New Democracy & ZANU-PF: Zimbabwe's Revolutionary Path

[Return to the Source]

http://www.stanford.edu/class/e297a/Zimbabwe%27s%20Age%20Old%20Issue_files/image002.jpg

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts about this essay I wrote regarding Zimbabwe, ZANU-PF, and Mao's idea of new democracy (http://return2source.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/new-democracy-zanu-pf-zimbabwes-revolutionary-path/).

The gist of my argument is that Zimbabwe's Third Chimurenga, embodied in the Fast Track Land Reform Program, represents the consolidation of New Democracy--a state of all revolutionary classes that carries out the political and economic tasks of a democratic revolution in a post-colonial country without implementing capitalism.

An excerpt:


In post-colonial countries suffering from underdevelopment, New Democracy lays the material foundation upon which the masses will build socialism. Accordingly in Zimbabwe, the new Black farm owners have invested heavily in the improvement of their land and the development of advanced agricultural techniques. Scoones again finds that “new settlers have cleared land, built homes, purchased farm equipment and invested in livestock. We estimated that on average across sites over US$2,000 had been invested per household in a range of assets and improvements.” ZANU-PF encouraged indigenous investment in the newly acquired land by legally enshrining the FTLRP as irreversible.

Mugabe’s FTLRP has revolutionized the relations of production in rural Zimbabwe by radically democratizing the economy. Scoones explains this transformation particularly well, writing that “Unlike the old dualisms of the past, where large numbers of people were excluded from active participation in the agricultural economy, the processes of accumulation from below mean that new players are involved, benefits are being more widely distributed and economic linkages are more embedded in the local economy.” The land reform provided numerous remarkable opportunities for the people of Zimbabwe to directly participate in this new agrarian economy, signifying the development of actual economic democracy.

The FTLRP succeeded in establishing New Democracy in Zimbabwe, and this exciting development creates the conditions for further revolutionary advances towards socialism. Scoones alludes to this, writing”Land reform has unleashed a process of radical agrarian change. This was not just a modest process of transfer to black beneficiaries as in past attempts at resettlement, and has been the case in other land reform efforts elsewhere in the region. Because of its scale, it fundamentally changed agrarian structure, livelihoods and the rural economy. There are now new people on the land, engaged in new forms of economic activity, connected to new markets and carving out a variety of livelihoods.”

[DaringMehring]

You don't find it bizarre that "New Democracy" which is supposed to lead to "revolutionary advances towards socialism" sums up its achievements as "new people" "connected to new markets"?

Is "New Democracy" a fig leaf phrase for left-populism under capitalism? It seems like W.J. Bryan for instance should be considered a "socialist" using the criteria of "New Democracy."

[Return to the Source]

New Democracy isn't socialism; it's a transitional state ruled by a coalition of all revolutionary classes with the expressed goal of carrying out the political and economic tasks of a democratic revolution in a post-colonial country.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It's not Socialism, it's a 'state', it says that 'all classes are revolutionary'. That says it all.

And also, it's clearly failing if part of its task is to carry out the economic tasks of anything, let alone a revolution from below. Zimbabwe's economic performance over recent years has been astounding in its failure.

[the last donut of the night]

the only revolutionary class is the working class. tbh there's no need for logical rollercoasters to justify bourgeois rule

[Thirsty Crow]

the only revolutionary class is the working class. tbh there's no need for logical rollercoasters to justify bourgeois rule
Well, logical rolercoasters and rhetorical jumps up one's ass are pretty much all that is left when it comes to "bourgeois socialists'" defence of a given class collaborationist regime.

[robbo203]

http://www.stanford.edu/class/e297a/Zimbabwe%27s%20Age%20Old%20Issue_files/image002.jpg

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts about this essay I wrote regarding Zimbabwe, ZANU-PF, and Mao's idea of new democracy (http://return2source.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/new-democracy-zanu-pf-zimbabwes-revolutionary-path/).

The gist of my argument is that Zimbabwe's Third Chimurenga, embodied in the Fast Track Land Reform Program, represents the consolidation of New Democracy--a state of all revolutionary classes that carries out the political and economic tasks of a democratic revolution in a post-colonial country without implementing capitalism.



Absurd. Zimbabwe is a capitalist state and nothing in the so called Fast track Land Reform Program changes that. Like every other capitalist state (and every other state on the planet is capitalist under this system of global capitalism), Zimbabwe's priorities are fundamentally shaped by the needs of capiltal accumulation. Nor is some kind of transitional state being heralded as you maintain. Production for the market continues unabated as you yourself concede: "There are now new people on the land, engaged in new forms of economic activity, connected to new markets and carving out a variety of livelihoods.”

This is wishy washy, utterly confused leftist bilge of the worst sort. You've allowed your overly romanticised view of politics and your evident attachment to pretty labels, to get in the way of clear-headed hard analysis. To say something is "transitional" is to imply it is on the way to becoming something else. There is certainly no evidence of that in Zimbabwe's case and in any case any kind of fundamental change cannot be introduced from the top down; it has to come from the bottom up

Frankly I will celebrate the day when that disgusting anti-working class scumbag, Mugabe, is booted out. But I dont have any illusions that his departure will herald some new era of working class emancipation. It will just be another Zimbabwean capitalist government in charge but hopefully somewhat less despotic

[dernier combat]

New Democracy isn't socialism; it's a transitional state ruled by a coalition of all revolutionary classes with the expressed goal of carrying out the political and economic tasks of a democratic revolution in a post-colonial country.
But pray-tell, which revolutionary classes does this coalition include? Of course, it must include the working class - peasant workers (or however it is you call the non-exploiting ones) are also fine. But I don't see the rationale for incorporating the petit- and national-bourgeoisie in this ruling coalition.

How exactly can four classes simultaneously rule at once, anyway? A prerequisite for proletarian rule is taking control of the means of production, but the capitalist classes certainly wouldn't stand for that, as it contradicts the prerequisites for their rule (i.e. they control the MoP).

[Gorilla]

the only revolutionary class is the working class. tbh there's no need for logical rollercoasters to justify bourgeois rule

I have some problems with the theory of New Democracy as well, but the point of it is precisely that revolution is no longer possible without working-class leadership.

The idea is, in semi-feudal countries where you would previously have looked to the bourgeoisie to wage national-democratic revolution, the bourgeoisie is incapable of completing its historic tasks. So you either end up with no national-democratic revolution or an aborted one, a non-functioning gangster state like the mainland Guomindang regime. The working class has to take the lead in completing the tasks (land reform, legal equality among citizens, etc.) that had previously fallen to the bourgeoisie.

I agree with all that so far as it goes, but I disagree that it amounts to anything other than laying the groundwork for capitalism. Not that it's not worth doing, but it does lay the groundwork for capitalism despite the best efforts of Mao otherwise.

But I'm not sure that the Third Chimurenga fits into the New Democratic theory. For various historical reasons the Zimbabwean working class has found itself siding with international capital against the peasantry, black bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie who are driving land reform.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Switching the racial background of your country's bourgeois does not equate a real revolution. Bourgeois is bourgeois, no matter what the color of the skin or the continent from which their ancestors come. So he took land from the white bourgeois who descend from the old settler classes and gave a little land to some subsistence farmers ... great, his wife is still a freeloading multimillionaire and Mugabe's political buddies got a lot of the best (ie, most profitable) farmland. You still have a bourgeois state, except now it has hyperinflation, cholera outbreaks and a shortage of basic foodstuffs.

Also, to see some of the wonderful, pro-working class policies of the Mugabe regime, look at their "slum clearing" efforts. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4706115.stm)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/africa_enl_1119001870/img/1.jpg
(those used to be homes lived in by poor Zimbabweans)

Also, lets not forget the suffering of the Ndebele people, who were discriminated against for not supporting Mugabe, but supporting Soviet-backed guerillas during the war against the Smith govt. Many were brutally slaughtered by North-Korean trained Zimbabwean soldiers in the 80s. Some liberation leader.

It would be nice if other leftists would stop looking up at cryptofascists, theocrats, military dictators and tyrants for inspiration.

[Gorilla]

Switching the racial background of your country's bourgeois does not equate a real revolution. Bourgeois is bourgeois, no matter what the color of the skin or the continent from which their ancestors come. So he took land from the white bourgeois who descend from the old settler classes and gave a little land to some subsistence farmers

Whatever the validity of your other points (and you left some out) subsistence farmers are not bourgeois. And the number of such farmers who have benefited from land reform is quite a bit more than 'some'.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Whatever the validity of your other points (and you left some out) subsistence farmers are not bourgeois. And the number of such farmers who have benefited from land reform is quite a bit more than 'some'.

I never said subsistence farmers are bourgeois ... not all the land went to subsistence farmers. Most of it did, but not all of it. I've read that Mugabe's cronies often got the most commercially viable land.

Edit-also, land redistribution isn't the only issue, from what I understand there is an economically well-off circle around Mugabe too independent of agriculture, though I don't know enough about Zimbabwe to say what their source of income is (just regular old "rent economy" or what)

[Return to the Source]

@Shiva:

Read my post. The most recent study on the FTLRP shows that people connected to government officials--Mugabe's "cronies," to use your pejorative--didn't receive much land.

EDIT: In fact, they received the lowest percentage of land of any class group in the FTLRP.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

@Shiva:

Read my post. The most recent study on the FTLRP shows that people connected to government officials--Mugabe's "cronies," to use your pejorative--didn't receive much land.

I've heard that his political allies didn't get much land as a % of redistributed properties, but there are different ways of evaluating the land grants. If they get the land that produces the most value per acre, they don't need to receive a proportionately large amount to nevertheless profit quite substantially. Say I have a ranch with 95 acres that can produce some corn, and an orchard with 5 acres that can produce apples for export. If George a corrupt bureaucrat, he might make as much money getting the 5 acres of fertile apple orchards over the 95 acres of scrub. He may have gotten only 5% of the total land, but George the corrupt bureaucrat will make more profit out of it (presuming he can figure out how to manage it efficiently or sell it for a profit.)

In other words, you might be right that most of the land didn't get gobbled up in corruption, but there's still the possibility of serious graft and the creation of a whole new bourgeois establishment under the cover of the destruction of the old. There are enough other worrying features about the Mugabe administration to make that fear more than justified, in my mind.

[Return to the Source]

@Autonomia:

A couple folks in here have taken issue with the characterization of any class but the proletariat as a "revolutionary class." You're much more generous to include the peasantry. The reason that the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie are included is that in post-colonial countries, these classes may have an interest in fighting back imperialism and neo-colonialism. Even if one characterizes President Mugabe as bourgeois, no one can reasonably deny that he's at odds with imperialism. I don't think the facts show that ZANU-PF is a bourgeois party, but even if it was, it's qualitatively different than the MDC, who are proven collaborators with the West and call for greater sanctions that destroy the lives of workers, peasants, and the petty-bourgeoisie alike. That's the point I made in the final section of my essay related to whether or not ZANU-PF was still a revolutionary party.

Look at the facts: The FTLRP was the most egalitarian land reform in the history of Africa, and one of the most ambitious land reform projects in world history. If ZANU-PF were a capitalist party promoting traditional capitalist development in Zimbabwe, why haven't they governed like Ethiopia post-1991? Why foster accumulation from below, as opposed to an enclosure movement that forces poor and working people off their land to consolidate big business in the countryside? Moreover, why did government officials--Mugabe's "cronies," their pejorative, not mine--receive so little land in the FTLRP? Why were peasants and workers the greatest beneficiaries of the FTLRP? Why did the West spend the better part of the last decade demonizing the FTLRP and trying to build international consensus against Mugabe if he fit comfortably into a capitalist framework?

New Democracy is about laying the material groundwork for socialist construction. I quoted Mao in the essay (http://return2source.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/new-democracy-zanu-pf-zimbabwes-revolutionary-path/):


The [New Democratic] republic will take certain necessary steps to confiscate the land of the landlords and distribute it to those peasants having little or no land, carry out Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s slogan of ‘land to the tiller,’ abolish feudal relations in the rural areas, and turn the land over to the private ownership of the peasants. A rich peasant economy will be allowed in the rural areas. Such is the policy of ‘equalization of land-ownership.

Critique the idea of New Democracy if you want, but my argument is that ZANU-PF is building New Democracy in Zimbabwe, at least as Mao conceived of it.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Source-lets assume that there was nothing wrong with the land reform for a moment. What do you think about Mugabe's slaughter of many Ndebele in the 80s and the slum clearing efforts? It seems that those two acts should disqualify him as a "liberation hero" alone.

Take the slum clearing. It came as a result of the failures of Mugabe's own government (why is there a housing shortage of hundreds of thousands of homes?), so why does he bulldoze those homes?

Or the slaughter of the Ndebele. It seems to me, a Leftist reading history, as an ethnic (Shona) government imposing its ethnic and political power on another (the Ndebele) in order to secure the state, at the expense of innocent, unarmed civilians. As Mugabe says, "This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe#Criticism_and_opposition) He was talking about land reform, but he could have been talking about his brutal killing of many Ndebele people in southern Zimbabwe, probably as a populist move with his own Shona ethnic group.


EDIT: He's also deeply homophobic. To put it one way, Robert Mugabe would be banned from RevLeft for being a homophobe quite quickly. His views are so far from progressive on this issue, it's like he's coming from the Dark Ages in Europe.

"I find it extremely outrageous and repugnant to my human conscience that such immoral and repulsive organizations, like those of homosexuals, who offend both against the law of nature and the morals of religious beliefs espoused by our society, should have any advocates in our midst and elsewhere in the world."
""It degrades human dignity. It's unnatural, and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it, why must human beings? We have our own culture, and we must re-dedicate ourselves to our traditional values that make us human beings. … What we are being persuaded to accept is sub-animal behavior and we will never allow it here. If you see people parading themselves as Lesbians and Gays, arrest them and hand them over to the police!"" -Robert Mugabe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Zimbabwe)
He has launched an incomprehensible vendetta against gays, imagining a gay conspiracy that includes Tony Blair and "the gay government of the gay United gay Kingdom." Also from Mugabe (http://www.slate.com/id/81386/)


Perhaps you're right about land reform (I remain skeptical), but there are certainly other black marks on Mugabe's record that are beyond inexcusable from a leftwing perspective. I'd like to know what you think about these facts, and how you fit them into your views on ZANU PF's policies.

[RED DAVE]

But pray-tell, which revolutionary classes does this coalition include? Of course, it must include the working class - peasant workers (or however it is you call the non-exploiting ones) are also fine. But I don't see the rationale for incorporating the petit- and national-bourgeoisie in this ruling coalition.Welcome to Fantasy Politics (Maoist version).


How exactly can four classes simultaneously rule at once, anyway?They can't this is a Maoist cover-up for some other class ruling over the working class and the peasantry.


A prerequisite for proletarian rule is taking control of the means of production, but the capitalist classes certainly wouldn't stand for that, as it contradicts the prerequisites for their rule (i.e. they control the MoP).Yeah, it seems kind of obvious when you state that way, doesn't it?

The final question is: What happens when the Maoist block of four classes is instituted. Let's see: China - capitalism; Vietnam - capitalism; Nepal - class collaboration leading to ... capitalism.

What's wrong with this picture? Nothing ... if you're a capitalist.

RED DAVE