The Making of an English Marxist? 1925–29

Abstract

It is difficult to weave anything like a seamless intellectual garment from the diverse and, sometimes, conflicting strands of thinking to be found in Strachey’s journalistic outpourings of the period 1925–29. Indeed the articles in the Spectator, the Socialist Review, the Miner and the New Leader¹ furnish materials more suitable for a patchwork quilt. In part this was a consequence of the nature and demands of journalism — the instant response to and assessment of rapidly unfolding events. Nor was there any shortage of stirring events demanding Strachey’s journalistic attention — the General Strike, the ongoing struggle in the coal industry, the vindictive Conservative counter-attack upon the trade union movement via the Trades Disputes Act, the Mond/Turner talks and the Cook/Maxton manifesto all elicited a response. What such writing rarely provided, however, was an opportunity for an extended exposition of any aspect let alone the totality of his thought. What is available then to the intellectual historian are fragments of a mosaic which must be shuffled into some kind of order. Given that, and knowing the ideological destination to which Strachey was bound in the 1930s the temptation is to order the fragments in such a manner as to point to, or at least hint at a Marxist-Leninist trajectory.

The fundamental thing is to realise that we take up the Socialist not the Communist attitude of mind.

J. Strachey, Socialist Review, April 1927