WeeklyWorker

27.07.2011

Eager to debate with others

Mark Fischer underlines that all are welcome at Communist University

This has been a quieter, but still respectable, week in the Summer Offensive, our annual fundraising campaign. This year we have set ourselves the collective target of £25k - to be raised by August 20. We added £1,156 to last week’s running total, to take us to £13,666. As a distinct strand within this year’s SO, we are aiming to secure a minimum of £300 a month extra in standing orders for our paper. Two more commitments came in this week - CS has pledged a monthly £20, while JD has topped up his existing regular payment by £5. So our Weekly Worker campaign is running at £218 in new money - well done to all comrades.

The fight to achieve the SO target is very much linked to the work to build our summer school, Communist University, which will take place in south London from August 13-20 - when the Weekly Worker goes ‘live’ for seven days, you might say. The same brand of open, exacting and serious debate that finds its way into the paper every week animates our approach to the organisation of our school. Indeed, if you need further convincing of the superiority of the culture we are fighting for, in contrast to what dominates the revolutionary left as a whole, don’t just read the paper (11,070 of you did so online last week, by the way): look at the range of speakers we have featured over the years, and the important differences in the revolutionary movement we have openly addressed, including within our own ranks.

The guidelines we provide to those chairing each CU session underline that they are not there to act as the human equivalents of pub chalk boards, where punters scrawl their name to get in line for a game of pool. It is a political role and we explicitly try to bring to bring in minority views, and those from outside our ranks - the aim is to organise the discussion so that the key points of controversy are given the time and space to be properly aired.

The contrast with the bulk of the left could not be starker. There is a story - possibly apocryphal, but also, sadly, quite possibly not - of a wonderful faux pas a few years ago at the Socialist Workers Party annual school, Marxism. A young and inexperienced comrade chairing a large session at the event was being shepherded through the experience by SWP old hands. In addition to whispered advice and instructions, the comrade was also on the receiving end of a steady stream of written notes suggesting announcements she could make to the meeting.

Another arrived and she dutifully read out its contents, no doubt to the consternation of its now departed author, Lindsey German. The gist of it was along of the lines of: ‘Don’t let any speakers from the sects in - make sure SWP comrades talk’. Priceless.

Now, whatever the precise veracity of the details of this incident, it tells a real truth about the philistine culture that is all too often on display at the SWP’s public events - and indeed too much of the rest of the left. The expression of political and theoretical differences is almost treated as an attempt to disrupt the meeting. Not quite of the same order as persistent drunken heckling or a lunge to chin the speaker, but not far off.

The full Communist University agenda is now online. Highlights include:

All are welcome to attend Communist University - even critically minded comrades, with strong opinions at odds with the majority of today’s CPGB! Which, unfortunately, makes the event, like our paper, really quite unique on the left.