Sir Alexander Gray (1882-1968) was a well-read, trilingual (English, French, German) – and therefore seemingly multi-talented – Scottish scholar, poet, and economist who studied at universities in Edinburgh, Paris, and Göttingen. In 1942, he was elected to a fellowship at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a reputed center for scientific and literary academia1. Among his most famous works, published during his stint at Aberdeen University as an economics professor, is The Development of Economic Doctrine (1931), which many scholars, to this day, dubbed his magnum opus. Indeed, he recommended that this book be complemented to the book that is the subject of this review. He is also a translator of a number of German and Danish poems and ballads into both English and Scottish Gaelic.
Sir Alexander’s credentials are doubtlessly impressive for a man of his time. I wasn’t personally surprised that a man of such caliber would take a shot at providing a survey of seemingly similar ideas of prominent thinkers he calls “socialists”, which, according to him, are named on virtue of their opposition to (absolute) individualism and laissez faire,
the underlying assumption… that each individual is competent to look out for himself, … is the best judge of what is good for him…, and that the best service he can render to his day and generation is to look after his own affairs (p 487).It should therefore be of no surprise that he takes this a step further and attempts to tie them to the historical phenomenon that is Socialism.
This leads me to the topic of the review. The Socialist Tradition is a secondary work that surveys, with moderate detail (enough to summarize and explain the main ideas), a wealth of primary “socialist” sources from the Bible to the Communist Manifesto. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a particular thinker or group of thinkers of a certain era or trend: Gray treats Robert Owen and the Scientific Socialists (Marx, Engels, Lasalle, and Rodbertus) in separate sections. The chapters are ordered chronologically, and deal with a total of 40 thinkers (e.g. Proudhon) and/or groups of thinkers (e.g. the Saint-Simonians). The chapters follow a somewhat uniform template, beginning with biographical and contextual background of its concerned intellectual, followed by a systematic breakdown of their main arguments (with appropriate citations), how they were shaped by intellectuals before them (e.g. how Thomas More was influenced by Christian theology; p. 64), and how they shape those after them (e.g. William Godwin’s influence on Robert Owen; p. 199).
Regardless of the encyclopedic appeal of this book, Sir Alexander’s scholarly work was an attempt to implicitly convince the reader of extant common trends in socialist thought, which I assume he eponymously called the “Socialist Tradition”. A long week and 534 arduous pages later, his book does exactly that, plus a complimentary bag of chips, preferably English ones with a side of cod fillet. The stated purpose of the book itself is to assess the contributions of such thinkers to the “Socialist Tradition”, itself a deep social trend (p. 1). He first engages the reader with a compelling précis of ancient Greek (p. 11-27) and Biblical texts, drawing out the Ten Commandments and divinely-ordained injunctions towards societal betterment, opposition to excessiveness and exploitation, and goodwill to one’s fellow man and woman (p. 32-42). Then, he shows us how these ideals (emphasis) influenced Utopian Socialist thought (p. 61), and how they water down and succumb to more secular, political, and practical interpretations of Socialism (Marx, Bakunin, Bernstein et al.; p. 297, 352-362; 401-408). He caps this book by citing a major example of socialist interpretation in political action: that of the Lenin (p. 459). All in all, he raises socialist concerns for justice, equity, and equality (yes, I too thought that equity and equality were the same at one point; p.69, 159 492), and concerns against class difference (p. 220), excessiveness (p. 164), usury (or capitalism in more modern cases; p. 337), tyranny (p. 140), and individualism (p. 195). Given the manifestation of these trends throughout history, we are led to believe that these concerns are ahistoric in nature, and therefore tied to the essence of human existence itself, if not human nature (which, I believe, is an elusive concept despite myriads of scholarly attempts to resolve it). Socialism itself, it appears, is historic: it evolves and changes as time progresses, although a certain degree of consistency in the underlying impetus, mentioned above, is achieved.
I’ll have to admit that when I first picked up the book from the university library, I thought it was going to be another rightwing smear campaign against leftists. Of course, that was until I actually read the preface. Gray states that previous dissertations on socialist thought, such as Kirkup’s History of Socialism (1892), have been fraught with bias, or prejudice in some cases, in some form or other (p. v). While he appeals to objectivity, he acknowledges his bias quite comically, stating that he does “not like the company of Marx”, and that he would be amused amicably if Fourier were to “give his marvelous impersonation of a fox or a robin or a giraffe” should the hypothetical hotel bar that he would meet him in were not full (p. vi). Informality aside, he does in fact offer a more or less unbiased perspective. The biggest surprise I encountered was his slightly empathic portrayal of statements made by the well-known radical French socialist Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865). One such statement that Proudhon coined is the famous anarchist slogan, “Property is theft” (p. 236). Gray goes on, however, citing the Frenchman’s work, that he actually implied the “sum total of the abuses that may spring from property” (p. 239). He also states in the epilogue of the book ( “postface” in early 20th Century Scottish English) that despite conventional definitions of individualism and Socialism, they
are not so much opposed as complementary principles… We are each of us an individual in society. We express ourselves as individuals through society and (whether we like it or not) we depend on society (p.488).I can only say that I could not agree more with such a talented writer.
It’s his remarkable array of talents, however, from which stem the shortcomings of this book. While his perspective may be more on the fair side, the pages are convoluted with complex syntax (not that the language of this review is any simpler). Despite the informal preface, the remaining 534 pages of the book are clearly intended more for scholarly examination than a reading hour on a lounge chair. Make no mistake: this is not “Socialism for Dummies”. One could definitely get the gist of what he’s talking about in the book overall, but Gray has his moments of academic epiphany: he assumes that the reader is, for starters, well-versed in German (and German poetry), French, English, and, in some parts, Latin. Too often has he thrown in untranslated quotes by French and German intellectuals, and, at one point, a German quote by an English intellectual (p. 63). I had to wait till I got home and went online to translate “la dialectique m’envirait” (whose meaning is still unknown to me; p. 233), a line I read in the library 5 hours ago. Who in the world of academia, today and in the past, would subliminally compel you to use not one but two dictionaries alongside a book intended for you, a speaker of the language the book was written in to begin with?
Other concerns cast doubt on his thesis. After all, scholarly work is not perfect. One might wonder, for example, if 40 thinkers and/or groups of them is too small a number to analyze an encompassing phenomenon such as Socialism. Rest assured, Gray acknowledges this, and claims implicitly that were it not for his other endeavors, he would have devoted a lifetime to its study, but even that would not be enough (p. v-vi). Large temporal gaps exist between thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and St. Thomas More (1478-1535; p.54, 61), although their common interest in Christian theology may negate this factor. Moreover, much to my dismay, most if not all characters mentioned are European. Consider historically that the Renaissance was affected greatly by the works of Islamic and Jewish scholars2, and that much of their contributions had collectivist and Socialist undertones3. Regardless, I’m tempted to forgive Gray for his omission of non-European contributions: he persuades the reader that Socialism itself became more ideologically manifest amongst European intellectuals who devoted their lives and energies towards developing a purely Socialist ideology in one form or another. This is not to say that Socialism is a strictly European phenomenon, that it could only stem from the Europeans, or that it is a “good” or “bad” ideology.
My last, and probably most important, concerns are his lack of extensive citations per page, use of an equal amount of secondary sources, and the mass of text he uses to interpret statements found in the works he researched. He has apparently failed to address this concern given that the copy of the book that was available to me was the second edition. Some pages contain a handful of citations (9 on p. 248), and others contain little to no citation (p. 307, well into the chapter on Scientific Socialism). Nevertheless, the 50-page chapter on Scientific Socialism contains at least 100 references, but I felt that they were spread too far and too thin amongst most of the text, which consisted of his personal interpretation of the texts more than anything else (p. 307). Also, while much attention is given to primary sources, he does in part pay lip service to commentaries on them, such as that of Lenin (p. 304) and Loria (p. 319) on Marx’s teachings. My guess is that he is attempting to use these sources for clarification purposes at best, given the overall “fairness” of his outlook on Socialism.
The Socialist Tradition from Moses to Lenin – in spite of its archaic syntax, pretentious non-English quotations, and hard cover – was nonetheless a fruitful and enlightening read. If you can sift through it and bear through mind-boggling minutes, if not hours, of reading, then this book is definitely for you. If, however, that lounge chair is looking comfortable, then you’d better get out that “Socialism for Dummies” copy that’s been collecting dust on your bookshelf.
Endnotes
1. Literary Encyclopedia, accessed on 11-18-08
2. The Wisdom Fund, accessed on 11-18-08.
3. AAIIL, accessed on 11-18-08.
Bibliography
Sir Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition from Moses to Lenin, Harper and Row Publishers Inc., New York, 1946: xx, 514, index
Salaam, from Saracen
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