 Fake or
real communists?
Yesterday on this forum I published the results of six months of work, during which I composed from the political education resources of the Communist University, eight “Generic Courses” (see below for the links). Some of this work has been accepted for the SACP web site (here). During this work, which was unavoidably to some extent a totalisation, I often used to wonder what a “complete”, “real”, “genuine” or “true” communist might be? I used to wonder if it is even possible to think in such terms at all, yet I was compelled by the work to do so. It is in the nature of such a job that one must draw a line at the end and say: That will have to do for now. But exactly where should that line be drawn? Please allow me to unpack this a little with you, comrades. In the Generic Courses re-write, I had picked up and included a project that I began a year or two before, namely to deal with Karl Marx’s Capital Volume 1 in parts, but thoroughly, and leaving out nothing of significance. I do believe that I have done it in a satisfactory way, and so made Capital Volume 1 potentially accessible to many more people, perhaps to millions more people, than was the case before. Could a person be called a communist who had not read and understood Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume 1? I read somewhere that Sidney Bunting was never able to cope with Marx’s Capital at all. Does this mean that Sidney Bunting was not a communist? I don’t think so. Sidney Bunting was undoubtedly a communist, and a very great one at that. But what one knows is that it bothered Sidney Bunting that he had not mastered Capital, and that it troubles any communist to know that this great book exists, until he or she has read it and internalised it. This famous book, Capital Volume 1, that is so often like a flag or a banner or a standard for us, uniting us, yet it unintentionally also divides us, into those who have knowledge of it, and those who do not yet have that knowledge. So much for Capital, Volume 1. What about Volumes 2 and 3? Let me confess that at this moment, they are beyond my grasp. It would be nice to say: Let me leave Volumes 2 & 3 to the academics. But we know that the academy is full of anti-communists and it hardly ever deals honestly with our material. Also, those of us who read the newspapers must know that officials and representatives are quoting from Capital Volume 3 in particular. Are they doing so correctly? How will we know, unless we study it? In the end, I left links to Volumes 2 & 3, but I have not yet processed them into study texts as I have done with the rest; and I have made a note to come back to Capital Volumes 2 & 3, and to make a ten-part course out of them, if possible in the next six months or so. Let me give one more example: In Lenin’s notebook on philosophy, “Conspectus of Hegel’s book ‘The Science of Logic’”, dated 1914, he (Lenin) wrote: “It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later, none of the Marxists understood Marx!!” Have I, Domza the VC, “thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic”? No, I have not. I find Hegel’s writing difficult, like riddles. I do intend to study the “Logic”, and the “Philosophy of Right”, and to make another ten-part “Generic Course” out of these two, but I have not properly done so, yet. So, does that mean I am a “fake communist”? Is the VC a fake, because he struggles with Hegel? I think that we have to study, comrades. We have to be on that road, and then we will get confidence from our sense of progress, knowing that the mockers are on the sidelines, standing still. The road of science has no end. The further we go down the road, the wider are the horizons. Here are the opening links to the CU Generic Courses:
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- [YCLSA Discussion] Fake or real communists? Dominic Tweedie
- Re: [YCLSA Discussion] Fake or real communists? morgan phaahla
- Re: [YCLSA Discussion] Fake or real communists? Xoli Dlabantu
