[Marxism] Re: Isaac Deutscher and Marxist history

[Brian Shannon <brian_shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

My contribution is more fitting for the Yahoo SWP forum. But it  
started here, so it makes more sense to continue it here.

Here are the last paragraphs of Breitman's criticism of Joseph  
Hansen's review of Isaac Deutscher's "The Prophet Outcast."

Unfortunately, we don't have Hansen's review of the final volume of  
the Deutscher trilogy available, or his reply to Breitman's strong  
criticism. Perhaps the ETOL people will do that work for us. Of  
course, a few libraries have back issues.

What Breitman missed is that by this time, there were young people  
who were using Deutscher as a lead into what Breitman urged. Placed  
in the context, not of the fight with Cochrane, but with the  
regroupment of the late 1950s, Breitman was arguing that during the  
regroupment after the Khrushchev revelations and the Hungarian  
revolution, Deutscher's ideas presented a satisfactory half-way house  
that allowed some to get on with their lives. A few became members of  
the New Left a la David Horowitz and others (Horowitz himself became  
close to both Deutscher and to Trotskyism while in England.)

Barry Sheppard writes favorably of the end of regroupment and the  
tightening up of the YSA. I don't have any documents available, but I  
recall that the SWP also considered the NY State election campaign in  
which we were involved during this period (alliance with W.E.B.  
DuBois, Annette Rubinstein,* and others) to also have been a failure  
because no, or few, individuals were recruited.

However, by the time of Hansen's 1964 review, the cumulative effect  
of the great trilogy was to elevate Trotsky's prestige and respect on  
the Left and on young people coming around our movement. They ignored  
Deutscher's negative comments on the attempt to build the Fourth  
International. After all, the attempt to build the FI was at the same  
time an attempt to build revolutionary parties within each nation.  
They could see that the YSA and its parent organization were  
participating in civil rights actions in northern cities and were  
playing a leading role in defending the Cuban Revolution. Within a  
couple more years, they could see our organizations' impact on  
uniting the anti-Vietnam War movement. These young people ignored the  
negative comments on Trotsky and instead identified with his great  
struggles.

The trilogy also helped in our relations with the CP itself. Its  
members and especially the milieu around it had to acknowledge and  
even respect Trotsky, whatever their disagreements with the  
organizations that identified with Trotsky and his ideas. This made  
it much easier to draw these individuals and organizations into  
coalitions. In hindsight, had we had a deeper psychological and  
political understanding of what was developing within this stratum,  
we might have done much better than we did. And I say this as one who  
was personally very slow in grasping this and extremely hostile to  
the U.S. CP.



> I also have serious reservations about Hansen’s contention that  
> “through Deutscher, some of them (Communist Party members)  
> eventually found their way to Trotskyism.” It is true that some of  
> them found an introduction to Trotsky’s ideas in Deutscher, but in  
> a distorted form. To find “their way to Trotskyism,” they would  
> have had to go around or over Deutscher, not through him, and, in  
> this country at least, few did. For most of them, Deutscher served  
> as a stopping point; as a justification for breaking with  
> Stalinism, but also as a justification for rejecting Trotsky’s  
> conclusion on what to do.
>
> For most readers of the Trotsky biography, I believe, the  
> conclusion will be that Trotsky was a great man but that  
> “Trotskyism” is Utopian and impractical. As a “public facility,”  
> Deutscher is more like a detour or dead end than a bridge, and I  
> not only could be against that kind of facility, but am. If this is  
> what led Hansen to “reform” his attitude to Deutscher, I would  
> recommend that he take another and closer look at where this  
> facility has led most readers.
>
> Finally, I question the use of Hansen’s analogy of Deutscher’s  
> biography of Trotsky with a portrait that might be painted of  
> Trotsky by an artist. (“Let us not ask too much from them  
> (artists), but take gratefully what they can give.”) If Deutscher  
> gives a portrait, that is only incidental. His is a political  
> biography, that is, political analysis, not art (however well  
> Deutscher writes). Perhaps Hansen’s review would have been better  
> if he had treated it primarily as false political analysis rather  
> than as a work of art marred by the obtrusiveness of a  
> gesticulating brush.

> http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/breitman/1964/xx/ 
> deutscher.htm

______________

See http://www.monthlyreview.org/annetterubinstein.htm and the end of  
http://www.monthlyreview.org/nfte600.htm






________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism