Tjo, Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device -----Original Message----- From: Dominic Tweedie <[email protected]> Sender: [email protected] Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 07:36:48 To: <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [YCLSA Discussion] RESPONSE TO GWEDE MANTASHE
Dear Comrades, Thanks for the support and for all the comments, whether supportive or not. Thanks to Cde Mandla Radebe, Secretary of Linda Jabane District, for reminding me of Marx on "Indifferentism", and even more so, of Engels on "Authority". I have made a short version of that piece of Engels' writing and pasted it below. It certainly applies in this case. Whether I ban or whether I leave, is my decision. Authority is with me in either case, and whether any of us like it, or not. Whether I am right or wrong, my authority over the CU for the time being cannot be avoided by the subscribers, or evaded by me. Please feel free to discuss what Engels wrote about the question of authority, comrades. This will surely not be the last time the question arises, and at some moment in the future, this question of authority may well become the most crucial question of all in our revolution. Thanks also to those comrades who remembered that when Floyd Shivambu recently posted his opinion on the ANC's public discussion document on "The Second Transition", and some comrades asked for him to be banned at that time, I declined to do so and instead encouraged the comrades to engage with what on the face of it was a /bona fide/ (in good faith) contribution by Floyd to an important debate. Clearly I saw a qualitative difference between that previous post of Floyd's and the present one, and I acted accordingly and differently in each case. My decision is final. There is no DC here, and no DC of Appeal. Nor would these be of any use when the people concerned do not respect such authorities, and publicly defy and insult them. I don't propose to argue the merits of my decisions in detail. I would rather let Engels do the talking, because everything that needs to be said, and discussed, is there in Engels' document. One comrade noted that Floyd Shivambu wanted to use our forum as a theatre of war against the movement. I think that is true. I have written before that the job of moderator is guided by a principle of protecting and preserving the forum. I will continue to follow that guiding principle. *VC* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *On Authority (Engels, 1872)* /Extracts/ Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether --- given the conditions of present-day society --- we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear... Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority? Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see... ... the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one. When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of /a commission entrusted/! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world. Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon --- authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2012/07/20 08:39 PM, [email protected] wrote: > I agree with you Comrade Sandile. This censorship won't help us. > > -- 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] . -- 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] .
