This formidable work — also published under the title of Principals of Social Reconstruction — discusses war, pacifism, reason, impulse and personal liberty, and greatly contributed to Russells fame as a formidable social critic and anti-war activist. “The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that centre around possession.” “Russell is one of the most profound thinkers of the modern age.”