[Marxism] Fw: Isaac Deutscher and Marxist history

["Graham M." <gkmilner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Graham M. 
To: Socialist Alliance 
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 4:09 AM
Subject: Isaac Deutscher and Marxist history


Dear Comrades,
                       The British writer Perry Anderson, in the preface he 
wrote to a selection of essays by Isaac Deutscher: 'Marxism, Wars and 
Revolutions' (1984), described Deutscher as 'one of the greatest socialist 
writers' of the 20th century.   Anderson later ruefully commented, while 
surveying the intellectual scene at the beginning of the new century (and 
millennium), in a gloss for a new, second, series of the journal 'New Left 
Review', that Deutscher's legacy, along with much of the rest of the socialist 
tradition, had slipped from view in the 1990s, which was a bleak period indeed 
for the left.

   New forces and movements have come to the fore over the past decade which 
have transformed the political scene and brought a new generation to 
anti-capitalist positions.   While searching for answers to the big questions 
about the history of the last century, those newly or recently recruited to the 
socialist movement will find a treasure trove in the writings of a 
revolutionary Marxist writer like Isaac Deutscher.

   Born in Poland of Jewish, middle-class parents, Deutscher had a background 
in many respects similar to that of Rosa Luxemburg, the great Polish socialist 
theoretician and founder of the German Communist Party.   Luxemburg's 
revolutionary internationalist socialism had a big influence on the young 
Deutscher.   Deutscher joined the Polish Communist Party as a young man in the 
early 1920s and was a militant until he was expelled in 1932 for opposing the 
ultra-left 'Third Period' line in the Communist International.  He considered 
that this line was paving the way for the victory of Hitler.   Deutscher was, 
later in the1930s, associated with the Trotskyist International Left Opposition 
and attended, as the Polish delegate, the founding conference of the Fourth 
International in 1938 in Paris.   He held that in the climate of defeat and 
disintegration of the international labour movement a new International would 
not be successful, and voted against its establishment.

   During World War Two, Deutscher lived in England.   He began to learn the 
English language and was soon writing for British publications.   He soon 
mastered the English language and his prose is wonderfully supple and 
expressive.   In this respect he emulated another Polish writer, Joseph Conrad, 
whose command of English prose was also very fine.

   Deutscher is known primarily for his great biographies of Stalin and 
Trotsky.   He had intended to write a full-scale biography of Lenin but this 
project was never completed, partly because he was prevented from achieving 
academic appointments during the Cold War.   Deutscher had found himself 
compelled to earn his living from journalism.   'Lenin's Childhood', a short 
vignette, was published after Deutscher's death, and it gives the flavour of 
what would in all likelihood have been a great biography of the Russian 
revolutionary and Soviet leader.

   Deutscher's biography of Stalin first appeared in 1949, while the Soviet 
dictator was still alive and while Stalinism was almost totally dominant in the 
world Communist movement.   The book was ignored by the Soviet press, but it 
was a best-seller in the West.   The book was denounced as an apology for 
Stalin and Stalinism by Cold Warriers in the West, while orthodox Communists 
denounced it as a heretical attack on the Stalin cult.   There have been 
written, over the years, many biographies of Stalin, but Deutscher's study is 
to my mind the most satisfying of the ones I've read.   Trotsky's biography of 
Stalin is in my view too partisan and lacking in the distance that is probably 
necessary for this kind of work.   Deutscher's own perspective is however 
heavily indebted to Trotsky, but Deutscher develops interesting and important 
original insights concerning the nature of Soviet Bonapartism and the 
intricacies of Stalin's foreign policy.

   Deutscher's three volume biography of Trotsky: 'The Prophet Armed'; 'The 
Prophet Unarmed', and 'The Prophet Outcast', is in my opinion one of the 
greatest political biographies of the 20th century.   It contains a wonderful 
fund of information not only on Trotsky's life and ideas, but also on the 
European labour movement and on international affairs in the first half of the 
century, and on many aspects of socialist and Marxist ideology and thought.   
It contains a tremendous psychological portrait of Trotsky as well, and in this 
respect is far superior to a later attempt to deal on a large scale with 
Trotsky's life.   This latter work, Tony Cliff's four volume biography of 
Trotsky, does contain valuable material, but in my view lacks Deutscher's acute 
psychological penetration.

   The drama and colour of the international socialist movement is nowhere 
brought out more successfully and effectively than in Isaac Deutscher's Trotsky 
trilogy.   The tragic aspect of Trotsky's career is well illustrated in these 
volumes.   Deutscher deals at length with Trotsky the writer and theoretician 
as well as with the tribune of 1905, the organiser of insurrection in October 
1917, and the organiser of victory in the Civil War, which ended 
in 1921. The last volume deals with Trotsky's final exile.   Deutscher brings 
out Trotsky's moral stature in standing up to the Stalinist regime while 
continuing to produce an enormous written output in many spheres.   Deutscher 
presents Trotsky as the towering figure that he was.

   The Trotsky trilogy has been recently reissued, and a new generation of 
socialist activists now has access to these marvellous books.   

   It might be asked: if Isaac Deutscher was a Marxist why was he, as a 
historian, so keen to focus on individuals (great men) rather than deal with 
history in the round, as a process?   I think that the answer to this is to be 
found in the critique that Deutscher would have offered of 'vulgar Marxism'.   
Marx and Engels never wrote that individuals were not of importance in the 
historical process.   The famous words at the beginning of 'The Eighteenth 
Brumaire' state that 'men make their own history...' even though their actions 
are conditioned by inherited circumstances.  Plekhanov wrote his great essay 
'The Role of the Individual in History' to illustrate the approach of 
historical materialism on this subject.   The fact is that great men (and 
women) can articulate social forces.   The battle between Stalin and Trotsky 
was not just a contest of individual wills, but was a conflict between 
programmes which reflected class and political forces in Soviet society.   In 
the same way Oliver Cromwell, Robespierre and other important figures led class 
struggles during the epoch of the bourgeois revolutions in Europe.   
Deutscher's own approach seems to me to be legitimate and fruitful.   Other 
historians have used a similar biographical approach to the Russian Revolution; 
for example Bertram Wolfe in 'Three Who Made a Revolution' (Lenin, Trotsky and 
Stalin).   Wolfe had long since left the Communist movement when he wrote this 
book, but the text, which goes down to 1912, is well informed and is certainly 
worth studying.

   Deutscher died in 1967.   Not long before he died the Marxist historian 
delivered the Trevelyan lectures at Cambridge University.   Published under the 
title 'The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917-1967', these lectures are a 
superb overview of the dynamics of the revolutionary process in Russia, and 
remain a fine analytical commentary on the subject of Deutscher's life work.  

    Isaac Deutscher stands out as one of the great figures in 20th century 
Marxism, and his contribution as committed radical scholar and activist 
deserves to be honoured by all socialists.


                                       In solidarity,


                                                    Graham Milner

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