Utopia vs. Science

Socialism, Utopian and Scientific

The linked text below is “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific”, by Frederick Engels. 

By Utopian, Engels meant imaginary, or ideal, and typical of the early socialists such as Robert Owen, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Charles Fourier (who was the historical inventor of the word “feminism”, among other things).

Developing a new generation of leaders

Developing a new generation of leaders through a quality, accessible and transformed post-school system

Dr Blade Nzimande, ANC Today, 5 February 2010

Twenty years ago this week, the destiny of our country changed forever as years of revolutionary and selfless struggle gave rise to a free, open and democratic society. The freedoms we now enjoy came as a result of battles fought on many fronts to topple the apartheid regime and undo the legacy of institutionalised racism and discrimination.

One of these frontiers of struggle was the education system. While the apartheid government used an inferior education system to suppress the black population, the revolutionary movement used that very education system as a platform for rebellion and mobilisation.

CU, at the UJ Library, Doornfontein, 10 February 2010, 17h00

3 Sources and 3 Component Parts of Marxism 

Please note, we will meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The session will be as follows: 

• Date: 10 February 2010 (Wednesday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• (New) Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Vehicle access is from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: Lenin’s “The Three Sources and three Component Parts of Marxism” (downloadable in MS-Word format)  

Click here to view the CU 2010 Draft Programme.

  

New: Click to view full linked list of downloadable Generic Course files, with page count.  

We have said, while discussing Machiavelli, that communism does not break with the past, but grows out of it. This week the main item is Lenin’s “Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism” (linked below). This piece of writing, though extremely short, manages to embrace the whole of philosophy, politics and economics. For these reasons it is highly popular with teachers and students.

Education central to modern societies

A Jag in the garage while the lawn needs cutting

Education central to modern societies

Neva Makgetla, Business Day, Johannesburg, 3 February 2010

ECONOMISTS overuse the family as a metaphor for the economy, but sometimes the parallels are irresistible. As in: What would you think if your neighbours bought a Jaguar, attached a fully fitted gym and spa to their roof and set up a helicopter pad, complete with helicopter, in the garden — and then couldn’t afford their rates and school fees, or to keep the lawn trimmed?

A similar philosophy seems to be driving South African government officials when they develop economic strategies. All too often we seem to define “development” as creating conditions for the rich and powerful to pretend they live in Europe, through megabucks projects such as the Gautrain, the pebble bed nuclear reactor, the Fifa World Cup and the arms deal, among others. In short, flashy regularly wins out over the hard slow work of systemic improvement.

Umsebenzi Online, Volume 9, No. 3, 3 February 2010

Umsebenzi Online, Volume 9, No. 3, 3 February 2010

In this Issue: 

• Let's debate, but let's debate in a way that unifies our movement and strengthens practical programmes of action

Red Alert

Let's debate, but let's debate in a way that unifies our movement and strengthens practical programmes of action

The SACP Political Bureau held its first meeting for 2010 last Friday. The meeting took place at Liliesleaf in Rivonia, the historic site from which the secret High Command of Umkhonto We Sizwe operated until its arrest at this venue in 1963. It was this location that gave the name "Rivonia" to the famous trial that ensued. The property is now being turned into a museum and conference centre with the support of, amongst others, UNESCO.

Liliesleaf has a particular symbolic significance for the SACP - not only was it the site at which legendary names in our Party's history operated, but it was the clandestine SACP that purchased the former small-holding in the early 1960s. Unfortunately for the SACP, not only are we now too late to put in a restitution claim, but it seems that the clandestine SACP-run trust that originally bought the property sold it in the 1960s to a private buyer!

Assessing the SACP's December 2009 Special National Congress

At last Friday's PB, we used the occasion to evaluate, amongst others things, the Party's Special National Congress in Polokwane in December last year. We noted that the Congress was characterised by a very high degree of inner-Party unity. The divisions within the Party, which some of the media had been predicting and, in some cases, promoting, completely failed to materialise.

Cuba's role in our struggle

Cuba and the South African anti-apartheid struggle

  

Nicole Sarmiento, Pambazuka News, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, 21 January 2010

Twenty years ago, Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl, South Africa, on February 11, 1990. That historic victory was the product of the long and courageous struggle of the oppressed people of South Africa. It was also a victory for the international movement against apartheid. Revolutionary Cuba played a vital role in the international movement against white minority rule in South Africa, as the following article describes. (See also "Cuito Cuanavale: How Cuba fought for Africa’s freedom".)

* * *

January 21, 2010 -- Pambazuka News -- Cuba's relations with African liberation movements began as early as the 1960s, and shortly after the triumph of the struggle against the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. Members of the Cuban leadership travelled to Algiers to build formal relations with the Algerian National Liberation Front (Gleijeses, 1996a). Che Guevara's trip around the African continent in 1963 was a significant turning point in strengthening Cuba's relationship with liberation movements around the continent.

US boots on the ground in Haiti

Sending in the Marines

A Q & A with the State Department on Haiti

Judith Scherr, Counterpunch, 29 January 2010

The French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet accused the U.S. of “occupying” Haiti rather than helping in the wake of the devastating January 12, 7.0 earthquake. Doctors Without Borders and officials from the Caribbean community expressed similar frustrations, as US military personnel controlling the airport turned away their planes. With just under 20,000 U.S. boots on the ground in Haiti or just off shore, the U.N. military force has augmented its numbers to around 12,000. Still, more than two weeks after the disaster, Haitians lack water, food, medicine, shelter and equipment to dig out those that may still be alive under the rubble.

Haitian disaster in context

Haitian Disaster put in historical context

Andile Lungisa, Deputy President, ANC Youth League

A devastating earthquake, the worst in 200 years, struck Port-au-Prince on the 12th of January 0, laying waste to the city and killed many thousands of people. The quake detonated more than 30 aftershocks throughout the night to the following morning.

It toppled houses, hotels, hospitals and even the capital city's main political buildings, including the presidential palace. The collapse of so many structures sent a giant cloud into the sky, which hovered over the city, raining dust down onto the wasteland below. Estimated 200,000 people have died, in a metropolis of 2 million people and those that survived are living in the streets, afraid to return inside any building that remains standing.

Bourgeois & Proletarians

Bourgeois and Proletarians

This week’s session will be as follows:

Date: 3 February 2010 (Wednesday)

Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp

Venue: Lecture Hall G05, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Vehicle access is from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.

Topic: Selected chapters from Machiavelli’s “The Prince” (downloadable in MS-Word format)

Click to view the CU 2010 Draft Programme and the Jhb Central Branch 2010 Schedule.

  

Bourgeois and Proletarians is the first of the three major parts of the Communist Manifesto, commissioned by the Communist League, written in London by Karl Marx, at the age of 29, with the help of his then 27-year-old friend Frederick Engels, and published in January, 1848.

Engels on the great historic catastrophe

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

In support of this week’s main text (which is extracts from Machiavelli’s “The Prince”), and as an alternative or supplementary text for study circles to use in dialogue, we yesterday posted Chapter 32 of Karl Marx’s “Capital”, Volume 1. It is typically sweeping overview of history, placed at the end of this long book as a summary.

Both Machiavelli, and (later) Marx, were familiar with the history of “the ancients”, and especially with the literature of the Greeks and the Romans. These ancients often wrote in the same kind of broad, sweeping terms.

How Marx Sums Up Capital, Volume 1

Marx’s “Capital”, Volume 1, Chapter 32

Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation

This week’s session will be as follows: 

• Date: 27 January 2010 (Wednesday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: Lecture Hall G05, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Vehicle access is from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: Selected chapters from Machiavelli’s “The Prince” (downloadable in MS-Word format) 

Click to view the CU 2010 Draft Programme and the Jhb Central Branch 2010 Schedule.

During this week we are covering the second of the ten parts of the Generic Course called “Basics”. The main text is the one with extracts from Machiavelli’s “The Prince” that was posted last week.

In support of “The Prince” we now go straight to the short Chapter 32 from Karl Marx’s “Capital”, Volume 1 – the second last chapter in the book. It is a broad-brush summary of Volume 1. At this stage it may prove a difficult read for some, but it will be valuable in any case, as a preliminary impression of what is to come as these studies progress.

What is a Strategic Political Centre? - Ramatlhodi

What constitutes the strategic Political Centre?

Ngoako Ramatlhodi, Viewpoint, ANC Today, 22 January 2010

We do not need to know that we exist in order to exist. However, we need to exist first before we can know that we exist. In other words, the objective reality is out there whether we are aware of it or not. This objective world shapes the subjective reality that it authors in the first instance. On the other hand, the subjective reality is capable of influencing, and indeed does in fact influence the objective reality, albeit within the limitations imposed by objective reality.

In political terms, the objective reality of South Africa is that of a country ruled under conditions of colonialism of a special type, otherwise known as apartheid. Colonialism of a special type occurs when the ruler and the ruled occupy the same territory, as opposed to classical colonialism where a colony is administered by a designated authority on behalf of a foreign power. Before 1910 South Africa was a classical colony of Great Britain. Britain created colonialism of a special type when political power was transferred to the white minority settlers, to the exclusion of the black majority.

The most glaring characteristic feature of this colonial rule is the total exclusion of blacks in general and, the African majority in particular, from political power. Accordingly, the strategic objective of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) is the liberation of black people in general and Africans in particular, regardless of their class affiliations. As a national group standing to gain most from a victorious NDR, blacks constitute the principal motive force for the national democratic revolution. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the defeat of colonialism and apartheid rule.