ABSTRACT
Systematic and deep digging is needed if Karl Marx is to be rescued, and one of the main aims of the book is to engage in the necessary unearthing of the ‘real’ Marx. Of those who took part in the interment of Marx, the Stalinists were culprits-in-chief. In connection with the problems associated with the dominance of ‘Marxism’ the most important thing our author has to say is the following: ‘it became impossible to view Marx’s work unless it was first refracted through the distorting lens of this [Stalinist] tradition’. One further point should be made in connection with Cyril Smith’s ill-founded claim that all would-be Marxists were trapped, more or less completely, within the limits of the ideological categories of Stalinism. The problems of the Fourth International cannot be understood simply, or even mainly, from the point of view of how adequately its leaders grasped the work of Marx.
