ABSTRACT
Among the multiple products of Bertrand Russell's panoptic intelli-. gence, his writings on politics have been rather slighted. Admirers ofhis analytic lucidity are content to celebrate his mathematical philosophy and some ofhis later work in the philosophy ofscience and philosophy of mind, while those stunned by his persona and touched by his moral courage dwell on his life - his practical engagement in the great issues of suffrage, pacifism, nuclear disarmament and world peace. Consequently, his political thought, falling somewhere between pure theory and vigorous praxis, is often treated as a function ofhis journalism. The political books, in this view, are a kind of tribute exacted by his political principles, popular 'potboilers' (Russell's own term) to pay the bills that academic emoluments might have met had he kept his politics to himself and lived passively as a distinguished academic logician. A. ]. Ayer, thus, pays Russell's political thought little heed, passing over it entirely in his Russell and Moore and just grazing it in the 'Moral Philosophy' chapter in his Modern Masters account.
