Azeem Nazir from the Daily Post in Pakistan wrote an obituary for Ted Grant, which we reproduce here in full.
Like
people, books also die. Like many dead books, the ideologies that trail
behind the ground realities die too, and many a time commit suicide.
But from Hugo Chavez to Munnoo Bhai, several people, leaders and
writers scattered across the globe present the true picture of the UN’s
‘kitchen’ to the world by raising their voices against the brutalities
committed on the innocent citizens of Lebanon and bombardment of its
cities. Serious journals around the globe are paying tribute to the
great revolutionary intellectual Ted Grant on his death. It goes to
show that the people who wish to change the fate of humanity and the
books and ideologies teaching the lesson of courage, never die.
After
1945, when the bureaucracy-controlled economic system in Russia and
China was making historic progress, Ted Grant was the second
revolutionary intellectual after Leon Trotsky, who had forecast in his
writings that the Soviet Union would eventually fall, and capitalism
would harbinger barbarism in the world. At that time, redcoat-wearing
Stalin’s eulogizers who called themselves revolutionary ‘comrades’
declared Ted Grant’s predictions as a figment of a madman’s
imagination. They watched in the 1990s the predictions of the person
who used to keep only two suits to wear all his life, come true. Now
Fukuyama, the renowned rightist ideologue and author of the famous book
The End of History is watching the capitalists digging their own graves
for themselves.
Apart from other languages, several of Ted
Grant’s books and articles are being translated into Urdu. Russia, from
Revolution to Counter-Revolution is one such introductory book of Ted
Grant that shows the poor and the youth of the world a revolutionary
path to end the problems of the workers across the globe. It gives the
message of a peaceful world that will be free of demand, greed,
wickedness, hunger, deprivation, and illness. Such a world is all the
more possible today. It will be a society where men would not be slaves
of their need, and only then would they be able to give selfless love
and make sincere friendship. Only such a society can make a person a
true journalist, true artist and the master of his trade. According to
Ted Grant, every system that fails to cater to human needs becomes a
burden, and if it is not replaced by a fresh one, the decadent system
brings discrimination, bloodshed and destruction in society, very much
evident these days.
Ted Grant had said in his last writing that
we would witness flabbergasting changes in the days to come, which
would give rise to big movements. If these movements were not
transformed into an organised revolution of the workers, then
capitalism would keep on spreading its reign of bloodshed by dividing
people on racial, national and sectarian basis, because capitalism
always keeps open a back door.
See any page of a newspaper. Most
of the news report incidents that are the result of the circumstances
arising out of the unequal distribution of wealth. Signing of an
agreement such as the Charter of Democracy in London and presenting of
its copies as a package to US envoys is also meant to keep this system
intact, so that people’s anger against the US and capitalism could be
vented through elections to receive a share in the government. It would
ensure continuity of US policies and the agenda of international
organisations, ensuring them another chance to suck the blood of the
masses.
The masses have learnt a lot from their past experiences
and if the PPP leadership would again try to swindle the poor, it would
be the last time. This was also predicted by Ted Grant.
The writer is the Executive Editor of Khabrain