African Revolutionary Writers, Part 0
Introduction: Weapon of Theory
Next week, the CU-Africa begins to post a ten-part course on African
Revolutionary Writers. This will be the first of four ten-week courses to
be run through this e-mail channel in 2014.
As usual, the CU gives you original texts, attached to a short
introduction or “opening to discussion”. You are welcome to reply to the CU
postings, continuing the discussion, or adding your own new comments on the
text.
As a suitable introduction to the new course, herewith attached please find Amilcar Cabral’s
“Weapon of Theory”.
Cabral is the most profound and the most sublime of African
Revolutionary writers. He is one of those Africans who contributed
indispensable new lessons to the universal revolutionary legacy. “The Weapon of
Theory” is relevant to our course as a whole, and to all our courses, for that
matter. At a later stage in this course we will return to Amilcar Cabral and to
the great single-volume compendium of his work called “Unity and Struggle”,
recently republished in English in South Africa.
The Weapon of Theory
The Tricontinental
Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America was held in
Havana in January, 1966, 46 years after the Baku Conference of the Peoples of the
East and seven years after the
Cuban Revolution.
Forty-eight more years have passed since the Tricontinental. A lot has
been achieved in that time, including our South African democratic
breakthrough, almost twenty years ago, and the unbanning of the ANC,
twenty-four years ago.
The full defeat of Imperialism has not yet occurred. What we can say is
that from early in the 20th Century the historical agenda was set by
the liberation movements, and that Imperialism represents the degeneration and
the decline of bourgeois class power, and not its heyday.
The great political change in the world in the last century was the
taking of sovereign independence by the formerly oppressed peoples of the
former colonies, affecting the great majority of the population of the planet
and opening the road of democracy for them.
This gigantic movement and huge change was achieved with the weapon of theory.
In 2014 with direct Imperialist armed aggression still taking place on
the continent of Africa it is, however, clear that the struggle continues.
In this connection we can note that Amilcar Cabral, in the speech to the Tricontinental that has always been known by
the title “The Weapon of Theory”,
said the following:
“It is often said that national liberation is based on
the right of every people to freely control its own destiny and that the
objective of this liberation is national independence. Although we do not
disagree with this vague and subjective way of expressing a complex reality, we
prefer to be objective, since for us the basis of national liberation, whatever
the formulas adopted on the level of international law, is the inalienable
right of every people to have its own history, and the objective of national
liberation is to regain this right usurped by imperialism, that is to say, to
free the process of development of the national productive forces.
“For this reason, in our opinion, any national
liberation movement which does not take into consideration this basis and this
objective may certainly struggle against imperialism, but will surely not be
struggling for national liberation.
“This means that, bearing in mind the essential
characteristics of the present world economy, as well as experiences already
gained in the field of anti-imperialist struggle, the principal aspect of
national liberation struggle is the struggle against neo-colonialism.”
Amilcar Cabral was a true vanguardist. He was both a great leader, and a
great intellectual.
The struggle against neo-colonialism continues.
·
The Weapon of Theory (PDF download)
·
A PDF file of the reading text is attached
·
To download the full African
Revolutionary Writers course in PDF files, please click here
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