Duncan B.
The 13th Congress of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) recognised that members of the Communist Party and its supporters must study hard to improve their knowledge of Marxism-Leninism and its application to the Australian situation.
The newly-elected Central Committee of the Party was given the task of developing and implementing a Party-wide study programme. In support of this study programme, the Marxism Today pages of Vanguard will publish articles which will provide guidance to our readers in their studies and practice. We will be returning time and again to the fundamental questions of Marxism-Leninism – political economy, dialectics, the nature of imperialism, parliamentary and trade union politics, the state, and building the Communist Party in Australian circumstances.
We will draw on the writings of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Australia’s own Ted Hill. All of these giants of Marxism-Leninism involved themselves directly in revolutionary experience and conducted thorough investigations of the economic situation and class relationships in their own and other countries. It is this revolutionary experience and investigation which are an important source of the earth-shaking power of the theories of Marxism-Leninism. It is essential that the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism are re-inforced regularly, because of the continual distortions of Marxism by bourgeois “experts” and academics, and left and right opportunists in the revolutionary movement.
Working class history
We will also be looking at various aspects of Australian history and society from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. The Australian working class has a long, proud history of struggle, yet many Australians are ignorant of our working class history.
Australian society is a complex entity which cannot be properly understood unless we use Marxism-Leninisn to analyse the relationships between the different classes and groups. All aspects of a class society such as literature and art, education, the legal system have a class nature, which needs to be uncovered using Marxism-Leninism. We also need to understand the workings of key sectors of the Australian economy such as transport, mining, manufacturing and agriculture.
Everyone needs to study
Everyone, from people just becoming acquainted with Marxism-Leninism, to veterans of the revolutionary movement, needs to study Marxism-Leninism. As Mao Zedong said in his Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work, “Conditions are changing all the time, and to adapt one’s thinking to the new conditions, one must study. Even those who have a better grasp of Marxism and are comparatively firm in their proletarian stand have to go on studying, have to absorb what is new and study new problems.”
The Party-wide study of Marxism-Leninism will not be just for the purposes of an academic exercise. It is expected that there will be tangible results coming from the study programme such as investigation projects, articles for publication in Vanguard, Party leaflets and other initiatives that assist Party building.
Study: not easy, but very rewarding
We realise that some of our readers will find it difficult to study the classic works of Marxism-Leninism. It is worth hanging in there though! As Marx said in the Preface to the French edition of Capital, as encouragement to his readers, “there is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.”
Don’t be put off if the works you are studying seem difficult at first, but keep at it and come back a second or third time to any section which you have trouble understanding. Your perseverance will be rewarded! When the workers of Australia understand how the capitalist system operates, they will be better prepared to overthrow this rotten system based on the exploitation of the many by the few.
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