Re: [Marxism] Alan Woods versus James Petras

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Gary MacLennan wrote:
> I agree with most of Woods critique of Petras.  However I am inclined to
> think that he has over read the situation in Iran when he says that the
> REVOLUTION has begun. I think it was Fred who described such thinking as
> :"hallucinatory" and that seems more realistic an assessment to me.  However
> I have clipped a piece from Woods' article when he characterizes the Iranian
> state:  Here it is:
> 
> Woods: "The government of Iran is not a progressive pro-working class
> government but a reactionary theocratic dictatorship, which has
> systematically repressed the workers’ movement, denied trade union rights,
> arrested, tortured and executed trade union activists, for decades."

 From an interview with Ted Grant:

Q: What was the role of the leaders of the Fourth [Intrernational]?

A: Only that they were not up to the level of the tasks posed by 
history. Marx once said that he had sown dragons but reaped fleas. 
Trotsky could have said something similar. We used to think: “Ah well, 
they are at least manure for the future.” But they were not even that. 
Pablo, Frank, Mandel, Cannon, Healy, Maitan – they succeeded in 
completely disorienting the movement, leading it from one crisis to 
another. In the end, they destroyed it...

They have absorbed all the nonsense of the petty bourgeois – woman’s 
lib, gay lib, black nationalism, guerillaism – you name it! Not a trace 
of the old ideas remains. In fact, some of them like the American SWP no 
longer even call themselves Trotskyists. That is history’s revenge for 
the policies and conduct of the leaders of the SWP in the past!

full: 
http://www.marxist.com/the-theoretical-origins-of-the-degeneration-of-the-fourth-interview-with-ted-grant.htm




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