Open Letter to COSATU: Reaffirm COSATU to the working class than embezzled battles:

[Sithembewena Tsembeyi]

Open Letter to COSATU: Reaffirm COSATU to the working class than embezzled battles:

By Sithembewena Tsembeyi

 

Dear Comrades;

I write this letter to all you as untrusted leaders of our giant federation not only to advance our struggle for better working conditions at our shop-floors but continuously engage in ideological and dialectical questions in trying to find rooted solutions in bettering the lives of the poor masses of our country.

There are some damning questions that one would want you comrades to carefully considered in the continuous internal problems:

What is a Class Struggle?

In a Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin writes that:

"...At each stage of development, at each moment, proletarian tactics must take account of this objectively inevitable dialectics of human history, on the one hand, utilizing the periods of political stagnation or of sluggish, so-called "peaceful" development in order to develop the class-consciousness, strength and militancy of the advanced class, and, on the other hand, directing all the work of this utilization towards the "ultimate aim" of that class's advance, towards creating in it the ability to find practical solutions for great tasks in the great days, in which "20 years are embodied". Two of Marx's arguments are of special importance in this connection: one of these is contained in The Poverty of Philosophy, and concerns the economic struggle and economic organizations of the proletariat; the other is contained in the Communist Manifesto and concerns the asks of the proletariat..."

All this should be compared with numerous references by Marx and Engels to the example of the British labor movement, showing how industrial "property" leads to attempts "to buy the proletariat" (Briefwechsel, Vol. 1, p. 136). to divert them from the struggle; how this prosperity in general "demoralizes the workers" (Vol. 2, p. 218); how the British proletariat becomes "bourgeoisified" this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie" Chartists (1866; Vol. 3, p. 305); how the British workers' leaders are becoming a type midway between "a radical bourgeois and a worker" (in reference to Holyoak, Vol. 4, p. 209); how, owning to Britain's monopoly, and as long as that monopoly lasts, "the British workingman will not budge" (Vol. 4, p. 433). The tactics of the economic struggle, in connection with the general course (and outcome) of the working-class movement, are considered here from a remarkably broad, comprehensive, dialectical, and genuinely revolutionary standpoint.

The Communist Manifesto advanced a fundamental Marxist principle on the tactics of the political struggle that:

"...The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement." That was why, in 1848, Marx supported the party of the "agrarian revolution" in Poland, that party which brought about the Krakow insurrection in 1846.

On Trade union and Capitalism:

I am amazed by the number of theoretical mistakes and glaring blunders contained in most of our comrades’ view on trade-union. How could anyone leading a big party discussion on this question produce such a sorry excuse for a carefully thought out statement? Let me go over the main points which, I think, contain the original fundamental theoretical errors.

Lenin states in his paper The Trade Unions, The Present Situation that:

"...Trade unions are not just historically necessary; they are historically inevitable as an organisation of the industrial proletariat, and, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, embrace nearly the whole of it. This is basic, but Comrades [Trotsky] keeps forgetting it; he neither appreciates it nor makes it his point of departure, all this while dealing With "The Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions", a subject of infinite compass..." this is the same mistake undertaken by both the party (SACP) and the union federation (COSATU).

It follows from what I have say that the trade unions have an extremely important part to play at every step of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But what is their part?

I find that it is a most unusual one, as soon as I delve into this question, which is one of the most fundamental theoretically. On the one hand, the trade unions, which take in all industrial workers, are an organisation of the ruling, dominant, governing class, which has now set up a dictatorship and is exercising coercion through the state. But it is not a state organisation; nor is it one designed for coercion, but for education.

It is an organisation designed to draw in and to train; it is, in fact, a school: a school of administration, a school of economic management, a school of communism. It is a very unusual type of school, because there are no teachers or pupils; this is an extremely unusual combination of what has necessarily come down to us from capitalism, and what comes from the ranks of the advanced revolutionary detachments, which you might call the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat. To talk about the role of the trade unions without taking these truths into account is to fall straight into a number of errors.

Lenin further states that:

"...Within the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the trade unions stand, if I may say so, between the Party and the government. In the transition to socialism the dictatorship of the proletariat is inevitable, but it is not exercised by an organisation which takes in all industrial workers..."

What happens here is that the party absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship cannot be exercised or the functions of government performed without a foundation such as the trade unions. These functions, however, have to be performed through the medium of special institutions which are also of a new type.

What are the practical conclusions to be drawn from this peculiar situation? They are, on the one hand, that the trade unions are a link between the vanguard and the masses, and by their daily work bring conviction to the masses, the masses of the class which alone is capable of taking us from capitalism to communism. On the other hand, the trade unions are a "reservoir" of the state power. This is what the trade unions are in the period of transition from capitalism to communism.

On "reactionary Trade Unions"

The trade unions are a tremendous step forward for the working class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from the workers' disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation. When the revolutionary party of the proletariat and the working class, the highest form of proletarian class organisation, begins to take shape (and the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses) the trade unions inevitably do begin to reveal certain reactionary features, a certain craft narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political, a certain inertness, etc.

However, the development of the proletariat does not, and could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through the trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party of the working class. The proletariat's conquest of political power is a gigantic step forward for the proletariat as a class, and the Party must more than ever and in a new way, not only in the old, educate and guide the trade unions, at the same time bearing in mind that they are and will long remain an indispensable "school of communism" and a preparatory school that trains proletarians to exercise their dictatorship, an indispensable organisation of the workers for the gradual transfer of the management of the whole economic life of the country to the working class (and not to the separate trades), and later to all the working people.

In the sense mentioned above, a certain "reactionism" in the trade unions is inevitable under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not to understand this means a complete failure to understand the fundamental conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism. It would be egregious folly to fear this "reactionism" or to try to evade or leap over it, for it would mean fearing that function of the proletarian vanguard which consists in training, educating, enlightening and drawing into the new life the most backward strata and masses of the working class and the peasantry. On the other hand, it would be a still graver error to postpone the achievement of the dictatorship of the proletariat until a time when there will not be a single worker with a narrow-minded craft outlook, or with craft and craft-union prejudices.

The art of politics (and the Communist's correct understanding of his tasks) consists in correctly gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the proletariat can successfully assume power, when it is able during and after the seizure of power to win adequate support from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the non-proletarian working masses, and when it is able thereafter to maintain, consolidate and extend its rule by educating, training and attracting ever broader masses of the working people.

Lenin emphasises this by stating that:

"...We are waging a struggle against the "labour aristocracy" in the name of the masses of the workers and in order to win them over to our side; we are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth..."

Having said all this I would not dwell much on the recent attacks, counter-attacks, accusations and counter-accusations you continue to level against each other as our untrusted leaders but I would want you to look on the broader ideological context of you leading a class struggle, it is presumed that you are ‘the most advanced and resolute section of the working class’ such that you are entrusted to wage a struggle that is contained in ensuring socialism is achievable in the near future.

Most of our federation unions are faced with challenges; they have eroded their roles to that of being workerist, the continued scourged of unemployment of young workers in our country is opportunistically used by oppositions, and the absence of the revolutionary trade unions and the vanguard party is not assisting.

Triple oppression at work places are gradually being reinforced as you continue fight amongst yourselves, the proletariat remain leaderless as emblettlements take a hike at COSATU house.

The capitalist and bourgeoisies continue to disunite the working class and the future is blurry.

SAMWU is held in a wall, SADTU faced with moguls, NUM under serious attack, workers in the farming industry endure sufferings,  and that list is endless.

As a young man trapped between today and tomorrow, with the future only being identified in the unity of the working class, and the total achievement of a socialist society is appealing to you to hold you heads high, requesting sanity to prevail as my future and many of the working class, the poor and the most marginalized lays in the hands of you, you need to preoccupy yourself with tactical, ideological and dialectical work to ensure that the party of the working class is united than before.

 

Sithembewena Tsembeyi is a member of the SACP, a member of the South African Municipal Workers Union and writes in his personal capacity.

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Hasta siempre la Commandante
SIthembewena Tsembeyi
Socialismo o Muerte