[Marxism] Re: Fwd: Chavez praises Marxist.com and backsHandsoffVenezu,

["M. Junaid Alam" <junaidalam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

For a couple years I was affiliated with the youth website in the US
identifying the Grant/Woods tendency, which was www.newyouth.com. That
eventually became a recruiting ground for the American branch of the
tendency called WIL [www.socialistappeal.org], which a couple years back
had about 40 members nationwide, but last year there was (surprise) a
purge of some West Coast people, so I don't know how large it is now. My
guess is it's basically insignificant in terms of on the ground presence.

By "affiliated" what I mean is I wrote a couple articles for them and
spent a lot of time reading Grant/Wood material and being on the
discussion boards (often getting booted or moderated) debating and
discussing everything Marxist under the sun. Then I made a website for
the Pakistan branch [www.ptudc.org] before I disassociated myself with
them completely. It was definitely a very formative learning experience.

From what I remember of a few years back, they have several hundred
members in Pakistan and Italy, maybe a couple hundred in Greece and
Iran, don't recall the rest. The interesting thing is that the American
face of their group appeared in 1998 or around then, just this one guy,
paid fulltime by the organization, out in Minnesota, Peter Johnson or
John Peterson, who was convinced to join up when he was just touring
England and heard one of their members at that speakerbox corner place,
wherever it is that people apparently stand up on this thing and say
whatever they want.

My experience and that of a few acquaintances who were on the American
NC is that the group has _extreme_ enforcing of the party line and lots
of social/peer pressure. So the US branch at least was very dogmatic and
cultish internally, it was like bizarro world.

That said, I always like to read what Alan Woods writes (Ted Grant is at
least 90 and is not in good enough health to do much anymore). And the
CMI is definitely the most disciplined Marxist organization around,
which has its bonus points regardless of all the problems it entails. I
think Chavez's openness toward Marxism of any kind is a good sign, it's
not like he's going to be infected by the internal atmosphere of the
group itself anyway.


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