As a political thinker and politician, John Strachey (1901-1963) strove to alter and modernize British society for 40 years. For him, modernization meant Marxism. Before and after the Second World War, Strachey was the most elegant thinker on the left end of Britain's political spectrum.

Judging from his family background, one would not expect that Evelyn John St. Loe Strachey would become one of Britain's most prominent socialists. He was born in Guildford, Surrey on October 21, 1901. His father was John St. Loe Strachey, the longtime publisher and editor of the conservative periodical, Spectator. An ancestor, Sir Henry Strachey, had been secretary to Robert Clive in India. On the other hand, there was St. Loe's cousin, Lytton Strachey, the liberal biographer and critic, who was a member of the Bloomsbury circle.

While editorials in St. Loe's Spectator rationalized the British conservative and imperial position to readers throughout the empire and...