Marxist (2018)

Book Review from the January 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Comment je suis devenu marxiste', by Julius Martov (Editions Lumpen)

This is virtually a French version of our new pamphlet on Martov, containing the same series of articles in which Martov demonstrates how Lenin and the Bolsheviks were distorting Marxism to justify the dictatorship over the working class that they were establishing. The title – 'How I became a Marxist' – is a bit misleading in that this is not the main article nor the whole of Martov's draft autobiography. It does, however, have the merit of identifying the author as a Marxist. In the extract published here, Martov recounts how he became a Marxist, as someone who relied on the working class to overthrow Tsarism (as opposed to the Narodniks who relied on the peasants), while a student at St. Petersburg University in 1892. Other short articles are included, a couple on the aftermath of the 1905 insurrection in Russia and Martov's denunciation of the Bolshevik government for bringing back the death penalty. One minor criticism: the articles are not dated so it is left to the reader to work this out from their content.

Adam Buick