Alan Woods (political theorist)

Alan Woods (born 23 October 1944) is a British Trotskyist political theorist and author. He is one of the leading members of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) as well as of its British affiliate group Socialist Appeal. He is political editor of the IMT's ''In Defence of Marxism'' website. Woods was a leading supporter within the Militant tendency within the Labour Party and its parent group the Committee for a Workers' International until the early 1990s. A series of disagreements on tactics and theory led to Woods and Ted Grant leaving the CWI, to found the Committee for a Marxist International (soon renamed International Marxist Tendency) in 1992. They continued with the policy of entryism into the Labour Party. Woods has expressed particularly vocal support for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, and repeatedly met with the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, leading to speculation that he was a close political adviser to the president.

Early life

Woods was born into a working-class family in Swansea, South Wales and grew up in the Townhill and Penlan areas of the city. At the age of 16 he joined the Young Socialists and became a Marxist, becoming a supporter of the Trotskyist Militant tendency within the Labour Party. He studied Russian at Sussex University and later in Sofia (Bulgaria) and Moscow State University (MGU). Woods's work in Brighton for the Militant tendency established an important base of support at the university and in the town. He later moved back to south Wales, becoming the first regional full timer for the organisation. He, his wife, and two small daughters moved to Spain in the early 1970s where his well-known political stance placed him amongst those struggling against the Francoist Spain, where he worked to establish the Spanish section of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI).

Split in Militant

In the early 1990s, Woods and his mentor, Ted Grant, left the Militant tendency and its parent organization, the Committee for a Workers' International, over what they considered to be the ultraleft turn of this organisation when it decided to split from the Labour Party. The minority group, led by Ted Grant, also argued that a decline in emphasis on political education, as well as the development of a bureaucratic clique around Peter Taaffe, was damaging Militant. Grant and Woods and their supporters internationally formed the Committee for a Marxist International in 1992, which was later to be known as the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), and remained active in the Labour Party. The British section of the IMT is known as Socialist Appeal.

Recent activities

Woods was the editor for some years of the Marxist journal '' Socialist Appeal'', published in London. He is currently a theoretician in the IMT and editor of its website ''In Defence of Marxism''.

Woods has had meetings with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and defends the idea that the Bolivarian Revolution is the germ of the world revolution. Woods also travels and supports other revolutionary processes in Pakistan, Bolivia, the Middle East and Cuba. He is a close friend of Trotsky's grandson Vsievolod Platonovich "Esteban" Volkov, who regards Woods' work as closest to Trotsky's theories. President Chávez publicly stated in a TV broadcast that he was reading Woods' book ''Reformism or Revolution'' "in great detail", which encouraged speculation that Woods was an advisor to the President.

In 2010, Woods was subject to severe criticism, firstly by some Venezuelan newspapers and political parties in opposition to Chávez, like Primero Justicia, then by international conservative factions of the media, Yolanda Valery
"Alan Woods, the new ideologue of Hugo Chavez?"
BBC Mundo, 3 December 2010. for an article (''Where is the Venezuelan revolution going?'') he wrote on the IMT website. He wrote it after the latest Venezuelan general elections advocating to further radicalize the Bolivarian Revolution towards "the expropriation of the commanding heights of the economy". His reply to these attacks was given widespread attention in the Venezuelan media.

In November 2012, Woods went on a speaking tour in both the United States and Canada.

In November 2015, Woods detected "embryonic seeds of revolutionary developments" in the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader.

Throughout 2022, Woods wrote a series of articles opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which he explained that the conflict is fundamentally a reactionary inter-imperialist proxy war between NATO and Russia, while also commenting that the barrage of propaganda in Western media served the purpose of obscuring the true facts of the events.https://www.marxist.com/the-deadly-russian-missile-that-never-was.htm

Publications

* Marxism in Our Time (1992)
* China in Crisis (1994)

A Socialist Alternative to the European Union
(1997)


(1997)


(1998)


(1998)


(1998)






* Two books co-authored with Ted Grant
*
Lenin and Trotsky: what they really stood for
(1969)
*
Reason in Revolt: Marxist philosophy and modern science
(1995)


(1999).


(2000)


(2003)


(2003).
* ttp://www.marxist.com/defence-marxism-israel-shamir1.htm In Defence of Marxism – Reply to Israel Shamir(2004)

The Celia Hart Controversy – Stalinism or Leninism?
(2004)
* Ireland: Republicanism and Revolution (2005)
* The Venezuelan Revolution – a Marxist perspective (2005)
* '' Marxism and the U.S.A.'' �
article
(Wellred USA, 2005).


(2006)
* ttp://www.marxist.com/reformism-or-revolution-out-now.htm Reformism or Revolution – Marxism and Socialism of the 21st Century (reply to Heinz Dieterich)(2008)

XXI Century Socialism, or There is Nothing New Under the Sun
November 2010

Marxism and Anarchism – A collection of writings
(2012)
* The First World War: A Marxist Analysis of the Great Slaughter (2019)
* The History of Philosophy: A Marxist Perspective (2021)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woods, Alan
1944 births
Alumni of the University of Sussex
British Marxists
British political party founders
British political writers
British social commentators
British Trotskyists
International Marxist Tendency
Living people
Marxist theorists
British Marxist writers
Militant tendency supporters
Moscow State University alumni
People from Swansea
Sofia University alumni
British expatriates in the Soviet Union
Critics of postmodernism