ABSTRACT
This book addresses a particular period in the historical development of Marxism in order to make sense of its contemporary impasse, both as a strand of political theory and as a living political tradition. Specifically, I focus on the theoretical and political legacy of two important Marxist figures, Antonio Gramsci and Leon Trotsky, using their compelling and tragic stories to provide a concrete historical account of the rise of Stalinism in the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. Through this account, I theorize Stalinism as the complex, disastrous, and by no means inevitable outcome of a political struggle in the international communist movement in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. I also assess the relative merits of Gramsci and Trotsky’s analyses of Stalinism, a phenomenon that not only disrupted the established theoretical framework of Marxism, but also served as a challenge and imperative to develop it further. In this sense, my book is a work of political theory understood as the historical study of political ideas. Stalinism, however, is not a largely extinguished phenomenon of mere historical interest. I argue that Stalinism casts a long, though in many cases undetected shadow over various contemporary academic attempts to revitalize-as well as attempts to overcome-Marxism. While these attempts operate largely at the level of theory, much of their force and animating impulses derive from a deeply entrenched common sense about the Russian Revolution and its inevitable totalitarian
degeneration. In this introduction I begin by situating the project in the contemporary political and intellectual context. I then discuss the choice to focus on Gramsci and Trotsky, and offer a few methodological reflections to explain my approach in the context of the existing protocols of political theory. Finally, I will provide a schematic account of the structure of the book.
