6001^ R£Vt£W 83 form. He must cooperate in settling, and then accept and implement the Party line. He must work loyally inside his group, and perform his small or large share of the common plan. As long as he remains outside this revolutionary party, it is a sign that although he believes in the need for a revolution he remains a bourgeois. When he decided to embrace Communism he did not go straight to King's Street, London, to be the literary editor of the Party organ. He quietly settled down in a working class district near the East London docks so that he could be one of the anonymous proletariat. During the period (a little more than a year) of his membership, he did ordinary work of the Party like bill-posting, slogan-chalking, etc. In December 1937 he drove an ambulance to Spain where he joined the International Brigade. On his very first day of combat he was killed. In my daydreams I have often speculated about what would have happened had Gaudwell remained in England. Perhaps he would have become an English Lukacs ! In his theoretical writings Caudwell wanted to integrate as many branches of learning as possible within the basic framework of Marxism. He entertained a kind of Renaissance ambition : to inherit the sum of human knowledge. He knew what Lenin said : Communism becomes an empty phrase, a mere facade, and the communist a mere bluffer, if he has not worked over in his consciousness the whole inheritance of human knowledge. It is obvious that in today's conditions no single individual can fulfil this task thoroughly ; but it has to be emphasised that everyone, who aspires to deserve the name of a Communist, has to persevere along this path, however modest may be the stride he takes. The circumstances of a critic's life are not, in the ultimate analysis, relevant in the assessment of the value of his ideas. But in the case of Caudwell (and of Ralph Fox) every commentator is reminded of his sense of total commitment to an idea. The shortcomings of CaudwelPs writings deserve criticism. Bat the kind of total commitment to the revolution that he illustrated in his life and writings is something we should be proud to emulate. The Modern Quarterly discussion of Gaudwell (1951) revealed how sharply divided was the British Marxist opinion on the value of his achievement. But it is worth mentioning that while Maurice Gornforth, a trained philosopher, and J D Bernal, an active scientist, severely criti-sised Gaudwell, George Thomson, a profound literary scholar, found in in him a rich mine of ideas. Professor Samuel Hynes, who has written the editorial introduc-duction to Romance and Realism shows generous understanding in assessing Caudwell's place in English Marxist criticism. George Moberg is said to have completed a full-length biography of Caudwell. Lawrence and Wishart have published a sympathetic critical treatment of Gaudwell under the title The Function of Literature written by David N Margolies.