LETTERS, CRITICISM AND SUGGESTIONS
About Universities
Recently I read an article about the future of education in communism, which is the future of universities (RF Vol. 10 # 10). A group of us comrades discussed it. This article was putting forward the end of universities as centers of xenophobia and racism, and intellectual elitism.
I mentioned the importance of the revolutionary nuclei in Latin America within the universities that gave a strong social struggle and organizational efforts to create the first revolutionary nuclei.
These would later form the armed groups that would join the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation in the case of El Salvador. Another example of the struggle was in Mexico during the 1960s where students and teachers massively crystallized the malaise of the terrible economic and social policies of the Mexican Government at the time.
It was there within the universities that, thanks to international workers’ solidarity, in these nations they had access to revolutionary and visionary documents that spoke of communism, socialism, dialectical materialism and then spread them to the industrial and farmworker centers.
The criticism is through questions that were raised in the discussion and that should be answered by the communist workers and groups internationally.
What kind of education do we want?
Should the Universities be eliminated or changed?
What is the historical role of the Universities in scientific and technological development?
Let us remember, then, that human practice also includes theoretical training, culture and art. Therefore it does not refer only to work in the workplace. Anything that is part of the activity of the human being is practice. It is important to take into account the practical-theoretical unity for the advancement of human societies, something very present in the communist movement.
A comrade who mentioned that it is revolutionary education and not academic education that creates revolutionaries, is right. We must start collective discussions to visualize how we intend to solve a problem on a global scale, which is the education of every human being on earth, a great task … To rescue what worked and what did not, during the educational model of the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba and China during the Cultural Revolution, to identify elements that help in building a communist educational system.
A new vision and mission of education from and for the masses must be formed. Since the communist revolution must not be a gray steamroller of the collective consciousness of the masses, it is vital that it be the starting point for the liberation and emancipation of the thinking of humanity.
With the end of universities, racism, xenophobia and intellectual elitism will not be completely eliminated. This is related to the formation of values and mass consciousness from a capitalist production model that expropriates the fruits of the workers’ labor and puts commercial relations and the interest to accumulate capital above everything.
The transformation of material reality and production relations is the substantial step to generate a transcendent and permanent impact on the minds of millions of people who have lived with the idea that capitalism is the highest point of human progress.
A comrade in the United States who said, “The universities educate and train people with a capitalist and bourgeois mentality,” is correct. However, let’s remember that the communists are within the capitalist system. We fight within institutions that perpetuate the capitalist model of production and yet that is where we must work and from there with discipline and perseverance we build communist nuclei or cells.
—Comrade in El Salvador
Write More about Recruitment
I think that RF in general could do a better job in encouraging friends of ICWP to join, and encouraging members to recruit them. Here I’ll go over the last issue to illustrate the problem.
It does not begin well. On the front page are two articles, a short one on the Brazil fires and a longer one on the auto industry in India. Both make useful points but neither have anything at all to say directly about joining or recruiting, not even a short call to join ICWP.
The page 2 article has next to nothing about joining/recruiting except for the final sentence, exhorting Pia Klemp and RF readers to “join us.”
Things look up when we reach the memorial article for the late comrade Martha Bracho. Oddly, there is no call to join/recruit in her memory. But it makes clear that she took recruiting very seriously and successfully. And her secret: getting to know lots of people, doing things with them, and forming strong personal ties.
Another bright spot is a letter from a new comrade in South Africa explaining in straightforward language why they joined ICWP, and how they are going to recruit others.
But what really saves the day is the “sense” article from Seattle. It explains how workplace (and other) discussions about current events can be used to recruit. Its optimistic message is that “every week comrades meet more potential communists at work, at multiracial and international social events, at schools and in our daily lives.”
That’s about it. The rest of the articles say nothing about joining/ recruiting or merely call at the very end, for example “let’s build the ICWP” or “join the fight for communist revolution.”
I’m not suggesting that every article has a big section about recruiting. That would be boring. But the editors should make sure the issue is addressed in each issue.
Where RF really and consistently falls down is in not explaining what it means to join ICWP. There are basic questions people have which are almost never answered. For example who can join (anyone), how do you join (ask any member), do you have to know a lot about Marxism (no). What do you do as a member? Why is it important to join now? And why do we need a party in the first place?
I suggest a pamphlet about all this.
—Comrade in Canada.