On Wed, 31 Dec 1997, Doug Henwood wrote:
> productive/unproductive sort - the "fake" Trotskyists denounced by the
> Sparts (who are the authentic Trots, it goes without saying), or the
Doug, one of the great misfortunes of the American left was the decline
and fall of the SWP, Trotsky's favorite group. You are too young to
remember the activity or the ideas of the SWP from the mid to late 1960s.
(Doug just turned 45, wish him a happy birthday.)
There were literally dozens of people who could think and write circles
around somebody like Jan Norden, the Spartacist League leader who was
expelled recently and who you admire.
The European Trotskyist movement also included some extremely brilliant
people besides Mandel. I include Michael Lowy first and foremost. There
are also figures like Theodore Draper and CLR James who came out of the
Trotskyist movement in the 1930s but who evolved in a 3rd camp direction
like Castoriadis.
There is no question that one of the reasons that Judith Butler and
Foucalt seem like a necessary "corrective" to you is that you view the
Spartacist League as bonafide Trotskyism. Nothing can be further from the
truth.
Louis Proyect
