And early post linked to Isaac Deutsher’s wonderful essay “The Ex-communist’s conscience” and I said I would say a bit more about Deutscher.

Deutscher of course lends his name to the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize, which is awarded every year for the best book in Marxism and is one of the few book awards worth paying attention to. The reason I mention this is because receiving the award brings with it the compulsion to give an lecture. One particularly interesting lecture given in this circumstance was Justin Rosenberg, who had been given the award for his book “The Empire of Civil Society”. Available on amazon and libcom.

Rosenberg’s lecture was on “Isaac Deutscher and the Lost History of International Relations”. It is a fascinating little essay/lecture and I very strongly recommend reading it.

I had always thought the idea of Combined and Uneven Development was a load of nonsense and Rosenberg’s essay has convinced me its not. There’s something there.

Rosenberg is running a research group in Sussex on this question and you can read about it on their site: http://unevenandcombineddevelopment.wordpress.com/