revolution, 34, 50, 84, 88, 100, 106, 155, 165, 195, 216, 229

Anabaptists, 154

Antinomians, 154

Antonov-Ovseënko, 127