30 July 2010

Dialego, Philosophy, and the Class Struggle

0 comments
Philosophy and Religion, Part 6a


Dialego, Philosophy, and the Class Struggle

In 1976, in the year of the Soweto uprising, ten years after the “Tricontinental”, four articles were published in the African Communist, written by John Hoffman under the pen-name “Dialego”. The first two are linked below, as our main texts for today.

Hoffman still teaches philosophy at Leicester University in England. He is no longer trying to be a revolutionary, but is an overt liberal these days. His liberalism of today is foreshadowed in these works of three and a half decades ago. His liberalism, now, is a child of his “Dialectical Materialism”, then. “Dialectical Materialism” is not revolutionary, but it is liberal. We will develop this argument in due course.

Hoffman’s four articles were subsequently published, more than once, as a set, in a booklet. (Click here for Part 3 and Part 4 if required). The articles were popular with MK and are still famous, and they certainly raised the banner of theory high. But they contained major deficiencies, of which the principal one is “Dialectical Materialism” itself.

We are going to return to the history of “Dialectical Materialism” in the next part of this series. Then we will look again, in the following two parts, at the much more fruitful Subject-Object relation, where priority is given to the free human Subject, before finishing in the tenth and last part of the series with new theoretical developments and ways forward for philosophy.

Hoffman (in his Part 2) writes of “Materialism Vs. Idealism: the Basic Question of Philosophy”. But the Fundamental Question of Philosophy is the relation of the Subject to the Object, and not “Materialism vs. Idealism”. Glaring errors arise if and when these two different formulations are conflated into one.

For example, going back to Hoffman’s Part 1 under “Philosophy and Our ‘Experience’”, Hoffman writes about “stress[ing] the materialist component of our philosophy at the expense of the dialectical”. This is a muddle. What he is describing is what he himself is doing: idealising the objective factors of a situation, while all but eliminating the human Subject.

Out goes God, in come the atoms and the molecules.

An original causation is demanded, which then has to be given a higher status than all else.

In this way of thinking (dialectical materialism) the atoms and the molecules, the inanimate a priori material, take precedence over life. This is “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” dressed up as revolutionary theory. But it cannot be.
Revolution is a quality of life.

The dialectic that is political is the one between subjective humans and the objective universe (which is indeed material). In this political dialectic, the human Subject is the “point”.

As Marx wrote in the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Who’s point is that? It is our point. It is the human beings’ point. We are humanists. We are on the side of the humans, and of their humanity, which we ourselves have created and continue to create out of the world’s mud.

A purely material event is like a tree falling in the forest, unseen and unheard by anyone. It is a real event, but it is not a political event.

Similarly, a switch from an imaginary world of superstition to one that fetishises inert material is no gain at all. These are merely two different forms of idealism.

In both these latter cases, powers are held up that are higher than people, whether the powers are invisible or visible. But in politics, the power that matters is people-power. For sure, that means people-power in a real, material world. But it does not mean a “balancing act” between the human and the inhuman.

There is no dialectic of the ideal versus the material. These two categories are not interdependent, but constitute alternatives: either/or.

But there is certainly a dialectic of the Subject and the Object, because these two categories define each other. They are inseparable in their opposition to one another. But people still come first. People have priority. The Subject is what it is all about, and not the material Object.

Hoffman’s (then) devotion to “materialism” led him to write that “[man] developed out of the world of nature through a long process of evolution and his ideas are the product of the mental activity of his brain, itself a highly developed and complex form of matter.”

How does a “complex form of matter” become human? Actually, it is not even necessary to ask. It is only Hoffman’s kind of “materialism” that leads to such miserable, reductionist questions: questions that run away from humanity.

The atoms and molecules may be taken as “given”, whether by God or by chance. But humanity is special, while matter is only matter. Humanity is historical, while matter is infinite. Humanity is revolutionary work-in-progress. Humanity is what humans make. Making humanity is what humans do. It is the free-willing human Subject that is at the centre of our consciousness, our concerns, our morality, and our politics.

Our next gathering will take place next week Thursday, at 17h00, at a venue to be announced. Please read “The Weapon of Theory” in preparation.

Download:

Further reading:





Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]
Course Archive
Weeks
Last Posted
2/10
CU Africa [230]
8/33
CU [2853]
6/10

Courses completed in 2010 to date:
6
June - July

12
March - June

10
January - March
3 days
2-4 June
10
March - June

10
January – March


29 July 2010

The Weapon of Theory

0 comments
Philosophy and Religion, Part 6


Weapon of Theory




We meet this evening at 17h00 in “B Red 6” at the Bunting Road Campus of the University of Johannnesburg. Hard copies of Cabral’s “Weapon of Theory” will be available.




The Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America was held in Havana in January, 1966, 46 years after the Baku Conference of the Peoples of the East and seven years after the Cuban Revolution.

Forty-three more years have now passed since the Tricontinental. A lot has been achieved in that time, including our South African democratic breakthrough, sixteen years ago, and the unbanning of the ANC, twenty years ago.

The full defeat of Imperialism has not yet occurred. What we can say is that from early in the 20th-Century the historical agenda was set by the liberation movements, and that Imperialism represents the degeneration and the decline of bourgeois class power, and not its heyday.

The great political change in the world in the last century was the taking of sovereign independence by the formerly oppressed people of the former colonies, affecting the great majority of the population of the planet and opening the road of democracy for them.

This gigantic movement and huge change was achieved with the weapon of theory.

43 years ago Amilcar Cabral [see image, above] in the speech to the Tricontinental that has always been known by the title “Weapon of Theory” (please find the link to the download, below) also said the following:

“It is often said that national liberation is based on the right of every people to freely control its own destiny and that the objective of this liberation is national independence. Although we do not disagree with this vague and subjective way of expressing a complex reality, we prefer to be objective, since for us the basis of national liberation, whatever the formulas adopted on the level of international law, is the inalienable right of every people to have its own history, and the objective of national liberation is to regain this right usurped by imperialism, that is to say, to free the process of development of the national productive forces.

“For this reason, in our opinion, any national liberation movement which does not take into consideration this basis and this objective may certainly struggle against imperialism, but will surely not be struggling for national liberation.

“This means that, bearing in mind the essential characteristics of the present world economy, as well as experiences already gained in the field of anti-imperialist struggle, the principal aspect of national liberation struggle is the struggle against neo-colonialism.”

Amilcar Cabral was a true vanguardist. He was both a great leader, and a great intellectual.

Please download the document via the link given here.

Download:

Further reading:


Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]
Course Archive
Weeks
Last Posted
2/10
CU Africa [230]
8/33
CU [2858]
5/10

Courses completed in 2010 to date:
6
June - July

12
March - June

10
January - March
3 days
2-4 June
10
March - June

10
January – March


26 July 2010

Reminder! CU at UJ Bunting Road, 19 July, 17h00

0 comments

Reminder!

26th July Commemoration

  • Date: 29 July 2010
  • Time: 17h00 – 18h30
  • Venue: B Red 6, University of Johannesburg, Bunting Road Campus


  
Discussion

When Cuba lost its trade with the former Soviet Union and entered what it called the Special Period, it suffered, for the first time since the revolution of 1959, a huge increase in some of the major ills of capitalist countries, especially unemployment, and particularly youth unemployment.

What the Cubans did in response to this situation was to educate themselves more, and then to turn large numbers of young people, who were the “problem”, into the solution of the problem, by turning them into social workers.

For an account of this remarkable turn-around please read the main document linked below.

Clearly, what worked in Cuba might work in South Africa. This is what we are going to discuss.
  
"what began as an unattainable dream - to see a nation become a university - is today a reality"
Fidel Castro (2004)

The above will be the basis of our discussions on Thursday, when the Communist University, the Young Communist League of South Africa and the South African Communist Party will mark the 57th Anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks at the University of Johannesburg with a discussion on Cuban pedagogy (educational theory).

For an account of the significance of the 26 July 1953 Moncada attack, please read some of the documents below.

Download:


Further Reading:




On July 26 (27 368 words)




Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]
Course Archive
Weeks
Last Posted
2/10
CU Africa [230]
7/33
CU [2872]
5/10

Courses completed in 2010 to date:
6
June - July

12
March - June

10
January - March
3 days
2-4 June
10
March - June

10
January – March





22 July 2010

The SAA lesson

0 comments

Umsebenzi Online, Volume 9, No. 14, 22 July 2010

In this Issue:
  • The SAA lesson: Intensify working class struggles against corruption

Red Alert

The SAA lesson: Intensify working class struggles against corruption          

Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

The findings of the KPMG report about possible large scale corruption and embezzlement of SAA monies, as well as the decision by the current SAA board to recoup these monies, is a decisive moment in working class struggles to fight corruption and defeat tenderpreneurship. The main lesson from this SAA saga is that the working class, and indeed the entire mass of our people, must not allow themselves to be intimidated in the struggle to expose corruption wherever it occurs.

The SACP does indeed welcome the findings of KPMG on allegations of corruption and possible self-enrichment at the SAA, as well as the decision of its board to further investigate this matter, including possible criminal actions against all those involved.

The SACP must salute the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) for having issued a 'red card' against corruption at the SAA. This goes to show the extent to which the workers and the poor in general, and the organized working class in particular, have the power to be at the head of the struggle against corruption. Therefore the SAA developments must act as a lesson for the rest of the organized working class; that it must intensify its struggle against corruption on all fronts and with even more vigour.

We are however heartened by the fact that a number of other progressive trade unions, both in the public and private sectors, are intensifying the struggle against corruption on all fronts.

The latest SAA developments also have other lessons for us. Those amongst our ranks who might have begun to doubt the efficacy and impact of our campaign against corruption must now learn a lesson that we must be decisive and also persevere in our struggles to defeat the scourge of corruption.

'Tenderpreneurs' of all sorts, including of late 'mediapreneurs', have left no stone unturned to try and tarnish the image of all those in the forefront of the campaign against corruption. Some of these elements have tried to intimidate us by trying to project our campaign as being a campaign against the ANC and our government. Nothing is further from the truth. This has just been one of many attempts to try and kill our campaign against corruption. Proof of this is that most, if not all, of those who have been trying to project this as a campaign against the ANC, have not lifted a finger or participated in the many activities and debates we have embarked upon to highlight the dangers of corruption in society. The most important lesson from this is that we should refuse to allow any of our organizations and components of our alliance to be used as refuge pillagers of state resources.

Our campaign against corruption, we must reiterate, is not a campaign against the ANC, nor is a campaign that implies that ANC and government leaders are corrupt. This is one of the scarecrows used by tenderpreneurs, especially those within our own ranks, to try and scuttle legitimate working class struggles to intensify the struggle against corruption.

Another critical lesson from this is that the SACP, and indeed the working class as a whole, must not succumb to, or be intimidated by, media attacks and other attempts to discredit us, individually or collectively, as a way of diverting us from this principled campaign against corruption.

If anything, the SAA victory points to the actual and potential successes and victories we can still score against tenderpreneurs and those who steal public monies and resources.

Whilst welcoming the stance taken by the SAA board to go into the bottom of these allegations in the light of the forensic report, we must however express our serious reservations about its reluctance to probe the reasons why the previous SAA board failed to detect and act on this problem. It is only proper that the previous board should equally be called to account as to how such things happened under its watch. Otherwise failure to do this can only give an impression that corruption is being selectively dealt with outside of a holistic approach to call everybody to account.

It is also important that we re-iterate our stance that our struggle against corruption is not merely a moralistic struggle, important as the moral dimensions of this struggle are. It is fundamentally a political struggle that locates corruption as one of the major stumbling blocs in the building of a developmental state. Corruption is tantamount to theft from the state and the people, thus seriously undermining the capacity of the state to use the resources in its hands to advance our developmental objectives.

Coming back to the SAA and other state owned enterprises, it is important to use these latest revelations about the SAA to begin to advance concrete perspectives about the role of the SoEs in the national democratic revolution. SoEs must not be treated as private corporations in the hands of the state. They should be seen as important components of a developmental state. Therefore corruption undermines the entire developmental outlook of SoEs.

The above also means that we need a complete review of the salaries, conditions of service and bonuses of SoE executives, their investment priorities and their relationship to the overall developmental policies of the state. Salaries and conditions of service of SoEs must not be benchmarked against those of the private sector, much as we should also intensify the struggle against the obscene salaries and bonuses of private sector executives.

As the SACP we should advance, within the context of the Industrial Policy Action Plan 2 and the proposed new growth path, a completely new role for the SoEs; that of taking forward our overall developmental objectives in the spheres in which they operate. SoEs should not be treated as private corporations in the public sector, but as critical capacity in our struggle to eradicate poverty through, amongst other, transformation the current growth path into a developmental one.

Exposure of actual and possible corruption in the public sector and in the state owned enterprises should also not be distorted to suggest that corruption is only to be found in the public sector. There is large-scale corruption the private sector as well. Therefore, the working class should intensify the struggle against corruption in the whole of society.

We are indeed emboldened by SATAWU's actions at the SAA!