Books: Wilson v. the U.S.

THE COLD WAR AND THE INCOME TAX by Edmund Wilson. 1 18 pages. Farrar, Sfraus. $2.95.

In 1848, drawing up a step-by-step program for what he called "the despotic inroads on the rights of property," Karl Marx put as No. 2 on his big agenda "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax."

Ninety-eight years later, Critic Edmund Wilson, the most gifted and eloquent expositor of Marxism the U.S. ever produced, failed to file an income tax return. He went on failing to file right up to 1955, when he got around to opening financial conversations with the U.S. Government. In the nature of...