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Darkness at Noon | Koestler's Socialist Political Philosophy

In the following essay, Scott Trudell argues that Darkness at Noon advocates a socialist political philosophy similar to that of the Menshevik thinkers before the Russian Revolution.

Most of the criticism of Darkness at Noon has concentrated on its convincing and insightful case against Stalin’s totalitarian regime. Because he is so familiar with Party thinking, and because he is able to portray so compellingly the psychology of a former Communist hero losing his faith, Koestler has been uniquely influential in the twentieth-century debate about Soviet politics. His novel has been set as a classroom text in the United States and Britain and generally understood as a rebuttal of Communism or even as a vindication of capitalism. While it is...

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