To the Finland Station

by Edmund Wilson, Louis Menand (Introduction)

Edmund Wilson's magnum opus, To the Finland Station , is a stirring account of revolutionary politics, people, and ideas from the French Revolution through the Paris Commune to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. It is a work of history on a grand scale, at once sweeping and detailed, closely reasoned and passionately argued, that succeeds in painting an unforgettable picture--alive with conspirators and philosophers, utopians and nihilists--of the making of the modern world.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Russia, Philosophy, European History, Biography

507 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. See also physicist Edmund Wilson.

Edmund Wilson Jr. was a towering figure in 20th-century American literary criticism, known for his expansive intellect, stylistic clarity, and commitment to serious literary and political engagement. Over a prolific career, Wilson wrote for Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books, shaping the critical conversation on literature, politics, and culture. His major critical works—such as Axel's Castle and Patriotic Gore—combined literary analysis with historical insight, and he ventured boldly into subjects typically reserved for academic specialists, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Native American cultures, and the American Civil War.
Wilson was also the author of fiction, memoirs, and plays, though his influence rested most strongly on his literary essays and political writing. He was instrumental in promoting the reputations of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, and many others. Despite his friendships with several of these authors, his criticism could be unflinching, even scathing—as seen in his public dismissal of H. P. Lovecraft and J. R. R. Tolkien. His combative literary style often drew attention, and his exacting standards for writing, along with his distaste for popular or commercial literature, placed him in a tradition of high-minded literary seriousness.
Beyond the realm of letters, Wilson was politically active, aligning himself at times with socialist ideals and vocally opposing Cold War policies and the Vietnam War. His principled refusal to pay income tax in protest of U.S. militarization led to a legal battle and a widely read protest book.
Wilson was married four times and had several significant personal and intellectual relationships, including with Fitzgerald and Nabokov. He also advocated for the preservation and celebration of American literary heritage, a vision realized in the creation of the Library of America after his death. For his contributions to American letters, Wilson received multiple honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His legacy endures through his extensive body of work, which remains a touchstone for literary scholars and general readers alike.

Reviews

[Murtaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Communism was the last great religious movement to gain a mass following around the world. We tend to associate it with Russia or perhaps the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America where it existed most recently, but in its deepest origins the communist idea was French. This book charts the birth of communism from its earliest origins in the intellectual and moral ferment surrounding the French Revolution. That revolution radically broke with the past and transmuted the old Christian ideals of the kingdom of heaven into a quest for utopia among people on earth.

But the Christian God didn’t go away even after being cast out of his earthly cathedrals. Instead, he lived a strange afterlife through Hegelian ideas like Will and History. It was such ideas that worked their influence on French, German and finally Russian thinkers, concerned with the painful social consequences of industrialization, who shaped what we now know as communism. The seed of an idea planted over a century earlier in France one day brought Lenin in a sealed train to the Finland Station.

It takes a bit of an extension out of oneself to take other people’s religions totally seriously. We have a natural bias to feel that the beliefs we grew up with have some solidity and basis (even if we don’t fully believe them) while the religions of others are obviously absurd superstitions. Communism is only slightly different in this regard for being born after the Enlightenment. But even if you think it’s nonsense it has made its force on human affairs undeniable and cannot merely be dismissed.

Wilson offers a sympathetic and engaging an analysis of this movement and its prophets over the past three centuries. The communist diagnosis of the problems of modern society were often astute, even if their groping solutions were not. The communists and proto-communists were motivated mainly by a sympathetic desire to better the conditions of those who were suffering amid the disorientation and cruelty of the new industrial world. In a sense communism is a universalist religion akin to Christianity and Islam. It seeks to create a universal kingdom of mankind like the Ummah or the Church, but in this case united under the banner of the proletariat of all nations. For those unfamiliar with it, the book gives an eloquent explanation of the Marxist conception of history: history with a capital H. This refers not merely to a record of events past, but a living force like the one imagined by Hegel, propelling the capitalist world towards an inevitable rapture that will culminate with the establishment of communism. It seems political ideas are more appealing when they are portrayed as being inevitable anyways.

Despite this seeming determinism, Marx and Engels were much more flexible thinkers than later communist ideologues. Marx in particular had a compelling analysis of the apparent contradictions of the capitalist system that had emerged in his time. But as a German deeply influenced by Hegel he also deeply believed in some type of teleological inevitability to events. His idea that workers would inevitably do X when faced with Y was based on psychological assumptions which are by no means obvious. Marx also lived in an undemocratic society and never seems to have accounted for how democracy and its various release valves for social pressure may undermine the possibility of revolution.

To my knowledge a communist revolution has not taken place in a society with democratic freedoms, which is not necessarily a defense of democracy. The dubious freedoms of being able to vent and divide oneself over matters of tribal identity can sometimes act as a hindrance to achieving the substantive freedoms of bread, housing and economic dignity. But it was perhaps a reflection of Marx’s necessarily blinkered worldview that he had a hard time thinking outside his own circumstances. There is nothing condemnable in that as long as you treat him as what he was, an intellectual doing his best, rather than a prophet endowed with divine knowledge.

From Michelet to Saint-Simon to Engels and Marx, many of the people who helped shape the communist idea suffered deeply on a personal level for their pious goal of establishing the universal kingdom of mankind’s equality. Wilson suggests that by the time the idea passed to the Germans it had begun to be influenced by Marx’s own Jewish cultural outlook, with the sufferings of the Jewish people and their ultimate liberation subconsciously conflated with the new category of the industrial proletariat. By the time communist ideas filtered to Trotsky and Lenin in Russia they had begun to take on harder and grander connotations. It was only Stalin, not directly discussed in the book but his shadow lurking among its last pages, who finally killed the nobility of this idea, transforming it into a weapon to build a regime as brutal as Genghis Khan’s.

This book isn’t perfect, it drags a bit towards the end when the train of events arrives in Russia. On some level you probably need to be able to take Marxism as an ideology seriously to fully appreciate it. But it is beautifully written throughout and a pleasure to read – an exemplar of intellectual history as a genre. This is highly recommended to anyone who has an interest in ideological leftism. Even amid conditions vastly different from what Michelet could imagine, its tenets and symbols continue to exert powerful emotional force on modern people trying to get their bearings amid injustice and dislocation.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

... the historian, who, taking history as something more than a game, makes the effort in good faith to enter into the life of the past ... For where is the life here? Who can say, here, which are the living and which are the dead?

Jules Michelet, quoted by Edmund Wilson




Edmund Wilson; his book; his later view of the book




Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) was an American writer and critic. Some of his many books included Axel’s Castle (1931), Memoirs of Hecate County (1946), The Scrolls from the Dead Sea (1955) and Patriotic Gore (1962). To the Finland Station was published in 1940.

The Finland Station is a railroad station in St. Petersburg. It is the famous location at which, on April 16, 1917, Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from his self-imposed exile in Switzerland and spoke to a crowd of Bolshevik supporters. In his address, he lashed out at the Russian Provisional Government (the result of the February Revolution in that year), and called for a proletarian revolution. Months later, in October, Lenin came to power.

The book was published in September 1940, an uncomfortable time for views of the nineteenth century revolutionists to be introduced to a reading public. For although the American public were still looking from afar at the war in Europe, the specter of socialism/communism had been visible in Russia (and in America, in well-known events and movements) ever since the October Revolution of 1917. On top of that, the non-aggression pact signed by Russia and Germany in August 1939 was still being observed by both parties, though the planning of Operation Barbarossa was secretly underway – plans which would lead, on June 22 1941, to Germany’s invasion of Russia.

Even after Russia became an ally of Britain and her empire nations (through the necessity of defeating a common enemy aggressor – not by virtue of any other commonality of outlook), the book did not sell well. In a contemporary essay on the web site of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History (https://s-usih.org/2017/05/to-the-fin...) by Andrew Hartman we find that, “By 1947 it had sold only 4,527 copies, a disappointing number for a book written by a well-known critic and published by a trade press (Harcourt, Brace & Co) at a time when people still bought and read books.”

However, Hartman goes on,

To the Finland Station slowly but surely gained readers in the years after 1947, perhaps due to Wilson’s growing reputation as a left critic of the Soviet Union—Wilson wrote a new introduction to the 1972 edition of the book published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux in which he argued that the path from Lenin to Stalin was fated. But more important, by 1972—also the year Wilson died—a new generation of leftists had emerged unencumbered by the obsession with the Soviet Union that hampered Wilson’s generation of sectarian leftists. Communism no longer had the same purchase, but neither did anticommunism. To the Finland Station was a much different read without the weight of all that baggage.

In that Introduction to the 1972 edition mentioned above (this is the book I have), Wilson admits that there is too rosy a view of the socialist experiment as found in Russia after the Revolution, and as well a too rosy view of Lenin. He offers excuses for this, but still asserts that the book “should be read as a basically reliable account of what the revolutionists thought they were doing in the interests of ‘a better world’”, and continues, “Some corrections and modifications ought, however, to be made here [in the Introduction] to rectify what was on my part a too hopeful bias.”




Louis Menand’s view of the book





In the above 2003 edition of the book by NYRB Classics (unfortunately now out of print, but fairly easy to get), the American critic and essayist Louis Menand wrote a very interesting Forward, which is available in a PDF file. https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com... [Actually I see that the PDF file appears to contain Wilson’s entire book, following Menand’s essay!]

In this Foreword, Menand displays a wonderful ability to express profound thoughts through the written word. Here’s an example:

To the Finland Station is, if not a great book, a grand
book. It brings a vanished world to life. Writing history is an imaginative act. Few people would deny this, but not everyone agrees on what it means. It doesn’t mean, obviously, that historians may alter or suppress the facts, because that is not being imaginative; it’s being dishonest. The role of imagination in writing history isn’t to make up things that aren’t there; it’s to make sensible the things that are there … A few lines in a memoir, a snatch of recorded conversation, a letter fortuitously preserved, an event noted in a diary: all become luminous with significance — even though these are just the bit that have floated to the surface. The historian clings to them, while somewhere below, the huge submerged wreck of the past sinks silently out of sight.

Menand has much more to say in his fourteen-page essay. I’ll refer to it below. You might find it worth reading.



This reader’s view of the book

To me, Wilson’s claim that the book “should be read as a basically reliable account of what the revolutionists thought they were doing in the interests of ‘a better world’” seems right. The aims of the actors in his book, the goals towards which they felt they were on the way to reaching, were a set of interconnected visions of a better world, better than the world of industrialization and capitalistic accumulation of wealth which had come into being in the century and a quarter since the French Revolution.

I was particularly interested in the subtitle of the book: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History. The “writing of history” suggests to me historiography, but maybe Wilson meant something else? I don’t know, and I’m not going to try to figure it out at this stage. What about the “acting of history”? That seems a bit more enigmatic.


The following spoiler gives a complete listing of the book’s contents. There are two purposes here. First, if the names of the historical figures don’t excite any interest, then the book might not be for you. Second, check the chapter titles in bold. These suggest chapters which may help the reader discover what Wilson is suggesting through that enigmatic sub-title.

(I’ve included starting page numbers so as to indicate the length of the chapters.)
Part I
1. Michelet Discovers Vico (3)
2. Michelet and the Middle Ages (7)
3. Michelet and the Revolution (15)
4. Michelet Tries to Live His History (29)
5. Michelet Between Nationalism and Socialism (33)
6. Decline of the Revolutionary Tradition: Renan (42)
7. Decline of the Revolutionary Tradition: Taine 53)
8. Decline of the Revolutionary Tradition: Anatole France (65)

Part II
1. Origins of Socialism: Babeuf’s Defense (83)
2. Origins of Socialism: Saint-Simon’s Hierarchy (94)
3. Origins of Socialism: The Communities of Fourier and Owen (102)
4. Origins of Socialism: Enfantin and the American Socialists (116)
5. Karl Marx: Prometheus and Lucifer (131)
6. Karl Marx Decides to Change the World (142)
7. Friedrich Engels: The Young Man from Manchester (152)
8. The Partnership of Marx and Engels (165)
9. Marx and Engels: Grinding the Lens (178)
10. Marx and Engels Take a Hand at Making History (191)
11. The Myth of the Dialectic (210)
12. Marx and Engels Go Back to Writing History (234)
13. Historical Actors: Lasalle (268)
14. Historical Actors: Bakunin (305)
15. Karl Marx: Poet of Commodities and Dictator of the Proletariat (338)
16. Karl Marx Dies at His desk (385)

Part III
1. Lenin: The Brothers Ulyanov (407)
2. Lenin: The Great Headmaster (436)
3. Trotsky: The Young Eagle (472)
4. Trotsky Identifies History with Himself (501)
5. Lenin Identifies Himself with History (520)
6. Lenin at the Finland Station (533)

Appendices [4] (557)
Index (571) [19 pages]




Last Words

Wilson

On the night of Lenin’s arrival at The Finland Station…

The crowd carried Lenin on their shoulders to one of the armored cars that had been drawn up… The Provisional Government … had forbidden bringing out these cars, which could become formidable factors in a mass demonstration; but this had had no effect on the Bolsheviks. He had made another speech, standing above the crowd on top of the car. The square in front of the station was jammed: there they were, the textile workers, the metal workers, the peasant soldiers and sailors. There was no electric light in the square, but the searchlights showed red banners with gold lettering.

Later that night, Lenin and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, were given their own room in the house of his older sister, Anna Ilyinichna.

There they found that Anna’s foster son had hung up over their beds the last words of the Communist Manifesto: “Workers of the World, Unite!”
Krupskaya later wrote that she hardly spoke to Ilyich. “Everything was understood without words.”

Menand

Unlike many other American intellectuals of his generation, Wilson did not rebel against the politics of his youth. He renounced communism and the Soviet Union in the 1950s, but he did not become an anti-Communist crusader … Wilson had lost his faith in history, but he still resembles, in his final years, the great isolatos he had brought to life in the pages of To the Finland Station: Michelet, Saint-Simon, above all, Marx himself - writing ceaselessly in a chaotic household, his books selling few copies, his wife ill, his children crawling all over him, the rent collector at the door, and his inner gaze fixed raptly on history, the courtesan of every ideology.

this reader

As Menand notes in his essay, “History is the true subject of Wilson’s book, and what he so successfully evokes is what it felt like to believe - as Vico and Michelet, Fourier and Saint-Simon, Hegel and Marx, Lenin and Trotsky all believed - that history holds the key to the meaning of life”.

This evocation is perhaps what so enveloped me, drew me into Wilson’s narrative, and ended up fascinating me about the historical actors he writes of.

A magnificent historical story!



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[Eric Byrd · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m leaving this unfinished for now, breaking off (or merely just pausing) before the portrait of Lenin that concludes this varicolored chronicle of European socialisms. Wilson concedes, in the 1971 preface, that those final chapters are full of starry-eyed bullshit. Wilson’s radiant image of Lenin as the Second Coming, after a slumberous century under the snows of bourgeois reaction, of 1789’s spirit of Liberty (and surely not 1793’s spirit of Terror!), was the major bone of contention in his epistolary sparring with Nabokov over the meaning of the Russian Revolution. Nabokov’s stateless aestheticism should not make us miss the fact that he was as obsessed by The Russian Destiny as any other Russian writer, but in his own cool, Apollonian, Pushkinian kinda way. So while I’m curious, I still don’t want to vex myself with said bullshit right now. Scrawling testy, indignant marginalia makes me feel like my father.

Wilson's method with Marx is strange amalgam of disabused, warts-and-all portraiture and propagandistic hagiography. Illusionless portrayal alternates with fulsome special pleading. Wilson shows Marx as victim of the usual revolutionary contradiction, as the humanitarian who loves The People, but doesn’t like people--an insufferably haughty Herr Doktor, a cantankerous, biting, paranoid, misanthropic pain-in-the-ass who had difficulty getting along with anyone except Engels, a worldly bon vivant who submissively exchanged a “sketching” prose style of humane raconterie for an hermetic cackle much like Marx’s. Marx’s insolent demeanor and sneering style (conversational and literary) are well suited to anarchist dandies like the young Baudelaire (who during the 1848 revolutions helped loot a Paris gunsmith, and then, after outfitting himself to his sartorial standard, cutting quite a bella figura with a handsome hunting rifle and leather cartridge belt, mounted the nearest barricade and began exhorting the now well-armed mob with “We must go and shoot General Aupick!”—-his hated haute bourgeois stepfather), but less so to anyone wishing to make alliances and build organizations. To scenes of this brilliantly cold-eyed literary understanding Wilson then tacks on drooling apologia. Wilson prefers to interpret a crank’s angry irascibility as the Old Testament sternness of an essential prophet. Forgive me if I laugh. I’m too constitutional a cynic to see a given personality as anything other than an engine of self-defeating folly. Wilson shifts abruptly from Marx as Balzac or Flaubert would have written him to Marx as he appeared on a Soviet poster. I didn’t really mind this arrangement, though, because it kept the two sides of Wilson (portraitist and propagandist) easily segregated. When Wilson is really writing, applying his literary talents to picturing the past, the result is a Marx who is human and self-contradictory and real. The sufferings of his family, trapped in the dingiest Dickensian nightmare London had to offer (bailiffs, pawnbrokers, dead newborns), provoke genuine pity; and Marx’s resistance to the Prussian monarchy during the 1848 revolutions was so fearless and manly as to ward-off the eyebrow-arching contempt that usually seizes me whenever I examine his “patchwork of weaknesses.”

To the Finland Station is subtitled “a study in the writing and acting of history,” and it starts with Michelet discovering Vico, which is nice. This book piqued me to think more about the philosophy of history and to spend an hour reading Pushkin’s fragmentary Peter the Great’s Blackamoor, his experiment in fabulous genealogy and historical meditation (Pushkin was official historiographer in the court of Nicholas I) on the meaning of Peter’s cultural innovations—-of which Pushkin’s black ancestor was a symbol and a vessel—-for the future of Russia. Marx’s philosophy of history and predictions of the “inevitable” movements of economics and culture have a slippery vagueness of detail, an utopian avoidance of the crucial questions of psychology and sociology that make him seem a less than serious thinker; then again, he wanted to “change” the world, not just “interpret” it. But even uncontemplative empire builders like Peter the Great are rarely able to change the world directly or intentionally; "worldly philosophers" like Marx even less so. A body of political theory purposefully stripped down for use and action, as his was, turns out to be a pretty poor agent of its author's will, principally because of that purposeful vagueness. The blanks spaces Marx left in his idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” for instance, came to be fleshed out by later revolutionaries, and not in ways that did credit to Marx's reputation. The unpredictable details of politics determine the human shape of abstract systems; the peculiarities of a given culture can alter any theory beyond recognition. Political theory never survives its first contact with politics. (Pushkin asks: what fruits will Peter the Great’s commitment to Westernization bear? It turns out that notable among those fruits were not just worldly prestige and power for Peter’s dynasty, but the intellectual currents that helped topple that dynasty, Marxism, yes, but also the British-style constitutional liberalism of Vladimir Nabokov’s father, author of the abdication letter the last Czar’s brother signed and Minister of Culture in the Provisional Government Lenin later overthrew.)

That Marx became a banner-boy in Russia, a country he regarded as an eternal stronghold of Absolutism, even if its rulers were to become socialists (Marx hated Bakunin for this reason); that Marx became the patron saint of a regime more murderous and soul-destroying than any he opposed in his life of agitation (much as parts of Nietzsche were claimed by the German nationalists he loathed in life) is testimony to the fact that history is not a discoverable Hegelian unfolding of the Absolute Idea, something that only makes sense to Germans anyway, but is instead “a context in which we achieve the contrary of our aspirations, in which we disfigure them unceasingly”—-as E.M. Cioran bottled the tonic awareness that Frenchmen have always dispensed, since Montaigne probably, or perhaps since Tacitus--Nietzsche did say that no literature is more connected to the cold candor of antiquity than French.

[Feliks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Formidable scholarship. The history of European socialist thought (1600-1900) surveyed by any competent author would be a worthwhile read; but in the hands of Edmund Wilson? Its just out there. A book to test anyone's mettle. This is academia of a caliber you simply don't see anymore. For this famously difficult and vexatious kind of subject matter--one which has long resisted assimilation--Wilson is just the man for the job. Thank heaven for his interest in these topics.

His deployment of formal English vocabulary and dissertation, is extraordinary. If you want to see how its supposed to be done, to see where the bar used to be set, this is it. Prose mastery to warm the heart of any lover of proper, correct English. But beyond that--well, it's hard to even fathom what went into the making of the intellect from which this book emanates. What kind of mind must Wilson have enjoyed to tackle this topic (amid all his other ambitions, activities, and concerns)? What kind of training--what kind of matriculation--gave him such self-assured confidence? You get the measure of the man from the way he selects, sifts, and evaluates. The way he singles out various items (battles, speeches, men, their monographs, their correspondence, their thoughts) to hold up and invoke our acclaim. He constantly contrasts and compares the most moot scrap of meaning, vs all its possible peers, vs any array of deceptively-similar products. His analysis always arrives clean, refreshing, & linear.

Wilson is authoritative--Holmesian--in the way he can compare examples one-to-the-other. He easily identifies the leaders vs the followers, the vanguard vs the train. If he says something like, "I know of no other historian in the 1800s who..." you can be sure he is speaking from solid bedrock, from having personally and scrupulously done the reading himself.

His voice is unwavering, unflinching, unhesitating in any statement. Not like today's half-hearted milksops. Wilson knows his topic cold. For the combination of eloquent prose and rigorous historical criticism, Wilson is the pillar you should seek out.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revolution as Political Means

This 1940 book isn’t just about Karl Marx, but it makes some arguments (both pro and con) about a hypothesis I’ve long had that Marx’s greatest achievement from a political point of view was to legitimate violence or revolution as a political means (at least in extreme circumstances of social and political oppression or suppression).

Marx, at various times regarded himself as a philosopher, an historian, and a political economist. It's not clear which viewpoint prevailed when he advanced the following thesis in relation to Ludwig Feuerbach:

“The philosophers hitherto have only interpreted the world in various ways: the thing is, however, to change it.”

This thesis seems to draw a distinction between passive and active relationships with the world.

However, Marx seems to imply that, if we understood the world properly, we would (or should) want to change it. If we understand its evil, we should want to make it good. We can't just put up with oppression.

Modes of Change

This leads to a consideration of the alternative modes of change. At the two extremes, the alternatives are evolutionary, democratic change and revolutionary, violent change.

Nowadays, most of us would tend to prefer democratic change, but Marx was writing at a radically different time. Neither the working class, nor women as a gender, were entitled to vote, so it was difficult to understand how they could participate in a democratic process, except by appealing to the altruism and generosity of their economic, social and political opponents and oppressors.

History as Man Creating Himself

Edmund Wilson divided his book into three sections:

● The rise and fall of the revolutionary tradition (as it relates to the French Revolution);
● The origins of socialism (up to Marx and Engels); and
● The background of the Russian Revolution in October, 1917.

The French Revolution was essentially a bourgeois revolution against the feudal aristocracy, which maintained that its legitimacy and authority derived from religion and God. What was, was right, because God willed it. Therefore, to oppose the status quo was to defy God’s will.

Edmund Wilson starts his analysis with a discussion of the discovery by a French historian and philosopher named Jules Michelet of the Italian philosopher Giovanni Vico (who was influential on the structure of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”). Michelet took from Vico the idea of “living force, of humanity creating itself”. This enabled him to view history in a different way:

“With the world began a war which will end only with the world: the war of man against nature, of spirit against matter, of liberty against fatality. History is nothing other than the record of this interminable struggle...To determine with any certitude the manner, the quantity, of the action, to found so new a theory scientifically, requires no small effort.”

Wilson says of Michelet that he “leads us, as we follow generation after generation of kings, to feel the old virtue passing out of them, the lapsing of their contact with the people.”

He also comments on “Michelet’s absorption in his history, his identification of himself with his subject.” He quotes one of Michelet’s letters:

“I am accomplishing here the extremely tough task of reliving, reconstituting and suffering the Revolution.”

At the same time, life goes on around him. His wife is pregnant and “on the point of wresting a new me from her womb…”

Wilson concludes:

“We finally get to feel that Michelet is the human spirit itself fighting its way through the ages - enduring long degradations, triumphing in joyful rebirths, contending within itself in devastating and baffled conflicts.”

A Principle of Action

Michelet is seeking “a principle of action” that explains and motivates history.

When Michelet discusses the post-revolutionary Terror, he says that “the bourgeois has lost touch with the people; he has betrayed the revolutionary tradition.”

Wilson says the same of later historians who “were travelling away from romanticism, from the revolutionary enthusiasm and the emotional exuberance of the early part of the century, and setting themselves an ideal of objectivity, of exact scientific observation, which came to be known as Naturalism.”

The Dialectic in Historical Materialism

Wilson outlines a number of alternative socialist theories, the more utopian of which were intended to create a heaven on earth.

He describes Marx as “a born addict and master” of philosophy. Wilson’s analysis is focussed on the biographical rather than the philosophical. Indeed, he almost suggests that his philosophy derived from his personal circumstances. We learn of the enormous suffering and misery of Marx and his wife, Jenny von Westphalen, their poverty and the death of many of their children. Marx seemed to regard his writing as the only work to which he was suited, and never achieved a stable income or financial status during his lifetime.

Meanwhile, Engels’ experience in Manchester lead him to believe that “what the English badly needed...was the new kind of philosophy, which showed that man could at last become his own master.” Engels adopted the Chartist slogan:

“Political power our means, social happiness our end.”

Wilson now turns to the influence of Hegel:

“The great thing that Marx and Engels and their contemporaries had got out of the philosophy of Hegel was the conception of historical change.”

Wilson quotes Hegel:

“Such individuals have had no consciousness of the general Idea they were unfolding, while prosecuting those aims of theirs; on the contrary, they were practical, political men. But at the same time they were thinking men, who had an insight into the requirements of the time - what was ripe for development [that for which the time was ripe].”

Wilson states:

“Where Hegel had tended to assume that the development of history through revolution, the progressive realisation of the ‘Idea’, had culminated in the contemporary Prussian state, Marx and Engels, accepting the revolutionary progress but repudiating the divine Idea, looked for a consummation of change to the future, when the realisation of the communist idea should have resulted from the next revolution.”

Wilson describes Marx in the following terms:

“In spite of all Marx’ enthusiasm for the ‘human’, he is either inhumanly dark and dead, or almost superhumanly brilliant...As a Jew, Marx stood somewhat outside society; as a man of genius, above it.”

“‘The Communist Manifesto’ combines the terseness and trenchancy of Marx, his logic which anchors the present in the past, with the candour and humanity of Engels, his sense of the trend of the age...It compresses with terrific vigour into forty or fifty pages a general theory of history, an analysis of European society, and a programme for revolutionary action.”

At this point, Wilson recalls how he was originally concerned “with writers who were attempting retrospectively to dominate the confusion of history by imposing on it the harmony of art...With Marx and Engels we come to men of equal genius who are trying to make the historical imagination intervene in human affairs as a direct constructive force...Marx and Engels were no longer aiming at philosophical or literary glory. They believed that they had discovered the levers by which to regulate the processes of human society, to release and canalise its forces: and, though neither had any gifts as a speaker or much talent for handling men in a political way, they attempted to make their intellectual abilities count as directly as possible for the accomplishment of revolutionary ends. They were trying to make their writing what has in architecture come to be called ‘functional’...”

They were not just trying to write history, they were trying to make it (happen). In the words of Marx' thesis, they were not just trying to interpret the world, they were trying to change it.

“No sooner had we made the matter clear to ourselves than we set to work to [[convince the proletariat].”

The Repressions of the Tyrant

Wilson’s discussion of abstracts such as the Dialectic and Historical Materialism is insightful:

“There is a non-personal entity called ‘History’ which accomplishes things on its own hook and which will make the human story come out right, no matter what you or your opponent may do. The doctrine of salvation by works, as the history of Christianity shows, is liable to pass all too readily into the doctrine of salvation by grace. All too naturally, by identifying himself with the antithesis of the Dialectic, that is, by professing a religious faith, the Marxist puts himself into the state of a mind of a man going upstairs on an escalator. The Marxist Will, which once resolved to change the world, has been transformed into an invisible power which supplies the motive force to run the escalator; and if you simply take your stand on the bottom step, the escalator will get you to the top, that is, to the blessed condition of the synthesis…

“Karl Marx, with his rigorous morality and his international point of view, had tried to harness the primitive German Will to a movement which should lead all humanity to prosperity, happiness and freedom. But insofar as this movement involves, under the disguise of the Dialectic, a semi-divine principle of History, to which it is possible to shift the human responsibility for thinking, for deciding, for acting…it lends itself to the repressions of the tyrant.”

Wilson later asks, “Why should we suppose that man’s brutal and selfish impulses will all evaporate with a socialist dictatorship?”

While Wilson was relatively rosy-eyed about his travels to the Soviet Union, he still questioned the political institutions and the equivalent of the French Revolutionary Terror that arose from the Russian Revolution.

Marx’ Tribulations

Wilson argues persuasively that Marx’ own distressful experience as a Jew and a writer influenced his philosophy:

“In attacking the industrial system, he is at the same time declaring his own tribulations, calling the Heavens - that is, History - to witness that he is a just man wronged, and damning the hypocritical scoundrel who compels others to slave and suffer for him, who persists in remaining indifferent to the agony for which he is responsible, who even keeps himself in ignorance of it...Such is the trauma of which the anguish and the defiance reverberate through ‘Das Kapital’.

“Marx has found in his own personal experience the key to the larger experience of society, and identifies himself with that society. His trauma reflects itself in ‘Das Kapital’ as the trauma of mankind under industrialism; and only so sore and angry a spirit, so ill at ease in the world, could have recognised and seen into the causes of the wholesale mutilation of humanity, the grim collisions, the uncomprehended convulsions, to which that age of great profits was doomed.”

Wilson concludes with the opinion:

“Out of the brooding and labouring thought comes an instrument that is also a weapon in the actual world of men.”

A Depiction of Lenin Arriving at the Finland [Railway] Station in St Petersburg

Lenin and Trotsky Act Out History in Their Own Image

Part III concentrates on Lenin and Trotsky.

Lenin in exile lived in conditions that were just as harsh as those Karl and Jenny Marx had suffered for most of their married life. Wilson doesn’t look to Lenin so much for philosophy or theory:

“All the writing of Lenin is functional; it is all aimed at accomplishing an immediate purpose...He is simply a man who wants to convince...What renders his writings impressive is simply the staunchness, the sincerity, the force, that make themselves felt behind them.”

Like Marx, Lenin believed that “mankind, without help from above, must create its own future.”

Wilson quotes Maxim Gorky on Lenin's demeanour:

“He was particularly great, in my opinion, precisely because...of his burning faith that suffering was not an essential and unavoidable part of life but an abomination that people ought to and could sweep away...His words always gave one the impressions of the physical presence of an irresistible truth; he seemed to speak not of his own will, but by the will of history.”

Wilson’s assessment of Trotsky is relatively brief, but acute:

“Trotsky is not, like Marx, a great original thinker; he is not a great original statesman, like Lenin; he was perhaps not even inevitably a great rebel: the revolution was, as it were, the world in which he found himself living. He is one of those men of the first rank who flourish inside a school, neither creating, nor breaking out of, its system...

“Trotsky differs from the typical Marxist pedant, with his spinning of abstract ‘theses’, in that the dominance in his mind of Marxist theory still leaves the play of his intelligence pretty free...”

Still, Wilson says of his influence on the character of the post-revolutionary dictatorship:

“It cannot be said that Trotsky has shown himself particularly humane. It seems to have been principally the planning side of socialism, the opportunity for increasing efficiency, and the ruthless side of Marxism, that attracted him when he was actually in power...With a people quite untrained in political democracy, it was inevitable that a revolutionary government should itself have to resort to despotism. And it is true that during the years of civil war the brutal methods of war-time imposed themselves as a matter of life or death for the Revolution itself.”

Wilson seems to have no illusions that Trotsky would have been a better successor to Lenin than Stalin.

A Story and a Study of Revolutionary Human Intervention

Wilson wrote this book between 1934 and 1940, though we see little of the dictatorship of the proletariat that followed the October Revolution and ended with Stalin’s dictatorship. In fact, the narrative of the book more or less ends when Lenin arrives at the Finland Station of the title in St Petersburg at the beginning of the Revolution.

While it reads well as a story, the book is primarily a lasting “study in the writing and acting of history”. It tracks how history was both interpreted and made by way of human intervention, even if communism as implemented subsequently didn’t achieve the heaven on earth that was supposed to remedy the distress of the emergent Russian working class and trigger a permanent world revolution.


SOUNDTRACK:

Rolling Stones - "Street Fighting Man"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUO8S...

Rolling Stones - "Sympathy For The Devil" [Live at Madison Square Garden, 1969]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj6y6...

Rolling Stones - "Under My Thumb" (Meredith Hunter's Death at Altamont)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShLJn...

Tracy Chapman - "Talkin' bout a Revolution"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2wne...

Cosmic Rough Riders - "Revolution (In The Summertime?)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqawe...

Cable Ties - "Say What You Mean"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sMDxK_S...

Dream Syndicate - "How Did I Find Myself Here"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv2nK...

[Andrew]

History could be told this way, if we really wanted it to... an interplay of ideas and circumstances, beginning with Michelet's reading of Vico and ending with Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station, ready to start his revolution. Suddenly all these ideas, all these people are rendered as fully fleshed characters with as much personality and subjectivity as the protagonists of a 19th Century psychological novel. And a finer explication of the socialist ideal-- what it is, what it was, what it could have been, where its failures and potentials lay-- I could not have imagined.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edmund Wilson was a polymathic literary critic. While his books on historical subjects--such as this one and those on the Dead Sea Scrolls--are not expert, they do serve as excellent, albeit opinionated, introductions and they are beautifully written.

To the Finland Station begins with the Enlightenment and ends with Lenin and the Russian Revolution. It is basically a chronological survey of the development of socialist ideas. The portrait of Lenin is a bit idealized, but is representative of much opinion at the time of writing.

[Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This and Russian Thinkers would make a perfect introduction to leftist revolutionary thought of the 19th century. Not finished with it yet, but so far it's good, though I have some quibbles. [ETA: finished; loved it.] It corrects the common perception that Communism was an invention of mostly Marx and partly Engels by detailing the movement's antecedents in Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owens, and others, most of whom were inspired in turn by the French revolution. I hadn't realized that in the case of both Marx and Engels, it really did take a village. The sense of genealogy goes a long way toward removing early Communism from the drawing room and planting it in the streets, and also makes Marx look a little less original, but considering his sophistication compared to the lunatics who inspired him, it makes him look smarter, too.

On the other hand, the book necessarily engages its protagonists' ideas in broad strokes. That's OK, but at times Wilson needed to rein it in. We are told that the newly empowered French postrevolutionary bourgeoisie's "ideas" became "vulgar"- excuse me? Wilson is comfortable with the nuts and bolts of the labor theory of value, but as Menand points out in the excellent introduction, he's fuzzier when it comes to dialectic. (Menand observes that Americans are uncomfortable with the both/and nature of Hegelian philosophy, preferring to give things "thumbs up or down." Thus we here are saddled with leftists whose abstemiousness leads them to expect to save the world by buying only organic lettuce.)

Why not start with Hume or Kant or Hegel or Fichte? Because, Menand implies, Wilson liked writing stories about eccentric industrialists more than he liked discoursing on Feuerbach. Who can blame him? It's an unusual intelligence that can assimilate stories about Marx's romance with Jenny von Westphalen but can't bear to muster more than a few sentences on The German Ideology.

The other thing this book lacks is a sense of the complexities of Russian politics. After reading Orlando Figes' book on the Revolution, I was impressed with how many different factions had to fall into place just so during the period 1905-1917 for the Bolshies to win the day. Wilson has nothing but derision for the very important Populist movement and does not even mention the Slavophiles, opinions on whom split the Russian intelligentsia down the middle for such a long time. All in all, Wilson approaches 19th century nationalism as a blip on the radar where most sources today seem to see it as much more influential than that. But this book was written nearly 80 years ago, and if it had said everything I wanted it to then reading it would have been pointless.

Engels comes off better than anyone here. Wilson lovingly details his tireless support of the Marx family despite Marx's insensitive and obnoxious nagging, and manages to make Engels' business dealings consistent with his ideology. This is no small feat. Engels was the convivial one; Marx was the crank, and once Marx died, Engels took to having dinner company over again, remarking that he had been underrated while Karl was alive and overrated after he died. While Karl and the subsequent savageries of Lenin and Josef "Care Bear" Stalin make it hard to read this book with too much sympathy, Engels makes it all seem like it could've worked.

What an astounding work of narrative history, though. I heartily recommend this to anyone with an interest in 19th and 20th century European politics and thought.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is one of history’s great questions: How did it all go so wrong? How did Communism, which was founded on the principles of equality, fraternity, justice, and human dignity become the antithesis of all of them? So many brilliant thinkers laid the groundwork, and it attracted the best and the brightest followers, the smartest, most dedicated, most talented. If any ideology ever seriously had a chance to change the world, this was it, and yet everywhere it was tried it quickly become brutal, repressive, xenophobic, and reactionary. Perhaps the Buddhists are right: all existence is suffering, there is no optimal political or social structure, and misery is and always will be inherent to life. I think I need a drink.

There are other good books that look at applied Communism, but this is one about the theoretical underpinnings in the centuries before it moved from a potential to an actual force in the world. The early thinkers started from a humane, compassionate viewpoint: life could be, should be better. There is an inherent dignity in humankind, and we should be working toward making life better for everyone.

An idea like this was something of a revolutionary act itself in the era of divine right of kings, where everyone’s station in the world was ordained and approved by god. After all, that’s what the priests told them, and it’s not like priests ever lie, and it’s not suspicious at all that what god wants just happens to be the same as what the rich and powerful want. Just a coincidence, no doubt. Nothing to see here. Move along. I can imagine the conversation going something like: “The poor, well they could – oh, let’s see – what if we tell them that if they obey their betters they will be rewarded after they die. Yeah, let’s try that line and see if they’ll swallow it. They will? Jeez, they’re even dumber than I thought.”

Some form of universal equality started to seem reasonable, logical, possible. By the Age of Enlightenment, with the philosophes to lead the way, it even seemed inevitable. Then came the Revolution, and the high minded slogans of liberté, égalité, and fraternité gave way to a mad scramble for power and wealth, and the new elites made sure to dispose of anyone who questioned the ongoing inequality. In the end the poor were no better off than they had been under the kings.

And so the thinkers went back to work. Perhaps it was never going to be possible to argue people into a new social system. Perhaps force was required. How much force? As much as it required. Some enemies of the people were incorrigible, and the world might be better off without them anyway.

Marx and Engels thought they had discovered a scientific system that governed human progress, moving inevitably from slavery through feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and finally, “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs,” Communism. It wasn’t actually scientific, but if you insisted it was, and shouted down the nay-sayers, you could pretend it was the immutable path of history, and who doesn’t want to be on the right side of history?

Marx and Engels were theoreticians, and their works are mostly lacking in the details about how to actually put their ideas into practice. When the revolution finally came Lenin and his comrades were forced to improvise as they tried to create a government and fight a civil war at the same time they were attempting to fundamentally alter society’s social and economic structures. They found that terror worked. It worked so well that it became one of the hallmarks of Communist governments everywhere. If your system isn’t working, if, in fact, it is so fundamentally flawed that it has no chance of ever working, you can at least keep the people cowed into submission and afraid to ask questions. That will do, for awhile at least. Ask Ceausescu how that worked out. Someone should tell Xi Jinping.

This is a marvelous book. Edmund Wilson wrote many excellent things, but this is the great monument to his life’s work. For anyone who is interested in how the theories of Communism developed this is an essential starting point.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Badass. Encyclopedic in the right way. Every few pages tells the story of another character in the drama of European Socialism. The stories are well worth knowing, and reading.

Got to lose a star on account of Wilson's having been sucked into taking Lenin to be a better man than he actually was. And for the Russian Revolution to have been better than it actually was.

But. It doesn't really matter. Wilson is mostly a careful scholar and an amazing teller of this gigantic moment in modern history. You learn Marx, Engels, and so on with ease and fervor. It makes a lot of sense, the way he explains it.

He learned German to read Hegel in the original to study him to get better background on Marx (!) and he learned Russian (an exceptionally hard language to learn, I'm told) in order to get to the quick. Brilliant scholarship from one of the few real men of letters this country has ever had.

Funny thing- in the introduction Louis Menand says that Wilson didn't know what he was talking about when he writes about Hegel. Imagine! The thing is, my philosophy professors told me that the Hegel Wilson explains is actually perfectly fine. I figure that Hegel is complex enough that there are going to be a million different interpreations of it, so Wilson can be given a pass. tough to read that, though, and then try and take him seriously.

but, without question, this is a powerful story transcendantly well told and with accuracy aplenty. So worth reading its not even funny.

It'll make you get more into Marx, and if that's something that appeals to you as a reader I can't think of a better intro.

One of the best books I have ever read. Amazing. Colorful. Rich. Beautiful. Sublime.

[Steve]

The trip to Finland Station was a winding one indeed. Mr. Wilson follows the intersecting historical threads that culminated in Lenin’s return to St. Petersburg in 1917. The tale begins with Giovanni Vico, a little-known 18th century Italian scholar, then dives into the rise of socialist thought that arose following the French Revolution, focusing largely on Jules Michelet, Ernest Renan, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, Anatole France, François-Noël “Gracchus” Babeuf, Le Comte de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, Marx, Engels, Ferdinand Lassalle, Mikhaíl Bakúnin, Trotsky, and finishing with Lenin’s arrival at the train depot, a surprisingly modest structure for a capital city. In addition to the French Revolution, Mr. Wilson examines the importance of the Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, and the Russian Revolution of 1905, all failures, to the development of socialism.

I enjoyed some of the craziness embedded in this history. Of particular note was the behavior of Charles Fourier.

Not merely did he work out in his strange life of solitude all the complicated interrelations of the groups which were to compose his ideal communities and the precise proportions of the buildings that were to house them; but he believed himself able to calculate that the world would last precisely 80,000 years and that by the end of that time every soul would have traveled 810 times between the earth and certain other planets which he regarded as certainly inhabited; and would have experienced a succession of existences to the precise number of 1626.

How about we all fall in line behind this guy.

While socialism has many appealing facets, in practice it has emitted a toxic stench. I say any system that measures its killed and injured in the hundreds of millions is probably one best avoided. But why bother with socialism or any political -ism? Do the masses even care for a better life? Voting patterns in my country cause me to wonder. I question if there’s something of a solipsistic ambition these days that our elites secretly covet, to accumulate massive wealth, shuttle between double-gated enclaves in Silicon Valley, Palm Beach, Aspen, Jackson Hole, and Greenwich, where social ailments are far from view, unless one unwisely turns to the news, to keep a fueled Gulfstream G700 or, even better, a Boeing 767 ready to roll on the tarmac to escape local problems should they arise. If folks don’t care to wear a mask or to vaccinate against a virulent disease or they want to fight unnecessary and costly wars – the wealthy won’t be participating in those, by the way, although they will be profiting – limit medical care and women’s reproductive rights, or repress education, who really cares because with wealth all is ultimately possible and if not in the US, then in Canada, the UK, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, etc. Perhaps some object to the emergence of this rarefied social stratum. Realize though that because of their wealth, this growing crew exerts significant, disproportionate influence on political processes, further enhancing and solidifying their economic and personal security. The kicker is that in the end, they don't care because if things go awry, they're out of here. Chew on that, Messrs. Marx, Engels and Lenin.

A footnote: We should add Konrad Gisbert Wilhelm Freiherr von Romberg to the list of unknown, yet unwittingly critical, persons in European history, a list that includes Leopold Lojka, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s chauffeur on 28 June 1914. Freiherr von Romberg was the German ambassador to Switzerland, a central figure in the negotiations that allowed Lenin transit back to St. Petersburg. What would have happened had Freiherr von Romberg fumbled his duties, stranding Lenin outside Russia? At times incompetency can be of great benefit to us all, it seems. Then again, Mr. Lojka did bumble, the world losing one archduke and one duchess, as a result. Let’s then say that incompetency is of universal value 50% of the time.

[R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reputation – 3/5
Edmund Wilson was an American literary critic whose reputation soared during the first half of the 20th Century. He was the university friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited the latter’s posthumous manuscripts, and helped to establish the reputation of such writers as Hemingway and Nabokov. But with the decline of literary realism in the last half century, Wilson has been largely forgotten.
Besides his numerous book reviews and articles, he wrote three book-length literary studies of note. To the Finland Station is the most ambitious of the three.


Point – 5/5
If you simply look up To the Finland Station you’ll see it described as “a history of European Socialism from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution” or something like that. Though that is probably the best single sentence description of the chronology of the book, it is much like saying that Ulysses is about two guys walking around town.

To the Finland Station begins in medias res in 1824, when the French historian Jules Michelet finds the name of Giambattista Vico in a translator's note of book he has been reading. Michelet learns Italian, reads Vico’s La Scienza Nuova, and sets out to write a multi-volume history of his native France.

In Vico, Michelet had found the seeds of the empirical ("scientific") study of history; in his own Histoire de France, he added to them the idea that all of history is merely an expression of the will of “the people.” Wilson chooses Michelet as the starting point for his “Study in the Writing and Acting of History,” because Michelet is the first writer whose work bears the stamp of those immortally alarming words by Marx:

”Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

Beginning with Michelet as the father of history whose purpose is to make people act, Wilson takes a detour through several French writers whose work was meant to make people react. He studies the works of Ernst Renan, Hippolyte Taine, and Anatole France, heading each chapter with the title “Decline of the Revolutionary Tradition,” and presenting evidence for how each writer turned his back on the French Revolution’s values and on Michelet’s idea of the “progress of history.”
Here, Edmund Wilson is very much in his element. He is essentially writing book reviews of French literature – something he had already been doing professionally for twenty years.

The central section of the book addresses the origins of socialism in its most utopian variants before arriving at Marx and Engels. The brilliance of the book (and the bulk of it) are contained in Wilson’s demonstration of how Marx and Engels preserved the moral center of gravity for the Revolutionary Left throughout the 19th century’s violent upheavals and theoretical assaults from both reactionary and anarchist philosophers.
Michelet had written history, now Marx and Engels are both writing and acting it. Their “scientific socialism” lays down the theoretical foundation of future action, sweeping away the vague idealism of utopian socialists and anarchists, and the roles they play in the 1848 Revolutions and the 1871 Paris Commune set the standard for the conduct of a revolutionist in practice.
Through some blend of biography, literary criticism, and philosophy of ideas, Wilson brings 19th Century European Socialism to life better than anyone outside of Alexander Herzen (who actually lived it). His chapter on Marx’s Capital is the best literary review I’ve ever read of Marx in English.

The final few chapters of the book bring us To the Finland Station and the Russian Revolution. Here we are squarely in the realm of acting history. Vladimir Lenin takes center stage as the arch intellectual man of action. He has understood the theory and practice of socialism in his mind, grasped the force of Marx in his fist, and bent the arc of history under his heel. For the first time in modern history the idea written with a pronounced intention has produced its premeditated action. This is what Wilson meant in giving his book the subtitle “A Study in the Writing and Acting of History.”

But does it all matter? And why does this book deserve 5 stars?

It matters because Socialism is not a provincial idea. Neither is the idea that the written word can impel people to act with some deliberate direction towards its purpose. This book traces the tradition of how the ideas of an obscure French professor reading an old Italian book set a gear moving that would eventually become the machine of the Soviet Union. Even more incredibly, this book itself fits into the tradition of the books and people about whom it is written. It is not merely history; it is history with a partisan purpose. It compels the reader to believe in the “progress of history” in precisely the form that Marx intended.
To the Finland Station is a book that someone will pick up in a hundred years and be converted into a revolutionary socialist because of it.


Recommendation – 4/5
If you have sympathy for leftist politics, this book is essential. If you are merely curious about Marx and what socialism is all about, I would recommend this as the best book to start with. If you think you understand Marx and hate him, you’ll probably find yourself out of sympathy with this book, but I can guarantee that you will be proven wrong in some of your preconceptions after reading it. Whether or not you will admit that is a different story.


Personal – 5/5
I first encountered this book in South America, where sympathies for revolutionary socialism have not been entirely extinguished. It was apparently very popular in Spanish and Portuguese translations for some time before the recent republications in English. I have an old 1971 paperback reprint of this book that I’ve been carrying around with me for years. It is one of my all-time favorites and I come back to it as a sort of preface any time I’m about to approach Marx again.

On this rereading I found a noteworthy stamp of form. There is a quote in the book about the Paris Commune that I think sums up the sort of history writing we encounter now and that I would point out as a sort of ultimate justification for Wilson’s socialist sympathy:

”It is a proof of the divergence of the tendencies of the socialist and the bourgeois pictures of history – and from now on there will be two distinct historical cultures running side by side without ever really fusing – that people who have been brought up on the conventional version of history and know all about the Robespierrist Terror during the Great French Revolution, should find it an unfamiliar fact that the Terror of the government of Thiers executed, imprisoned or exiled more people – the number has been estimated at a hundred thousand – in that one week of the suppression of the Commune than the revolutionary Terror of Robespierre had done in three years.”

The Paris Commune took place from 18 March to 28 May, 1871.

From Jules Michelet reading Vico in January of 1824 (start of the book) to the Paris Commune – 47 years, 2 months.

From the Paris Commune to Lenin’s arrival at the Finland Station in April of 1917 (end of the book) – 46 years, 1 month.

[Julian Worker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book about a fascinating subject, tracing the roots of nationalism, socialism, and Marxism as they spread across Europe creating widespread social change.

Edmund Wilson is considered by many to be America's greatest 20th Century social and literary critic. I find he has a tendency to indulge in character assassination rather than criticism at times about particular figures in his ambitious book.

For me, there's not enough discussion about The Paris Commune and about Jean Jaures, who is mentioned twice but not in relation to the part he played in the subject of the book.

[alex angelosanto · Rating 5 out of 5]

a testament to what's possible when you've got a century of history and impeccable style

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really far more engaging than you might think. But then again, I like books in which writers write about other books with clear and almost palpable relish. A very good time for an overview of revolutionary literature.

[Igor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Історія соціалізму в біографіях та філософіях головних дійових осіб, від французької до російської революції (умовно 1789-1917 роки). Автор уміє і цікаво розповісти життєві факти, і доступно викласти ключові ідеї Фур'є, Маркса та інших. Я б поставив 5 зірок, але заважає кілька дрібних моментів - подеколи надмірна схильність пояснювати ідеї крізь призму біографії (Вілсон був прихильником фройдизму), не дуже зрозумілий вибір матеріалу в перших розділах (я так і не зрозумів важливість Анатоля Франса для соціалізму). Загалом же хороша книжка, точно варто читати тим, хто вже має певний історичний бекграунд і хотів би поглибити знання з теми.

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

My reading used to be overwhelmingly focused upon literature and now is overwhelmingly focused on politics and history. There are people and books which have a high reputation in the world of literature and literary studies and which don't necessarily have the same kind of profile outside of that. This is an example. I have been keen to read this book for years because I really enjoyed Axel's Castle by Wilson on Modernist literature and I'm now exploring the history of radical politics and Marxism, so this seemed right up my street.
The book held some interest. The early chapters on the development of socialism prior to Marx taught me a little. The chapters on Marx and Engels didn't reveal much that I wasn't already familiar with. The chapters on Lenin, Trotsky and the build up to the Russian Revolution were the most interesting to me.
I got the impression that Wilson was allowing some idiosyncratic opinions come out which many would disagree with, without providing very strong arguments or evidence to support his claims. He is very insistent on emphasising that Marx was Jewish and attributes a lot of his character and activity to being the descendent of Rabis. He suggests that Marx attributes qualities to the Proletariat that are a mistaken transference from the Jewish people. It's not a totally unreasonable point of view but it's bold to just say that without providing a strong argument to support it. He also dismisses the concept of the Dialectic and Historical Materialism, waving it away as being a sublimated religious concept, a de-sacrilised concept of God. This is an absolutely key concept in Marx, so if you are going to dismiss it you had better be ready to make a very thorough philosophical argument, which Wilson doesn't do. I got the impression that Wilson might have become disillusioned by what was happening in the Soviet Union whilst, or shortly before writing this book, and was perhaps turning away from Socialism. It's clear that he really admires Lenin.

[Kaij Lundgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

"One cannot care so much about what has happened in the past and not care what is happening in one's own time. One cannot care about what is happening in one's own time without wanting to do something about it."

Remarkable book not just about history itself, but about the way that we think about and consciously influence it's course. Chronicling revolutionary thought in Europe from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution, Wilson depicts an array of fascinating figures and conspiratorial intrigue. Progressive liberals, reactionary traditionalists, destructive anarchists, and dedicated communists are all featured prominently.

The long sections on the lives of Marx and Engels were my favorite, and Wilson writes with such obvious passion that the reader will likely feel inspired to seek out the material produced by the thinkers he characterizes. The early sections are tougher to engage with for me because I'm not as familiar with the background of the French Revolution, and Wilson just assumes that I'd have the requisite foreknowledge to jump right in. My bad, I guess, sorry for being too dumb.

I also wish that the book lasted a bit longer, and showed us Lenin actually forming and governing the Soviet Union. This book was first published in 1940, 16 years after Lenin's death, and I think Wilson could have at least tried to continue his narrative up until then. Maybe it was hard to do accurate research into this period of Lenin's life at that time for obvious reasons. As is the ending feels a bit abrupt, like Wilson leads us right up until the moment when these ideas are actually being put into practice and stops before the most consequential moment of all. Still a great book that really invites the reader to engage with the history.

[Jonathan Hinckley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor Theoretically and as a work of Historiography, decent biographically.

Edmund Wilson is clearly not a Marxist, and this work very much does not employ Historical Materialism as its structure. Advertised as a history of the development of Socialism from the French Revolution, it's really a series of loosely connected micro-biographies, with very little emphasis on the surrounding context. Generally, Wilson can only really deal with the particulars of personalities or events rather than their theories, meanings, situations or broader resonance and this leaves a number of annoying issues: the first section is pretty superfluous, justified only by its final paragraph, Marx's Judaism is leaned on uncomfortably heavily, and Wilson REFUSES to read poor Marx in a positive light, framing his relationship with Engels as abusive. The ironic reversal of this is that Wilson fawns over the most controversial of the major figures, Lenin, which he is forced to walk back with weird bitchy details from other biographies in the updated intro.

The worst two sections in the book are when Wilson tries to deal specifically with theory- on Dialectics and Capital. He doesn't really try to understand Dialectics, never going beyond its most basic, Aristotelian structure, and calls it a 'Myth' for most of the book (I think part of the issue is that he reads Historical Materialism as 'economic motivation' so can't see it other than as mechanical materialism). He also disagrees with the Labour Theory of Value which he disarms with an endearing passage on the utopian United States ("We have the class quarrel out as we go along. And this is possible because in the United States, even where class interests divide us, we have come closer to social equality").

If you want a standalone introduction to Marxism, do not read this book. However, if you want to know the people behind the ideas (albeit one that reads most of them in a very negative way) AND already have a grasp of the material covered (again, really recommend 'Socialism, Scientific and Utopian' for a pre-Marx history of Socialism), this book is a fun supplement.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 3 out of 5]

In still don't know where I stand on this one - and it’s my problem not the book's. I should say first and foremost that it is extremely well written and very readable.

A lot of this dilemna is about my perception of what this book is. Is it a novel? Is it a biography of Revolution? Is it history? Is it political or literary critique? Each category presses different buttons and my reaction to the content changes with my perception of where this book is aimed, and this shapes my overall appraisal of the book. I suppose it helps to know a little of Edmund Wilson and the history of the book too. The writer was primarily a literary critic and an academic. He was well connected with a generation of great American writers, and though he espoused communist sympathies, he was never a member of the Party or considered himself a Marxist. This book was published in 1940, so saw the Revolution and the rise and death of Lenin as well as his successor Stalin.

Wilson clearly felt competent to write this work on the history of Socialism. And he knows his stuff and brings HIS opinion to the works and the movers from Michelet and Vico through to Trotsky. He refrains from commenting on Stalin. He spends the first part of the book commentating on the pre- and post- French Revolutionary movers, but the meat of the book concerns Marx and Engels. The book wasn’t that popular on publication, 1940 having seen the Ribbentrop-Trotsky pact and Russia’s invasion of eastern Europe and Finland. Over the years it has gathered a readership (with Hilary Clinton stating Bill kept it by the bedside). On Wilson’s death the book was hailed as a marvellous novel, with Marshall Bergman stating ”… “interweaves philosophy, sociology, psychobiography, literary criticism, economic analysis, political history and theory, always in complex and sophisticated ways—and yet, for all this, the human narrative hardly ever flags, but sweeps us breathlessly along.”

This sums up my dilemma with the book. It is a vision of history from Wilson and his ‘characters’ are players in the evolution of socialism and revolution as well as ‘actors’ in his novel treatment. That is, it is HIS vision and mapping. As such it becomes a very decent potboiler for the development of Marxism and Leninism and the evolution of the Russian Revolution. But I have to say I probably got a better and less slewed view from reading simply Marx for Beginners and more complicatedly, Citizens and A People's Tragedy as well as going back to the sources and reading them. I really don’t have a solid enough grasp of Hegelian dialectic to criticise Wilson’s proposal in his chapter ‘The Myth of Dialectic’. But there is a good review covering precisely this area here. It’s enough for me to say that something in Wilson’s critique of Marx and Engels just feels wrong and poorly substantiated.

From Marx and Engels, he passes on to Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin seems to be seen as ‘the right man in the right place at the right time’. Trotsky is seen as far more the idealist and theorist than I have ever heard before. Both are given quite a heroic treatment. Orlando Figes treats them all somewhat differently in ‘A People’s Tragedy’.

Despite my misgivings about what this book is – I mean… where does he get all these anecdotal incidents on the life of his revolutionaries? Is it like the wonderful world of mytho-geography where if something is deemed worth telling then it is worth ‘enhancing’? So are all these ‘incidents’ in fact made up pieces in the novel side of this work? If so then it detracts from the excellent overview and appraisal that Wilson has made in the book. And because of this I found myself having to go to other sources to get confirmation of what Wilson is saying. That it stops right at the point where it begins to get really interesting historically – with Lenin’s arrival back in Moscow – is also frustrating. But hey… it is where he chose to stop.

What really makes you stand back and admire the book is Wilson’s ability to capture a moment and a feeling succinctly in his writing. He sums up Anatole France’s view from bourgeois hauteur as “… all Revolutions turn into tyrannies at least as oppressive as those they replaced.” with bourgeois sensibility giving way to the ‘duty of irresponsibility and a morality of moral anarchism’ that he sees in Dada and Surrealism. (As an aside I might add that his description of post-Reign of Terror France sounds just like England post-pandemic with a Tory government led by people promoted well above their station and abilities making money for themselves hand over fist through insider knowledge and connections, buttering themselves up). Charles Fourier and Robert Owen are dismissed as do-gooders who only succeeded through the force of their own personalities. Marx is a grumpy fraudster with a brain the size of a planet. Engels is in awe of his companion. Both are charismatic figures but had no real basis for what they were proposing, hung up on Hegelian dialectic and foisted on a world ripe for rebellion. And yet he still has great admiration and respect for both as original and honest thinkers if misguided. This is politics and history as narrative, all trumped by economics and the human condition. His ‘spotlighting’ (which he warns the readers precisely against) gives us that ‘nothing can be done by invoking the bourgeoisie’ and later gives us Kautsky’s ‘dictatorship of the proletariat led by left leaning bourgeois academics’.

”The proletariat, left to itself can never arrive at socialism. Socialism must be brought from above by the bourgeois intelligentsia.”

In some ways, Wilson's delivery of history and politics as narrative means that the reader doesn't have to break into a sweat of discernment and analysis. Wilson's already done it for them! This moves the book towards a great purchase for the flâneurs and blaggers who can take it on without having to think or commit. An instance of this is the breaking down of The Communist Manifesto into 10 bullet points. There is high praise for Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte without really going into why they are so good.

For all the disputes I have with some of the points within the book, I still cannot think of another book that sums up so much and covers such a lot of ground succinctly (OK... maybe as mentioned above the somewhat comedic and original Marx for Beginners). Is it just/all what you need? Hardly. It is merely the starting point and if you can put the 'novelistic' features aside it is a decent eye-opener. Prepare to take on the thinkers of the movement. Or not as you will.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history of the rise of revolutionary communism and its historical theory. Some interpretations are dated, eg. Marx.

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

First half of this book knocked my socks off, so to speak. Wilson unravels a couple hundred years of intellectual history so lucidly that at times it felt more like a book that belonged to the tradition of the 19th century novel than 20th century criticism. I do think the material drags a bit towards the end, retreading well understood personal histories of Lenin and Trotsky. The central argument about Lenin is so compelling though — that in this one man’s actions we see the embodiment of centuries of thought, inklings of Vico and Michelet constellate in forming this harsh but necessary advancer of human freedom from oppression.

My main issue with the book is Wilson’s seemingly wishful thinking re: America, and his somewhat dubious (though entertaining) chapter “The Myth of the Dialectic”, in which he essentially makes the common simple thesis ——> antithesis ——> synthesis error and ascribes certain faults to Marx’s retainment of German Idealism which, Wilson suggests, should have been abandoned for epistemologically softer humanist socialism via someone like Emerson (again, I might be naïve but I don’t really buy that the Americans were so historically unique in their development what with chattel slavery, expansionist colonial wars like Nez Perce, and the generally fast rise of a bourgeois class in the east coast cities). Wilson seems to suggest that Marx’s inability to abandon his German system ultimately doomed his thought and lead to the “Marxist moral confusion” that could make things like the Moscow Trials possible.

But ultimately these quibbles are just with weird ticks in a book that essentially concludes celebrating Lenin’s triumph. This thing goes down very smooth, I recommend!

[Ginger Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Communism's back story, told with the sweep and vision of _War and Peace_. 

When this nonfiction novel begins, Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen still travel their world in horse-drawn carriages, imagining they can direct humanity toward socialist utopia. A generation later, locomotives have arrived. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels need a theory of social progress that will run on its own, like a steam engine. They locate it in Hegel's dialectic. 

Exiled in London, Marx works out his grand theory, dragging his family into miserable poverty along the way (four of his seven children die in childhood, weakened by their wretched living conditions; two more eventually die by suicide). Marx, who knows himself to be a genius, grows increasingly bitter at the uncomprehending world. Though he drinks heavily and suffers from a variety of ailments, he manages to outlast interlopers like the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and the preening Ferdinand Lassalle. 

But events outrun Marx's theorizing as industrialization and nationalism push western Europe forward. His thunderous pronouncements against the bourgeoisie seem incongruous against the backdrop of Victorian England, with its widening franchise and myriad movements for social reform. By the time Marx dies in his cluttered study, we can almost dismiss it all as nothing more than a sad drama. We want to shelve his story away, maybe next to _Jude the Obscure_.

But then Vladimir Lenin enters the scene. His brother has been hanged for plotting against the czar and he's seen the worst of Russia's backwardness and oppression. Lenin wants revolution; Marxist theory provides the hook he needs. He doesn't concern himself with Marx's carefully worked out blah blah about society needing to move through historical stages before communism can arrive. Lenin seems to realize (as Marx and Engels did not) that illiterate Russian peasants, who have never known political power, are more likely to accept communist dictates than western European workers, who have already learned to steer parliamentary democracy. 

Joseph Stalin makes brief cameo appearances in the story, and it's like getting a first glimpse of the great white shark in _Jaws._ Fascists, far off to the side, pick up on leftist populism and anger, ready to rush through the door that Communism has kicked open.

This book originally was published in 1940. Leon Trotsky was still alive when it went to press. Stalin had him hunted down and murdered shortly before it appeared in print. There are still Marxists around today. They still believe. If you've never had one lecture you on the internal contradictions of capitalism, your eyes have never truly glazed over.

[Otávio Mayrink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esse é um livro sobre a história das ideias de revolução e de socialismo, escrito por um crítico literário que tem como ponto de partida a biografia dos personagens que as definiram. Extraordinariamente bem escrito e pesquisado, Edmund Wilson é capaz de expor com absoluta clareza e perspicácia o que cada autor pensava e por que pensava, correlacionando as ideias com o contexto da época, a vida pessoal e personalidade dos homens que lhes deram vida. Wilson parte dos historiadores da revolução francesa, percorre os primeiros socialistas até chegar em Marx e Engels, figuras que são dissecadas em todas as suas vicissitudes. O livro segue com a vida de Lenin e Trotsky e termina com a histórica chegada do líder bolchevique em 1917 na Estação Finlândia, em Petrogrado (hoje São Petesburgo), para conduzir a Revolução Russa. O autor consegue nos fazer enxergar para além das superficialidades e, mostra sem paixões ou ódios, as virtudes, fragilidades, limitações e impactos desses homens e de suas ideias.

Agradecimentos ao Flávio Viegas Amoreira pela indicação.

[Harris]

A compelling exploration of the hope for a more equal world as imagined by white men. The sections on Michelet and Bakunin are especially fun. Learning about Marx’s life and personality and what Engels did for him also seems very worthwhile. However, since the section on Lenin and Trotsky is based on what is now known to be propaganda, it’s hard to know what to make of it.

A hefty knowledge of French history would have helped with the first section. I’m sure I’ll reread this a few years from now and absorb much more.

[Fábio Shecaira · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is not easy to summarize this book. I worry that describing it as a history of revolutionary politics would give a misleading impression of cohesiveness. The book provides a combination of political theory, biography and literary analysis (the focus changing from chapter to chapter). This is not a flaw of the book — indeed, the variety of topics helps to keep it interesting. The book does have, however, a couple of noteworthy flaws. First, some of Wilson’s choices of historical figures are mysterious. For instance, I am still puzzled as to why Renan, Taine, and France deserved their own chapters in the same book as Marx, Engels, and Lenin (Wilson does try to make a connection, but to me it seemed strained). Moreover, Wilson’s critique of Marxism is disappointing — he make his case eloquently but closes it prematurely, ignoring the predictable Marxist responses. Despite these flaws, the book has many interesting and entertaining chapters. Wilson’s erudition is impressive, and so is the clarity and elegance of his writing.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea of a literary critic writing a work that incorporates intellectual histories and biographies, as well as philosophical and literary criticism of those ideas and lives, isn't going to seem new to most contemporary readers. But Edmund Wilson manages to tackle each of those things in such a way that they reinforce each other instead of just blending together into a thick, self-important intellectual mush. Wilson spends the course of this wonderful book showing the various personal and intellectual linkages between the thinkers of the French revolution and tracing their influence and successors all the way down to Lenin returning triumphantly to a 1917 Russia ripe for socialism. Wilson is a fairly pragmatic writer and he deals with the temperaments of the various people and ideologies here with a sincere but never uncritical eye that many subsequent thinkers (be they lovers or haters of Marx, Engels and co), almost never manage. If he comes across as a bit too fawning of Lenin and even Trotsky, perhaps its because they and the USSR still seemed like a lively and fascinating grand experiment in 1940 when this book was first published, and less like the nightmarish, murderous police state we think of now over 20 years after it all collapsed. Ultimately, what makes this book work so well is that Wilson never looses sight of the fact that it is first and foremost an intellectual history, not a polemic designed to demolish or defend Marxist socialism. It shows the origins of what would, in Wilson's time, become the second largest political/economic ideology on the planet and one of the two major national powers on earth. As an American, I found reading it immensely helpful, most european history (at least as its taught in American highschool) after the French revolution is usually just discussed as a pretext for WWI, and almost never regarded as an age with its own unique blend of economic and social pressures. This is the sort of book that makes you want to go out and read every other book it mentions or makes references to.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually read the original 1940 version, not this one. It starts slowly - the first part discusses (I think, it took me a while to get through) the petering out of the original ideals of the French Revolution before the story finally picks up with the development of socialism from the early 19th century onward. The discussions of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky are very interesting but clearly from the framework of a 1940 liberal. WIlson understood that communism was a pipe dream and that Stalin had perverted the original Marxist vision, but he clearly has some sympathy for the original communists. Also, the style of writing is incredibly pompous and presumes the reader has the cultural and historical knowledge of the average 1930 Harvard College graduate. It lapses into countless digressions. When the subject matter is interesting, it's worth it. When it's not, it's painful.

Overall a very good read but not outstanding.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't recommend this book enough. It follows the thread of a belief in history. Each generation seems to build on the last in formulating the theory that eventually leads to the Russian Revolution. The title refers to Lenin's being shipped through Europe in a sealed train car back to Russia and let out at the "Finland Station" where the strange religion of the self as an actor in history changed the world.

Bakunin, Marx, Engels, Vito, Hegel and others are painted as vivid characters.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

An oddity in my life; Wilson clearly doesn't *understand* socialism in intellectual terms, though he is equally clearly moved by its moral claims and generally eccentric charms. But that makes the Marx chapters, in particular, tough to get through (i.e., he doesn't understand Marx). The chapters on people I know less about were more engaging, but who knows? Maybe Wilson didn't understand them, either.