Support Mandella or the ANC? [Archive]

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Universal Struggle

6th June 2010, 20:37

I understand supporting the ANC during apharteid, as it would have been a disgrace not to, but why support them now?

The South Afrikan Government is a corrupt disgrace, which lets its citizens go on pogrom like massacres of zimbawbwean settler villages.

alot of Girls as young as 7 have already been raped at least once in some townships and the corrupt police never show up to deal with crime, so the people have turned into barbaric judge and juries, burning people alive for stealing food.

The ANC did away with Apartheid, blacks are no longer work modules, because, thereis no work for anyone, unemployment and drug abuse is through the roof.

Many young men commit crimes openly to get into polsmoor,where they get healthcare and food, they often end up in either, the 26s 27s or 28s gangs.

Why do we support a government that fucks the people over and whores it's natural resources off and leaves its people malnurished?

Red Conall

6th June 2010, 21:24

bricolage

6th June 2010, 22:20

To support the ANC led government, that has been responsible for selling out the promises and dreams of a post-apartheid South Africa and has led a society in which very little has changed since 1994 and in which power relations remain remarkably the same is inexcusable. The same applies to the South African Communist Party that have been a willing partner in this process and yet remain a party that many people on this site support.

Obs

6th June 2010, 22:30

Why do we support a government that fucks the people over and whores it's natural resources off and leaves its people malnurished?

We do?

Universal Struggle

6th June 2010, 22:36

alot of "Communists " do yeah....... which is disgusting

blake 3:17

7th June 2010, 20:27

At this point, you need NOT give a drop of support to the ANC. Mandela is worth respecting. Desmond Tutu deserves even more respect.

This article by Breyten Breytenbach on Mandela's 90th birthday doesn't point to a clear political alternative to the ANC. I think it is worth reading more than once. http://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/0082308

Proletarian Ultra

7th June 2010, 20:46

See, this is what people don't understand about national liberation and popular-democratic struggles. They deserve our full support while the revolution is on. They [cross-class national/democratic movements] deserve our full opposition once they have won. I'll post chapter and verse from Marx on this once I get home - it's one of his speeches to the Communist League.

Red Conall

7th June 2010, 22:01

See, this is what people don't understand about national liberation and popular-democratic struggles. They deserve our full support while the revolution is on. They deserve our full opposition once they have won.

Why should revolutionaries wait until after petit-bourgeois forces have "won" to expose or challenge them? And perhaps, by way of example, you would be kind enough to demonstrate how this principle is applied in the real-world class struggle and why such temporary capitulation is necessary.

Proletarian Ultra

7th June 2010, 23:29

Why should revolutionaries wait until after petit-bourgeois forces have "won" to expose or challenge them?

You'd rather apartheid stayed in place? What's with you Trots and hating brown people?

But anyways, national-liberation and popular-democratic revolutions may not address wage exploitation, but they can address primitive accumulation and remnant of feudalism. This is important.

And perhaps, by way of example, you would be kind enough to demonstrate how this principle is applied in the real-world class struggle and why such temporary capitulation is necessary.

South Africa, Rhodesia, the Angolan Civil War. If you think struggling alongisde the ANC, the ZANU-PF or the MPLA was "capitulation", I'm don't really even care to argue with you.

EDIT: Found it.

The relation of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything whereby they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests.

MARX and ENGELS, ADDRESS OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TO THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE (March 1850)
(http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/ACL50.html)

Crux

8th June 2010, 00:18

No, but unlike you we do not advocate capitulation either.
Your two-stage nonsense has, as is evident by the examples you take, always ended in total failure. The comrades in ANC struggled for ANC to adopt a marxist program, something you would oppose, of course since you believe "brown people" are only capable of "anti-feudal" revolution. What is it with you stalinists and hating brown people?

Proletarian Ultra

8th June 2010, 00:22

Crux

8th June 2010, 00:31

So, what would the correct Trot position have been on the Angolan civil war?
Not your two-stage nonsense, mr. latter day menshevik. Do I need to outline a program for every african state now? Well, look at what the pro-beijing and pro-moscow groups did and you will see pretty much what you shouldn't do. But since we are discussing south africa, well at least that's what we were doing before you tried to divert, ANC, while certainly having many good militants, lacked a marxist core. This made sure that the deal they made with the ex-apartheid regime was shite, not in the least in the economic sense, but for a petit-bourgeoisie force (or rather leadership) this can be easily adapted too, which kind of is case in point why no your "anti-feudal" idea does not work.

Nothing Human Is Alien

8th June 2010, 00:48

...[the] ANC, while certainly having many good militants, lacked a marxist core. So it was just a question of taken a mistaken position? Bad politics in other words?

Where do positions and politics come from? The air?

No, it was the class character of the ANC that caused it to act as it did. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

The relation of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything whereby they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests.Marx and Engels always advocated the independence of the working class as a key principle.

What they were saying here was that in certain times, in certain struggles the workers may find themselves pointing their guns in the same direction as the petty-bourgeoisie, but that it was important to maintain working class independence and be prepared to go forward and act against the petty-bourgeoisie the minute those struggles were won (as the petty-bourgeoisie would then try to consolidate its own gains and move against the workers).

The very next thing they said was:

"The democratic petty bourgeois, far from wanting to transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible. They therefore demand above all else a reduction in government spending through a restriction of the bureaucracy and the transference of the major tax burden into the large landowners and bourgeoisie. They further demand the removal of the pressure exerted by big capital on small capital through the establishment of public credit institutions and the passing of laws against usury, whereby it would be possible for themselves and the peasants to receive advances on favorable terms from the state instead of from capitalists; also, the introduction of bourgeois property relationships on land through the complete abolition of feudalism. In order to achieve all this they require a democratic form of government, either constitutional or republican, which would give them and their peasant allies the majority; they also require a democratic system of local government to give them direct control over municipal property and over a series of political offices at present in the hands of the bureaucrats.

"The rule of capital and its rapid accumulation is to be further counteracted, partly by a curtailment of the right of inheritance, and partly by the transference of as much employment as possible to the state. As far as the workers are concerned one thing, above all, is definite: they are to remain wage laborers as before. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable..."

Sound familiar?

scarletghoul

8th June 2010, 01:00

The CPSA was totally correct to side with the ANC during apartheid, obviously. However they seem to have done something wrong and let themselves become bourgeoisified as a party.. Either that or they mistakenly believe that apartheid remains the primary contradiction in SA.

I really do hope that one day soon the CPSA wakes up and realises there's a huge gaping need for a leftist opposition to capitalist South Africa. The ANC has let white colonialists keep their farms, has practically mourned the death of a neonazi leader, and lets the vast majority of Africans suffer in poverty.. It is completely liberal and the Communist Party should wake up and oppose them full force. It's a pretty big party so this would have a good effect..

Nothing Human Is Alien

8th June 2010, 01:15

Yeah, that's it. The SACP just has to wake up and realize it's been pursuing the wrong policies for decades. It's all been one big mistake. It has nothing to do with the class character of the party.

Barry Lyndon

8th June 2010, 01:28

Ultra lefts need to stfu, imho. When they dispatch an army to Africa to fight against imperialism, then I'll take them seriously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tNF0YkRQjM&feature=related
Cuban intervention on the side of the MPLA and the ANC was one of the most inspiring examples of internationalism of the 20th century. The reason that South Africa remains a hideous neo-liberal hellhole 20 years after the fall of apartheid is only in part due to the opportunism of the bourgeois leadership. It is also due to the fact that the Soviet Union had collapsed by the early 1990's and therefore there was no major power that South Africa could turn to that would support an non-privatized economy. It's not a coincidence that the Marxist Leninist regimes in Mozambique and Angola also collapsed around the same time-already devastated by over a decade of US and Afrikaner-backed wars, they could not survive the loss of their Soviet ally.

Proletarian Ultra

8th June 2010, 01:47

What they were saying here was that in certain times, in certain struggles the workers may find themselves pointing their guns in the same direction as the petty-bourgeoisie, but that it was important to maintain working class independence and be prepared to go forward and act against the petty-bourgeoisie the minute those struggles were won (as the petty-bourgeoisie would then try to consolidate its own gains and move against the workers).

Yes. As I said regarding "national liberation and popular-democratic struggles. They deserve our full support while the revolution is on. They [i.e. cross-class national/democratic movements] deserve our full opposition once they have won."

Yeah, that's it. The SACP just has to wake up and realize it's been pursuing the wrong policies for decades. It's all been one big mistake. It has nothing to do with the class character of the party.

It may well, but it also has something to do with international capital threatening a creditors' strike if the ANC went through with their nationalization program. It's funny that some peole here are putting down both South Africa and Zimbabwe. SA gave up nationalization to avoid economic warfare. Zimbabwe pursued land reform and brought economic warfare upon itself. Do you see the catch-22?

I brought up Angola because you don't need to come up with a program. The country was in constant civil war from the 70's til a few years ago; enacting a program was out of the question. There's only two choices: 1) fight against MPLA and the Cubans, 2) fight against UNITA and the South Africans. Saying 'both' is not only a cop-out, but straightforward support of the Apartheid side.

And if you respond that there's not a dime's worth of difference between MPLA and UNITA...you're either unspeakably callous, or you know very little about national liberation struggles in Africa, and maybe should refrain from comment.

No, but unlike you we do not advocate capitulation either.
Your two-stage nonsense has, as is evident by the examples you take, always ended in total failure.

Do you even know what kind of economic aggression African countries have been facing since independence? There's a reason every single African country is in bad shape, and it's not because all of them had bad political lines.

The comrades in ANC struggled for ANC to adopt a marxist program, something you would oppose,

Nice try. ;-)

of course since you believe "brown people" are only capable of "anti-feudal" revolution.

Anti-feudal is in scare quotes, like overthrowing feudalism is worthless. You also skipped over the part about primitive accumulation. Do you know what that is?

Nothing Human Is Alien

8th June 2010, 01:58

Yes. As I said regarding "national liberation and popular-democratic struggles. They deserve our full support while the revolution is on. They [i.e. cross-class national/democratic movements] deserve our full opposition once they have won."Not quite the same thing.

You're saying the working class should abandon its independence and enter into multi-class popular fronts under the leadership of the petty-bourgeoisie or bourgeoisie until some point in the future, when they will then break from and oppose the front.

Marx and Engels were saying that sometimes the working class may point its guns at the same enemies as the petty-bourgeoisie, but that it must maintain its class independence throughout and be prepared to turn its guns on the petty-bourgeoisie when necessary.

How about Lenin?

"...the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form..."

It may well, but it also has something to do with international capital threatening a creditors' strike if the ANC went through with their nationalization program. It's funny that some peole here are putting down both South Africa and Zimbabwe. SA gave up nationalization to avoid economic warfare. Zimbabwe pursued land reform and brought economic warfare upon itself. Do you see the catch-22?Only if you limit yourself to the choices of private ownership of the means of production or nationalization; not if you call for proletarian revolution to eliminate property in the means of production.

Proletarian Ultra

8th June 2010, 02:10

Marx and Engels were saying that sometimes the working class may point its guns at the same enemies as the petty-bourgeoisie, but that it must maintain its class independence throughout and be prepared to turn its guns on the petty-bourgeoisie when necessary.

I'm happy to concede your point. Class independence is necessary. At the same time, so long as the working class is pointing its guns in the same direction as the petty-bourgeoisie, it's not pointing its guns at the petty-bourgeoisie.

It may well, but it also has something to do with international capital threatening a creditors' strike if the ANC went through with their nationalization program. It's funny that some peole here are putting down both South Africa and Zimbabwe. SA gave up nationalization to avoid economic warfare. Zimbabwe pursued land reform and brought economic warfare upon itself. Do you see the catch-22?

Only if you limit yourself to the choices of private ownership of the means of production or nationalization; not if you call for proletarian revolution to eliminate property in the means of production.

???

How would that avoid sanctions and a creditors' strike? Proletarian revolution doesn't make you immune to fiscal and trade collapse.

Nothing Human Is Alien

8th June 2010, 02:15

How would that avoid sanctions and a creditors' strike? Proletarian revolution doesn't make you immune to fiscal and trade collapse. The proletarian revolution is international or it is nothing.

Proletarian Ultra

8th June 2010, 02:30

The proletarian revolution is international or it is nothing.

Oh fuck, it's one of those threads again.

Nothing Human Is Alien

8th June 2010, 02:45

It's a basic fact my friend. Both of the namesakes of the organization you sympathize with said it long before I came along.

"The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

"The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

"National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

"The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

"In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end." - Marx

"It was clear to us that without aid from the international world revolution, a victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible. Even prior to the revolution, as well as after it, we thought that the revolution would also occur either immediately or at least very soon in other backward countries and in the more highly developed capitalist countries, otherwise we would perish. Notwithstanding this conviction, we did our utmost to preserve the Soviet system under any circumstances and at all costs, because we know that we are working not only for ourselves but also for the international revolution." - Lenin

RadioRaheem84

8th June 2010, 04:44

http://monthlyreview.org/100601bond.php

In the meantime, long-standing ANC promises to nationalize the banks, mines, and monopoly capital were dropped; Mandela agreed to repay $25 billion of inherited apartheid-era foreign debt; the central bank was granted formal independence in an interim constitution; South Africa joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade on disadvantageous terms; and the International Monetary Fund provided a $850 million loan with standard Washington Consensus conditionality. Soon after the first free and fair democratic elections, won overwhelmingly by the ANC, privatization began in earnest; financial liberalization took the form of relaxed exchange controls; and interest rates were raised to a record high (often double-digit after inflation is discounted). By 1996, a neoliberal macroeconomic policy was formally adopted. From 1998 to 2001, the ANC government granted permission to South Africa’s biggest companies—Anglo American, DeBeers, Old Mutual, South African Breweries, Didata, Investec—to move their financial headquarters and primary stock market listings to London.

With extremely weak private sector fixed capital investment, the basis for sustaining the subsequent property and financial bubble came from two sources: residual exchange controls, which limit institutional investors to 15 percent offshore investments and which still restrict offshore wealth transfers by local elites; and a false sense of confidence in orthodox macroeconomic management, exemplified by a budget surplus in 2006-08 and the country’s highest-ever real interest rates. The oft-repeated notion is that, under Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, who served from 1996 to 2008, “macroeconomic stability” was achieved. In reality, though, no other emerging market suffered as many currency crashes (15 percent in nominal terms) over the last two decades: in 1996, 1998, 2001, 2006, and 2008. By early 2009, The Economist ranked South Africa as the most “risky” of seventeen emerging markets, in large part because corporate/white power had generated an enormous balance of payment deficits, thanks to outflows of profits/dividends to London/Melbourne financial headquarters.6 (http://monthlyreview.org/100601bond.php#en63)

Crux

8th June 2010, 05:09

Do you even know what kind of economic aggression African countries have been facing since independence? There's a reason every single African country is in bad shape, and it's not because all of them had bad political lines.

Nice try. ;-)

Anti-feudal is in scare quotes, like overthrowing feudalism is worthless. You also skipped over the part about primitive accumulation. Do you know what that is?
First, you can't possibly describe Zimbabwe as a success story. The so called nationalizations have not come to the benefit of the people but only a small clique of the Zanu-PF bureaucracy. Granted it's not just because they were relying on a flawed theory, but from that flows mistakes in practice. Permanent revolution applies very well to the anti-colonial struggle.

I am not "trying", comrade, that is the result of your political line of two-stage revolution, trying to separate the struggle for socialism from the anti-colonial struggle.

I know my Lenin. That is also why I disagree with you, we must fight for worker's power not "anti-feudalism", this struggle is not necessarily straightforward or simple, but the fall-pit of two-stage theory is one hard to climb up from.

Barry Lyndon: I can't speak for NHIA, but that is a strawman, comrade.

Saorsa

8th June 2010, 05:10

Zimbabwe pursued land reform and brought economic warfare upon itself.

Come on. Mugabe did nothing about land reform for decades, and only began the seizure of white farms in response to the rise of the MDC, ZANU-PF's elections defeats and the need for him to reenergise his increasingly disillusioned supporters. I wrote this in 2008 after the last elections there, and I think my analysis was correct:

Since the initial elections, ZANU-PF has unleashed a wave of violence against MDC members, with several being killed. Interestingly, government-approved farm occupations have begun again in some areas. This also happened after the 2000 elections, and clearly shows that the farm occupations are not part of any attempt by Mugabe to radically transform Zimbabwe’s economy and transfer land and wealth to the poor, but is rather just an attempt to distract people from his election defeats.

The proletarian revolution is international or it is nothing.

Proletarian revolutionaries are realistic about what can be achieved, or they will achieve nothing.

The entire world is not going to have a revolution all at once. History shows quite clearly that revolutions succeed, even in the most turbulent periods like that which followed WW1, only in small numbers of countries at best.

We have to figure out a way to preserve the gains of the revolution in one country pending the spread of the revolution elsewhere. Various theories have been put forward about how to do this, from multi-party competition to absolute decentralization. But throwing around meaningless rhetoric about how we need international socialism doesn't help anyone.

There's more to revolutionary politics and revolutionary analysis than throwing around Marx quotes and saying TEH REVOLUTION MUZT SPRED!!!

Crux

8th June 2010, 05:42

http://www.socialistsouthafrica.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73&Itemid=1

Towards a genuine left alternative? (http://www.socialistsouthafrica.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=1)

Proletarian Ultra

8th June 2010, 06:15

First, you can't possibly describe Zimbabwe as a success story. The so called nationalizations have not come to the benefit of the people but only a small clique of the Zanu-PF bureaucracy.

It's not, and that's not the point. The point is what happens to African countries when they try to mess about with private property. (The land seizures in fact benefited a fairly large number of ZANU-PF veterans of the bush war.) I could also cite Congo-Brazzaville for what happens when they mess about with mining concessions. Just going around shouting Workers' Power is not going to make this go away.

But help me to understand what you mean by 'two-stage'. Take Angola. I think the correct line would have been to fight alongside the MPLA against Savimbi. Are you saying the correct line would have been to open up a third front and fight against both, even if that might mean a Savimbi victory?

Come on. Mugabe did nothing about land reform for decades, and only began the seizure of white farms in response to the rise of the MDC, ZANU-PF's elections defeats and the need for him to reenergise his increasingly disillusioned supporters. I wrote this in 2008 after the last elections there, and I think my analysis was correct:

Since the initial elections, ZANU-PF has unleashed a wave of violence against MDC members, with several being killed. Interestingly, government-approved farm occupations have begun again in some areas. This also happened after the 2000 elections, and clearly shows that the farm occupations are not part of any attempt by Mugabe to radically transform Zimbabwe’s economy and transfer land and wealth to the poor, but is rather just an attempt to distract people from his election defeats.

Well yes. Mugabe did bugger-all until 1999 or so; he'd been Africa's #1 liberal darling for years. Then Britain pulled out of the Lancaster House Agreement, MDC started breathing down his neck, and the War Veterans' Association started getting restless. The point isn't that Mugabe is a great socialist or that Zimbabwe's land reform program is a model for the ages; the point is the International Community went after Zimbabwe with hammer and tongs for even attempting it.

Now, how do you think they'd react if Mandela started nationalizing DeBeers and Anglo-American? I think he should have, but you have to understand the real constraints South Africa was under.

Towards a genuine left alternative? (http://www.socialistsouthafrica.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=1)

This is very encouraging. Thanks for the link. And on the Trotsky extract...

Thus there is established between the democratic revolution and the socialist reconstruction of society a permanent state of revolutionary development.

The second aspect of the ‘permanent’ theory has to do with the socialist revolution as such. For an indefinitely long time and in constant internal struggle, all social relations undergo transformation. Society keeps on changing its skin. Each stage of transformation stems directly from the preceding. This process necessarily retains a political character, that is, it develops through collisions between various groups in the society which is in transformation. Outbreaks of civil war and foreign wars alternate with periods of ‘peaceful’ reform. Revolutions in economy, technique, science, the family, morals and everyday life develop in complex reciprocal action and do not allow society to achieve equilibrium. Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such.

This would be a pretty apt description of post-colonial Africa.

Vulgar ‘Marxism’ has worked out a pattern of historical development according to which every bourgeois society sooner or later secures a democratic regime, after which the proletariat, under conditions of democracy, is gradually organized and educated for socialism. The actual transition to socialism has been variously conceived [...]. But both [the avowed reformists and the formal revolutionists] considered democracy and socialism, for all peoples and countries, as two stages in the development of society which are not only entirely distinct but also separated by great distances of time from each other.

Dude! White rule in Rhodesia only ended in the 80's, apartheid in the 90's, the Angolan civil war in 2002, and the Congo Wars are still going on. I would not call this gradual or a great distance of time.

bricolage

8th June 2010, 11:41

But anyways, national-liberation and popular-democratic revolutions may not address wage exploitation, but they can address primitive accumulation and remnant of feudalism. This is important.

Primitive accumulation (accumulation by dispossession still takes place in South Africa and across the whole African continent.
And there was no feudalism under apartheid.

The ANC has let white colonialists keep their farms, has practically mourned the death of a neonazi leader, and lets the vast majority of Africans suffer in poverty. The SACP has done all this too. I'm sick of this 'let's reclaim the SACP' rhetoric just because they have Communist in the name, to all intents and purposes it's like those that ask to reclaim the Labour Party here.

SA gave up nationalization to avoid economic warfare. Zimbabwe pursued land reform and brought economic warfare upon itself. Do you see the catch-22?

Even though the ANC has actually redistributed less land than what was agreed with the World Bank. When you are less redistributive than the World Bank something has to be wrong.

fredbergen

8th June 2010, 13:26

The South African working class is the powerhouse of the whole African continent. But it is held in check by the bourgeois tripartite alliance ANC-SACP-COSATU. The task of revolutionists is to break that alliance and forge a genuine Trotskyist party, to fight for a black-centered workers government!

For a good starting point to understanding the issue I suggest reading The Internationalist no. 3 (http://www.internationalist.org/int3toc.html), "Africa: For Permanent Revolution"

http://www.internationalist.org/Internationalist3.jpg

manic expression

8th June 2010, 13:41

There's no need to "reclaim" the SACP at all. It's a genuine communist party. They've simply been responding to the fragile and unique situation of South Africa since the early 90's, and thus some of their positions go against the moral purity of a few posters here. Sure, we don't have to think the SACP is perfect, but it's been a force for progress for its entire existence, under the most difficult of circumstances.

Here's an assignment for the anti-SACP posters here: explain, in detail, a better course of action for the SACP starting in 1994. Then we'll be able to discuss the real nature of the matter at hand.

fredbergen

8th June 2010, 13:55

Genuine communists do not support capitalist governments, not even capitalist governments in "fragile and unique situations."

Genuine communists oppose all capitalist governments and parties and fight for a workers government.

But carry on with the diplomatic "internationalism," Manic. You won't get a revolution, but you might get a medal and a free lunch.

manic expression

8th June 2010, 13:58

That's precisely what Lenin did with the Turkish Republic: support a capitalist government in a fragile and unique situation. I agree it wasn't ideal, but that's not the issue and it rarely is.

But I'll ask you again, what should the SACP have done beginning in 1994? Please be specific.

Proletarian Ultra

8th June 2010, 14:27

But I'll ask you again, what should the SACP have done beginning in 1994? Please be specific.

Not going into opposition during the Mbeki administration has cost SACP a ton of credibility.

The South African working class is the powerhouse of the whole African continent. But it is held in check by the bourgeois tripartite alliance ANC-SACP-COSATU. The task of revolutionists is to break that alliance and forge a genuine Trotskyist party, to fight for a black-centered workers government!

For a good starting point to understanding the issue I suggest reading The Internationalist no. 3 (http://www.internationalist.org/int3toc.html), "Africa: For Permanent Revolution"

Well this is a real Trotskyist effort to engage the situation rather than just shouting slogans. Thanks, Fred.

fredbergen

8th June 2010, 14:35

What should the SACP do is the wrong question. It was not a revolutionary party in 1994 and is not one now. You might as well ask "what should the PSL do"? I say split. What needs to be done in South Africa is forge a revolutionary Trotskyist party, that fights to break the powerful SA working class away from the capitalist tripartite alliance. Should the SACP do this? Should the Pope be an atheist? It can't. It is the glue that holds this alliance of class betrayal, an alliance for capitalism, together.

bricolage

8th June 2010, 14:45

I'm not going to tell the SACP what it should have done, I'm not in the habit of advising bourgeois parties of a course of action.
I am going to condemn everything they have done, as I did here; http://www.revleft.com/vb/sacp-speaks-t134794/index.html
... and never got a real reply to justifying their actions.

and thus some of their positions go against the moral purity of a few posters here.

Yes, like neoliberalism and being part of a bourgeois state.

Like I said before, since 1994 there has been a plethora of autonomous strikes at capital in South Africa. In each one the SACP has been on the side of the state in crushing them. At the risk of just repeating everything I did in that previous thread, I ask the same question I did there.

5iAIM02kv0g

manic expression

8th June 2010, 15:00

Not going into opposition during the Mbeki administration has cost SACP a ton of credibility.
True.

What should the SACP do is the wrong question. It was not a revolutionary party in 1994 and is not one now.
Of course it's a valid question. Let's say, purely for the sake of argument, that you, fredbergen, have complete control over the SACP in 1994. What would you have the party do? What would be the correct course of action? Remember, be specific.

Yes, like neoliberalism and being part of a bourgeois state.
You act as if the Great U-Turn was championed by the SACP. It wasn't. It came from the ANC, and the SACP stood by them because they weren't entirely numb to the political and social conditions of the day. Like I said, too many here would put moral purity above progress for the workers of South Africa, and far too many forget that the path to working-class revolution is rarely a straight one.

Like I said before, since 1994 there has been a plethora of autonomous strikes at capital in South Africa. In each one the SACP has been on the side of the state in crushing them. At the risk of just repeating everything I did in that previous thread, I ask the same question I did there.And I will give you the same response I did there, that the SACP is doing what it can given the realities of South Africa.

Perhaps if the SACP threw firebombs at banks, they would be more pure to some. Is that what you encourage? I have no idea, because you're unwilling to provide a single inch of an alternative course of action. Like the old working-class saying goes: "if you can't do it better, shut up". I'm eager to hear what you think is the better platform starting from 1994.

fredbergen

8th June 2010, 15:23

Let's say, purely for the sake of argument, that you, fredbergen, have complete control over the SACP in 1994. What would you have the party do? What would be the correct course of action? Remember, be specific.

This only proves that the PSL has taught you a Stalinist, bureaucratic conception of the party, besides one that is very cynical. A party is a social organism. It is made up of members and cadres who, although some might be won to a revolutionary perspective, are committed to a specific political viewpoint. Its whole history has conditioned it to serve a particular political role, propping up racist post-apartheid capitalism. You might as well ask how I would make a proletarian revolution if I was the CEO of Microsoft.

The SACP was organized to support the Menshevik/Stalinist "democratic," "national" capitalism now, and socialism later (when "the political and social conditions of the day" allow, of course). That's what it does. I've already stated the necessary starting point for my program: break with the tripartite alliance, forge a revolutionary workers party that fights for a black-centered workers government. This is not something that the SACP or its cheerleaders can do. But the workers of South Africa will! And when they do they won't thank you for your worthless emptyheaded diplomatic "solidarity."

An aside: in periods of heightened class struggle, when the capitalist order is being torn apart by its vicious internal contradictions, what do revolutionists do?

Do then rush to stabilize the "progressive" bourgeoisie until "the political and social conditions of the day" cool off?

Or do they strike while the iron is hot and intervene in these crises to organize the workers to take power?

The Mensheviks had one answer, the Bolsheviks had another. Which side are you on?

manic expression

8th June 2010, 15:45

This only proves that the PSL has taught you a Stalinist, bureaucratic conception of the party, besides one that is very cynical. A party is a social organism. It is made up of members and cadres who, although some might be won to a revolutionary perspective, are committed to a specific political viewpoint. Its whole history has conditioned it to serve a particular political role, propping up racist post-apartheid capitalism. You might as well ask how I would make a proletarian revolution if I was the CEO of Microsoft.
So you have no alternative course of action. Noted.

If parties reflect the background of their membership, then why don't you discuss exactly that when it comes to the SACP? I see no talk of the SACP's cadre, simply your belief that they are a "Stalinist/Menshevik/capitalist/Microsoft" party. Simply put, you're not even meeting your own criteria for judging them.

An aside: in periods of heightened class struggle, when the capitalist order is being torn apart by its vicious internal contradictions, what do revolutionists do?
Wrong comparison. In 1994, South Africa was in a period of national liberation. A fascist state was teetering on collapse. You say "strike while the iron is hot", but you know not what iron you speak of, because the iron was apartheid, and it was broken by the actions of the SACP and their allies. You seem to dismiss this. Further, revolutionaries in South Africa knew that to oppose the ANC outright after apartheid would not only be politically idiotic, not only a severe threat to multinational unity but also short-sighted opportunism that could have potentially undone all the progress made by the defeat of apartheid. I'm not sure why this is so hard for you to bear in mind.

The Mensheviks had one answer, the Bolsheviks had another. Which side are you on?
Your logic clearly goes against policies put in place by Lenin. I've pointed this out before. That should tell us what side you're on.

fredbergen

8th June 2010, 16:15

Red Conall

8th June 2010, 16:50

I presume the supporters of the ANC & SACP here must also, following their own logic, support "Provisional" Sinn Féin, its participation in a dual-sectarian administration and complete and utter capitulation to imperialism? Their "victory" was as hollow as that of the ANC & SACP.

Charles Xavier

8th June 2010, 16:54

The SACP is doing what it can in the situation its in. It has been instrumental in getting Mbeki kicked out. Unfortunately the situation is not ripe for revolution. Instead of what the SACP is doing bad someone should explain, what should the SACP be doing differently? The a lot of the bourgeoisie elements in the ANC have left when Mbeki was thrown out. Not all of course, but I don't get this criticism of the SACP as a bourgeoisie party. its not, its a genuine communist party and like all revolutionary organizations is capable of making mistakes.

Barry Lyndon

8th June 2010, 16:55

Barry Lyndon

8th June 2010, 16:58

Not all of course, but I don't get this criticism of the SACP as a bourgeoisie party. its not, its a genuine communist party and like all revolutionary organizations is capable of making mistakes.

What do you mean? Lenin and Trotsky and the Bolshevik Party never made mistakes......:rolleyes:

Charles Xavier

8th June 2010, 17:01

In his closing address to the ANC’s critical
1969 Morogoro Conference, ANC
President, OR Tambo said to a standing
ovation: “wage a relentless war
against disrupters and defend the ANC…Be
vigilant, comrades… Beware of the wedgedriver,
the man who creeps from ear to ear,
carrying a bag full of wedges, driving them
in between you and the next man, between
a group and another, a man who goes round
creating splits and divisions. Beware of the
wedge-driver, comrades. Watch his poisonous
tongue.”
Six years later, the ANC’s NEC issued
the following statement on the expulsion
of the so-called “Gang of 8”: “The mature
silence of the organisation in public about
the activities of the clique apparently made
them shout their slanders louder and louder,
and publish and distribute documents
which challenge the very basis of the policies
and decisions of our organisation…
Let it be made abundantly clear that the
policies of racialism and anti-communism
have been and still are diametrically opposed
to the traditions and practices of the
African National Congress.” (Expulsion of
a Conspiratorial Clique, statement by
the NEC of the ANC, Morogoro, December
1975).
Today, two very contradictory political
realities are at play within our ANC-led
tripartite alliance. On the one hand, the
commercial media is having a field-day,
portraying “deepening” crises within
the Alliance, and reporting on a steady
stream of personalised attacks on SACP,
COSATU and selected ANC leaders emanating
from within our movement. On
the other hand, it is an Alliance that over
the last two-and-a-half years has actually
begun to consolidate a considerable policy
and programmatic convergence – for
the first time in over a decade.
So what’s going on?
The beginning of any wisdom on this
matter lies in recognising the connection
between these two contradictory
realities. There are elements within our
movement who are threatened by the
deepening Alliance policy and programmatic
convergence underway since the
ANC’s 52nd National Conference in Polokwane
in December 2007. These elements
are doing everything they can to disrupt
the convergence process. They play a disruptive
role in meetings. They bombard
the media with demagogic attacks on all
and sundry, hoping to distract the nation’s
attention away from the key strategic
priorities that we agree must occupy
our lives, ²⁴⁄.
EDITORIAL NOTES
Defend the unity of the Alliance!
Defend our shared programme!
Congress must answer the questions thrown up by the global
economic crisis, by the state of SA 15 years into democracy,
and by developments in our democratic movement
AFRICAN COMMUNIST | April 2010
2
So why do they fear an Alliance that is
programmatically unified?
These are elements that have always
seen the 1994 democratic breakthrough
as an opportunity to advance not just
the national democratic revolution, but
also their own narrow self-enrichment
interests. They have little interest in organising
and mobilising our mass base
around our key priorities of jobs, healthcare,
education, rural development, and
fighting crime and corruption. Their only
real concern for organisational matters
within our movement is to secure positions
for themselves and their clique. It
is no accident that in their mouths any
political question quickly descends into a
promise or a threat about some relatively
distant elective ANC conference. They
are obsessed with electoral lists and not
the issues confronting millions of working
class and poor South Africans.
A new developmental growth path
Despite their disruptive actions, across
the Alliance and in government itself we
have successfully built a major consensus.
We have agreed upon on our five strategic
priorities. We have agreed that to address
these we need to place South Africa
on to a new developmental growth path.
Before the recession struck SA, we had 17
years of growth, touching 5% towards the
end. But after 17 years, the unemployment
rate (even narrowly defined) still
stood at crisis levels above 23%. Despite
a massive redistributive programme of
social grants and other measures, after
17 years the levels of racialised income
inequality has risen!
This was the context in which President
Jacob Zuma’s state of national address to
parliament in February this year called for
us to place SA onto a new, developmental
growth path. In his budget speech, Finance
Minister, Pravin Gordhan, evoked
the same central challenge.
But how do we get onto a new growth
path? A key (but not the only) pillar of
a new growth path is a state-led industrial
policy programme. Also in February,
Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies
published the Industrial Policy Action
Programme. Minister of Economic Development,
Ebrahim Patel, has also begun
to provide preliminary outlines of a new
growth path proposal. Government has
stressed the importance of continuous
monitoring and evaluation based on clear
strategic outcomes and linked outputs.
All of these are very important steps
along the way to consolidating the Alliance
policy consensus, not just in theory,
but in practice. This is not to say that
there are not many points of discussion
and outstanding debate – how do we
align our macro-policy with our industrial
policy, for instance? But such debates
should not be muddled up with a very
different challenge.
This different challenge is precisely
dealing with the disrupters, the wedgedrivers,
those who have no interest
whatsoever in having any serious policy
discussion. They do not want to see the
consolidation of policy consensus and
an active programme to implement our
policies.
Again, we need to ask: Why?
The answer is simple. Any serious
effort to place our country on to a new
developmental growth path will have to
expose and tackle the huge siphoning
off of public resources through all kinds
of tender-preneuring, political bullying,
rent-seeking and patronage distribution.
This is what they fear, and this is
why they try to create a permanent state
AFRICAN COMMUNIST | April 2010
3
of tension and recrimination, hoping to
distract us from a unified approach to
dealing decisively with the multi-billions
rand diversion of public resources into
private pockets.
How should the SACP react to these
challenges?
Precisely because the SACP has uncompromisingly
stood up against these tendencies
we have become a prime target.
In particular there is a factionalist campaign
against the SACP’s supposed attempt
to “control the ANC”. There is
nothing surprising about this. Back in
1976, the SACP central committee issued
a statement on the activities of the “Gang
of 8”, who had recently been expelled
from the ANC:
“The issues on which they have chosen
to attack the liberation movement are as old
as the struggle itself. The slander that the
ANC is run by the Communist Party is not
something new; it has always been spread
by the racists and those who act as their
agents. And it has always been designed to
weaken the people’s struggle. As early as the
1920s, liberals like Ballinger helped destroy
the ICU by raising the banner of anti-Communism,
and spreading scare stories about
‘Communist take-overs’. In the late 50s, the
break-away PAC group also used the white
liberal parrot-cry that ‘the Communists
were running the ANC’ in an attempt to destroy
it.”
So what do we do?
In the first place, let us not descend to
the level of vulgar insult-trading.
In the second place, let us ensure that
we play a leading role in defending the
unity and integrity of the Alliance and of
the ANC itself. This means that our own
interventions should never be sectarian or
personalised. Let us be firmly focused on
the foundation principles of the ANC and
its alliance, as enshrined in our respective
constitutions and policy documents.
Let us remind ourselves that the ANC’s
own constitution is very clear that:
“The following conduct by a member
or public representative shall constitute
misconduct in respect of which disciplinary
proceedings may be invoked and instituted
against him or her:
(…)
“Behaviour which brings the organisation
into disrepute or which manifests a flagrant
violation of the moral integrity expected
of members and public representatives or
conduct unbecoming that of a member or
public representative.
“Sowing racism, sexism, tribal chauvinism,
religious and political intolerance, regionalism
or any form of discrimination.
“Abuse of elected or employed office in
the organisation or in the State to obtain
any direct or indirect undue advantage from
members or others
“Behaving in such a way as to provoke
serious divisions or a break-down of unity in
the organisation.
“Undermining the respect for or impeding
the functioning of the structures of the
organisation.”
Let us ensure that we all uphold our
respective constitutional and disciplinary
codes. Failure to do this costs each
of enormously in terms of the prestige
and moral standing of our movement.
Finally, as the SACP, we need to ensure
that all points of difference and debate
within our Alliance are not conflated.
Many ANC members are not communists.
To be non-communist is not to be
anti-communist. Similarly, constructive
criticism and engagement with the SACP
is also not anti-communist. We need to
appreciate and respect this important
difference. ��

Charles Xavier

8th June 2010, 17:02

The worst thing the SACP can do right now is split the ANC.

Proletarian Ultra

8th June 2010, 17:35

Nothing Human Is Alien

8th June 2010, 18:03

There's no need to "reclaim" the SACP at all. It's a genuine communist party.

There you go folks. Manic just told you what "genuine communist parties" are all about: assisting in administering a capitalist state for 16 years, and according to the dictates of international finance capital to boot. Be sure to support his party now!

bricolage

8th June 2010, 19:57

Like I said, too many here would put moral purity above progress for the workers of South Africa

I don't really think there has been much progress for workers since 1994. Land ownership, living conditions, wages, inequality, spatial segregation, access to housing etc has remained pretty much the same and most workers have seen few benefits.
Like has been said, apartheid never really ended.

and far too many forget that the path to working-class revolution is rarely a straight one.Agreed, but there are some lines you do not cross and these include participation in the running of a bourgeois state and support for structural adjustment.

Perhaps if the SACP threw firebombs at banks, they would be more pure to some. Is that what you encourage?Not at all.

I have no idea, because you're unwilling to provide a single inch of an alternative course of action.For starters I think groups like Abahlali baseMjondolo are much more worthy of support than bourgeois parties like the SACP.
And of course then there is the same course of action that we can apply anywhere, strikes, occupations, struggle.

bricolage

8th June 2010, 20:00

Not all of course, but I don't get this criticism of the SACP as a bourgeoisie party. its not, its a genuine communist party and like all revolutionary organizations is capable of making mistakes.

In what ways is it a 'genuine communist party'?
It seems you just have to stick communist in your name and half the people will support you.

manic expression

8th June 2010, 20:55

Apartheid was not "broken." The white Apartheid rulers made a deal with the ANC, and together they now rule over the oppressed black workers and masses of South Africa. The white capitalist ruling class was convinced that the ANC could be a reliable partner in government, and made a deal. The ANC and SACP, in return, called off the mass struggle and allowed the bloody criminals of the Apartheid regime to be rehabilitated through "truth and reconciliation." The Trotskyists, then organized in the international Spartacist tendency, warned that the ANC would do this and gave no support to this capitalist party.
It's hard to discuss this with someone who doesn't understand the matter at all. Are you seriously suggesting that nothing in South Africa changed since the early 90's? Is that really your argument? It appears that is the basis of your claims, that no progress has been made, which is flatly absurd. Yes, as we all know, the SADF is still occupying Angola and Namibia and waging total war against Black African civilian populations in the townships...the bantustans are stilla round and most of the country can't vote. :rolleyes: It's time for you to come to grips with history, because you're clueless as it is.

Very briefly: do you believe that destroying apartheid was a good thing for the workers of South Africa or not? As always, try to be specific, and do try to answer this question, as you've refused to do anything of the sort before.

This is why we can't begin an honest study of what is to be done in South Africa by asking demagogically "what should the SACP have done in 1994." By 1994 the SACP had already supported the capitalist ANC, and has propped it up since then. But Manic has always been, above all else, a demagogue. What should the SACP do? Split. Militants in the SACP who want to fight for socialism, not capitalism, will need to break out of this pro-capitalist "Communist" party and work toward cohering the nucleus of a genuine Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party.
:lol: Yes, splitting is always the answer. Always. It's almost cliche how out-of-touch your reasoning is. First you lecture South African workers about how they should have never supported the end of apartheid, then you refuse to provide any alternative course of action, and now your solitary idea is a split within the SACP.

So, to sum it up, you have nothing to offer the workers of South Africa except for sectarianism and self-marginalizing ultra-leftism. I thought as much.

As for the rest... the workers can't fight for their own interests because the government is "fascist" .... the workers can't fight for their own interests because we are in a "period of national liberation" (from what colonial power? The minority white bourgeoisie in South Africa? They're still there, flanked by the ANC-SACP-COSATU tripartite alliance.) Real liberation for the black working class and poor in South Africa will require a workers revolution. South Africa needs a party that fights for workers revolution, not a party -- and its diplomatic apologists "in solidarity" -- that says "not yet, not yet, not yet."
Working-class revolution, as has been said constantly, demands flexibility above all else. This is what you fail to understand: the interests of the South African workers WAS to first destroy apartheid, then to guard against the fascistic reaction against the political enfranchisement of non-whites (something you want to pretend didn't happen) and NOW to confront anti-worker bourgeois elements within the Tripartite Alliance. That is precisely what the SACP is doing as you type, and so your claims are based on a sectarian bias, not fact.

You need to do your homework on what's actually happening in the country for a change:

Tensions increased during and after a recent December 2009 special conference of the SACP. ANC NEC members, including ANC Youth League chairman Julius Malema, were booed by the SACP delegates. SACP members rejected ANCYL proposals on nationalization as opportunistic; COSATU raised similar criticisms saying the proposals lacked “substance.”

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13371&news_iv_ctrl=1781

Revolution is made by revolutionaries who recognize the subtleties of political landscapes, not by those who can't figure out that South Africa today isn't the one Verwoerd ruled over.

manic expression

8th June 2010, 21:11

I don't really think there has been much progress for workers since 1994. Land ownership, living conditions, wages, inequality, spatial segregation, access to housing etc has remained pretty much the same and most workers have seen few benefits.
Like has been said, apartheid never really ended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre

It borders on offensive to suggest that today's South Africa is no different than when anti-apartheid activists were routinely murdered, than when racism was enshrined in the very foundation of the state, than when the South African military spent most of its time and energy shooting Black Africans for sport. Yes, the workers of South Africa are still oppressed (and a most ugly racism still persists, most assuredly), but to think that apartheid "never really ended" not only defames the memory of those who died at its hands, but it amounts to a soft excuse for apartheid itself. Hey, why should we care if apartheid comes back if nothing really changed?

The "apartheid never really ended" argument is a lot like someone saying nothing changed for Blacks after the Civil War. Blacks, after all, were still brutally oppressed and exploited and murdered and denied the most basic of political rights...so nothing changed from chattel slavery, right? That whole emancipation thing was just for show, right?

I think this has a lot to do with the political differences here. If you really think that the end of apartheid didn't mean anything to non-white workers, then sure, the SACP's policies might seem fruitless. However, that assumption is an incorrect one, and it is one that insults the progress made by the people of South Africa.

Agreed, but there are some lines you do not cross and these include participation in the running of a bourgeois state and support for structural adjustment.It's what Chavez is doing, and it's aiding the struggle of the Venezuelan workers. Flexibility is needed, not puritanism.

Not at all.Fair enough. I'd still like to hear what you think the SACP should have done starting in 1994 (or earlier, if you'd like). I'm not trying to be smarmy, I'm very open to alternative policies as long as we take into account what the workers of South Africa were facing at the time.

For starters I think groups like Abahlali baseMjondolo are much more worthy of support than bourgeois parties like the SACP.
And of course then there is the same course of action that we can apply anywhere, strikes, occupations, struggle.OK, but what about the realm of politics? Should the SACP have come out and opposed the ANC outright in 1994? Should they have denounced Mandela? Should they have tried to submarine the nascent post-apartheid government?

There you go folks. Manic just told you what "genuine communist parties" are all about: assisting in administering a capitalist state for 16 years, and according to the dictates of international finance capital to boot. Be sure to support his party now!
Cool. While you're at it, be sure to give a high-five to the Venezuelan ruling class on your way out, too...they appreciate it when "purer" leftists take potshots at revolutionary socialists.

fredbergen

9th June 2010, 04:06

Charles Xavier

9th June 2010, 05:07

fredbergen

9th June 2010, 05:14

Barry Lyndon

9th June 2010, 05:35

Yes Charles, there were and are many differences between Russia and South Africa.

1. The South African working class is larger and much more powerful in proportion to the whole population, than the Russian proletariat in 1917.

2. The South African "Communists," unlike the Bolsheviks, have spent most of their existence being an appendage of a capitalist party. So, yes, they were not ready to lead a revolution, and never will be.

The South African proletariat needs a genuine Leninist-Trotskyist workers party founded on the program of permanent revolution! Down with phony diplomatic "internationalism," for revolutionary Leninist internationalism!

But your "league" of two dozen people who devote themselves to hawking shitty newspapers on street corners that no one reads, will be the vanguard of the global proletariat! Yeah!!!! The only 'true' communists on the planet!

Everyone else is an idiot or sellout, besides your group. Please lead us out of the wilderness, oh great saviors of 'The League for the Fourth International'!

KurtFF8

9th June 2010, 05:45

The South African proletariat needs a genuine Leninist-Trotskyist workers party founded on the program of permanent revolution! Down with phony diplomatic "internationalism," for revolutionary Leninist internationalism! What are some of the specifics of what would be done differently?

jake williams

9th June 2010, 05:59

The ANC is not its bourgeois leadership, that leadership which everyone acknowledges betrayed the South African working class, with the clear consent of Mr. Mandela; the ANC, the SACP and COSATU are the most important organizations of the mass people's movement in South Africa. Yes, its leadership (the ANC in particular, to a profoundly lesser extent in the SACP and COSATU) has severe problems with reactionary and bourgeois forces.

But it (the movement, which includes the vast majority of the ANC) involves one of the best organized and most politically articulate working classes in the world, and not just that - that working class is actively engaged in the process of rejecting its reactionary leadership and achieving for itself more and more political power. It's true that this particular process takes longer than it does to make a few grand statements on the internet, so some folks might be disappointed, but it's exactly what's going on, and anyone sensible looking at South Africa will see that - along with the innumerable contradictions, weaknesses and setbacks that one has to deal with if one wants to be remotely serious about the real world.

Saorsa

9th June 2010, 07:26

Fuck Fredbergen is annoying

Crux

9th June 2010, 10:58

Fuck Fredbergen is annoying
I agree, but he is right though. Kind of. As for about not being south african and what not, well, where I do not know, I look to the south african comrades for clarity. And, not, you know, the SACP. That last part is directed at manic.

manic expression

9th June 2010, 12:46

Should the Russian revolution of 1917 have stopped at February? Remember, Russia was in a very delicate and unstable situation. A new provisional government, made up of many long-time revolutionary socialists and some progressive democrats, had just taken power away from the hated Tsar. Fascistic reaction from within, and war from without, threatened the new capitalist republic. Did those Bolsheviks think that nothing had changed since the time when the Tsar had autocratic power? How insensitive! How inflexible! How doctrinaire! How ultra-left! The heroic workers and peasants had just torn down the monarchy and brought Kerensky to power -- who was Lenin to criticize and call for no support to the provisional government?
The national question was hardly playing the same role in Russia in 1917. It's not even a comparison. In South Africa in 1994, the most viable possibility for a basis of national self-determination was through the Tripartite Alliance. If you go back to those days, the various nations of South Africa were at each other's throats, very literally, too. Zulu ultra-nationalists were attacking anti-apartheid activists and basically playing into Afrikaner hands; Afrikaner ultra-nationalists were setting up fascist mini-states and so on. Opposition to the one center of multinational unity, the Tripartite Alliance, would have either poured fuel on the reactionary fire or isolated whatever anti-ANC forces from the crucial struggles at hand...most likely both.

Without struggling for the advancement of the self-determination of nations, it would have been hardly feasible to move forward, which the SACP is doing now in confronting anti-worker elements of the Alliance. It wasn't an ideal situation, but outright opposing the ANC and denouncing them at the twilight of apartheid would have put into doubt all the progress made in the destruction of that fascist system. That is not what revolutionaries desire, for it runs against the interests of the workers.

But yes, comparing the specific political landscape of South Africa in 1994 to that of Russia in 1917 isn't problematic at all. :rolleyes: Since the specifics of the two are so different, it stands to reason that the most valid comparison is in principle and not practice. However, we learn from Lenin that communist principle means soberly responding to the situation at hand, not being impetuous and numb. Just as the Bolsheviks didn't launch an assault on the Provisional Government in March and then did in November when the situation had most drastically changed, so too must the revolutionaries of South Africa recognize the fact that the path to revolution is not a straight one, and certainly not a sprint. Their detractors would do well to learn that.

Manic, were you ever a revolutionary? And if you were, when did you become an apologist for capitalism?You have it backwards. Most people who become revolutionaries start out being anti-communists, but then, somewhere along the line, they stop agreeing with you.

fredbergen

9th June 2010, 13:15

Leninists recognize the right of all nations to self-determination, as a means to overcoming national divisions among the workers and uniting our class in struggle against the capitalist class.

Manic turns Leninist internationalism on its head. To him, where there are national antagonisms, the workers must unite -- to support their exploiters!

In the hands of most leftists, "Marxism" is a system of clever phrases used to justify the subordination of the workers and oppressed to the bourgeoisie.

Don't strike! Don't organize independently! Don't break from your bourgeois masters: the Nation is in danger!

manic expression

9th June 2010, 13:38

You, truly, take empty sloganeering to new heights.

Leninists recognize the right of all nations to self-determination, as a means to overcoming national divisions among the workers and uniting our class in struggle against the capitalist class.

Manic turns Leninist internationalism on its head. To him, where there are national antagonisms, the workers must unite -- to support their exploiters!

In the hands of most leftists, "Marxism" is a system of clever phrases used to justify the subordination of the workers and oppressed to the bourgeoisie.

Don't strike! Don't organize independently! Don't break from your bourgeois masters: the Nation is in danger!
Stay on topic: what was the most viable course of action to advance the right of nations to self-determination in 1994? Was it through torpedoing the Tripartite Alliance, which was the only significant force for multinational unity at the time? Was it through destroying any and all progress made through the defeat of apartheid? Again, be specific when you try to answer this, as you've failed to do so in every other post.

What's most striking is how you're entirely blind to South Africa's recent history. COPE's 2009 attempt to pull the ANC to the left from outside the Alliance failed, and ended up giving Zuma more freedom to stay to the right. That's what you want, to abandon the alliance that destroyed apartheid and give it, wrapped with a bow, to the bourgeoisie. It's this sort of political childishness that marks you out as impotent.

Lastly, your slander that the SACP doesn't stand up for workers is just slander:

During the last Parliament, communist members declared they would not be strictly bound to the ANC whip and would oppose anti-working class measures.

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=11977&news_iv_ctrl=1781

But as the SACP has itself pointed out, the new changes [made by Zuma] could easily be purely cosmetic, a sop to the left. Indeed, left-wing elements outside the SACP have argued this is likely the case. The one area all forces on the South African left, including COSATU, can agree on is the need to intensify popular struggles.

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12625&news_iv_ctrl=1781

The way forward is in bridging the gap between all pro-worker forces in South Africa, across all party lines. The SACP, COSATU and others are engaged in this as we speak.

bricolage

16th June 2010, 13:28

Have been away for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre

Last year an armed gang with machetes raided the Kennedy Road settlement - the base of Abahlali - in Durban, destroying homes and killing two people. They are widely thought to have been sponsored by the local ANC branch.
This month Landless People's Movement activists were shot and their homes burnt down by the police, there was one death.
The numbers are not the same (thus evidently they are not as deadly), but the essence is.

In the build up to the World Cup, thousands of poor shackdwellers are being evicted from major South African cities and placed in 'Transitional Relocation Camps', like most of the housing in the country they have been described as worse than that under apartheid. The essence is the same.

I also reject the idea that we only judge the violence of a regime based on the naked violence. Zizek distinguishes between two types of violence (I can't remember the name he gives them), the first is that which you mention, naked, coercive and bloody violence, the second is that which is hidden yet just as damaging, what we could call systemic violence. I put the quote in my signature that I put there because I think it sums this up nicely. The fact being that South Africans may not be being shot at any more (even though some are) doesn't mean much when you are just as likely to die from starvation, seeing your shack get burnt down or from living on the streets.

Interestingly this week there has been further repression of shackdwellers resisting eviction and armed police firing and demonstrating workers. I’m sure that communists everywhere would be out criticising a state crackdown like this but all the SACP has to say about the World Cup is this;

We congratulate the workers for their contribution and the sterling work to ensure that the country has the kind of infrastructure that we have now which will be of benefit to the ordinary people of our country. The next 30 days is for the workers and the poor of this country to celebrate and enjoy world class football wherever they will be; in the stadia, on television, on radio and the different FIFA Fan Fests around the country.http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?include=docs/pr/2010/pr0610.html

Good shit.

Yes, the workers of South Africa are still oppressed (and a most ugly racism still persists, most assuredly), but to think that apartheid "never really ended" not only defames the memory of those who died at its hands, but it amounts to a soft excuse for apartheid itself. Hey, why should we care if apartheid comes back if nothing really changed?What changed at the end of apartheid was the cruelty, as we can see massacres still happen but they are to a lower degree, racism still persists but it is less institutionalised. But what we are looking at here is a mode through which domination is exercised, a style of oppression and exploitation, yet the base relations of domination still remain remarkably intact, eg. land ownership, spatial segregation, housing etc.
Being able to vote for the ANC doesn't mean a lot to people that are homeless and losing their jobs which is why we are seeing an upsurge in abstentionism (eg. the no land, no house, no vote campaign of the Poor People’s Alliance). If people are in this way fundamentally rejecting the post-apartheid social contract, in what way is the state in any way more legitimate than that which preceded it? But need(ed) to be destroyed, however the SACP only goes halfway, it will not break its alliance with the ANC and it will not overthrow capital and the state.

Fair enough. I'd still like to hear what you think the SACP should have done starting in 1994 (or earlier, if you'd like).Like I said I’m not in the habit of advising bourgeois political parties, I do however think that any organisation with an ounce of principle would have refused to participate in the ruling of a capitalist state and in the furthering of IMF structural adjustment.
So I'm not going to say what the SACP should have done because that would be like me saying what the ANC should have done or what the Liberal Democrats should do. It's not about advising these structures and organisations, it's about destroying them.

OK, but what about the realm of politics?Well for starters I don’t buy into this distinction between economics and politics, it’s a wholly false distinction designed to separate the state and the market, the politician and the CEO, to imply they are not inherently linked, operating in the same system and for the same interests. With that in mind I think that labour and community struggles are political in themselves (I suppose you could call them anti-political but then that is a whole theoretical can of worms.
If however by politics you mean the state then I reject the idea of political parties participating in it at all. Although I suspect this starts a entirely new tangent.

manic expression

16th June 2010, 14:12

Last year an armed gang with machetes raided the Kennedy Road settlement - the base of Abahlali - in Durban, destroying homes and killing two people. They are widely thought to have been sponsored by the local ANC branch.
This month Landless People's Movement activists were shot and their homes burnt down by the police, there was one death.
The numbers are not the same (thus evidently they are not as deadly), but the essence is.
The essence is not the same, and such an assertion is absurd. Apartheid's murder of innocents was fueled by fascistic racism and nothing less. Today, yes, the capitalist state is most brutal against the workers, but not all capitalist oppression is the same. This would be a bit like saying that British imperialism is precisely as bad as Nazi Germany, because they both used concentration camps. This not only insults the victims of the Holocaust, but disrespects the people who fought to destroy Nazism. The same goes for those who make excuses for apartheid.

"They are widely thought to..." OK, not very impressive. Nevertheless, you forget that the SACP is now confronting the elements of the ANC that support this kind of brutality. Their position within the Tripartite Alliance gives them more opportunities to do so. Splitting and trying to oppose the ANC outright would not only isolate themselves from potential allies, not only weaken the potential for progress, but give the right-wing of the ANC more freedom to go to the right. None of this would be constructive in the slightest. Building stronger unity between all progressives in the country, within and without the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance, is the task at hand.

But I'll ask you again: what should the SACP do?

In the build up to the World Cup, thousands of poor shackdwellers are being evicted from major South African cities and placed in 'Transitional Relocation Camps', like most of the housing in the country they have been described as worse than that under apartheid. The essence is the same.And the SACP is confronting the elements that are responsible for these outrages.

I also reject the idea that we only judge the violence of a regime based on the naked violence. Zizek distinguishes between two types of violence (I can't remember the name he gives them), the first is that which you mention, naked, coercive and bloody violence, the second is that which is hidden yet just as damaging, what we could call systemic violence. I put the quote in my signature that I put there because I think it sums this up nicely. The fact being that South Africans may not be being shot at any more (even though some are) doesn't mean much when you are just as likely to die from starvation, seeing your shack get burnt down or from living on the streets.The SACP is fighting both. I've shown as much multiple times.

Interestingly this week there has been further repression of shackdwellers resisting eviction and armed police firing and demonstrating workers. I’m sure that communists everywhere would be out criticising a state crackdown like this but all the SACP has to say about the World Cup is this;

http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?include=docs/pr/2010/pr0610.html

Good shit.The CC received reports on the SACP`s April month of heightened activism against corruption. We also noted and saluted the role that SACP branches and provinces have been playing in this crucial fight.

As we take up this struggle, together with our allies and all others in our country who abhor the impact of corruption, we can expect fierce resistance. Already SACP lives have been lost. In Mpumalanga a fearless and outspoken critic of corrupt practices, cde Bomber ‘Radioman` Ntshangase, was murdered on the night of 4 May. Other senior SACP leaders in the province have been threatened. We are deeply concerned that no arrests have yet been made in these cases. We express our full support for our comrades in the province and together with them we resolve never to be intimidated.

[...]

The 1994 democratic breakthrough abolished the special-colonial state of white minority rule and replaced it with a new, non-racial democracy. However, 100 years after Union, and 16 years after the democratic breakthrough, the same fundamental accumulation path that reproduces racialised inequality remains hard-wired into our reality. Placing our economy onto a radically different trajectory is now the central task of our democracy.

http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?include=docs/pr/2010/pr0530.html

If people are in this way fundamentally rejecting the post-apartheid social contract, in what way is the state in any way more legitimate than that which preceded it? But need(ed) to be destroyed, however the SACP only goes halfway, it will not break its alliance with the ANC and it will not overthrow capital and the state.It's more legitimate because it's not based on institutional racism. That doesn't change the fact that it's capitalist and something the workers of South Africa must abolish one day, but it's something.

But your claim is curious. The SACP "will not overthrow capital"? How can you be so sure? Because they are participating in a capitalist government? So did the Bolsheviks...even the Communards were not above this! The SACP is trying to push forward the interests of the workers, and at the moment the Tripartite Alliance is the best place to do this.

Like I said I’m not in the habit of advising bourgeois political parties, I do however think that any organisation with an ounce of principle would have refused to participate in the ruling of a capitalist state and in the furthering of IMF structural adjustment.
So I'm not going to say what the SACP should have done because that would be like me saying what the ANC should have done or what the Liberal Democrats should do. It's not about advising these structures and organisations, it's about destroying them.This doesn't follow, it's a logic of rationalization and little more. This is how the exercise goes: you have complete control over the SACP, all its cadres and supporters await your instruction. What do you do? Please be specific.

Well for starters I don’t buy into this distinction between economics and politics, it’s a wholly false distinction designed to separate the state and the market, the politician and the CEO, to imply they are not inherently linked, operating in the same system and for the same interests. With that in mind I think that labour and community struggles are political in themselves (I suppose you could call them anti-political but then that is a whole theoretical can of worms.
If however by politics you mean the state then I reject the idea of political parties participating in it at all. Although I suspect this starts a entirely new tangent.Let us not think that the market and the state are the same exact entity; the market existed before the modern capitalist state. Anyway, by politics, I mean exactly what I stated: Should the SACP have come out and opposed the ANC outright in 1994 (or before that)? Should they have denounced Mandela? Should they have tried to submarine the nascent post-apartheid government? These are questions you must contend with.

bricolage

16th June 2010, 14:57

The essence is not the same, and such an assertion is absurd. Apartheid's murder of innocents was fueled by fascistic racism and nothing less.

And murder of innocents fueled by the desire to suppress opposition to the state and nothing less if justified?
The essence is the same because it is innocent people being killed. I'm not going to disrespect shackdwellers that are murdered by saying their deaths mean less than those killed prior to '94, simply because they are now being killed by people of the same skin colour as them.

"They are widely thought to..." OK, not very impressive.Widely thought to to the extent that everyone with half a brain knows they did it.

Nevertheless, you forget that the SACP is now confronting the elements of the ANC that support this kind of brutality.By remaining a part of their government? To be honest we should all be in these kinds of alliances right now, you are American right? I'd suggest you join the Democratic Party.

Their position within the Tripartite Alliance gives them more opportunities to do so. Splitting and trying to oppose the ANC outright would not only isolate themselves from potential allies,The potential allies are those striking in the streets and reclaiming their communities, not those sitting in parliament. This is the crux of the matter.

but give the right-wing of the ANC more freedom to go to the right.We should probably get some left-wingers in the Conservative party here then to stop the right wing of it having more freedom to go to the right then.
Stupid comments aside (at this point) this is the same argument I hear here all the time about how we should try to reclaim the Labour Party and I'm sorry this just isn't practical. You speak to anyone who is fighting for change in South Africa (as I do and have done many times) they will tell you their primary enememy is the Tripartite Alliance, the Western left however is so stuck to the myth of the anti-apartheid struggle (primarily because to abandon it would shatter many of their illusions of the Palestinian struggle) that they cannot get past the binary ANC=good/everyone else=racist approach, they cannot bear to face the fact that their statues of Mandela were for nothing and that what may have constitued an agent of social change in the 1980s no longer does so, that the oppressed are now the oppressers and that we must reject them in their entirety.

But I'll ask you again: what should the SACP do?I've already told you my position here.

And the SACP is confronting the elements that are responsible for these outrages.

The SACP is fighting both. I've shown as much multiple times.I've shown you multiple times that they are not. Cyclical arguments ftw.

The CC received reports on the SACP`s April month of heightened activism against corruption. We also noted and saluted the role that SACP branches and provinces have been playing in this crucial fight.

As we take up this struggle, together with our allies and all others in our country who abhor the impact of corruption, we can expect fierce resistance. Already SACP lives have been lost. In Mpumalanga a fearless and outspoken critic of corrupt practices, cde Bomber ‘Radioman` Ntshangase, was murdered on the night of 4 May. Other senior SACP leaders in the province have been threatened. We are deeply concerned that no arrests have yet been made in these cases. We express our full support for our comrades in the province and together with them we resolve never to be intimidated.

[...]

The 1994 democratic breakthrough abolished the special-colonial state of white minority rule and replaced it with a new, non-racial democracy. However, 100 years after Union, and 16 years after the democratic breakthrough, the same fundamental accumulation path that reproduces racialised inequality remains hard-wired into our reality. Placing our economy onto a radically different trajectory is now the central task of our democracy.

http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?include=docs/pr/2010/pr0530.htmlThis doesn't really have anything to do with the World Cup repression though does it.

But your claim is curious. The SACP "will not overthrow capital"? How can you be so sure? Because they are participating in a capitalist government?Yes.

So did the Bolsheviks...Indeed...
Although the Bolsheviks never implemented neoliberalism.

even the Communards were not above this!Ha, what? The Communards were part of the Paris Commune, the Paris Commune was not a capitalist government. Some of them may have been in the realm of state politics prior (eg. Delescluze, Rossel) but the Communards were a heterogenous bunch comprised of various groups, they were not a political party and they did not help administer capitalist states.

The SACP is trying to push forward the interests of the workers, and at the moment the Tripartite Alliance is the best place to do this.The interests of the workers lie in self-organised working class revolt, not in representative democracy and bourgeois politicians. The emancipation of the working class as I'm sure you know must be an act of the working class itself, not of the state.

This doesn't follow, it's a logic of rationalization and little more. This is how the exercise goes: you have complete control over the SACP, all its cadres and supporters await your instruction. What do you do? Please be specific.I would dissolve the party, is that specific enough?

Anyway, by politics, I mean exactly what I stated: Should the SACP have come out and opposed the ANC outright in 1994 (or before that)? Should they have denounced Mandela? Should they have tried to submarine the nascent post-apartheid government? These are questions you must contend with.Like I have said I don't care what the SACP should have done, principled organisations should have done most of that yes. To an extent it was understandable why groups might not want to do this during apartheid however post apartheid it is unacceptable by any stretch of the imagination.

manic expression

16th June 2010, 16:10

And murder of innocents fueled by the desire to suppress opposition to the state and nothing less if justified?
The essence is the same because it is innocent people being killed. I'm not going to disrespect shackdwellers that are murdered by saying their deaths mean less than those killed prior to '94, simply because they are now being killed by people of the same skin colour as them.
Not justified, no, but not apartheid, either. Don't try and think the ANC is perpetrating the same crimes as the Purified National Party, it's insulting to assert as much and it demonstrates a severe misunderstanding of South African history. Apartheid has been smashed, and South Africa is all the better for it. Never forget this.

Widely thought to to the extent that everyone with half a brain knows they did it.The fog of war is not something I'm going to ignore, especially here.

By remaining a part of their government? To be honest we should all be in these kinds of alliances right now, you are American right? I'd suggest you join the Democratic Party.Yes, by remaining a part of their government. They are confronting the rightists of the ANC in many ways, and by remaining in the Tripartite Alliance they can do this with more intimacy and without being ignored.

The potential allies are those striking in the streets and reclaiming their communities, not those sitting in parliament. This is the crux of the matter.And the SACP wholeheartedly works with and for these allies.

We should probably get some left-wingers in the Conservative party here then to stop the right wing of it having more freedom to go to the right then.But left-wingers don't have a place in the Conservative party, while they do in the Tripartite Alliance. You want them to abandon a useful political platform on nothing but abstract morals.

Stupid comments aside (at this point) this is the same argument I hear here all the time about how we should try to reclaim the Labour Party and I'm sorry this just isn't practical. You speak to anyone who is fighting for change in South Africa (as I do and have done many times) they will tell you their primary enememy is the Tripartite Alliance, the Western left however is so stuck to the myth of the anti-apartheid struggle (primarily because to abandon it would shatter many of their illusions of the Palestinian struggle) that they cannot get past the binary ANC=good/everyone else=racist approach, they cannot bear to face the fact that their statues of Mandela were for nothing and that what may have constitued an agent of social change in the 1980s no longer does so, that the oppressed are now the oppressers and that we must reject them in their entirety.I'm not saying "reclaim the ANC", am I? And it's quite a different position that Labour and the ANC find themselves in. Labour wasn't the key force behind the defeat apartheid and the subsequent establishment of a post-apartheid government that constituted a great step forward for the masses of South Africa. If they did, perhaps we could compare them, but they didn't.

I didn't claim anti-ANC leftists are racists. I brought up the example of COPE to illustrate that this is the case, and that splitting with the ANC is fruitless and unreasonable. COPE's experience shows us this quite clearly.

So you don't think any progress has been made due to the end of apartheid? Please be specific on your political stance instead of waxing poetic about injustice.

And I imagine a post-Zionist Palestinian state will likely have to wrestle over the same problems unless the worldwide political climate shifts before that point.

I've already told you my position here.That you have none. Since there are no alternative courses of action being proposed, we can deduce that the SACP's is the most prudent for the cause of socialism.

I've shown you multiple times that they are not. Cyclical arguments ftw.No, you have not. You haven't addressed the SACP's growing opposition to anti-worker policies from the ANC. They are posted upthread if you're interested.

This doesn't really have anything to do with the World Cup repression though does it.The situation surrounding the World Cup was the whole point behind its publication.

Yes.
Indeed...
Although the Bolsheviks never implemented neoliberalism.This is in contradiction. The Bolsheviks overthrew capitalism after participating in the Duma and providing support to non-working-class forces in some instances. This goes against what you are saying, and essentially disproves your own position.

Ha, what? The Communards were part of the Paris Commune, the Paris Commune was not a capitalist government. Some of them may have been in the realm of state politics prior (eg. Delescluze, Rossel) but the Communards were a heterogenous bunch comprised of various groups, they were not a political party and they did not help administer capitalist states.A minister of the Government of National Defense, the entire National Guard...yes, many key elements of the Communards came out of pre-Commune government organs which were certainly capitalist.

The interests of the workers lie in self-organised working class revolt, not in representative democracy and bourgeois politicians. The emancipation of the working class as I'm sure you know must be an act of the working class itself, not of the state.This is economism. You are ignoring the political aspects of revolution. Working-class organizations must advance not in some straight, paved path to socialism, but over broken ground. This means that the capitalist state may provide opportunities for the workers, and where it does, these opportunities must be utilized. The multi-class character of the ANC, the political situation following apartheid, the Tripartite Alliance all provide such opportunities, and you want working-class revolutionaries to abandon them on abstract principle. This is fruitless, puritanical and counterproductive at best.

I would dissolve the party, is that specific enough?So no alternative courses of action, then. The SACP's policy is evidently the most prudent.

Like I have said I don't care what the SACP should have done, principled organisations should have done most of that yes. To an extent it was understandable why groups might not want to do this during apartheid however post apartheid it is unacceptable by any stretch of the imagination.So you think it "principled" to outright oppose the ANC with no reservations. I have a label to propose for that idea: "worthless". Why, exactly, is it unacceptable for leftists to build bridges with progressives instead of fencing themselves in, putting their moral purity above the interests of the workers?

bricolage

16th June 2010, 17:28

Apartheid has been smashed, and South Africa is all the better for it. Never forget this.

Apartheid was not smashed, there was no great revolution, no mass uprising, there was only backroom talks between big business and co-opted anti-apartheid activists, between the ANC and the CIA. If you do no understand the extent to which apartheid relations still persist then it is you who know nothing of South Africa.

The fog of war is not something I'm going to ignore, especially here.I have no idea what you are on about here.

Yes, by remaining a part of their government. They are confronting the rightists of the ANC in many ways, and by remaining in the Tripartite Alliance they can do this with more intimacy and without being ignored.Yes, God forbid we should be 'ignored' by the bourgeoisie. They can't ignore it when their organs of class rule stop functioning but they can accept it when supposed radicals help to administer them.

And the SACP wholeheartedly works with and for these allies.Bullshit.

But left-wingers don't have a place in the Conservative party, while they do in the Tripartite Alliance.To be honest the two are about as 'left wing' as each other.

You want them to abandon a useful political platform on nothing but abstract morals.No. For what will bring us closer to revolutionary change.

Labour wasn't the key force behind the defeat apartheid and the subsequent establishment of a post-apartheid government that constituted a great step forward for the masses of South Africa.Neither was the ANC, they just like to claim they were. Anti-apartheid change was spearheaded by mass movements on the ground and by grassroots networks that were co-opted by the ANC and other such groups then sold out when those groups managed to take power. I don't deny there was a great chance for things to improve dramatically post-1994 but they have not. The end of institutional racism could have brought many positive social measures, yet in many cases that which has been implemented is entirely detrimental. You can say I am too critical of all this but then it comes in response to people like you who willingly celebrate the post-apartheid deal like it is some glorious utopia, simply because 'it is not apartheid', yet fail to notice that for many people life has not improved at all.

I didn't claim anti-ANC leftists are racists. I brought up the example of COPE to illustrate that this is the case, and that splitting with the ANC is fruitless and unreasonable. COPE's experience shows us this quite clearly.I don't COPE are a good model to follow either. They are no more revolutionary than the ANC or the SACP.

And I imagine a post-Zionist Palestinian state will likely have to wrestle over the same problems unless the worldwide political climate shifts before that point.And I imagine leftists will still be sitting here justifying support for Hamas when they follow the same neoliberal path that the ANC has done.

That you have none. Since there are no alternative courses of action being proposed,I have proposed many an alternative course, that you reduced it to 'economism' doesn't undermine this.

we can deduce that the SACP's is the most prudent for the cause of socialism.Not at all.

No, you have not. You haven't addressed the SACP's growing opposition to anti-worker policies from the ANC. They are posted upthread if you're interested.You have posted no examples except empty rhetoric and personal disputes.

The situation surrounding the World Cup was the whole point behind its publication.It was published in May, I am talking about what has happened in the last week.
In any case that section just refers to 'corruption', it doesn't mention evictions, labour disputes, segregation, police brutality etc etc. Corruption is simply a by-word for intra-state disputes that can easily be solved whilst failing to damage capital. That they put some rhetoric at the end about changing the economic system is meaningless.

This is in contradiction. The Bolsheviks overthrew capitalism after participating in the Duma and providing support to non-working-class forces in some instances. This goes against what you are saying, and essentially disproves your own position.The Bolsheviks did no overthrow capitalism. The working class were briefly in power but capitalism is a world system, it does not become 'overthrown' through the brief upsurge of such power in one isolated country.

A minister of the Government of National Defense, the entire National Guard...yes, many key elements of the Communards came out of pre-Commune government organs which were certainly capitalist.You wrote; 'Because they are participating in a capitalist government? So did the Bolsheviks...even the Communards were not above this!'

So we are obviously referring to participating in capitalist governments. Seeing as we can only refer to 'Communards' as a group in themselves post March 26 (the term was not immediately used after March 18) the Communards could only have participated in capitalist governments after this stage. Seeing as the only time they presented themselves as a group was between then and Bloody Week and were all in Paris at the time they could have only have participated in capitalist governments if you think the Paris Commune was a capitalist government. That some people who became Communards had done so prior (and would do so later) does not mean the Communards as a group did.

And in any case the Communards were not a homogenous political party like the SACP are, so you can say National Guard and I can say Louise Michel, both of us are right.

This is economism. You are ignoring the political aspects of revolution.The political is the economic. Political/social change comes from working class self-organisation, from strikes, occupations and struggles that develop into councils, into revolution. It does not come from above, handed down by an elite group of decision makers.

The multi-class character of the ANC, the political situation following apartheid, the Tripartite Alliance all provide such opportunities, and you want working-class revolutionaries to abandon them on abstract principle. This is fruitless, puritanical and counterproductive at best.No based on what will bring us closer to communism. There are certain lines you do not cross and there are certain principles you must uphold.

So no alternative courses of action, then. The SACP's policy is evidently the most prudent.I just gave a course of action.

So you think it "principled" to outright oppose the ANC with no reservations. I have a label to propose for that idea: "worthless". Why, exactly, is it unacceptable for leftists to build bridges with progressives instead of fencing themselves in, putting their moral purity above the interests of the workers?Because those progressives do not act in the same interests as revolutionaries (note: fuck 'leftists'), they will betray, co-opt and suppress revolutionary change. What you are proposing is straight out collaboration and reformism.

I don't really think this is going anywhere, I have come to see that for a lot of people on this forum you just have to stick communist in your name and everyone will support you. Whether you are conducting ethnic cleansing, imposing neoliberal reform or smashing strikes it doesn't matter, if you are 'communist' you are heroes. Awesome...

Proletarian Ultra

17th June 2010, 00:03

This whole thread is getting tl;dr. Plz to quote moar selectively.

manic expression

17th June 2010, 13:28

Apartheid was not smashed, there was no great revolution, no mass uprising, there was only backroom talks between big business and co-opted anti-apartheid activists, between the ANC and the CIA. If you do no understand the extent to which apartheid relations still persist then it is you who know nothing of South Africa.
Oh, right, because Black Africans still can't vote. Because the SADF is still invading Angola and Numidia and every other country in the near vicinity. Because the army and police spend their time murdering Blacks in the townships for sport on a routine basis.

To suggest that nothing has changed is absurd and contrary to all reasonable views of history.

I have no idea what you are on about here.The Fog of War...the fact that during conflict, misinformation and confusion is unavoidable, and that assumptions should never be seen as reliable. That's why I'm not going on hear-say on this.

Yes, God forbid we should be 'ignored' by the bourgeoisie. They can't ignore it when their organs of class rule stop functioning but they can accept it when supposed radicals help to administer them.If we can help it, we shouldn't be ignored by the bourgeoisie and others within the ANC. If they ignore leftists entirely (as you so deeply desire), things will only get worse for South African workers. That is hardly constructive. It's far better to keep the strong political position in the Tripartite Alliance, and use it to confront rightists and build bridges with allies in the ANC.

Bullshit.Stunning logic.

To be honest the two are about as 'left wing' as each other.To you, everything to the right of Mikhail Bakunin is the same. Start dealing with the reality of things.

No. For what will bring us closer to revolutionary change.It wouldn't, though. It would give free reign to the rightists in the ANC to ruin workers' lives. But you don't care too much about that, do you?

Neither was the ANC, they just like to claim they were. Anti-apartheid change was spearheaded by mass movements on the ground and by grassroots networks that were co-opted by the ANC and other such groups then sold out when those groups managed to take power. I don't deny there was a great chance for things to improve dramatically post-1994 but they have not. The end of institutional racism could have brought many positive social measures, yet in many cases that which has been implemented is entirely detrimental. You can say I am too critical of all this but then it comes in response to people like you who willingly celebrate the post-apartheid deal like it is some glorious utopia, simply because 'it is not apartheid', yet fail to notice that for many people life has not improved at all.Next you're going to tell me the MK was imaginary. :lol: Look, your view on this this is entirely false. The ANC was a main force behind apartheid's defeat. Mandela practically was the one person who was able to end apartheid without a bloodbath civil war. Which "mass movements on the ground...and grassroots networks" were "sold out" by the ANC? Again, you fail to be specific because you can't be.

I don't COPE are a good model to follow either. They are no more revolutionary than the ANC or the SACP.You don't have a "good model to follow", that's the irony of all of this. You say the SACP shouldn't work with the ANC, and then I point out an organization that did exactly what you're proposing, and you say they aren't a good model. Your lack of understanding is only matched by your lack of any constructive alternative.

And I imagine leftists will still be sitting here justifying support for Hamas when they follow the same neoliberal path that the ANC has done.Which will be a step forward from the horrors of Zionist fascism. Leftists will be applauding that step and pushing for new steps toward revolution. Ultra-lefts, on the other hand, will be saying how Zionism wasn't all that bad, how Israel is just the same as Palestine...without proposing any constructive course of action for anyone.

I have proposed many an alternative course, that you reduced it to 'economism' doesn't undermine this.Your alternative is:

The interests of the workers lie in self-organised working class revolt, not in representative democracy and bourgeois politicians. The emancipation of the working class as I'm sure you know must be an act of the working class itself, not of the state.

That is quite economist, and thus useless. Oh, yes, self-organized revolt, what a brilliant idea. Now if you could give us the slightest idea on how this would happen, on how South African organizations can come to the point of even making this a vague reality...then maybe you'd have a point. But you don't. Let me know when you do.

Not at all.Of course we can. You cannot provide anything other than economism, and so the SACP's political program is the most prudent one in this entire thread...because it's the only one in this entire thread.

You have posted no examples except empty rhetoric and personal disputes.You wouldn't say that if you read my posts.

It was published in May, I am talking about what has happened in the last week.
In any case that section just refers to 'corruption', it doesn't mention evictions, labour disputes, segregation, police brutality etc etc. Corruption is simply a by-word for intra-state disputes that can easily be solved whilst failing to damage capital. That they put some rhetoric at the end about changing the economic system is meaningless.You said the only thing the SACP published on the situation surrounding the World Cup was the blurb you posted. I showed you this was not the case. At any rate, are you condemning the SACP's words? Don't dance around the issue, deal with it head-on.

The Bolsheviks did no overthrow capitalism. The working class were briefly in power but capitalism is a world system, it does not become 'overthrown' through the brief upsurge of such power in one isolated country.The Bolsheviks did overthrow capitalism. They abolished private property, the capitalist mode of production and the political power of the capitalist class. Capitalism was abolished in the Soviet Union.

You wrote; 'Because they are participating in a capitalist government? So did the Bolsheviks...even the Communards were not above this!'

So we are obviously referring to participating in capitalist governments. Seeing as we can only refer to 'Communards' as a group in themselves post March 26 (the term was not immediately used after March 18) the Communards could only have participated in capitalist governments after this stage. Seeing as the only time they presented themselves as a group was between then and Bloody Week and were all in Paris at the time they could have only have participated in capitalist governments if you think the Paris Commune was a capitalist government. That some people who became Communards had done so prior (and would do so later) does not mean the Communards as a group did.So the people who became known as the Communards popped out of holes from the ground in March 26, then, right? The Communards, the partisans of the Commune, participated in a capitalist government in the Government of National Defense.

By your logic, the Commune itself was a capitalist government:

The working class were briefly in power but capitalism is a world system, it does not become 'overthrown' through the brief upsurge of such power in one isolated country.

Interesting.

And in any case the Communards were not a homogenous political party like the SACP are, so you can say National Guard and I can say Louise Michel, both of us are right.And both were part of capitalist governments. That was my point. Your out-of-hand dismissal of individuals and organizations that participate in capitalist governments flies in the face of the experience of the Paris Commune. Either retract your condemnation of the SACP or condemn the Communards. Your choice.

The political is the economic. Political/social change comes from working class self-organisation, from strikes, occupations and struggles that develop into councils, into revolution. It does not come from above, handed down by an elite group of decision makers.This is more economism. There is a political dimension to working-class organization that you're missing. Working-class organizations need to grapple with the issues of the day beyond "let's strike, occupy factories, create councils and make a revolution". The road to revolution is not a straight or simple one, as you would like to believe. Aside from that, sure, the economic is the political, to an extent, and so why are you demanding that the SACP cast aside all political concerns in favor of your nonexistent course of action?

No based on what will bring us closer to communism. There are certain lines you do not cross and there are certain principles you must uphold.Your only principle is some abstract morality that you can neither define nor justify. The SACP must do what is best for the workers of South Africa, and that is what they are doing right now.

I just gave a course of action.You gave a fifth grade school presentation on what a proletarian revolution consists of. That is not a course of action.

Because those progressives do not act in the same interests as revolutionaries (note: fuck 'leftists'), they will betray, co-opt and suppress revolutionary change. What you are proposing is straight out collaboration and reformism.Those progressives are important allies in the struggles of revolutionaries. They are our allies against racism, homophobia, exploitation and more. As the struggle grows, they will be forced to choose sides, and I'd rather them be more sympathetic to the revolutionary side than the other one. What I'm proposing is prudent working-class strategy for revolution; what you're proposing is self-defeatism.

Once again, we see that you are politically numb, that you would rather sacrifice the strength of the forces for revolution then violate your ultra-left morality.

I don't really think this is going anywhere, I have come to see that for a lot of people on this forum you just have to stick communist in your name and everyone will support you. Whether you are conducting ethnic cleansing, imposing neoliberal reform or smashing strikes it doesn't matter, if you are 'communist' you are heroes. Awesome...Like I said, I guess if the SACP burns down a bank with workers inside of it, they'd be more revolutionary in your mind. But that's how ultra-left criticism goes...everyone else is horrible and reactionary, even if you can't come up with a single useful idea on how to move forward.

Zoster

17th June 2010, 14:10

Zoster

17th June 2010, 14:15

For instance, take this statement from the SACP:

--sacp.org.za/main.php?include=docs/pr/2008/pr0427.html

This looks like it could have been written by any liberal anti-communist. How can any Marxist-Leninist consider the SACP a real communist party, when they so blatantly join hands with Western imperialism in their stupid, crass propaganda against the ZANU-PF?

Crux

17th June 2010, 14:51

Zoster: Of all the thing's you could criticize the SACP for...

Zoster

17th June 2010, 15:32

Zoster: Of all the thing's you could criticize the SACP for...

I don't give a shit about most of the ridiculous, stupid 'criticisms' in this thread, especially those coming from Trotskyite trash and anarcho-smellies, and other assorted do-nothing pseudo-Left losers.

However, the Party of Socialism and Liberation is supposed to be a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, even if it has its origins in Trotskyism. So I am wondering the reason why manic expression supports the SACP, in light of their relationship to the demands of US imperialism.

manic expression

17th June 2010, 16:17

While I respect comrade manic expression's views on the SACP, and I think he probably knows more than I do about them, I have strong reservations about the SACP and COSATU's positions on Zimbabwe, Mugabe, and the ZANU-PF. In fact, they strike me as extreme opportunists. What say you about this, manic expression?
I wouldn't agree with the SACP on this, definitely not...getting into the specifics would probably bring us off-topic, but I'll say that while I think it was very incorrect for the SACP to side with the anti-ZANU-PF chorus, I don't think calling the SACP's position "extreme opportunism" is the right response, either. Yes, I strongly disagree with the SACP statement you posted (see below for more info), but in the end it's a disagreement and it's a huge overreaction to condemn the whole of the SACP because of it; we can be comrades while still taking exception to such a mistake.

Comrade, if you're interested, here's a more in-depth explanation of the PSL's position on the topic of Zimbabwe: http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9526

robbo203

17th June 2010, 20:41

gorillafuck

17th June 2010, 21:03

Since we are talking about CPSA here's a little historical curiosity to digest. In the 1920s they supported the white miners in their call to preserve wages and the colour bar with the memorable slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!".

Makes you think , dunnit?
Link or source?

There's no need to "reclaim" the SACP at all. It's a genuine communist party. They've simply been responding to the fragile and unique situation of South Africa since the early 90's, and thus some of their positions go against the moral purity of a few posters here. Sure, we don't have to think the SACP is perfect, but it's been a force for progress for its entire existence, under the most difficult of circumstances.

Here's an assignment for the anti-SACP posters here: explain, in detail, a better course of action for the SACP starting in 1994. Then we'll be able to discuss the real nature of the matter at hand.
The SACP is participating in a blatantly neoliberal government, and while you talk about how they do it only because they're in a "tough situation", out of curiousity I'd like to know what policies in the South African government they have pressed for and/or accomplished while in government? Do they organize workplaces and try to radicalize unions, do they organize landless farmers, do they call for strikes, what? My knowledge of SA's internal politics is limited.

robbo203

17th June 2010, 23:41

Quote:
Originally Posted by robbo203 http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1777605#post1777605)
Since we are talking about CPSA here's a little historical curiosity to digest. In the 1920s they supported the white miners in their call to preserve wages and the colour bar with the memorable slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!".

Makes you think , dunnit?
[QUOTE=Zeekloid;1777616]Link or source?

I first read it in Class & Colour in South Africa 1850-1950 by Jack & Ray Simon. There is also a link here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Communist_Party

Zoster

18th June 2010, 00:19

I wouldn't agree with the SACP on this, definitely not...getting into the specifics would probably bring us off-topic, but I'll say that while I think it was very incorrect for the SACP to side with the anti-ZANU-PF chorus, I don't think calling the SACP's position "extreme opportunism" is the right response, either. Yes, I strongly disagree with the SACP statement you posted (see below for more info), but in the end it's a disagreement and it's a huge overreaction to condemn the whole of the SACP because of it; we can be comrades while still taking exception to such a mistake.

Comrade, if you're interested, here's a more in-depth explanation of the PSL's position on the topic of Zimbabwe:

I think there are genuine disagreements that amount to mere quibbles. I fail to see how this is a minor disagreement. The line of the SACP is literally pro-imperialist. Even revisionist and rightist communist parties don't often participate in this kind of crap. How on Earth could the SACP, in your words, be a "genuine communist party" and say anything so outlandish about Mugabe?

If not condemn the whole of the SACP, who is at fault? If the SACP was once good, how did they arrive at place where they would publish should crass bullshit about the ZANU-PF? Surely this is not a minor disagreement, but a major break with any sort of revolutionary-minded Marxism. Who is at fault?

Care to enlighten us?

manic expression

18th June 2010, 02:49

I think there are genuine disagreements that amount to mere quibbles. I fail to see how this is a minor disagreement. The line of the SACP is literally pro-imperialist. Even revisionist and rightist communist parties don't often participate in this kind of crap. How on Earth could the SACP, in your words, be a "genuine communist party" and say anything so outlandish about Mugabe?

If not condemn the whole of the SACP, who is at fault? If the SACP was once good, how did they arrive at place where they would publish should crass bullshit about the ZANU-PF? Surely this is not a minor disagreement, but a major break with any sort of revolutionary-minded Marxism. Who is at fault?
Of course it's not a minor disagreement, I never said it was, but the point stands. However outlandish their position on Mugabe, however much it falls in with the anti-Zimbabwean chorus conducted by the imperialists, denouncing the SACP in full gets us nowhere.

I say the SACP is a genuine communist party because I think genuine communist parties are capable of making mistakes, even grave mistakes. The Bolsheviks made truly serious oversights on many occasions even before October (the reluctance to strike Kerensky from practically everyone except Lenin, participation in the July Days, the second boycott of bourgeois elections, the Bolshevik line until the April Theses, strict adherence to "trade-union consciousness" until proven wrong in 1905, etc.), but who among us will argue they were anything but a genuine communist party? Basically, I think that even communist parties worth supporting are, indeed, capable of publishing BS from time to time.

Let's not forget, our movement has split and split and split over issues that, while serious, did not necessitate the weakening of our own forces. There are minor disagreements that are mere quibbles, and there are major disagreements that are far more than that, but if we can maintain unity in spite of disagreements then I say we should. This seems to be one of those cases. Burning this bridge will do nothing; convincing our comrades to come to the correct side of the bridge is what we must do.

the last donut of the night

18th June 2010, 02:52

The task of revolutionists is to break that alliance and forge a genuine Trotskyist party, to fight for a black-centered workers government!]

aww c'mon you're making me blush

Kassad

18th June 2010, 17:00

Zoster, half of your posts are basically just insults against other ideological trends. This is not the first thread I've seen this in. Consider this a verbal warning for flaming.

Proletarian Ultra

18th June 2010, 20:56

I agree with Zoster that SACP's refusal to support (granted, politically motivated and badly implemented) land reform in Zimbabwe is shameful, but there's no need to go around calling people Trot scum about it. I have deep personal affection for many of the Trot scum in this thread - especially comrade Majakovskij. :thumbup1:

Zoster

18th June 2010, 21:21

I've been reading this book written by a Trotskyite lately. It is The New York Intellectuals, The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left From the 1930s to the 1980s, by Alan M. Wald. I think it is a rare example of a Trot being honest. Wald basically says that there are two components of Trotskyism: a more-or-less Marxist component, and a raving anti-communist component that are in dialectical opposition to each other.

Trotskyism represents political schizophrenia on the Left, as grounps and individuals oscillate between these two poles. It not only accounts for the fact so many leading-Trotskyties became outright neo-cons (as they abandoned the Marxist component of Trotskyism all together), but the extreme tendency of Trotskyism to split itself apart into many smaller tendencies. Groups fill the range of the spectrum, from basically the Marxist-wing completely (called by everyone else "Stalinists," basically the PSL and WWP), to somewhere in the middle (most Trot groups), to the ex-Trot neo-cons (Shachtman, Burnham, Kristol, Hook, etc).

In any case, Trotskyism does nothing but confuse honest radicals, and attract anti-communist scum. Trotskyism is a mental disease, that needs to be eliminated.

gorillafuck

18th June 2010, 21:29

Why is this about trotskyism now?

robbo203

18th June 2010, 21:45

The a lot of the bourgeoisie elements in the ANC have left when Mbeki was thrown out. Not all of course, but I don't get this criticism of the SACP as a bourgeoisie party. its not, its a genuine communist party and like all revolutionary organizations is capable of making mistakes.

Really? So you know that the SACP stands for a moneyless wageless stateless society called communism and that it opposes without compromise the reformist tinkering with capitalism that only diverts attention from the need to establish communism. Perhaps you might care to disclose your evidence for this remarkable claim to the rest of us on this site. For an organisation that could adopt that memorable slogan in the 1920s"Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!", I somehow doubt it.

Proletarian Ultra

18th June 2010, 22:30

Why is this about trotskyism now?

National liberation threads always become threads about Trotskyism.

Saorsa

19th June 2010, 03:29

Since we are talking about CPSA here's a little historical curiosity to digest. In the 1920s they supported the white miners in their call to preserve wages and the colour bar with the memorable slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!".

Makes you think , dunnit?

Yes. They did. And their adoption of this slogan led to Stalin and the Comintern intervening, and forcing the CPSA to drop their white chauvinist bullshit and transform themselves into a party of struggling black workers. Honestly, why not just do a quick wikipedia search and learn the facts?

The Communist Party of South Africa first came to prominence during the armed Rand Rebellion by white mineworkers in 1922. The large mining concerns, facing labour shortages and wage pressures, had announced their intention of liberalizing the rigid colour bar within the mines and elevate some blacks to minor supervisory positions. (The vast majority of white miners mainly held supervisory positions over the laboring black miners.) Despite having nominally opposed racialism from its inception, the CPSA supported the white miners in their call to preserve wages and the colour bar with the slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!". With the failure of the rising, in part due to black workers failing to strike, the Communist Party was forced by Comintern to adopt the Native Republic thesis which stipulated that South Africa was a country belonging to the Natives, that is, the Blacks. The Party thus reoriented itself at its 1924 Party Congress towards organising black workers and "Africanising" the party. By 1928, 1600 of the party's 1750 members were Black. In 1929, the party adopted a "strategic line" which held that "The most direct line of advance to socialism runs through the mass struggle for majority rule".

The CPSA in 1922 is a rather different organisation to the SACP of the anti-apartheid struggle, let alone the SACP today.

robbo203

19th June 2010, 10:48

Yes. They did. And their adoption of this slogan led to Stalin and the Comintern intervening, and forcing the CPSA to drop their white chauvinist bullshit and transform themselves into a party of struggling black workers. Honestly, why not just do a quick wikipedia search and learn the facts?

The CPSA in 1922 is a rather different organisation to the SACP of the anti-apartheid struggle, let alone the SACP today.

I am well aware of that, thank you very much, having originated from South Africa myself. So you dont need to teach me how to suck eggs. All I said it was a "historical curiosity" afterall.

Of course nothing of what you say detracts from the essentially state capitalist and bourgeois-reformist nature of the SACP in any case. This is no "communist" party we are talking about....

bricolage

19th June 2010, 21:07

So I made quite a few one line posts here that were pretty stupid so I've looked back through some old notes I had on this and seeing as I have the weekend with nothing to do have written a better post than I have been doing.

Oh, right, because Black Africans still can't vote.

Because the army and police spend their time murdering Blacks in the townships for sport on a routine basis.
To suggest that nothing has changed is absurd and contrary to all reasonable views of history.Ok I’m going to backtrack here because I wrote a bunch of stuff pretty quickly and was pretty rash at points so let’s address the apartheid bits first.
I am not trying to say ‘nothing has changed’, I don’t think I have said that and if I have then it wasn’t what I meant. What I am trying to say is that the power relations that sustained apartheid, of white over black of exploiter over exploited still remain in place. White farmers still own most land (which was codified in the constitution as existing property rights were protected), people still live in the same bad (or good as the case may be) housing and communities and business elites are still quite static. To the extent that black South Africans have made gains the most of these have been felt by the black bourgeoisie of the country, now able to gain greater access to capital and through policies like BEE (a byword for nepotism and cronyism) supported by law). For most ordinary black South Africans they live in the same houses, do the same jobs and have the same access to necessary services. Yes institutionalised racism is not in place and the cruelty of the apartheid regime does not remain, additionally there have been in some cases advances in working and conditions of most South Africans and this is a definite step forwards so if you would say to me is life now ‘worse’ than under apartheid, no of course it is not.

But then if we look at what has happened after the end of apartheid the ANC led government has backtracked on nearly every promise it made and has failed to address poverty in the country not primarily because of a lack of resources but because of voluntary and unncessecary (even for bourgeois politics) policy choice, eg. it has implemented less land reform even that what was approved by the World Bank.

Yet the role of the SACP has not been to challenge these (as will be seen with GEAR later on) even when it would do so, but to stand by and support them, either because of loyalty to the ANC or because of its class allegiances. I’ll let other make their own minds up there.

So while the SACP speaks of socialism and claims to be fighting for change, while it waxes lyrical over the great changes made since the end of apartheid the reality begs to differ.

“Politicians have money for big houses, luxury cars and expensive clothes but they are not earning their money by doing things for the poor, said Khulu, who is unemployed. For 20 years I have lived in a shack. Nothing has changed for us after apartheid ended. Things have gotten worse.”
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-03-03-we-voted-anc-but-it-seems-are-forgottenYet this is not just coincidence and going beyond what reforms the SACP could have helped facilitate we have the simple fact that it is, and cannot be, a revolutionary organisation. Political parties aimed at the seizure of state power, who are happy to support neoliberal reform and who are part and parcel of the capitalist system are not, and cannot be, revolutionary agents.

So you ask me what the SACP should have done from 1994 onwards and I say I will not tell you because the SACP, being a bourgeois party, is not one I am going to advice. So if I were to tell you I would have to tell you the SACP would have to change its political line, would have to refuse the conquest of state power, would have to refuse taking state power with the ANC, would have to immerse itself in everyday struggles and would have to join the struggle for a stateless, classless society. But I don't even have to take this theoretical approach, because by being in the ANC alliance the SACP has done absolutely nothing of any good, so I don't have to be theoretical I just have to point to the history of South Africa since 1994 and the complete failings of the SACP.

And so we move on to specifics.

The Fog of War...the fact that during conflict, misinformation and confusion is unavoidable, and that assumptions should never be seen as reliable. That's why I'm not going on hear-say on this.Ok well I'm going to take the word of the shackdwellers on this this and not the ANC, that you would do the opposite shows where your allegiances lie;

“We have often said that the attack on our movement in the Kennedy Road settlement on the 26th and 27th of September last year was planned at a very high political level. It was planned outside of the Kennedy Road settlement. The attack took the lives of two people; drove our leaders, their families, their friends and comrades out of the Kennedy Road settlement and left thousands of people homeless and displaced. Thirteen people were arrested for the crime that was planned after several meetings of the ANC structures in and outside the settlement. Eight months later five of those people remain in Westville prison without bail and without any evidence being brought against them.”
http://www.abahlali.org/node/7050Considering the way the ANC framed the event this isn't hard to believe;

“The violent intimidation of AbM in the Kennedy Road settlement began with mysterious but very well organised and extremely brutal assaults on AbM leaders S’bu Zikode and Mashumi Figlan. Then, as the whole world knows, an armed mob, chanting ethnic slogans, went from door to door on the night of 28 September 2009 driving well known AbM leaders and members from their homes. Their homes were destroyed and looted while the police and local politicians looked on. The office of Willies Mchunu, the provincial MEC for Safety & Security, issued a statement that declared that Kennedy Road had been ‘liberated’.”
http://www.abahlali.org/node/6630
It wouldn't, though. It would give free reign to the rightists in the ANC to ruin workers' lives. But you don't care too much about that, do you?Oh yes because the SACP has been so good at stopping the ANC do this so far right? Except of course the SACP have been wholly complicit in this entire process. Let’s take one example, that of GEAR, the epitome of neoliberal reform and implemented in 1996 following the abandonment of the RDP. The results of GEAR were that South Africa overtook Brazil as the world's most unequal major country, as black incomes fell below 1994 levels and white incomes grew by 24 percent, according to official statistics. Here are some nice views on it;

Nick Barnardt, an economist at BOE NatWest Securities; "It is a clear choice for the market-related way of doing things and a defeat for the ANC left-wing."
George Soros; "South Africa is in the hands of international capital."

Anyway here is what the SACP had to say about it in 1996; “The South African Communist Party welcomes the government’s Growth, Employment and Redistribution Macro-Economic Policy. We fully back the objectives of this macro-economic strategy”

Considering Alec Erwin has been described as one of the primary architects of GEAR this is hardly surprising. (Note: other such examples of this could incluce Jeff Radebe privatising public services as Minister for Public Enterprises whilst at the same time sitting on the Central Committee of the SACP. And of course there is always Blade Nzimande's famous 1.2 million rand luxury BMW)

But anyway away from this the SACP approach to GEAR, while they now (albeit too late to make a serious difference) still remains hampered, for example in 2004 Essop Pahad, who served as Minister in the Presidency around the late 1990s/early 2000s still had this to say about it;

“Why do you keep on saying that it was a neoliberal policy? And say, OK, define neoliberalism, and say: what part of it was neoliberal? Because fiscal prudence isn’t neoliberal, it’s just common sense, it’s common sense when you run your own house that you want to have fiscal
prudence, because if you spend more money than you have, at some point you’re going bankrupt”Going back a few years (and yes I understand this was 9 years ago so this is indeed dated but I think it is a good example), here is what the SACP had to say about the 2001 General Strike against privatisation (most of which was in actual fact the result of GEAR);

“While the general strike is obviously political in character (it is about seeking to influence and change aspects of current policy), the Politburo understands that the strike is not about challenging or undermining the legitimacy of our ANC-led government”So the SACP supports GEAR, the workers strike against GEAR, SACP supports the strike but at the same time does not support the aim of the strike, an attack upon the government that implemented GEAR. I don’t think you can find any more obvious examples of a party taking the side of the state against the workers.

And you claim I don’t care about workers...

That is quite economist, and thus useless. Oh, yes, self-organized revolt, what a brilliant idea. Now if you could give us the slightest idea on how this would happen, on how South African organizations can come to the point of even making this a vague reality...then maybe you'd have a point. But you don't. Let me know when you do.And here is the problem in your analysis, organisations don’t make revolution, the working class makes revolution. While there is a role for organisations in spreading ideas, offering support to and attempting to facilitate the link up of isolated struggles, and providing conceptions of an alternative world, of a real human community, these organisations can no more make revolution than this forum can make revolution. You start from the top downwards, assuming that the growth in specific political parties and the extent to which they can gain nominal control of structures of domination signifies a step closer to revolution, you assume that by being able to reform capital, by being able to alter it slightly to the (abstract and undesirable) ‘left’ it will pave the way to true emancipation. It will not, it will merely co-opt struggle and sell it back to its practitioners. While organisations will play a large role in the revolutionary process those organisation will grow (or even be created in themselves) through struggle itself, they will come from the alliances and affinities developed through resistance, will grow and multiply as the struggle does so accordingly. The SACP is not revolutionary and it cannot be, it is, in the words of Bordiga, a gravedigger of the revolution.

And you want to know how self-organised revolt will happen well you know what I don’t know how it will happen because I’m not a fortune teller. We cannot predict the future and, as you have so many times stated, the path to revolution is not smooth. Can I predict the particular greivances, desires and struggles that will lead to revolution? Of course not, all I, and anyone who really cares about emancipation, can do is to be there when they happen, to support them and to faciliate their growth towards revolution.

And when this happens (as it happens in micro-occurences now) parties like the SACP are there to tell people to abandon the barricades and enter the polling stations, to leave the strike committees and join the party. Therein lies the problem with it all.

You wouldn't say that if you read my posts.Ok, perhaps I have no fully checked your links (which all seem to be from the PSL website it appears) so I had a look.

Let’s see what the PSL has to say about South Africa;

“But as the SACP has itself pointed out, the new changes could easily be purely cosmetic, a sop to the left. Indeed, left-wing elements outside the SACP have argued this is likely the case. The one area all forces on the South African left, including COSATU, can agree on is the need to intensify popular struggles.”This is nice language and you point out the SACP have claimed this again;

“During the last Parliament, communist members declared they would not be strictly bound to the ANC whip and would oppose anti-working class measures.”However in actual fact the relationship between SACP and these intensifying popular struggles is less rosy than you like to present;

“However, when Blade Nzimande, the general secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), condemns the current spate of strikes around the country and recent looting of shops in Durban, and blames it on a third force, this is very worrying. The concern here is not the condemnation of violence but its link to a third force by someone who leads a party that claims to represent the interests of the poor.”
http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=26147Furthermore could you please indicate where the SACP has opposed anti-working class measures in the South African parliament? Talk is nice, action is better.

One example you claim to have given is this;

“Tensions increased during and after a recent December 2009 special conference of the SACP. ANC NEC members, including ANC Youth League chairman Julius Malema, were booed by the SACP delegates. SACP members rejected ANCYL proposals on nationalization as opportunistic; COSATU raised similar criticisms saying the proposals lacked “substance.”Yet as I have noted before this is nothing more than the result of a clash of egos between Malema and Cronin. COSATU was quick to heal up the differences and the issue has been defused.

Another interesting section from what you have posted is here;

“In July, numerous townships erupted in protests demanding better delivery of services. Basic social services, such as water and public transportation, are inadequate or non-existent in the townships, which are predominantly working class.”It is telling here that the PSL, following the SACP, take the ‘service delivery’ line on these recent protests, this is not an isolated occurrence;

“The SACP's Gauteng spokesperson, Jacob Mamabolo, directed the Mail & Guardian to its joint statement with the ANC, Cosatu and Sanco on Wednesday this week which said that service delivery is not really behind the protests. Rather, the protests are in communities where "a lot of development is under way" and so are "more about calling for speeding up of service delivery".
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-03-19-spooks-to-sniff-out-whos-behind-protestsHowever the language of ‘service delivery’ is in itself a form of elite discourse;

“A key barrier towards elite understanding of the five-year hydra-like urban rebellion is that protests are more or less uniformly labelled as “service delivery protests”. This label is well suited to those elites who are attracted to the technocratic fantasy of a smooth and post-political developmental space in which experts engineer rational development solutions from above. Once all protests are automatically understood to be about a demand for “service delivery” they can be safely understood as a demand for more efficiency from the current development model rather than any kind of challenge to that model. Of course, many protests have been organised around demands for services within the current development paradigm and so there certainly are instances in which the term has value. But the reason why the automatic use of the term “service delivery protest” obscures more than it illuminates is that protests are a direct challenge to the post-apartheid development model.”
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=76611
“Some say the reason there are so many so-called 'service delivery protests' is because some within the political parties are spoon-feeding the protesters because they want to be nominated in the next municipal election. The government is always saying that someone is telling the people to riot against their councillors, and the reason why they are doing it is that they want to take over as councillors.

That is naive thinking: Do they think poor people don’t see that either there is no service delivery or else it is the wrong king of delivery, a delivery that oppresses us? Do they think that poor people don’t know how to separate something good from something bad? It is an insult to think there are people spoon-feeding the poor. Do the poor need somebody to tell them about their suffering?

Please, come on, the poor know their problems without any help from anyone. So let us tell you what we need you to do. Now is the time to stop a top-down system and make sure that each and everyone can decide his or her own future. It is our lives and we are the masters of what we are.”
http://libcom.org/news/lindela-figlan-reflects-aftermath-attack-abahlali-basemjondolo-last-year-15042010
You said the only thing the SACP published on the situation surrounding the World Cup was the blurb you posted. I showed you this was not the case. At any rate, are you condemning the SACP's words? Don't dance around the issue, deal with it head-on.Ok, let’s talk about what the SACP said. In the document the two issues they most refer to are corruption and and financial sector reform. In regards to the former while corruption can be an issue at hand it is an intra-bourgeois issue and it as issue that can easily be reformed without damaging the functioning of capital. To be corrupt you must first be in a position of power, a position of authority and a position of exploitation otherwise it would not matter if you were corrupt; how can you fiddle funds if you have no access to funds to fiddle? Therefore to ammend this you simply need to ensure non-corrupt individuals take these positions or the system is made non-corrupt, the basic way however in which the system functions does not have to be altered and nor does the exploitation that is inherent in it. For example there are many countries in the world that can be said to not be corrupt, yet they are still capitalist and they still exploit labour.
 Regarding financial reform these is in keeping with the tactics of the SACP and in doing so ensures they do not offend the ANC. This is a rather long quote from a journal article but it is quite telling;

“In light of the many socio-economic issues currently plaguing the country, there are concerns as to the appropriateness of prioritising financial sector reform and cooperatives as central to the strategy and tactics of the Party. The most salient issues for the working class and poor in South Africa are arguably housing, electricity, water, land reform, unemployment, and HIV/AIDS. Thus, it is striking that the lead campaigns of the Party would not be directly addressing any of these crucial issues. It is also noteworthy that the ANC Government has addressed the socio-economic issues mentioned above in a woefully inadequate manner, and in some cases the ANC’s neoliberal policies have exacerbated already existing problems (such as unemployment). Yet instead of attacking the Government’s role in implementing neoliberal macroeconomic reform, the Party has focused instead on those issues that will not disrupt relations with the ANC. The campaigns are therefore ‘safe’ for the Party leadership, as they do not directly confront the ANC Government and its policies (or the SACP leaders sitting in Government). Dale McKinley, scholar/ activist and former SACP member, argues that the SACP’s emphasis on the financial sector campaign is actually indicative of the ideological and political bankruptcy of the SACP, what it has become. It has become reduced to an organization that is unable to take up the most basic struggles with people on the ground around basic services. They have nothing to say about water, they have nothing to say about housing, electricity (2004).”If we then take those last two points housing and electricity the failings of the SACP become even more apparent. In regards to electricity a useful starting point is the case of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, a grassroots community organisation aimed at reconnecting electricity to those who have been disconnected. Disconnections have been a regular occurrence since 1994 and the effects are of course disasturous;

“When they arrive, 78-year-old Christine Sonile takes her time emerging from a darkened bedroom.
"On Friday I was having a nap in the afternoon when there was a knock on the door. The next thing I knew I was disconnected," she says.
She has to support three grandchildren on a monthly pension payment of 1,000 rand ($130 or £80).
Her face creased with both worry and old age, Ms Sonile explains that each month she paid the electricity company 100 rand.
One look at her bill shows it was not nearly enough.
Accumulated over 20 years her balance is a staggering 66,000 rand.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8376400.stm Beyond this in many shacks with no electricity they are forced to used paraffin stoves. It is then hardly surprising that shack fires remain a primary concern occurring on average ten times a day and killing someone every other day. Yet the SACP response to the SECC has not been to support them but to outright condemn them, to denounce them as ‘ultra left’ and claim they undermine the ‘progressive government’. Furthermore they have also been prominent in actually calling the cops on the SECC. Once again the alleigances of the SACP are evident for all to see.

Returning to the other big issue there housing.
Despite being written into the constitution as a human right and described by Mandela as an ‘unbreakable promise’, housing for all has failed to materialise. In turn the number of people living in shacks has actually increased since 1994 with the figure standing at over one million in Durban. With the World Cup this process has only intensified the process. To build the stadiums evictions were increased and anyone who resisted was liable for either a hefty fine or a stint in the cells. In turn a series of ‘Transitional Relocation Camps’ have been constructed and are being used to house the evicted residents. Described by those that inhabit then as ‘concentration camps’, families of six or seven people are crammed into living spaces of three by six metres, there are no shower facilities, little toilet facilities, a chronic lack of food and reports of police brutality in the middle of the night. Once there, people are informed it will probably be up to ten years until they can access permanent housing, leaving them stranded in what has been described as apartheid conditions.

Yet do the SACP mention this? Do they even mention the striking workers shot at by police? No all they can say is “The next 30 days is for the workers and the poor of this country to celebrate and enjoy world class football wherever they will be”.

Yes, I’m sure the workers and the poor of South Africa are enjoying it a lot.

http://www.abahlali.org/files/active/5/5124_large.jpg

So the people who became known as the Communards popped out of holes from the ground in March 26, then, right? Actually this isn't far off what actually happened, most of the Communards (nearly all if we go beyond the Communal Council to the other structures in Paris) were unknown not established politicians. This was one of the biggest criticisms launched against the Commune and it didn't come from nowhere. A lot of them were involved in previous organisations and institutions, ranging from the Vigilance Committees to the Central Committee of the 20 Arrondissements, to the clubs, to the co-operatives, to the trades federations and, yes, to the National Guard and the Government of National Defence, including in some cases the Second Republic and the Second Empire. Yet despite all this they were not the most well known figures, Blanqui was in jail, Proudhon was dead, Victor Hugo, Louis Blanc were not there etc etc. In many ways yes they did pop out of holes in the ground, and as a normative point I believe this is a much better way to approach revolution than the ‘great man’ approach beloved by so many on the ‘left’.

The Communards, the partisans of the Commune, participated in a capitalist government in the Government of National Defense.Some of them did, but not that many, if we look at some of the most well known Communards; Arnould, Cluseret, Courbet, Dmitrieff, Dombrowski, Ferre, Frankel, Leo, Michel, Vaillant, Varlin, Vermorel - none of these had ever participated in previous French assemblies. Many others had done yes but for you to say with one broad sweep that ‘The Communards... paricipated in a capitalist government’ is just a straight up lie. Furthermore it ignores the fact that the Communards were not a homogenous group so unless speaking about March-May 1871 we cannot say ‘the Communards did x’ or the ‘Communards did y’ because they were not Communards except when they were fighting, living and dying in the Paris Commune.

By your logic, the Commune itself was a capitalist government:Half right. The Commune was not a government and it was not a state. This is a very complex argument I accept and is hampered by an adequate and universally accepted definition of ‘the state’ but if we for example take Marx’s (and even Lenin’s) writings on the Commune we note the emphasis he places on two specific aspects of the Commune; the recallability of officials and average workers wages.

Yet these are fundamentally absent from the South African state. Without getting into further discussion of whether the Commune was a state this is a clear differential between the two.

However you are right the Commune was capitalist, or rather, it was not socialist, as what accepted by Marx; 'the majority of the Commune was in no wise socialist'. While economic measures were there there largely followed the ideal of co-operatives, more in common with mutualism than radical forms of socialism. Yet the Communards never claimed otherwise and what the Paris Commune represented was a genuine revolution is both spatial occupation and in political governance, this is why Marx terms it ‘the political form at last discovered under which to work ou the economical emancipation of labour’ (note; it is not the economic form at last discovered). However as we are now talking about ‘politics’ and ‘economics’...

There is a political dimension to working-class organization that you're missing.Regarding your claims of economism and the distinction between economic and political and I am prepared to admit I have been reductionist here. A praxis of emancipation does exist beyond the workplace, a specific nod here goes to community organising which I think has been long neglected by the traditional ‘left’. Interesting this has become very prominent in South Africa.
However in your distinction between economics and politics I am yet to see what the political component is, except for participation in existing state structures. Yet the state is not a site of change, it is a structure of domination and while I am perfectly happy to accept there is a political dimension to revolutionary activity if this dimension I reduced to the state then I am not. Once you enter into state politics you take on the role of administering capital and of ruling class governance, you are no longer an ally of any form of popular struggle. To the extent that demands may be placed upon the state this is because the state, in order to function and to ensure control must monopolise the provision of, or the allocation of the provision of, necessary services and needs. With state control anyone who seeks to go beyond this paradigm can be deemed criminal and liable to punishment, with regards to South Africa the SECC proves this very well; in attempting to secure mass access to a necessary service, electricity, in the face of a state structure that will not do this they are breaking the spurious dimensions of law, they are criminal. Yet this is exactly what we must be looking to do, to subordinate the provision of these services downwards and away from the state whilst still accepting the, rather hideous, politics of demands, especially for the South African poor must still, by necessity, be engaged with.

One last point it is this distinction between politics and economics that was instrumental in co-opting and defusing the anti-apartheid struggle. As Nigel Gibson notes;

Former critics of the ANC played an important role in disempowering the people, arguing that politics should be left up to those who understood and thus echoing a line that the SACP had earlier pushed agains t the workers (and the “workerists”), namely, that they didn’t understand the complexity of politics and without the party’s leadership couldn’t develop more than a trade union consciousness.

Like I said, I guess if the SACP burns down a bank with workers inside of it, they'd be more revolutionary in your mind.Not at all. I don’t think this is revolutionary in any way.

But that's how ultra-left criticism goes...everyone else is horrible and reactionary, even if you can't come up with a single useful idea on how to move forward.Unfortunately when dealing with parties such as the SACP they are indeed ‘horrible and reactionary’.

manic expression

19th June 2010, 22:51

I am not trying to say ‘nothing has changed’, I don’t think I have said that and if I have then it wasn’t what I meant. What I am trying to say is that the power relations that sustained apartheid, of white over black of exploiter over exploited still remain in place. White farmers still own most land (which was codified in the constitution as existing property rights were protected), people still live in the same bad (or good as the case may be) housing and communities and business elites are still quite static. To the extent that black South Africans have made gains the most of these have been felt by the black bourgeoisie of the country, now able to gain greater access to capital and through policies like BEE (a byword for nepotism and cronyism) supported by law). For most ordinary black South Africans they live in the same houses, do the same jobs and have the same access to necessary services. Yes institutionalised racism is not in place and the cruelty of the apartheid regime does not remain, additionally there have been in some cases advances in working and conditions of most South Africans and this is a definite step forwards so if you would say to me is life now ‘worse’ than under apartheid, no of course it is not.
A few problems with this. First, thanks for the clarification, it sounded a bit as though you were saying nothing had changed. Second, as you point out, the Black African bourgeoisie has been put into power alongside the former rulers, that is a huge change, especially since the ANC (which has been unimpeachable in the South African electorate so far) is a multi-class party with a lot of different class interests shoe-horned into the same organization. But we are in agreement on this, it seems.

But then if we look at what has happened after the end of apartheid the ANC led government has backtracked on nearly every promise it made and has failed to address poverty in the country not primarily because of a lack of resources but because of voluntary and unncessecary (even for bourgeois politics) policy choice, eg. it has implemented less land reform even that what was approved by the World Bank.Yes, I wouldn't disagree with this. The ANC has been dragging its feet at best when it comes to promises made to the working class. The "Great U-Turn" (introduction of neo-liberalism) in particular is a good example of this.

Yet the role of the SACP has not been to challenge these (as will be seen with GEAR later on) even when it would do so, but to stand by and support them, either because of loyalty to the ANC or because of its class allegiances. I’ll let other make their own minds up there.

So while the SACP speaks of socialism and claims to be fighting for change, while it waxes lyrical over the great changes made since the end of apartheid the reality begs to differ.

Yet this is not just coincidence and going beyond what reforms the SACP could have helped facilitate we have the simple fact that it is, and cannot be, a revolutionary organisation. Political parties aimed at the seizure of state power, who are happy to support neoliberal reform and who are part and parcel of the capitalist system are not, and cannot be, revolutionary agents.

So you ask me what the SACP should have done from 1994 onwards and I say I will not tell you because the SACP, being a bourgeois party, is not one I am going to advice. So if I were to tell you I would have to tell you the SACP would have to change its political line, would have to refuse the conquest of state power, would have to refuse taking state power with the ANC, would have to immerse itself in everyday struggles and would have to join the struggle for a stateless, classless society. But I don't even have to take this theoretical approach, because by being in the ANC alliance the SACP has done absolutely nothing of any good, so I don't have to be theoretical I just have to point to the history of South Africa since 1994 and the complete failings of the SACP.This, I take exception to. Within public politics, the SACP has stood by the ANC for many reasons. The alliance forged in the defeat of apartheid, the political dead-end of going against the ANC as it stands...those factors may all play a role, I would think (speculation here). But most importantly, the SACP has remained in the Tripartite Alliance because it affords revolutionaries the best chance to advocate for workers, as it has done with increasing visibility in the past year or so. The SACP has booed rightist elements of the ANC in conferences, pushed pro-worker motions and more, and this is only possible with participation in the Alliance. The working class' best hope is in the Tripartite Alliance, and the SACP recognizes this, as any genuine communist party would. Their course of action is most reasonable. Without that, the SACP, and thus the interests of the workers, would be entirely marginalized and insulted even more. Let's look at this:

Imagine if the SACP left the Alliance. What would the immediate ramifications be? First, the ANC would be far more anti-worker than it has been previously. If you think the South African government is bad now, you ain't seen nuttin...the right-wing of the ANC would make Reagan blush in his grave if pro-worker members abandoned the Alliance. Second, the cause of socialism would be pushed to the sidelines, would be slandered as a traitor of South African liberation, seen as a friend of the enemies of the ANC (which, interestingly enough, posters are doing on this very thread). Third, pro-worker and progressive elements in the ANC would be hamstrung and left with virtually no base of support. It would alienate leftists within the ANC, it would weaken leftists without the ANC. Basically, it would be political suicide.

My question to you: do you even care? You write potential allies off as "bourgeois", the calling card of someone who's more interested it purity than in building a popular movement for revolution. If your motives lie in the conditions and political empowerment of the workers (as you state, and as I believe), then you should look at the whole board. The SACP has been dropped into a chess game, and they're not about to play checkers because you think it's purer.

And so we move on to specifics.

Ok well I'm going to take the word of the shackdwellers on this this and not the ANC, that you would do the opposite shows where your allegiances lie;

Considering the way the ANC framed the event this isn't hard to believe;

Oh yes because the SACP has been so good at stopping the ANC do this so far right? Except of course the SACP have been wholly complicit in this entire process. Let’s take one example, that of GEAR, the epitome of neoliberal reform and implemented in 1996 following the abandonment of the RDP. The results of GEAR were that South Africa overtook Brazil as the world's most unequal major country, as black incomes fell below 1994 levels and white incomes grew by 24 percent, according to official statistics. Here are some nice views on it;Don't be silly. The SACP cannot come out and overtly oppose the ANC, and thus they cannot "stop" the party of South Africa. Like it or not (and I don't), the ANC is unstoppable in today's South African politics. The SACP is doing remarkably well as it stands, and I don't know why you insist on maligning them for doing that.

I am familiar with GEAR and I denounce it. That does not mean we should throw everyone who had anything to do with it under the bus. It was 1994 for crying out loud, what was the SACP supposed to do? Call for economic assistance from the Soviet Union? It was single-minded leftism that has brought the left to the difficult position that it's in today...and I think it unwise to continue that.

Nick Barnardt, an economist at BOE NatWest Securities; "It is a clear choice for the market-related way of doing things and a defeat for the ANC left-wing."
George Soros; "South Africa is in the hands of international capital."I've seen far more troubling quotes than that. But now that South Africa is in the hands of international capital, and now that the ANC left-wing (who, evidently, opposed the Great U-Turn of the ANC right) has been handed a defeat...what do you want to do? Give the ANC left another defeat? Put South Africa even deeper in the pockets of capital? That is no way forward.

Anyway here is what the SACP had to say about it in 1996; “The South African Communist Party welcomes the government’s Growth, Employment and Redistribution Macro-Economic Policy. We fully back the objectives of this macro-economic strategy”

Considering Alec Erwin has been described as one of the primary architects of GEAR this is hardly surprising. (Note: other such examples of this could incluce Jeff Radebe privatising public services as Minister for Public Enterprises whilst at the same time sitting on the Central Committee of the SACP. And of course there is always Blade Nzimande's famous 1.2 million rand luxury BMW)

But anyway away from this the SACP approach to GEAR, while they now (albeit too late to make a serious difference) still remains hampered, for example in 2004 Essop Pahad, who served as Minister in the Presidency around the late 1990s/early 2000s still had this to say about it;

Going back a few years (and yes I understand this was 9 years ago so this is indeed dated but I think it is a good example), here is what the SACP had to say about the 2001 General Strike against privatisation (most of which was in actual fact the result of GEAR);

So the SACP supports GEAR, the workers strike against GEAR, SACP supports the strike but at the same time does not support the aim of the strike, an attack upon the government that implemented GEAR. I don’t think you can find any more obvious examples of a party taking the side of the state against the workers.You're missing the bigger picture, again. The government, the state, in 1994, represented a step forward from apartheid. It represented a crucial beach-head in the fascistic occupation of South Africa. It was a life-line. To openly oppose that, something which so many South Africans, Namibians, Angolans, Cubans and others gave their lives for, would border on insanity. The SACP was thinking long-term, and that meant swallowing a bitter pill in supporting an important ally who had turned right. The alternative, again, was what? Yes, that's what.

And you claim I don’t care about workers...I think you do care about the workers. If I said otherwise, then I take that back. I just don't think your position reflects it, that's what I was trying to say.

And here is the problem in your analysis, organisations don’t make revolution, the working class makes revolution. While there is a role for organisations in spreading ideas, offering support to and attempting to facilitate the link up of isolated struggles, and providing conceptions of an alternative world, of a real human community, these organisations can no more make revolution than this forum can make revolution. You start from the top downwards, assuming that the growth in specific political parties and the extent to which they can gain nominal control of structures of domination signifies a step closer to revolution, you assume that by being able to reform capital, by being able to alter it slightly to the (abstract and undesirable) ‘left’ it will pave the way to true emancipation. It will not, it will merely co-opt struggle and sell it back to its practitioners. While organisations will play a large role in the revolutionary process those organisation will grow (or even be created in themselves) through struggle itself, they will come from the alliances and affinities developed through resistance, will grow and multiply as the struggle does so accordingly. The SACP is not revolutionary and it cannot be, it is, in the words of Bordiga, a gravedigger of the revolution.Organizations (help) make revolutions because the working class makes organizations. Anything else is classic economism. Right, the workers make the revolution, so why have parties at all? Why have leftists? Why post on RevLeft? The nebulous, faceless, nameless blob of "workers" will do everything, so I guess we can all go on vacation and forget about all this "theory and practice" bunk. :rolleyes: Organizations are critical, if not decisive, in revolutionary situations. The SACP is one we can count on to promote the interests of the workers, because it has proven its dedication to the cause of socialism in the darkest of days.

This is not about being able to reform capital. That is part of it, but to think that is the end goal is absurd. Sure, the SACP wants to be able to win any concession that might help workers' lives in the short-term, but they are thinking, once again, in the long-term, too. To be able to work with key allies in the ANC, to be able to build the basis of a popular movement for socialism, to be able to confront anti-worker rightists on their own turf are opportunities that facilitate South Africa's march forward. And you want to throw that all away...and for what? For absent-minded determinism, for some vaguely-defined alternative that has no chance of doing anything, ever. Let me ask you: what has your ideology done for the workers lately? What revolutions have your comrades made...and defended?

And you want to know how self-organised revolt will happen well you know what I don’t know how it will happenThank you. It's worth bearing in mind.

And when this happens (as it happens in micro-occurences now) parties like the SACP are there to tell people to abandon the barricades and enter the polling stations, to leave the strike committees and join the party. Therein lies the problem with it all.You just said you weren't a fortune-teller, that you don't know how anything will play out, and yet you're so sure that the SACP will betray your uprising? That doesn't follow. Either you know exactly how it's going down or you don't.

Ok, perhaps I have no fully checked your links (which all seem to be from the PSL website it appears) so I had a look.

Let’s see what the PSL has to say about South Africa;

This is nice language and you point out the SACP have claimed this again;

However in actual fact the relationship between SACP and these intensifying popular struggles is less rosy than you like to present;

Furthermore could you please indicate where the SACP has opposed anti-working class measures in the South African parliament? Talk is nice, action is better.First, thanks for checking the links, I admit that sometimes I'm guilty of neglecting opposing material. Second, what's interesting is that you reject the SACP's pro-worker rhetoric as "talk" and then when the SACP talks about looting being not all that great, you jump on it as evidence of some anti-worker tendency. This is neither consistent nor convincing. Third, I really wouldn't know where I would find the South African parliamentary minutes to prove the claim on opposition, but perhaps you could take it in good faith...I've never known the PSL to be wrong on something like that.

One example you claim to have given is this;

Yet as I have noted before this is nothing more than the result of a clash of egos between Malema and Cronin. COSATU was quick to heal up the differences and the issue has been defused.

Another interesting section from what you have posted is here;

It is telling here that the PSL, following the SACP, take the ‘service delivery’ line on these recent protests, this is not an isolated occurrence;

However the language of ‘service delivery’ is in itself a form of elite discourse;Please specify what you mean by that. The PSL is hardly "elite", as you say, and everyone who's worked with them can verify that. Also, whether or not it's a clash of egos or a clash of tastes in ballet, it's a clash...your picture of the SACP and ANC crushing workers' rights while holding hands doesn't match up to the intricacies of the situation.

Ok, let’s talk about what the SACP said. In the document the two issues they most refer to are corruption and and financial sector reform. In regards to the former while corruption can be an issue at hand it is an intra-bourgeois issue and it as issue that can easily be reformed without damaging the functioning of capital. To be corrupt you must first be in a position of power, a position of authority and a position of exploitation otherwise it would not matter if you were corrupt; how can you fiddle funds if you have no access to funds to fiddle? Therefore to ammend this you simply need to ensure non-corrupt individuals take these positions or the system is made non-corrupt, the basic way however in which the system functions does not have to be altered and nor does the exploitation that is inherent in it. For example there are many countries in the world that can be said to not be corrupt, yet they are still capitalist and they still exploit labour.
 Regarding financial reform these is in keeping with the tactics of the SACP and in doing so ensures they do not offend the ANC. This is a rather long quote from a journal article but it is quite telling;Corruption is not just as you say, it means the political disenfranchisement of workers. It is one of the issues that South African workers are concerned about and ready to fight...why not appeal to this? It is an ultra-left position to oppose a fight against corruption, for it seeks to fence the left in from the working class. Addressing key concerns is not a problem, the opposite is.

If we then take those last two points housing and electricity the failings of the SACP become even more apparent. In regards to electricity a useful starting point is the case of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, a grassroots community organisation aimed at reconnecting electricity to those who have been disconnected. Disconnections have been a regular occurrence since 1994 and the effects are of course disasturous;So the SACP shouldn't say anything at all?

Returning to the other big issue there housing.
Despite being written into the constitution as a human right and described by Mandela as an ‘unbreakable promise’, housing for all has failed to materialise. In turn the number of people living in shacks has actually increased since 1994 with the figure standing at over one million in Durban. With the World Cup this process has only intensified the process. To build the stadiums evictions were increased and anyone who resisted was liable for either a hefty fine or a stint in the cells. In turn a series of ‘Transitional Relocation Camps’ have been constructed and are being used to house the evicted residents. Described by those that inhabit then as ‘concentration camps’, families of six or seven people are crammed into living spaces of three by six metres, there are no shower facilities, little toilet facilities, a chronic lack of food and reports of police brutality in the middle of the night. Once there, people are informed it will probably be up to ten years until they can access permanent housing, leaving them stranded in what has been described as apartheid conditions.This must all be taken in the context of post-apartheid politics. The SACP is advocating for this to be ameliorated, but it must also contend with the realities of the day.

Yet do the SACP mention this? Do they even mention the striking workers shot at by police? No all they can say is “The next 30 days is for the workers and the poor of this country to celebrate and enjoy world class football wherever they will be”.

Yes, I’m sure the workers and the poor of South Africa are enjoying it a lot.That is not all they can say, they have said far more, and I've shown you exactly where previously.

Actually this isn't far off what actually happened, most of the Communards (nearly all if we go beyond the Communal Council to the other structures in Paris) were unknown not established politicians. This was one of the biggest criticisms launched against the Commune and it didn't come from nowhere. A lot of them were involved in previous organisations and institutions, ranging from the Vigilance Committees to the Central Committee of the 20 Arrondissements, to the clubs, to the co-operatives, to the trades federations and, yes, to the National Guard and the Government of National Defence, including in some cases the Second Republic and the Second Empire. Yet despite all this they were not the most well known figures, Blanqui was in jail, Proudhon was dead, Victor Hugo, Louis Blanc were not there etc etc. In many ways yes they did pop out of holes in the ground, and as a normative point I believe this is a much better way to approach revolution than the ‘great man’ approach beloved by so many on the ‘left’.So you're denying that they included someone who was a minister for the previous French government? That the National Guard was undeniably part of a bourgeois state? "Yet despite all this"...no, we're talking about principle, because you're basing your entire argument on exactly that: principle. To you, being part of a bourgeois government makes you bourgeois...that would be a most alien declaration to the Communards. That is the crux of this controversy and so I await your words on that.

Regarding your claims of economism and the distinction between economic and political and I am prepared to admit I have been reductionist here. A praxis of emancipation does exist beyond the workplace, a specific nod here goes to community organising which I think has been long neglected by the traditional ‘left’. Interesting this has become very prominent in South Africa.
However in your distinction between economics and politics I am yet to see what the political component is, except for participation in existing state structures. Yet the state is not a site of change, it is a structure of domination and while I am perfectly happy to accept there is a political dimension to revolutionary activity if this dimension I reduced to the state then I am not. Once you enter into state politics you take on the role of administering capital and of ruling class governance, you are no longer an ally of any form of popular struggle. To the extent that demands may be placed upon the state this is because the state, in order to function and to ensure control must monopolise the provision of, or the allocation of the provision of, necessary services and needs. With state control anyone who seeks to go beyond this paradigm can be deemed criminal and liable to punishment, with regards to South Africa the SECC proves this very well; in attempting to secure mass access to a necessary service, electricity, in the face of a state structure that will not do this they are breaking the spurious dimensions of law, they are criminal. Yet this is exactly what we must be looking to do, to subordinate the provision of these services downwards and away from the state whilst still accepting the, rather hideous, politics of demands, especially for the South African poor must still, by necessity, be engaged with.

One last point it is this distinction between politics and economics that was instrumental in co-opting and defusing the anti-apartheid struggle. As Nigel Gibson notes;I don't think that last point pertains to what I'm saying, though.

Anyway, let's take community organizing: whether or not you call your organization "grassroots", it is yet organization, and it fills a most political role. That is why we cannot say "the workers will make the revolution through something none of us can imagine". Revolutions and the movements they are founded on are created by workers...organized into organizations.

The state is certainly a site of change, just not in the way the capitalists envision. Working-class parties and their allies can use the platform of bourgeois politics to our advantage. After all, it is the duty of all revolutionaries to challenge, confront and defeat capitalist rhetoric in every inch of capitalist society. If we can do that from a campaign speech platform or from the floor of parliament, that is exactly what we will do. If circumstances dictate this must be done from within a coalition with a multi-class ally, then that is what we must respond to. The SACP is following this fundamentally revolutionary principle: advocate for the workers, everywhere.

You, quite reasonably, highlight the "politics of demands", but this is not hideous necessarily. It is one subset of politics that holds so much potential for South African workers, and we would be foolish not to take advantage of that.

Unfortunately when dealing with parties such as the SACP they are indeed ‘horrible and reactionary’.That is not the case, that is perception but not reality. Why burn bridges when you can help comrades to the other side? That's my question.

By the way, I appreciate the in-depth and well thought-out post. No matter our disagreements I respect the effort you've put into your response. I can only hope I've done the same. Just as a heads-up, it wouldn't surprise me if it takes awhile for me to respond next time (think a half-week to a week), but please don't let that stop you from making a reply...I'll get to it when I can. :thumbup1:

bricolage

20th June 2010, 13:10

I don't have time to write a proper answer now and am going away for a week, if I remember when I get back I will reply then.

Nothing Human Is Alien

21st June 2010, 11:53

Wanted Man

21st June 2010, 12:48

A recent candid admission from Mandela's ex-wife and ANC politician Winnie Madikizela-Mendela: "[Nelson Mandela] agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much 'white.' It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded."

And she denied giving this interview days after: http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article354012.ece

The alleged interview including the quote: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23812947-how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-ex-wife-winnie.do

Whether she said it or not, it's pretty accurate.