Comrades, ufasimba, revolutionaries I hope,
You know I "moderate" this forum. I keep out the 50 or so porn, phishing, fake watch ads and all the rest of it that come at this group every day, which you never see. So in the process I watch the rest go by, and I post stuff sometimes. I have not been comfortable with the tone of this discussion and I don't much like to see stuff here about correcting people's errors and their confusion. I find that patronising. I don't think you have got it right about the bourgeois press at all. None of you have got it right in my opinion. Freedom of expression is something you do. It's a struggle. Talking about it at one remove from the act is idle. The bourgeoisie is not a single-minded conspiracy. The bourgeoisie is not capable of that. The bourgeoisie is internally conflicted: contradictory. Bourgeois freedom is contradictory, but bourgeois freedom is not the same as no freedom. The most cursory glance at history should convince anyone of that. The bourgeois revolutions, and notably the Great French Revolution, did bring an enormously greater degree of freedom to vast numbers of people, especially as compared to the feudalism that preceded it. This is the general situation. Capital is a relation, not a thing. The bourgeoisie is in an intimate relationship with the proletariat. It cannot disentangle itself from the proletariat. The proletariat must lead the bourgeoisie, if only because the proletariat is capable of a concrete view, which the bourgeoisie is not capable of. But first the proletariat must achieve that concrete view. It cannot simply take it for granted that it is already enlightened and that the others are all idiots, morons or devils. That is not an intelligent way to proceed. Our Party has said that we must lead the whole society. As much as we may be the partisans of the working class, yet we must of necessity, in that very capacity, lead the whole society, including the bourgeoisie. But this leadership, and any leadership for that matter, is not a matter of instructing the ignorant and guiding the blind. There must be respect. Human respect and understanding, and willingness to learn, on the leader's side even more than that of the led. Willingness to learn is the essence of leadership. Then there is the particular situation of the production of newspapers. Huge amounts of stuff come in and have to be cut down and edited to produce a newspaper on a daily basis. Electronic news works to an even tighter time-scale. If we don't put our stuff forward, it cannot go in. When we do put our stuff forward in time, it very often does go in. Actually, we are very far from reaching the limit of what we can get published in the bourgeois media. We have the best of the intellectuals and the best material, but we are outnumbered by multiples on the op-ed pages, for the main reason that we do not submit nearly as much material as the bourgeois think-tanks do. Frankly, it looks like laziness. From that point of view, this discussion about how free or otherwise the bourgeois media are, comes across as a bit hollow, to say the least of it. Domza, VC Asikhulume!! -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: 07 May 2009 05:37 PM To: YCLSA Discussion Forum Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] Re: WHAT IDI AMIN DID TO JOURNALISTS. Comrade Jazz i agree fully that it is important to engage in debate with the confused and reactionary. However i don't believe we win debates by getting the last word, the last word is irrelevant, what matters is getting those with confused idea's to understand there error and realise that Marxist-Leninism is the only way to correctly analyse the world. So in this context I believe because Maureen failed to understand her contradictory stance there were no winners. But what we must use debates like these to consistently engage in revolutionary thought to not only re-educate the reactionary or ignorant but also to improve our understanding and ability to defend and articulate our positions. Comrades, We must educate to Emancipate! Brendan Rhodes Branch On May 7, 4:55 pm, Luzuko Buku <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for Telling us that comrade, I think the most thing that I like about this forum is that we are able to debate with people with reactionary views and most of the time we always win against them. > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
