Letter in Weekly Worker 1031 (October 23, 2014).
In writing this letter on Chris Cutroneâs critique of Mike Macnairâs book Revolutionary strategy (âDemocratic revolution and the contradiction of capitalâ, October 16), I am fully aware that: (a) Mike is probably considering a reply himself; (b) comparing a full-length book with a two-page article is potentially inherently unfair to the latter; and (c) that I am perhaps not the best qualified person to enter the debate, having only recently come to a serious engagement with issues of Marxist political strategy. Nevertheless, I thought it might be worth sharing how a comparison of the two has impressionistically struck a âgeneral readerâ.
Macnairâs approach has the following virtues that appear lacking in Cutroneâs account: (a) it is relatively comprehensible; (b) it appears rooted in a close reading of concrete historical events (aka âthe materialist conception of historyâ), whereas Cutrone appears to wander off-piste into free-floating philosophising, bordering on the worst of post-modernism; (c) Macnair offers concrete proposals as to what the Marxist left should be doing in the here and now, whereas Cutrone appears to be promoting a deeply depressing view of the proletariat as still primarily the passive victim of history.
Sean Thurlough
London