29 March 2010

A Red Card to Corruption

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A Red Card to Corruption


Speech by the SACP General Secretary, Cde Blade Nzimande, to the SACP Anti-Corruption Seminar, Parktonian, 29 March 2010

In line with our long-standing commitment to the democratic transformation of South Africa, since our founding in 1921, and our upholding of values of sacrifice, dedication to the cause of the workers and the poor, and a principled struggle prioritise the socio economic needs of the overwhelming majority of our people, we have taken the initiative to convene this summit.

28 March 2010

No Woman Question?

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No Woman Question?



We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 
  • Date: 8 April (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 Social Basis of the Woman Question.




Feminism, particularly in the field of politics itself, has often proved to work to the advantage of the bourgeoisie. Examples would be the elevation of Helen Zille, Margaret Thatcher, Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright and Hilary Clinton to leadership.


25 March 2010

No Woman, No Revolution

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No Woman, No Revolution: General Introduction





We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 
  • Date: 8 April (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 Social Basis of the Woman Question.


We have completed the “Basics” series. The new series, starting in Doornfontein on 8 April 2010, called “No Woman, No Revolution”, is motivated by the inconceivableness of a successful revolution that mobilised only half of the available support. Clearly, the women must be as fully involved as the men, or there will be no revolution. 


This series is designed to problematise the question of women in South Africa’s specific conditions in 2010.

24 March 2010

SA Working Class and the NDR

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SA Working Class and the NDR





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.



For this last session of our “Basics” course, we have looked at democracy, armed struggle, and popular unity-in-action, in terms of various countries of the world. The National Democratic Revolution is not a South African invention. The NDR is a worldwide phenomenon, but it has also generated a specifically South African literature. The NDR is a bridge between the national and international struggles. 

23 March 2010

The Armed People

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The Armed People





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.



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.

21 March 2010

Political and Military Struggle

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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?

18 March 2010

National Democracy

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 National Democracy





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.


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.

16 March 2010

Class Society and the State

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Class Society and the State





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.




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]

15 March 2010

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

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Again: Origin of Family, Property and State





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.




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.

13 March 2010

The State

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The State




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.



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.

8 March 2010

Nobody is a nobody

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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.

7 March 2010

Commodities

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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

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New Day for the Johannesburg CU: Thursday


Please note:

The Johannesburg CU Live Sessions will now take place on

Thursdays

New schedule:



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


Next session:




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).





4 March 2010

Job creation before BBBEE - COSATU

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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.

1 March 2010

Holy Grail already here

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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

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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.