Re: [Marxism] Alan Woods versus James Petras

[Gary MacLennan <gary.maclennan1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bhaskar,

Ted Grant's dates are 1913-2006.  But the point is not really about how long
ago he died.  My original post was on the absence in Alan Woods' piece to
any reference to categories beyond the trade unionist and trade unionism in
his piece refuting Petras.  Lou posted the quote from Ted Grant and while it
hardly amounts to proof, nevertheless  is very suggestive of a tendency to
label emancipatory movements as "petty bourgeois" and "distractions from the
class struggle".

My point is that this is really representative of a form of Marxism which
can shade into non-emancipation. Somewhere in my library I have David
Thorstad's fine book detailing how progressive the Bolsheviks were on
matters of sexuality.  It wasn't until Thermidor in the form of Joseph
Stalin that the process of emancipation was reduced to trade union rights.

Grant may be dead but Woods is not and it is incumbent on him as a leader of
an important tendency to make it absolutely clear that Marxism is
emancipatory for all - including the so-called "petty bourgeois".  Do we
have to sit thru *Before Night Falls again *to understand how counter
productive it is to reduce Marxism to an appendage of the trade union
movement?

Economistic Marxism, contra Ted Grant, has its roots in Stalinism. Think
how the CIA took advantage of the doctrinaire cultural theories of Zhadanov
and his condemnation of Abstract Expressionism and the work of
Shostakovitch.  The CIA promoted Greenberg and his protege Jackson Pollock.
Today the Zionists as I have pointed out are seeking to justify the bombing
of Iran because of the brutal treatment of gays by the Iranian theocracy.
Ted Grant's refusal to raise the question of gay liberation in Iran merely
serves to strengthen the hand of reaction  and enable it to pose as
emancipatory.

comradely

Gary
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