Marxist Academics

[blueeyedboy]

Hi guys. Who is the foremost marxist academic living today, who is the most influential and if they have any of their writings on the Internet.

[Lamanov]

Gilles Dauvé a.k.a. Jean Barrot (http://libcom.org/library/gilles-dauve), not an "orthodox Marxist", but an ultra-left activist, associated with Aufheben, Black and Red, etc. A really good writer and theoretician: I strongly reccomend his pamphlet When Insurrections Die.

[BreadBros]

The problem is that most mainstream "Marxist academics" are far from revolutionary or contemporary in any sense. Most of those in academia treat Marxism in the historical sense, in other words explaining how Marxist movements have effected change. They also tend to use Marxism and dialectics as a way of explaining certain elements of societal change, or certain social constructs, often in a post-modern way. Those that are politically-minded tend to focus on particular causes, i.e. the Palestinian-Israeli issue, or certain social issues such as racism or imperialism. If you are looking for theoreticians that are actively relating to the contemporary struggle, emphasizing revolutionary change, analyzing current events, etc. you will have to look outside of the mainstream. Off the top of my head, the big names that come to mind in this sense (of the ones Ive read some of), tend to be people like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Negri
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Cleaver
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Debord
among others.

While non-Marxism, easily the most pre-eminent leftist scholar of this age is Noam Chomsky.

However, if you were to ask me who the foremost Marxist theoretician today is, I would say it easily has to be RedStar2000. Unfortunatly, he no longer posts here and his website is down.

[bezdomni]

Think what you do of him, but Bob Avakian is pretty big.

Ted Grant was pretty well known too, but he died a few months ago.

[( R )evolution]

RedStar2000 FTW