Re: [Marxism] Deutscher trilogy reviewed

[Turbulo@xxxxxxx]

The Deutscher trilogy probably influenced me more than any three books I've 
ever read, apart , perhaps, from the three volumes of Capital. I first read the 
trilogy when I was a student radical in 1969. It moved me away from the Maoism, 
hence Stalinism, I then espoused, and led me to devour Trotsky's writings over 
the next couple years. They were my path toward the real history of the Russian 
Revolution and to classical Marxism. I became sympathetic to Trotskyism as a 
result, but also knowledgeable enough not to take a couple self-proclaimed 
Trotsyist organizations I ran into--the SWP and the Workers League--for the 
genuine article. When, years later, I did join a group--the Spartacists--that I 
thought closer to historical Trotskyism, I still regarded them from a certain 
critical distance, which in the end proved more than justified, and for which I 
am greatly indebted to Isaac Deutscher. (I actually heard him speak before I 
started reading him, here in NYC at the Socialist Scholars' Conference in 1968. 
He gave an address, "On Socialist Man.") 

Jim      
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