On Sun, Apr 11, 2021 at 3:24 PM Andrew Stewart <[email protected]> wrote: > Two thoughts: > a-Isaac Deutscher says in the Afterword of THE PROPHET OUTCAST that Trotsky would have been unable to regain power had he lived because of the shortcomings of his analysis and framework. Even though he was a Communist, he was still wed to the Marxist schema of the Second International. ...
Andrew Stewart has brought some confusion into this discussion by misrepresenting Deutscher's positive evaluation of Trotsky in his 'Afterword of THE PROPHET OUTCAST' which is titled "Postscript: Victory in Defeat" (please read it). Stewart makes the ridiculous assertion that Trotsky "was still wed to the Marxist schema of the Second International" and implies that this is what Deutscher thought of Trotsky. Stewart apparently thinks that 'Second International Marxism' is "classical Marxism" because he quotes Deutscher describing Trotsky's "classical Marxism" to supposedly show that Trotsky was 'wed to Second International marxism.' Deutscher did say in his postscript "It must be emphasized again that to the end Trotsky’s strength and weakness alike were rooted in classical Marxism" but neither Trotsky nor Deutscher thought that 'second international marxism' was "classical marxism." Deutscher spent his initial years in the revolutionary socialist movement building the Third, Communist International in opposition to the Social Democracy of the second international. Here is what Deutscher says in his Introduction to "The Age of Permanent Revolution: A Trotsky Anthology": "Trotsky is a classical Marxist in more than one sense. He represents the Marxist school of thought in its purity, as it existed before its debasement by the Social-Democratic and Stalinist orthodoxies. His writings convey the original inspiration, the intellectual splendour, and the moral élan of the idea and the movement." In his "Postscript: Victory in Defeat" to *The Prophet Outcast *Deutscher does not discuss Stewart's fanciful topic 'would Trotsky have been able to regain power if he had lived.' What Deutscher does discuss is his view that Trotsky's classical Marxism will eventually be vindicated in the Soviet Union: "Nothing indeed troubled Khrushchev more than the fear that young men, not burdened by responsibility for the horrors of the Stalin era, might become impatient with his evasions and quibblings and proceed to an open vindication of Trotsky." "The open vindication is bound to come in any case, though not perhaps before Stalin's aging epigones have left the stage. When it does come, it will be more than a long-overdue act of justice toward the memory of a great man. By this act the workers' state will announce that it has at last reached maturity, broken its bureaucratic shackles, and re-embraced the classical Marxism that had been banished with Trotsky." Unfortunately Deutscher was wrong about the future of the Soviet Union. In response to Michael's question - if Trotsky had lived for another couple decades - a most interesting topic would have been how Trotsky's evaluation of the Soviet Union might have changed. On Sun, Apr 11, 2021 at 3:24 PM Andrew Stewart <[email protected]> wrote: > > Two thoughts: > > a-Isaac Deutscher says in the Afterword of THE PROPHET OUTCAST that Trotsky would have been unable to regain power had he lived because of the shortcomings of his analysis and framework. Even though he was a Communist, he was still wed to the Marxist schema of the Second International. He even asks in his notes whether Marxism was disproved by the inability of German workers to reject fascism and the Soviet workers to reject Stalin. And then within a decade you have the Chinese revolution, ten years after that the Cuban revolution, and then in the following twenty-five years the Latin American and African revolts against colonialism and imperialism. > > b-Trotsky unfortunately alienated himself from the Soviet leadership by the mid-Thirties. Regardless of his brilliance as a writer, he was extremely haughty, elitist, and self-important to the point of being a nuisance. He used to flaunt his brilliance by quoting Flaubert in the middle of Central Committee meetings, annoying everyone by saying how smart he was. Deutscher said that the Fourth International was stillborn. > > So if he had lived, it is possible to imagine him ending up roughly akin to Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, exiled dissident Jews who used to sympathize with the Russian revolution but ended up writing polemics with limited shelf life. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#7949): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7949 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/82013043/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
