Weapon of Theory – Full Course
We will meet at 17h00 on 9 September 2010. The venue will be confirmed by e-mail on Tuesday.
Comrades of the Communist University,
In the previous post you were asked for assistance in compiling a list of African revolutionary writers, from which to construct a CU course.
I received suggestions from as far away as Argentina; New Jersey, USA; and East London, South Africa. Please, continue to send suggestions, and if possible, texts, be they articles, speeches, links to pages on the Internet, or text files.
We have to begin this course next week Thursday. Therefore to have something to discuss, please accept today Cabral’s “Weapon of Theory” (download linked at the bottom), which has to be part of this course even though we have circulated it only a few weeks ago, as part of the “Philosophy and Religion” course.
It has to be, because Cabral is the most profound and most sublime of African revolutionary writers. He is one African (but not the only one) who contributed indispensable new lessons to the universal revolutionary legacy.
When there is more time, and at a later stage in this course, we will return to Amilcar Cabral and to the great single-volume compendium of his work called “Unity and Struggle”, recently republished in South Africa (look for it!).
Here is the revised “African Revolutionary Writers” list with some links, dates and titles of possible works that we might use. (Below it is the previously-circulated intro to Cabral’s “Weapon of Theory”.) More suggestions, please!
Name | Dates | Main Candidate Text | Date |
1745 - 1797 | Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano | 1789 | |
1743 - 1803 | Haiti Constitution | 1801 | |
1818 - 1895 | My Bondage and My Freedom | 1855 | |
1876 - 1932 | Native Life in South Africa | 1916 | |
1903 - 1959 | What Must Be Done? | 1931 | |
1905 - 1978 | Cradock Letter | 1934 | |
1901 - 1989 | Notes on Dialectics | 1948 | |
1918 - 1970 | Memoirs of 1st Palestine War | 1955 | |
1898 - 1976 | Here I Stand | 1958 | |
1868 - 1963 | Africa in Battle Against Colonialism | 1960 | |
1898 - 1967 | Peace Prize acceptance | 1960 | |
1923 - 2007 | God’s Bits of Wood | 1960 | |
1925 - 1961 | Speech in front of Baudouin | 1960 | |
1925 - 1961 | The Wretched of the Earth | 1961 | |
1910 - 2001 | The Peasants Revolt | 1964 | |
1909 - 1972 | Neo-Colonialism, Last Stage of Imperialism | 1965 | |
1911 - 1994 | Not Yet Uhuru | 1967 | |
1929 - 1968 | Beyond Vietnam | 1967 | |
1939 - | The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born | 1968 | |
1920 - 1969 | The Struggle for Mozambique | 1969 | |
1917 - 1993 | Speeches ex ANC web site | 1970 | |
1925 - 1965 | By Any Means Necessary | 1970 | |
1925 - 1985 | In the Fog of the Season’s End | 1972 | |
1938 - | Homecoming | 1972 | |
1911 - 1986 | Strategy for a Black Agenda | 1973 | |
1942 - 1980 | How Europe Undeveloped Africa | 1973 | |
1922 - 1979 | Sacred Hope | 1974 | |
1922 - 1999 | Freedom and Development | 1974 | |
1933 - 1986 | Sowing the Seeds of Revolution | 1974 | |
1922 - 1984 | Strategy and tactics of the revolution | 1978 | |
1946 - 1977 | I Write What I Like | 1978 | |
1924 - 1973 | Unity and Struggle | 1980 | |
1923 - 1986 | Civilisation or Barbarism | 1981 | |
1944 - | Women, Race and Class | 1981 | |
1925 - 1982 | Mozambican Miner: Proletarian and Peasant | 1983 | |
1955 - 1991 | Cooking the rice inside the pot | 1985 | |
1949 - 1987 | Thomas Sankara Speaks | 1987 | |
1920 - | Coloniser and colonised | 1991 | |
1947 - | Citizen and Subject | 1996 | |
1918 - | Cubans aid Algerian revolution | 1998 | |
1946 - | The Struggle for Democracy | 2003 | |
1931 - | The American Ideology | 2004 | |
1942 - | The One-State Solution | 2009 |
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.
Please download and read:
The Weapon of Theory, 1966, Amilcar Cabral (7710 words)
