Reading+list+of+books+for+2007+CU+Programme

__Full-length books excerpted for the 2007 Communist University Programme__
These are full-length works from which chapters or short passages have been taken as readings for this year’s Communist University sessions. This is not to suggest that you must read these books, but only to show where they are available.

If you should choose to read any of them, you might consider using **The Buzan Organic Study Method**, which is the second half of our “conspectus” of Tony Buzan’s book “Use Your Head” – a book that is still in print and available from book shops in South Africa.


 * **__Title__** || **__Date__** || **__Author__** || __MS Word files__ || __HTML (browser)__ ||
 * //The Prince// || //1512// || //Machiavelli// || //[|CU Library]// || //[|Marxists Archive]// ||
 * //On War// || //1827// || //Clausewitz// || //[|CU Library]// || //[|Marxists Archive]// ||
 * **Class Struggles in France** || **1850** || **Marx** || **[|CU Library]** || **[|Marxists Archive]** ||
 * **18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte** || **1852** || **Marx** || **[|CU Library]** || **[|Marxists Archive]** ||
 * **Capital Volume 1** || **1867** || **Marx** || **[|CU Library]** || **[|Marxists Archive]** ||
 * **The Civil War in France** || **1871** || **Marx** || **[|CU Library]** || **[|Marxists Archive]** ||
 * **Reform or Revolution?** || **1900** || **Luxemburg** || **[|CU Library]** || **[|Marxists Archive]** ||
 * **What is to be Done?** || **1902** || **Lenin** || **[|CU Library]** || **[|Marxists Archive]** ||
 * **Two Tactics of Social Democracy** || **1905** || **Lenin** || **[|CU Library]** || **[|Marxists Archive]** ||
 * **The State and Revolution** || **1917** || **Lenin** || **[|CU Library]** || **[|Marxists Archive]** ||
 * //Neo-colonialism, Last Stage of Imperialism// || //1965// || //Nkrumah// || //In print// || //In print// ||
 * //Underdevelopment in Kenya// || //1975// || //Leys// || //In print// || //In print// ||

Click on the links in the table to select either downloadable MS-Word files or HTML.

In all your reading, you should avoid getting bogged down, or any kind of slowness. Read from back to front, flip the pages, look at the pictures (if any), go through the “Contents” (also from the back to the front) and the index. Read the summarising chapters first, whether they are at the beginning (as with Clausevitz, for example) or the end (as with Nkrumah and Leys). The aim is always to discover the “essence” of the book in the time available.


 * Marx, Luxemburg and Lenin**

The eight titles typed in bold above are all in some relation to one another, which is why they have together been chosen for study in this “Year of Revolution”.

Lenin used Marx’s three classic books on France in the writing of “The State and Revolution”, making the four together into an effective set as a study of dynamic political economy and revolutionary crisis. “**The State and Revolution**” is the keynote text of the year 2007.

Capital Volume 1 is basic to any course of revolutionary study.

“Reform or Revolution”, “What is to be Done, and “Two Tactics” were written in response to the appearance of reformism and what Lenin called “economism” (which is the same as workerism or anarcho-syndicalism), and to the demands of national-democratic or bourgeois revolution at the time. Luxemburg repudiates reformism decisively, while Lenin defines the necessity for the working-class political party, its strategy and its tactics.

The rest of the texts in the programme are shorter writings, used in their entirety. In all cases, the dialogue that is generated is the aim of the exercise, and not the learning of the texts as such. Ours is a **//social and collective learning methodology//**, and not a “qualification” process.