Controversy at Harvard

Early in the war Russell had become a socialist, resigned from the Liberals and joined the Labour party. The war had caused him to write on socio-political themes. But during his imprisonment he was permitted to deal only with subjects related to his earlier philosophical work. In his four months at Brixton Prison, he completed Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy and began work on The Analysis of Mind. Looking back on the war years, Russell observed that he ‘ceased to be academic and took to writing a new kind of books’. ¹ He was encouraged in this by the favourable response given to his propagandist lectures and articles, selections of which had been published in book form during the war. ² In the last days before his imprisonment he had hastily completed Roads to Freedom which was published in 1918. The book analysed the doctrines of socialism, anarchism and syndicalism, which were being fiercely debated at the time, and was to have a profound impact on American radicals during a period of great social unrest. Russell himself was impressed with the growth of labour agitation in America, particularly the rise of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies), and in Roads to Freedom noted with approval that ‘industrial unionism, spreading from America, has had a considerable influence in Great Britain.’ ³