Moving On

The Communist University is for communists, and communists are partisans of the working class. They cannot ignore the organised mass component of the working proletariat. Hence there is plenty of trade union material in these mailings but to a large extent we have been duplicating the work of the COSATU Daily Labour News, which relays media comment on proletarian issues, and the COSATU Weekly, which carries COSATU press releases and other items and goes out to the same list. COSATU Weekly will be archived in printable format. So it makes sense to subscribe the entire database of the Communist University to the COSATU Daily Labour News/COSATU Weekly list. If you don’t want it, the “unsubscribe” procedure is simple. Please refer any problems to dominic.tweedie@gmail.com . The transfer will be done in the next few days. You will continue to get these e-mails, which may carry less of the material we presently pass on from COSATU. For further reading on the topic of the NDR in South Africa, following our study of Gramsci’s “Some aspects of the Southern Question” last week and in anticipation of our discussion next Friday on SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande’s “What is the National Democratic Revolution” from the latest Umsebenzi Online, here linked below is the resolution on the NDR and Socialism passed at the COSATU 9th Congress. In the Sunday Times business section Thebe Mabanga quotes figures on the rise of “developing-country multinationals” (see the linked article below). This is what Imperialism is like. Capital nestles everywhere. Capital partially transcends the nation state but is unable to abandon it altogether. The bourgeois state survives, proliferates, and even has a golden age. The “export of finance capital” does replace the “export of goods” as the defining feature of the system, but not in the same way. Even more than the movement of goods, the movement of finance goes in all directions. The Weekender has been Snukified! The glorious season of Vukani Mde’s Political Diary, among other things, was all too short. Mde’s column has disappeared without an apology. We now have columnists who oblige their handlers with sneering snobbery towards the working classes. Jacob Dlamini tries, but fails, to become some kind of black Bullard. See the link. A good woman, Saras Govender, passed away yesterday. Many comrades who spent time in London can still remember the kind hospitality at her West Hampstead home, which cheered up many an exile over the years. Saras leaves her writer husband, Goni Govender, and son Krish. The Communist University sends its sad condolences to them and to all who knew and loved Saras. Click on these links: COSATU 9th Congress Resolution on the NDR and Socialism (809 words) Indifference to FDI, SA goes it alone, Thebe Mabanga, S Times (782 words) Struggle English of revolutionary comrades, Jacob Dlamini, Weekender (772 words)