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with the utmost vividness, is not the Marx of the racial and psycho–
logical explanations, but the everyday surface Marx, as he prob–
ably appeared to his closest friends and family. And he several
times reaches that summit of biography which he has described so
well in speaking of Trotsky's book on Lenin: "an art of traits care–
fully picked and quietly placed, a portraiture affectionate and
delicate, made sober by the deepest respect, quite outside the vein
of Marxist vehemence and recalling in an unmistakable way the
picture of Socrates by Plato."
To the Finland Station
is also a critique of Marxism. Wilson
rejects as "metaphysical" the philosophy of dialectical material–
ism, the economic theories of value, and the notion of history as a
process which assures the victory of socialism; the idea of eco–
nomic determination of culture he finds to be obscure, and he
regards as inconsistent with scientific detachment and causality the
introduction of moral judgments in Marx's analysis of capitalism;
finally, he believes that Marx had inadequate psychological under–
standing and therefore overestimated the revolutionary tendencies
of the proletariat. But he seems to accept in Marxism what he de–
scribes as its underlying motive-the concept of basic human
rights, the moral aim of a superior humanity and culture, the
criticism of class society as an obstacle to the achievement of this
goal, and its solidarity with the proletariat as the present means of
advancing the interests of humanity as a whole. And although he
admits the failure of Lenin to foresee or to prevent the gruesome
outcome of the party dictatorship, he speaks of Lenin's "conception
of the present" as having "unquestionably proved itself one of the
great imaginative influences of our age-a world-view which gives
life a meaning and in which every man is assigned a place."
Wilson's criticism of Marx and Marxism in general lacks the
freshness and incisiveness of his account of the men. He is free
from idolatry and orthodoxy, but he repeats the current unorthodox
arguments without clarifying difficult points or presenting fully
enough the positions he wants to refute; and he gives too great
importance, I think, to beating the dead dog of formal dialectic
and the religious conception of a personified History that he
imputes to Marx and Trotsky.
I have the impression that, in interpreting Marx, Wilson has
