SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande has just returned from Bolivia and written of the expedition in the latest Umsebenzi Online, which came out yesterday, and is linked below. The combined delegation included ANC SG Kgalema Motlanthe and COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi, and three other distinguished ANC comrades including one each from the Leagues. As Cde Blade points out, this is the first time since 1994 that the Alliance has carried out an international visit as a collective in this way.
In the general post-colonial and Imperialist situation of the world South Africa and Bolivia have many common preoccupations. The last third of Cde Blade’s article concerns the crucial relationship between the Party and the masses. It is instructive to study a similar situation that is also remote in place or time. This is a good way to start to conceive of the concrete nature of a situation.
In this spirit the Communist University is still watching the news for a suitable text that can open up the situation in Nepal for our study. We can report that Secretary General of the Socialist International, Luis Ayala, arrived in Nepal on Wednesday to take part in the Asia Pacific Regional-level meeting of the Socialist International to be held from February 10-11. The ANC is a member of the Socialist International.
Ayala said that the meeting of the Socialist International was being organised in Kathmandu to express solidarity to the ongoing peace process and democracy in Nepal.
Ann Crotty is a great journalist but she has become infected with the same disease as Xolela Mangcu. In the article below she relies on US solecism and neologism and unquestioned assertion from Citigroup, the Rockefeller bank, as if they were gospel. In spite of a strange nod in the direction of the Marxists right at the end, Crotty seems to have no clue that she is in territory that has been well studied by Karl Marx and his successors. If she had only read a few chapters of Capital she would have known that their conclusion is the reverse of Citigroup’s, and then at least she could have thrown up the contrast. Thus do great journalists start down the slippery slope.
Marxist scholarship has always been able to clearly demonstrate the opposite of Crotty’s assertions. Because the bourgeoisie are ripping surplus value off each worker on a daily basis, the workers all together cannot possibly have enough spending power to purchase their own product in full. Nor can the small bourgeoisie possibly spend enough to make up for the deficit. So Marx contradicts Crotty at its very core, and vice versa.
Banks like Citigroup, and especially central bankers like Tito Mboweni, are charged with fiddling the books in an effort to prevent the recurring overtoppling phenomenon called the “crisis of overproduction”. The result is structural poverty and “jobless growth”. Like many a good but bourgeois journalist, Crotty is having a bout of not being able to see the wood for the trees. She should re-read Capital, or at least “Value Price and Profit”, (redacted here), which is Marx’s short 1865 study of these phenomena. So should all the reformist proponents of the hopeless holy grail of capitalist economics, a “fair” labour market. Some of these are still found in the ranks of the labour movement. Such a thing as a “fair” distribution of wealth under capitalism will never be seen on this earth.
The US Imperialists are having another “launch” of their grandiose and arrogant “Africa Command” which could be comical if it had not already resulted in the tragic slaughter of innocents in Somalia. It is boosted on the back of the Al Qaeda scare. The linked article below at least carries the merit of the following final paragraph: “Critics of US policy however say that Washington is inflating the influence that Al-Qaeda has in Somalia in order to pursue its own geo-political goals in the Horn of Africa.” Thanks for that small mercy. At least SAPA did not quite swallow the nonsense whole. See the link.
Next week on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, the Communist University is going to study the first, summarising chapter of Clausewitz’ “On War”, with an opening by Floyd Shivambu of the YCL National Committee. We study war because we want peace. We study Clausewitz in particular because he shows that war is not an alternative to politics, but only a tragic interlude between negotiations. The greatest folly of the US Imperialists is to think that they can secure unconditional military victories. That is another fallacy that will never happen, anywhere. See the link below.
Click on these links:
Umsebenzi Online, Vol 6, No. 2, 7 Feb 2007, Bolivia and Latin America (2592 words)
Hope for a narrower wealth gap, Ann Crotty, Business Report (814 words)
US creates Africa Military Command on Al Qaeda excuse, Sapa (632 words)
Clausewitz, Chapter 1, What is War (7916 words)
In the general post-colonial and Imperialist situation of the world South Africa and Bolivia have many common preoccupations. The last third of Cde Blade’s article concerns the crucial relationship between the Party and the masses. It is instructive to study a similar situation that is also remote in place or time. This is a good way to start to conceive of the concrete nature of a situation.
In this spirit the Communist University is still watching the news for a suitable text that can open up the situation in Nepal for our study. We can report that Secretary General of the Socialist International, Luis Ayala, arrived in Nepal on Wednesday to take part in the Asia Pacific Regional-level meeting of the Socialist International to be held from February 10-11. The ANC is a member of the Socialist International.
Ayala said that the meeting of the Socialist International was being organised in Kathmandu to express solidarity to the ongoing peace process and democracy in Nepal.
Ann Crotty is a great journalist but she has become infected with the same disease as Xolela Mangcu. In the article below she relies on US solecism and neologism and unquestioned assertion from Citigroup, the Rockefeller bank, as if they were gospel. In spite of a strange nod in the direction of the Marxists right at the end, Crotty seems to have no clue that she is in territory that has been well studied by Karl Marx and his successors. If she had only read a few chapters of Capital she would have known that their conclusion is the reverse of Citigroup’s, and then at least she could have thrown up the contrast. Thus do great journalists start down the slippery slope.
Marxist scholarship has always been able to clearly demonstrate the opposite of Crotty’s assertions. Because the bourgeoisie are ripping surplus value off each worker on a daily basis, the workers all together cannot possibly have enough spending power to purchase their own product in full. Nor can the small bourgeoisie possibly spend enough to make up for the deficit. So Marx contradicts Crotty at its very core, and vice versa.
Banks like Citigroup, and especially central bankers like Tito Mboweni, are charged with fiddling the books in an effort to prevent the recurring overtoppling phenomenon called the “crisis of overproduction”. The result is structural poverty and “jobless growth”. Like many a good but bourgeois journalist, Crotty is having a bout of not being able to see the wood for the trees. She should re-read Capital, or at least “Value Price and Profit”, (redacted here), which is Marx’s short 1865 study of these phenomena. So should all the reformist proponents of the hopeless holy grail of capitalist economics, a “fair” labour market. Some of these are still found in the ranks of the labour movement. Such a thing as a “fair” distribution of wealth under capitalism will never be seen on this earth.
The US Imperialists are having another “launch” of their grandiose and arrogant “Africa Command” which could be comical if it had not already resulted in the tragic slaughter of innocents in Somalia. It is boosted on the back of the Al Qaeda scare. The linked article below at least carries the merit of the following final paragraph: “Critics of US policy however say that Washington is inflating the influence that Al-Qaeda has in Somalia in order to pursue its own geo-political goals in the Horn of Africa.” Thanks for that small mercy. At least SAPA did not quite swallow the nonsense whole. See the link.
Next week on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, the Communist University is going to study the first, summarising chapter of Clausewitz’ “On War”, with an opening by Floyd Shivambu of the YCL National Committee. We study war because we want peace. We study Clausewitz in particular because he shows that war is not an alternative to politics, but only a tragic interlude between negotiations. The greatest folly of the US Imperialists is to think that they can secure unconditional military victories. That is another fallacy that will never happen, anywhere. See the link below.
Click on these links:
Umsebenzi Online, Vol 6, No. 2, 7 Feb 2007, Bolivia and Latin America (2592 words)
Hope for a narrower wealth gap, Ann Crotty, Business Report (814 words)
US creates Africa Military Command on Al Qaeda excuse, Sapa (632 words)
Clausewitz, Chapter 1, What is War (7916 words)
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