Marxist Study Group in Toowoomba - a bit of a report

["Alan Bradley" <abradley1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just in case anyone is interested:  here's a bit of a report on my local
Marxist crowd.

The group meets every Tuesday night at a local pub, starting somewhere
between 7.00 and 7.30 pm, and goes more or less until closing time, or we
all get bored, whichever happens first.  (In other words, it was on tonight,
which is why I writing about it!)

The atmosphere, as you might guess is fairly informal, and tends to get more
so as the evening wears on. : )

The meeting tonight was the smallest so far, because the local university is
on holidays, but was still lively and intense.  We were discussing a bunch
of excerpts from Volume I of Capital, which covered a lot of the most
important bits.

A couple of the most influential members of the group were amongst those
absent, which changed the dynamics quite a bit.

Anyway, one of the members of the group is quite a find:  an academic from
the Business faculty, who has both a strong background in bourgeois
economics *and* is a Marxist.  Not unsurprisingly, our sessions on Capital
have been going quite well, with someone who actually has a background in
the area, and can explain it and set it in context.

On the other hand, I'm very impressed with the DSP's educational programs:
the grounding in Marxism I got from them has been very useful.

Over the next few weeks we will be covering questions like the State,
Revolution and the Party.  After that, we will move onto more immediate
issues, like Imperialism, the National Question, the environment....

Making the change to practical activity will be a bit trickier.  The
question keeps coming up, but nobody is quite sure exactly where to begin.
We will have a contingent at May Day.  A couple of use might make it down to
the M1 action, but we won't be able to have an organised group.

The group is politically extremely diverse.  It has a rather high proportion
of students and academics (the latter are well behaved, though).  Getting it
to do anything (other than talk) will be difficult.  I suspect that only
some of the group would be up for it.  That's OK by me.

My dream, of course, is to start getting a bit of a proto-party together.
Being an individual leftist in Toowoomba (or anywhere else there isn't an
organised left) is simply demoralising and depoliticising.  Getting a group
together - even one that's a little politically sloppy - is far more useful.

Alan Bradley
abradley1@xxxxxxxxxxx