'You might easily read great tomes on the English, French, American and Russian revolutions and still not encounter anything that explains all or any of them remotely as succinctly as this text does. The combination of erudition, brevity and clarity of thought, which was Duncan's forte, marked him out as one of the great socialist communicators of his generation, steeped in the Marxist tradition. I first read these essays as a novice shop steward in the early 1970s, and they have lost none of their sparkle, or wisdom.' - Jack Robertson, author of The Man Who Shook His Fist at the Tsar, and translator of Larissa Reisner: The Hammer and the Anvil.