We almost always read fiction in what I call our 'uptown' reading group, but this time we tackled [To the Finland Station]. Very interesting discussion followed, to my surprise and pleasure. Edmund Wilson writes marvelously clear prose, even if it's in an older, more subordinate-clause style. While his section on Lenin is too much a hagiography (as he himself admitted later), the history of socialist and communist origins and philosophy in Europe really filled a hole in my education, and his concentration on the history and personalities of Marx and Engels made them very vivid to me. If you haven't read it, take a look, and forgive the first chapter or so on the French philosophers (it is rather deadly). ( )

Highly recommended, a classic. This should be read by every intelligent reader. This book has special resonance today (in late 2017); economic considerations are the fundament of socialism, an attempt to imagine and institute a political system which could lessen the plight of the poor, of low-wage workers and those in unnecessarily onerous or dangerous jobs, as against economies operating in effect to satisfy the greed of the wealthy who benefit from those people and circumstances and enjoy political systems which evolved to sustain or increase the obvious inequities of wealth.

At issue is always how to institute a true socialist state in place of another. No nation has. Wilson offers thoughtful and closely reasoned criticism of the historical proponents of socialism, identifying not only their insight but also their incorrect assumptions and unsound reasoning, of which there is enough. He outlines a few former attempts at the setting up of Utopian communities, among dozens of which in the U.S. are listed in Wikipedia.

The world-wide concentration of wealth today is an obscenity ultimately warping nearly every human and civil standard, and entraining politics (and arguably media) within a corrupt golden feedback loop which might finally result in even an advanced country having hands-down the most ignorant and dangerous elected leaders in its history, in further increasing the concentration of wealth by tax laws and other means even when unpopular, and in stifling meaningful institutional oversight and balance, abetted perhaps by methodical media misdirection and lack of candor in support of short-sighted policies further enriching the wealthy few at the expense of the many economically insecure.

That is a disheartening prospect even to a lifelong conservative concerned deeply both with this possibility and with unpredictable reactions to it (call it dialectic), from which one hopes revolutionary history is not to be repeated with its usual blood and guts. An alert and informed public would help, where voting is practiced. Reading this book is recommended. It is very well written and enjoyable to read. ( )

a bit of a trudge. there are refreshing moments of evaluation and synthesis. ( )

Looks interesting although I am unsure about the USA angle...

History of the rise of socialism, from the French Revolution to the dawning of the Russian Revolution. All the standard caveats apply, and by the end of his writing the work Wilson knew the reality of the Soviet Union, but this is a worthwhile effort. The earlier chapters especially stand out. A historical work, not a political one. ( )