30 January 2007

Archbishop Americus


What with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu touching down between the posts, cheered on by our good friends Tony Hall and Shafiur Rahman, it looks like the organised working class has not just been sold one dummy since Christmas-time. More like two or three. But never fear: the proletarian test of truth is inexhaustible.

Let us get one thing straight. This is a partisan University. It believes, with Paulo Freire, that the only good pedagogue is a partisan pedagogue. We make categorical judgements, and so must you. We refuse any obligation to present an exceptionalist liberal interpretation of the facts. Concrete analysis of concrete situations is what we do here, and that means class.

Class politics is what is universal. No other kind will do. This university does not think it o.k. to cobble up a new politics to fit each case. The invention of a “militarised forced-labour state” here and a “clan conflict” there and a “religious-tribal warfare” somewhere else does not wash with us. The Communist University is looking for the class roots of conflict. This is a rational humanist university and not an ad hoc, eclectic chronicler of whatever the latest political fad may be.

There will be no solutions to any of the conflicts in the world that do not pay the strictest attention to the political economy, meaning the disposition of class forces and their interactions, of whatever given place. Before you can say otherwise, you must disprove what Marx and Engels published in the Communist Manifesto in 1848, namely that the history of all societies is a history of class struggle, repeat class struggle, and not any other kind.

What we are looking at today is revolutionaries being led down the garden path by liberals, who are themselves the more-or-less willing tools of Imperialists. And the Imperialists have not changed at all. We will soon see how liberal our sometime supporters really are. If universities cannot say such things as this one does, then who can? They have their outlets and they are using them, wall to wall. As always, their liberalism falls short when it comes to commmunists having any space at all.

Today we hear that John Perlman and Nikiwe Bikitsha are resigning from the SABC because they are under pressure from the likes of Snuki Zikalala for telling the truth on air. The Communist University hopes that John and Nikiwe will throw a massive party to allow tous-le-monde to show its support. The SABC is now a whited sepulchre.

So, dear Tony Hall, if you want to take part, then get your own blog back on the road! Your stuff on Somalia is not going to be published here. Archbishop Americus, go back to Yankee-land! Kader Arms-Sale, your Chapter 9 Youth Commission is never going to come near the power of the YCL, even if you pour billions of rands all over it. It is not going to fly. All the liberal “institutional arrangements” from Ward Committees right up to NEPAD are no better than sounding brass and tinkling cymbals so long as they are avoiding class politics, as they are designed to do. None of them will ever fly. All the fashionable liberal causes are bust, and their champions, the Bonos and the Richard Geres, are shown to be nothing but bibelots and mountebanks. Class struggle is our lot, whether we like it or not.

For a longer and more systematic presentation of the above position, do please read the incomparable Diana Johnstone taking apart first the International Criminal Court, then the World Trade Organisation, and then Imperialism itself, laying it all bare. Read it and see if you still want to run after all those liberal red herrings. See also the staunch, stalwart proletarian words of the Congress of the Communication Workers Union. See the link below, followed by two very strong articles from Sunday’s City Press, much too strong to be left out of the CU archive. And lastly, Comrade Ntando and friends will be at the Bassline on Valentine’s Day! What could be nicer than that?

Click on these links:

Do We Really Need an ICC?, Diana Johnstone, Counterpunch (2916 words)

Congress Declaration and new leadership, CWU Media Release (1233 words)

Farm evictions increase, Sama Yende, Ledwaba, City Press (834 words)

Make way for wild animals, Wonder Hlongwa, City Press (727 words)

Feb 14 Valentine evening with Ntando at Bassline, Jhb, R180 (flyer)

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