I first learned of Alban Dewes Winspear's brilliant Marxist studies in classics from a friend. When, one day in the mid-1980s, I asked Kevin Whitfield, who combined his job as professor of classics at several Boston-area universities with a commitment to political activism, if he knew of any good Marxist studies of the Greek and Latin classics, Winspear was the first name off his tongue. I had never heard of him.
Not long after that, I got and studied Winspear's major work, The Genesis of Plato's Thought. Deeply impressed with the depth of Winspear's research and his mastery of Marxist analysis, I studied it over and over again. After that, I got and read all of Winspear's published books, including the present short work.
While visiting my father in Montreal in 1987, I met an old friend of Winspear's, a one-time student who was also brought out the last edition of The Genesis of Plato's Thought. From him I learned a little of Winspear's life, and of the influence his works had enjoyed until the Cold War made it risky for a teacher to assign any kind of Marxist analysis, on any subject. I also learned of Gregory Vlastos' very positive review of Genesis when it first appeared.
Armed with a little biographical information, I contacted Winspear's widow in Canada. She sent me his unpublished memoirs, and an unfinished work on the origins of Christianity on which Winspear was working at the time of his death. He was felled in his prime, at age 74 in 1973, when he was pioneering an innovative new technique -- the computer analysis of classical Greek style, which he had already used to specify the actual author of Plato's Seventh Letter.
Glad that her late husband's work was still recognized, Ms. Winspear gave me her permission to photocopy Who Was Socrates? for my classes. Not long after that I received the same permission from the co-author, Tom Silverberg, by then a retired physician in New York City, but a graduate student of Winspear's at Wisconsin when Who Was Socrates? was written. I am assuming upon those permissions, granted over a decade ago, in publishing this short book, a seminal and exemplary text of Marxist historical analysis, on the Internet. Dr. Silverberg warmly recalled his old professor, and assured me that the work was really Winspear's -- that his own contribution had been rather slight.
Finally, I also received some helpful information on Winspear's political and intellectual activities from the editor of Science and Society, as well as further details of Winspear's difficulties during the start of the Cold War when, though a highly accomplished scholar, like so many others he was prevented from working in any North American university, and had to begin a private academy in Canada (of which he was a citizen, having moved from the United Kingdom as a boy).
Mr. Jarred Shaw scanned this whole work. He was very patient and positive throughout, despite computer and scanner problems aplenty, and despite the need for intense concentration for minimal pay. He was also very supportive of my attempt to make this work freely available to students. Thanks, Jarred!
Grover C. Furr
Montclair State University
May 15, 1999