The Armed People

The Armed People

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 

• Date: 25 March (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: The Struggle for Democracy.

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A practical, actually-existing alternative to the State – The Commune - arose in Paris in the beginning of 1871.  

It was more than the right of recall, and the whole people collectively in power and in perpetual democratic session. It was also the reappearance of The Armed People in a new kind of societal framework.

Political and Military Struggle

  

Political and Military Struggle

Presuming that we have by now established that we are not pacifists, but are revolutionaries who intend, by all means necessary, to assist the working class to expropriate the expropriator bourgeois class; then why can we not move with speed, and without any restraint, towards an armed overthrow of the oppressors?

National Democracy

 National Democracy

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 

• Date: 25 March (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: The Struggle for Democracy.

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In the last of the CU Basic Communism set we touch upon the single biggest historic task of the Communists in the period since the founding of the Communist International (a.k.a. Third International) in 1919: National Liberation (decolonisation).

In 1920 the Comintern organised a Congress of the Peoples of the East. It was the first international anti-colonial congress. The Comintern recognised Communist Parties in many countries (including South Africa’s CPSA in 1921). In 1928 the Comintern and the CPSA adopted the “Black Republic” policy for South Africa, making the CPSA the first South African party to call for black majority rule in South Africa. The CPSA was also the first non-racial party South African in terms of its membership.

Class Society and the State

Class Society and the State

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. Next week’s session will be as follows: 

• Date: 18 March (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: The State.

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This is the second supplementary text to accompany “The State”, by V I Lenin.

Lenin wrote "The State and Revolution" between the February 1917 bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, and the October 1917 proletarian revolution. The October Revolution dramatically interrupted his writing, leaving the work unfinished. [Picture: Lenin in 1917]

Once more on the Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State

Again: Origin of Family, Property and State

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. Next week’s session will be as follows: 

• Date: 18 March (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: The State.

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There are two CU supplementary texts to back up “The State” in this Basics course. One is “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, which we dealt with in January, here.

The State

  

The State

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. Next week’s session will be as follows: 

• Date: 18 March (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: The State.

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In “Bourgeois and Proletarians”, the first section of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx wrote: “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” In other words: The State is the executive committee of the ruling bourgeois class, of which there is, and cannot be, any other such ruling executive committee or totalising authority.

Nobody is a nobody

  

Nobody is a nobody

Innocent Maphal, Times of Swaziland, Mbabane, 7 March 2010

Like everybody else, I am appalled that government would stoop so low (literally) in its belatedly frantic endeavour to raise more money.

They are not exactly being transparent where management of public funds is concerned, they have now decided to take away three per cent from every worker’s monthly wage.

Commodities

To supplement “Value, Price and Profit”, here is a shortened (by removing one part) version of Chapter 1 of Karl Marx’s greatest work, “Capital”, Volume 1. This is a text that has been the material for many a political school. It begins with this great definition of commodities:

Johannesburg CU now on Thursdays: schedule

New Day for the Johannesburg CU: Thursday

Please note:

The Johannesburg CU Live Sessions will now take place on

Thursdays

New schedule:

Click here to see the new 2010 schedule on a web page

To download the 2010 schedule (MS-Word), please click here

Next session:

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. Next week’s session will be as follows: 

• Date: 11 March (Thursday!!!!!)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: Value, Price and Profit (link to full text).

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Job creation before BBBEE - COSATU

Cosatu says job creation must come before empowerment

Linda Ensor, Business Day, Johannesburg, 4 March 2010

CAPE TOWN — Broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) should be subordinated to the imperatives of a job-creating industrial policy, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said yesterday.

Holy Grail already here

Holy Grail already here

Dominic Tweedie, 1 March 2010 

On RT’s technology update programme there were two items shown over the weekend that together demonstrate that the Holy Grail of electronic communications is already here.

More SABC staff to be suspended

More SABC commercial staff to be suspended

Chantelle Benjamin, Business Day, Johannesburg, 1 March 2010

AT LEAST three senior staff of the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC’s) commercial enterprises division are expected to be suspended in the next two weeks, after the division’s head, Gab Mampone, was suspended last week.