isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

IN SEARCH OF AN IDEAL 39
that Darwin himself had not been an atheist. 1 Then the philosophical
essays of Arturo Labriola, the I tali an Marxist, brought
him a little nearer to his goal: Labriola's thought and style,
undogmatic, lucid, and graceful, left a lasting impression. He
now only half understood the subject matter ofLabriola's book,
but he obtained more solid clues to Marxist theory.
From such precarious points of view, and using a loose tissue
of fact drawn from Greek Orthodox sources, he then attempted
to write a materialist history of freemasonry and in this concrete
historical analysis to put to a test his homespun version of
Marxism. This was his first copious literary work and one for
which he preserved a lifelong attachment: he remained unconsoled
after its loss in one of his early wanderings. We need
not share the author's tenderness for his first-fruits; but we may
assume that in these writings he first tried his hand at Marxist
history writing. Among his many essays, which he used to put
into a hiding place in the prison latrine for his friends to read,
was one on the role of the individual in history, the subject of
ever-absorbing debate for the Marxist and the Narodnik. 'I made
no new discoveries; all the conclusions ... at which I arrived
had been made long ago by others .... But I reached them
gropingly and, up to a point, independently. This influenced
the whole course of my development. In the writings of Marx,
Engels, Plekhanov, and Mehring, I later found confirmation
for what in prison seemed to me only a guess .... I had not at the
outset accepted historical materialism in a dogmatic form.' 2
These efforts occupied his mind and kept his spirit buoyant
as his second year in prison was drawing to a close. Mentally,
the adolescent was passing into manhood; and the transition
was hastened by the fact that nothing was left to the captive in
his cell but thought and reflection.
' In an address to the students of the Sverdlov University in Moscow, in 1923,
he said: 'To the encl of my life I shall wonder whether Darwin was sincere in this,
or wht'ther he merely paid his tribute to conventional beliefs.' PoAo/enie Okt;·abr;·a,
pp. 55·56.
z L. Trotsky, Moya Zhi