Many years later, another Marxian rephrased this as the choice between socialism and barbarity. Which of these will prevail is a question which the twenty-first century must be left to answer.

The greatest cruelties of our century have been the impersonal cruelties of remote decision, of system and routine, especially when they could be justified as regrettable operational necessity.

The only certain thing about the future is that it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it.

It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does.

Human beings are not efficiently designed for a capitalist system of production.

Utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.

N. S. Khrushchev established his supremacy in the U.S.S.R. after post-Stalinist alarums and excursions (1958-64). This admirable rough diamond, a believer in reform and peaceful coexistence, who incidentally emptied Stalin's concentration camps, dominated the international scene in the next few years. He was also perhaps the only peasant boy ever to rule a major state