Basics, Part 0
Introduction
to “Basics”
YCLSA/WFTU Africa forum will be serialising the ten-week “Basics” course
during the first quarter of 2013. This course was designed to satisfy comrades
who are impatient to acquire the political fundamentals as quickly as possible.
At the same time, it is designed to open doors to further
studies, including, but not limited to, the other 11 courses of the Communist
University (find them here, or here,
in the links below the top).
Each post will have, attached, at least one PDF file of the
original text, formatted for printing as a booklet. Each post will consist of
an opening to a discussion of that text. Please join in the dialogue around
these posts by e-mail. Serialising the courses in parts is what allows the
possibility of such e-mail dialogue.
By contributing to dialogue, you will multiply the value of
this course for yourself, and for others.
Education
The course begins with reflections on the theory of teaching
and learning. This is so that we can know what we are doing, how we will do it,
and why. In general, the theory that underlies the pedagogical approach of the
Communist University is that of Paulo Freire, author of “The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed”. Not only is it crucial to ourselves as we proceed, but it is also
given as a political method, and as the actual substance of political practice.
Education is politics, and politics is education. Education takes place in
dialogue.
The rest of the
course
The second part leads with Machiavelli, backed up with texts
on Capital and The State by Marx and Engels respectively. The third part is the
Communist Manifesto of 1848, followed by summarising works by Lenin and Engels
on the fourth part. By this stage we should have made out a good general
outline of the material history of the world, and of its constant class
struggles.
In the fifth part we come back to South Africa to look at
the SACP’s short constitution, and to other crucial South African documents:
the 1955 Freedom Charter and the 1969 Morogoro “Strategy and Tactics” document
of the ANC.
In the sixth and seventh parts we deal with the relation of
the vanguard party to the mass organisations of the working class, in
particular trade unions and their work of collective bargaining with the
capitalist employers. Then we go straight to Karl Marx’s classic lecture on
this topic, “Value, Price and Profit”, backed up by the great Chapter One of
Marx’s Capital, volume 1, on Commodities.
In part nine we return to a closer examination of the state,
starting with Lenin’s lecture on the state, an then using the great classics,
Engels’ “Origin of the Family, Private Property and The State”, and Lenin’s
“The State and Revolution”.
The tenth part is dedicated to the on-going struggle against
Imperialism, using several short texts as well as Joe Slovo’s great “The South
African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution”.
The whole course can be downloaded in the form of PDF files
(printable as booklets) from:
