Free Thought and Official Propaganda.

A lovely, bright copy of one of Russell's scarcer titles, originally delivered as the Conway Memorial Lecture at South Place Institute on 24th March 1922. The text later reprinted in Sceptical Essays in 1928.

In it Russell advocates for complete freedom of expression from legal as well as economic and social penalties. Although his frame of reference centres on the blasphemy laws then in place in England, it's clear Russell also saw the dangers of ideological fanaticism in, for example, Bolshevik Russia where 'the advantages and disadvantages [of support for religion or communism] are exactly reversed' (p.17).

The lecture was delivered at a time when Russell was particularly politically active, running unsuccessfully as the Labour Party parliamentary candidate for Chelsea in the general elections of 1922 and 1923, and was given the same year Russell's Prospects of Industrial Civilization was published, which argued that the establishment of international socialism was necessary to save humanity from destroying itself through war.

First edition, first impression; 12mo (17 x 11 cm); publisher's blue cloth ruled in blind, upper cover lettered in gilt, spine lettered in gilt, very minor wear to extremities, near fine; 48pp.

Blackwell/Ruja A40.1a.