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 Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) as well as of its British affiliate group, the Revolutionary Communist Party. He is political editor of the RCI'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.

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 was known as Socialist Appeal, which in 2024 became the Revolutionary Communist Party. The IMT became the Revolutionary Communist International in 2024.

Political views
Woods was the editor for some years of the Marxist journal Socialist Appeal, published in London.

Woods has had meetings with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. 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 then by international media outlets, for an article (Where is the Venezuelan revolution going?) he wrote on the IMT website.

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

Publications

 * Marxism in Our Time (1992)
 * China in Crisis (1994)
 * A Socialist Alternative to the European Union (1997)
 * Revolution in Albania (1997)
 * A New Stage in the Capitalist Crisis (1998)
 * Indonesia: the Asian Revolution has Begun (1998)
 * The Kosovo pogrom and the Balkan Powder-keg (1998)
 * Crisis in Russia, the free market failure,
 * History of Philosophy,
 * 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)
 * Bolshevism: the Road to Revolution (1999).
 * Marxism and the National Question (2000)
 * British Poets and the French Revolution (2003)
 * The revolutionary dialectic of Republicanism – An Open Letter to Irish Republicans (2003).
 * 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).
 * The Reawakening of the World Working Class and the Tasks Faced by Marxists (2006)
 * 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)