ABSTRACT
Friedmann's liaison with marxism had been a product of an idealistic interpretation of the October Revolution as the triumph of western humanist values, which, in common with many other French intellectuals of his generation, he naturally tended to assimilate to the French rationalist tradition with which he was so thoroughly impregnated. Acceptance of marxism, or at least, of dialectical materialism, followed logically from acceptance of the PCF as representative of the Revolution in France. The attachment was therefore doubly brittle, for beyond the intellectual fragility of 'diamat' itself it depended upon the capacity of the Soviet authorities to live up to every expectation of them as the embodiment of the march of Reason in human affairs. Given their progressively unconvincing performance on this score after the rise of Stalin, the logic which had underlain the original choice was thrown into reverse and marxism was comprehensively repudiated.
