[PEN-L:29480] Ulhas: Auto-didactism in the class

[Hari Kumar <hari.kumar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ULHAS wrote: Indian CPs have 1 million party members, but on Left-wing
mailing lists I
have been subjected to lectures on party building, stagism, Marx's
letter to
Zasulikh, Marx on India, Vasco de gama etc etc. ! :-)
REPLY.
Dear Ulhas, I am not sure what you are really stating here. Perhaps I am
incorrect but you may be implying a dissonance between the 'members' of
a party & the empty talk of their 'intellectuals'?
If so I might agree with you - especially when you are talking about the
revisionist CPI who embraced Nehruvian socialism, or in the case of many
of the CPM - 'municipal socialism' a la West Bengal.
Perhaps you are saying there is a lot of empty talk on e-lists? If so I
also agree.
However, if you are implying that such topics as abstruse & varied as
those you note, are not the province of 'workers' - I respectfully
disagree. Remember that there were/are huge numbers of auto-didacts
(they had to be since the doors of Academe were/are largely shut in
their faces)  in the working class from time immemorial who could spout
with the best of them. From at least the Chartists onwards (See
E.P.Thomson "Making of ..etc"; Dorothy Thomson:The Chartists" etc );
there have been worker-philosophers-poets-naturalscientists-astronomers
& what-not. I vividly recall being sternly lectured in a Calcutta slum
by an aged man on the atomic philosophy of the best of the Greek
philosophers.
Hari