{"id":2035,"date":"2014-10-23T00:00:56","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T05:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/?p=2035"},"modified":"2021-11-18T13:57:29","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T18:57:29","slug":"off-piste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/?p=2035","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Off-piste&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/leninskiingzimmerwald.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/leninskiingzimmerwald.png\" alt=\"leninskiingzimmerwald\" width=\"340\" height=\"400\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2036\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/leninskiingzimmerwald.png 938w, https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/leninskiingzimmerwald-255x300.png 255w, https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/leninskiingzimmerwald-870x1024.png 870w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Letter in <\/em><strong>Weekly Worker<\/strong><em> <a href=\"http:\/\/weeklyworker.co.uk\/worker\/1031\/letters\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1031<\/a> (October 23, 2014).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In writing this letter on Chris Cutrone\u2019s critique of Mike Macnair\u2019s book <em>Revolutionary strategy<\/em> (<a href=\"http:\/\/weeklyworker.co.uk\/worker\/1030\/democratic-revolution-and-the-contradiction-of-cap\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u2018Democratic revolution and the contradiction of capital\u2019<\/a>, 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 \u2018general reader\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Macnair\u2019s approach has the following virtues that appear lacking in Cutrone\u2019s account: (a) it is relatively comprehensible; (b) it appears rooted in a close reading of concrete historical events (aka \u2018the materialist conception of history\u2019), 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sean Thurlough<\/strong><br \/>\nLondon <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Letter in Weekly Worker 1031 (October 23, 2014). In writing this letter on Chris Cutrone\u2019s critique of Mike Macnair\u2019s book Revolutionary strategy (\u2018Democratic revolution and the contradiction of capital\u2019, 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,32,16,21],"class_list":["post-2035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-36","tag-cpgb","tag-marxism","tag-postmodernism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2035"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3178,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions\/3178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}