Revolutionaries+use+the+technology+of+the+day

=Revolutionaries use the technology of the day.=


 * //E-mail is the cheapest, quickest means of communication ever//**


 * By Dominic Tweedie**

The working class is the most technologically advanced class in the history of humankind. This is because the machinery of the capitalist economy is not operated by the bourgeoisie, but by the workers on behalf of the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeois imagines otherwise. He sees himself as clever and the worker as poor and helpless. Bourgeois ideology foolishly tells us that the poor cannot afford the latest technology, and cannot understand it. It could not be more wrong.

We, the workers, understand technology better than anybody else. We are also not so stupid as to think that new technology is more expensive than the old. We know very well that new technology comes in precisely because it is cheaper.

It was the case when the universal penny post came in 1840, in England. The system used stamps for the first time, at a uniform rate for the whole country. We can be sure that when Engels followed by Marx settled in England a few years later they made full use of the economical new service and did not go back to whatever was used before.

So it is with e-mail. E-mail is affordable and convenient and it is becoming more so. Just as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels used the penny post to communicate with each other when one was in Manchester and the other in London, so we also must use the means of the day in our time.


 * E-mail can cost literally nothing.**

It does cost money to have a computer, a connection, and an Internet Service Provider (ISP) at home or at work. Or it can cost a lot less money to go to an Internet café for an hour.

But once you have the connection, the cost of each extra e-mail you send is nothing. The "marginal cost" is nothing. You can send to a hundred people as easily as to one, and for the same money.

To activists who remember the expense and the hard work involved in folding, stuffing envelopes, sticking on stamps and posting things, this looks like heaven. They find it difficult to understand why more comrades don't use it. Because of course you can only send e-mail to somebody who has an e-mail address.


 * How do you get one?**

Internet e-mail is the best and cheapest for most people. There was a problem with hotmail, yahoo, webmail, and other free Internet E-mail services, though. They used to fill up with e-mails and then "bounce back" any new ones that came in.

Now there is a solution to this, called Gmail, made by the Google search-engine company. Gmail has two gigabytes of storage on each account, so you are never likely to run out of space. Gmail has other advantages, too. In my opinion it is the first Internet e-mail service that competes with having your own in your computer, and it is free. So for the first time in many years of using e-mail I have gone over to Internet e-mail, using Gmail, which I can access anywhere. I send at least 200 e-mails a day and it only takes seconds.

There is always a catch. In this case the catch is that you cannot just go to the Google web site and sign up for Gmail (although you can get information about it at gmail.google.com/). For the time being, you have to have an "invitation". New users get 50 invitations to send to their friends. I still have a lot left. Send a message to **dominic.tweedie@gmail.com** and I will send you one, until they run out, that is.

As an SACP Branch Secretary I am using e-mail more and more to communicate with the members. I send BGM and BEC notices agendas and minutes, political education material, invitations to events and demonstrations, and clippings from the Internet. E-mail is bringing my branch to life. Any branch can use e-mail. All it takes is for the comrades to subscribe (preferably to Gmail).


 * Dominic Tweedie is Secretary and Political Education Convenor of SACP Johannesburg Central Branch.**