Qualitative Change

Today, January 6 2007, is the 12th Anniversary of the passing of Comrade Joe Slovo. It has become an occasion when the SACP issues a statement and so by chance marks the beginning of the South African political calendar and starts to set the political agenda for the year. See the statement linked below. Two days later, on the 8th of January each year, the Anniversary of the founding of the ANC is celebrated. This too is invariably accompanied with a statement. This year, the statement will be delivered five days after the actual anniversary, at the Atlantic Stadium, Witbank, Mpumalanga, on January 13th. Thabo Mbeki, President of the ANC, will read the address. Chance plays a necessary part in history. In the development of the Internet, too, the fortuitous arrival of one new thing or another in a somewhat random sequence has an effect. When the Communist Universit wikispace web site was created on November 1, 2005 by Nhlanhla Mabaso, we not only got an immortal name, amadlandawonye. We also took a certain and particular technical direction. The Communist University Google Group that was started in mid-December 2005 purely as an e-mail list has served its purpos well. It has carried 383 messages to date. The number of people receiving these (usually) daily messages is about 920 in total. This service has now changed in a qualitative way. It is quite possible that if the Google Groups had pages and file uploads in 2005, we would not have used a wikispace. The Google Groups have incorporated most of the best wiki ideas, with some new ones of their own. As a result, Google Groups in the beta version are now nearly perfect as multi-purpose Internet tools for mass organisations. There is no reason why the organised working class cannot make use of these tools on a very large scale. Do please click on the links that are given again in the following paragraphs. Please look at the new work that has been done. Please think about the potential it all has to become the autonomous, interactive mass medium of education and mobilisation with and for the workers and the poor that we have long dreamed of. The Communist University blog that is the point of first entry to our three-cornered distribution and archiving system is much improved because of the new beta version of Blogger. Although it is still basically the same in what it does, it is now much faster and more reliable and far easier to manage in terms of appearance, prompting a colour coordinated CU redesign across the board. The new beta version of the Google Groups came out on October 5th, 2006, is on the contrary a truly qualitative breakthrough. For this reason the Communist University Google Group (in the beta version) is now set up in a way that is deliberately intended to show off what the new Google Groups can do. Please look at it. Please follow some of the links that you will find there. We have highlighted the Communist University 2007 Programme, and also created links to the world of working class organisation as seen from South Africa today. See these linked below. The last document is archived in two different places, both linked. Contrast and compare. The Communist University wikispace site will continue. It has a huge amount of material on it now and its running sample of the passing political scene is a historic resource. The fourth element in the mix, set up in 2005 by Shafiur Rahman, is an archive of classic texts mostly in MS Word format, usually referred to as the Communist University Library. The way that this fits in to the mix may be seen from the last document linked below, which offers links to this library and in parallel, to the corresponding HTML source in the Marxists Internet Archive (MIA). The MIA, and Andy Blunden in particular, has been a constant source of inspiration as well as material. It is quite safe to say that the MIA is the greatest single library in the history of the world, or at least since the one in Alexandria, Egypt burned down a couple of thousand years ago. The MIA is the Daddy of the CU. Click on these links: SACP on 12th Anniversary of passing of Cde Joe Slovo (1020 words) Labour Movement Services (tables) Reading list of books for 2007 CU Programme (one-sheet text-and-table) Reading list of books for 2007 CU Programme (one-sheet text-and-table) archived in Google Group