ENCOURAGED by the vast numbers of drawing room pinks and pseudo-intellectuals who devoured the pages of Strachey's first editions of "The Coming Struggle for Power", The Modern Library now brings out a new issue for a dollar so that even those who can't afford a drawing room to be pink in can now have the advantage of reading this attack on Wall Street and Main Street.

In the new introduction which Mr. Strachey has composed for this masterpiece of radicalism, he urges the reader to believe that the communists are an erudite aggregation who predict revolution without advocating it. One is reminded of the classic morn when Poppea in her arrogance called Cleopatra a courtesan. Indeed, according to Mr. Strachey, it is not the communists who knock off the proverbial chip, but the fat capitalist who grinds down the worker to the depths of poverty and fifth.

Once again, Mr. Strachey here posits the classic thesis of the inevitability of the class struggle. Scanning the political horizon he sees only the lifted arm of Mussolini and the lifted eyebrows of Andy Mellon. He refuses absolutely to admit that our capitalist system is capable of amelioration through peaceful self-regulation.

The past few years of empty dinner pails, and scrawny profits have produced what many observers beleve to be a significantly novel popular psychology. Business men as a group have begun to realize that unregulated monopoly and labor exploitation are phenomena which must belong to a dead age if democratic institutions are to continue. In the light of this insight, they have voluntarily submitted to stringent regulation be governmental agencies. Wall Street has accepted the SEC; The I.C.C. dominates the field of railroads with the approval of big business. Such are isolated examples of a new spirit among capitalist leaders which indicates the possibility of a peaceful solution of the class struggle. To such new developments, Mr. Strachey still remains blissfully asleep.