Why I Am Not a Communist [1956]

THIS PAPER WAS written in April 1954 for a volume often short essays tentatively entitled “Why I Am Anti-Communist”. The pamphlet was to continue the Background Books series for which Russell had published three times already-once in a similar symposium, Why Communism Must Fail, and twice as the sole author, of the booklets What Is Freedom? and What Is Democracy? (1951a, 1952, 1953a). The Background Books series was intended by its publishers, the Batchworth Press, “to provide ordinary people, interested in what is going on in the world today, with some background information about events, institutions and ideas” (quoted in Hayhurst 1991, 71). Publication was subsidized by the British Foreign Office, perhaps from the hope that the reasoned anti-Communist arguments of authors like Russell would reach a mass audience. Each Background Book was about forty pages long and reasonably priced at is. or is. 6d. In the three years since the series had started in 1951 about 300,000 copies of the various titles had been printed in English, and assorted foreign language editions were in circulation as well.