The not so sharpest knife in the Drawer – a response to Walter Mothapos’ paper
Hastasseimpre
The not so sharpest knife in the Drawer – a response to Walter Mothapos’ paper
Sithembewena Tsembeyi
Puling a not so sharpest knife in the drawer remains the political trajectory facing the South African Communist Party post 1994, this reminds me of various debates that have found platform particularly in the terrain of ideological battles within the party, one cant fall far from the Mazibukos’ paper that found rebutting with outmost content when asking “is our flag RED of JZ”, he writes in a most poetric way that:
“…To show we are still sincere, we will criticise GEAR once a year”. If this jocular criticism has some truthful import, what could be the objective basis for it?”
My question is, are we ready to preserve our personal pro-rata, put them aside and use the old working class slogan that goes: “…we have no interest of our own separate and apart from those of the working class and the poor...” or does this only exists in our well document “rhetoric’s”. We are made to believe by the so called “Marxist-Leninist” scholars that the NDP remain in the same departure of our struggle for socialism, in context we are told “this is a possible shortest route to achieve a fully blown class struggle”.
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 Philosopy, 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…”
Maybe Mr. Walter due to the continued “ideological vacuum” and “intellectual laziness” within the party he has failed to recognise that long before, we have the programme and tactics of the economic struggle and of the trade union movement for several decades to come, for all the lengthy period in which the proletariat will prepare its forces for the “coming battle.” 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).[3] 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…”
Has the party and its leadership in the form of Cronin and Mathapo moved away from the Communist Manifesto as the strategic guide for Communist Parties in the world, did the UKZN congress resolve on this.
On Trade union and Capitalism:
I am amazed at the number of theoretical mistakes and glaring blunders contained in Cronin and Mothapos’ 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 Cronin and Mothapo.
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…”
On the National Development Plan:
it is clear that there are various trajectories that we need to dispatch from particular in us understanding the NDP, firstly we need to ask whether does the plan addresses the socio-economic challenges faced by our society from a class perspective, thus we should be asking is,
1. is the plan sustainable?
2. does the plan pursue the vision of reindustrialising the economy, with manufacturing at the centre, without ignoring recent consensus around the need for a state-led industrial strategy, which has been successfully pursued by our Brazilian and Chinese partners?
3. does the plan not take premise on undermining worker rights and a low-wage strategy. Doesn’t its key lies in the old treasury agenda of deregulating labour markets, Doesn’t it proposes a series of measures to promote a new stratum of ultra-low-paid first-time workers?
4. doesn’t it proposes that the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, to be only decrease slightly from its current world-beating level of 69% (or 0.69) to an excessively high 60% by 2030?
5. does the plan not uses a very low poverty measure of R418 per person, per month (2009 prices), suggesting only those households with an income of less than R2 000 per month are living in poverty?
6. does it not use a 6% unemployment target that is unrealistic, does it not use the limited definition of unemployment, which excludes all discouraged jobseekers?
There are many other aspects that are raised both by COSATU and NUMSA that need serious ideological work particularly from the “Ideological geniuses” from the party, we need to but done our shiny blades and deal with the questions raised above and many others arising from various critics that we have received from the labour front and counterparts.
In Conclusion
I find it very ideological shady for Marxist-Leninists to conclude that State in this current epoch remain revolutionary content with the class struggle and it is working class outlook, it is unfortunate to find that there are growing “ideological-hermaphrodites” within the party, who sing praise and shunt dialectical analysis on merits of class struggles, who continue to personify the class content of our revolutionary course. A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past,
“Batallamos hasta la victoria, siempre.”
Sithembewena Tsembeyi is a former Provincial Organizer of the Gauteng SACP and former District Treasure of the Young Communist League of South Africa in the Dr. Yusuf Dadoo District and writes in his personal capacity.