Amandla!
----- Original Message -----
From: Dominic Tweedie
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: [YCLSA Discussion] The Changing Times Online
Cde Thembinkosi,
Thank you so much for quoting "Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism" from the
Communist Manifesto. Good one!
On Cde Thidiso's point: With all due respect to Cde Nqaba, and he is welcome
here as far as I am concerned, yet I was trying to make a different point, and
not trying to say that he should be made comfortable while others are not
comfortable.
Communists have to move among workers. What are you going to do if you meet
workers with bourgeois opinions? Such people are very common! They are part of
the proletariat. The communists cannot shun them. The communists have to learn
how to talk to them.
Among other things I am saying that the presence of Cde Nqaba (and I hope he
does not mind me saying this) is an opportunity, not to beat him up, but to
learn how to hold up a dialogue with somebody of that persuasion, keep your
dignity, keep everybody smiling, and express your views, all at once.
It's a skill that the best communists have. It comes from practice,
experience, and confidence. It means that they are at home with everyone, like
Chris Hani was, for example. I admire that. I still want to be like that some
day.
In struggle,
VC
Mnguni, Thembinkosi wrote:
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VC
This is a very correct answer that you have provided but as much as it
stimulate Nqaba, to me COPE does not in any way closer to have characteristics
of the working class so as Nqaba, we will then look very closely in his
comments which to me are of Conservative or Bougeois Socialism nothing else.
"The socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social
conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom.
They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and
disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The
bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the
best; and bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various
more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a
system, and thereby to march straightaway into the social New Jerusalem, it but
requires in reality that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of
existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the
bourgeoisie"
Ends
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nqaba Bhanga
Sent: 10 December 2009 09:39 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [YCLSA Discussion] The Changing Times Online
Cde Dominic
Today ,I got the most satisfying response from a learning communist in our
country , you have just revived my conviction and hope for a Socialist Society
under the guide of Marxism -Leninism.
>>> Dominic Tweedie <[email protected]> 2009/12/10 09:28 AM >>>
Dear Cde Nqaba,
Concerning this forum, let me repeat again: there is no barrier, except
when it comes to spam. Spammers are banned.
In terms of the Communist University "contact sessions" (study circles),
there is no questionnaire; there is no interrogation, vetting or interview;
there are no preconceived exclusions. It is not impossible that the comrades
might one day rise up in a fury and throw somebody out, but it has never
happened to date.
I would say that the communists must be comfortable among the people, and
they must be accustomed to dialogue with all kinds of people, and they need to
practice, so that they become able to make headway in the presence of all sorts
of people.
Communism is not a sect. It is not a cult for initiates only. Communism is
the natural way of thought for human beings, far more so than capitalism, for
example.
Here are a few words from the "Communist Manifesto":
"In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class
parties.
"They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as
a whole.
"They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to
shape and mold the proletarian movement."
"In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement
against the existing social and political order of things.
"In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question
in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the
time.
"Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the
democratic parties of all countries."
Domza,
VC and Student.
Nqaba Bhanga wrote:
Cde Dominic , I would like to ask whether learning communist from COPE welcomed
to, forums of discussion in the same understanding of MDC and Zanu-PF Dominic
Tweedie <[email protected]> 2009/12/10 06:47 AM >>> The trouble
with this contribution from Frank Talk is that it walks awayfrom the strong
lights of the political stage, towards the endless darknessof conspiracy. What
is "predictable", to use Frank's chosen word, and what was indeedpredicted by
Lenin among others, is that the trade union movement will, byitself, only
produce a reformist political movement and not a revolutionaryone. It is not
that it "can be" so, as Frank Talk puts it, but that it isalways going to be
so. In "What is to be Done?" Lenin called this problem "economism". It is
toescape from "economism" that Lenin proposes a generalist party
ofrevolutionaries to educate, organise and mobilise the masses. Without such a
party of revolutionaries there is no possibility of anythingother than the
reformist kind of socialism, which is a kind of bourgeoisstate with a
temporarily modified appearance, and which is what is nowadaysreferred to as
"social democracy". Communists have to graduate from conspiracy theory to
something else. Notthat conspiracies do not exist. "Personal agendas" and
"darlings of theImperialists" and all the rest can be found if you look for
them. The problem is that eliminating all of the conspiracies, even if it
waspossible, would not eliminate the much larger problem, which is that
weproceed from a mass consciousness that is reformist and bourgeois. Weproceed
from a bourgeois society. We communists are the ones who encourage the
formation of reformistorganisations of the working classes and of other
self-defined masses, evenwhen they do not spontaneously appear. We do not
expect them to bespontaneously communist. It is no use to blame a trade union
movement forbeing reformist, and especially useless to do so when there is no
dedicatedrevolutionary party present, as in Zimbabwe. Both Frank and Mlilo seem
to think that the communists could, by beinghonest and pure of mind, and by
having a smart "analysis", naturally leadthe masses. This is as mistake. More
than a state of mind, leadership is apiece of work. Cleverness and will-power
are not enough. Educating, organising and mobilising is hard, grinding work.
Also, from thestart, you must love the masses, who in Zimbabwe are not only
workers butalso peasants, because at the start they are not your converts, and
you arenot a missionary, but you are hopefully a revolutionary who wants
freedom(the free development of each that is the condition for the free
developmentof all). You can't love the masses and want them to be free if you
think of them asfools or sellouts (if, in other words, you cannot trust them).
This is whyconspiracy theory is a handicap for communists. Not because there
are noconspirators, but because the existence or otherwise of conspirators
isbeside the main revolutionary point. Hunting for conspirators is a diversion,
Frank, and by the way, the reasonCde Mlilo is here at all is because he walked
into our Communist Universitysession one day in the SACP boardroom in COSATU
House and introducedhimself. He sought us, and when he found us, we welcomed
him, as we hadwelcomed the other MDC crowd before him, and as we would have
welcomedZanu-PF as well if they had come (but during six years to date,
Zanu-PFnever did come, or even send a message). The Communist University is not
for perfect communists but for ordinarypeople who are imperfect in all sorts of
ways, and where we are all of us,without any exceptions, students. Domza
Student. 2009/12/8 frank talk <[email protected]>
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