The+Party+and+the+Movement

=The Party and the Movement=


 * A revolution of all the people?**

//Marx, Lenin, Slovo, Ekhuruleni, Gumede and Mbeki//


 * //Compiled and introduced by Dominic Tweedie, April 18th, 2005//**

This short introduction is accompanied by about 2,200 words of quotation from Marx, Lenin, Joe Slovo, the ANC, and Thabo Mbeki, and from a review of William Mervin Gumede’s book “Thabo Mbeki and the battle for the soul of the ANC”, launched in Johannesburg on April 13th, 2005. My contribution is the lesser part, intended to stimulate discussion rather than provide definitive answers, although I will offer some theses “for the sake of argument”.

It is written in the aftermath of the South African Communist Party’s Special National Congress of April 8-10, 2005. At that Congress there was extended debate on the question of the SACP standing its own independent candidates in elections. A Resolution was adopted creating a Commission to examine all aspects of this question, and to report back to the full National Congress in 2007.

At the Special Congress its chief guest, President Thabo Mbeki, made an extraordinary speech calling upon the Communist Party to apply itself to certain problems for the sake of the Movement and of the country as a whole. He recommended the Comintern records and other early documents as sources (speech quoted below).

I am Secretary and political education organiser for the Johannesburg Central Branch of the SACP, running “Johannesburg Central’s Communist University”. This is a study circle that reads and discusses extracts from original political works on a weekly programme. The programme was set up long before the date of the Special Congress was announced. It happened by accidental coincidence that Marx’s “March Address”, Lenin’s “Bourgeois Democracy and the DOP”, and Joe Slovo’s “South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution” were in the April 2005 programme.

Reading all this material together with the other documents of the Special National Congress plus comments by Party members and by journalists encouraged me to attempt to draw a sketch of a concrete synthesis of all this material in the hope that it might help South Africans to understand the present conjuncture, and also the period, simultaneously still vivid but also obscure, between 1990 and 1994. Marx might have called such an attempt an “introduction to a contribution to a critique”.

In a few days we expect a Summit meeting of the ANC/SACP/COSATU Alliance - all the more reason to explore these matters now.

A starting point
Sunday morning, April 17th, 2005, and William Mervin Gumede is being interviewed on a phone-in radio programme. He frames his responses in bourgeois-democratic categories (“succession”, “legacy”, “from liberation movement to ruling party”). His thesis is familiar. It is a story of the rise of a ruthless individual, Thabo Mbeki, to supreme power. I make no apologies for not having read the R200 book (yet). I did pay close attention to the broadcast, and to several previous radio interviews of Gumede on the subject. I recalled that the President in his speech to the SACP Special National Congress had preserved the form: Party (= SACP) and Movement (= ANC) with which we have been familiar for many decades. Gumede, on the other hand, continually refers to the ANC as a “party”.

Suddenly a caller is on the line to complain that things went wrong in 1990, when according to him the ex-political prisoners overcame the United Democratic Front (UDF) and then the returning exiles overcame the ex-prisoners. (The UDF was a loose front of autonomous organisations opposing the apartheid regime during the 1980s). The caller’s lament was over the destruction of the UDF’s tradition of grass-roots organisation. This had been replaced, according to the caller, with top-down forms of command. Gumede did not disagree.

Quick theses
Marx and Lenin (the latter in one of the Comintern documents recommended by President Mbeki, see quotations below) both say that the working class must not re-submit itself to bourgeois democracy once the latter has been overthrown.

Lenin also says (as quoted by Joe Slovo, see below) that the National Democratic Revolution is a revolution of “the whole people”.

The last Alliance Summit, at Ekhuruleni in 2002 issued a declaration which said among other things: “There is one NDR, at the core of which is the liberation of black people in general and Africans in particular. Among these classes and strata, the working class is the leading social motive force.”

A quick set of theses is now advanced here. It by-passes the contradictions of these different approaches to the NDR. It proposes a possible unified theory. It will be briefly tested against various abstractions further on.


 * The unified theory/quick theses go like this:**

1. In 1990/1994 there was a possible situation of dual power between popular revolutionary institutions (UDF/MDM) and the one-person-one-vote bourgeois parliament. A Lenin might have ignored previous liberation-movement slogans and strangled the renewed (“New South Africa”) bourgeois parliament at birth. In the event there was no Lenin involved. The UDF got strangled instead. 2. Fifteen years later, the ANC in alliance with the SACP and COSATU (i.e. the “Movement”) retains the character of a revolutionary institution of all the people (like a Soviet), even while it performs the functions and obsequies of a party within bourgeois democracy. “Opposition” means very little, and the “official opposition” is despised. In these circumstances the question still remains: bourgeois democracy or revolution? 3. Sooner or later South Africa must repudiate bourgeois democracy, or starve. The answer sought by President Mbeki to the question “What is the relationship, if any, between the national revolution and the socialist revolution?” is “All power to the Movement! Down with bourgeois democracy!” 4. The first step in the subversion of bourgeois democracy is to open the possibility of the election of Communists to its highest organ, Parliament.

Derivation
This unified theory is based mainly on Lenin’s testimony. He was writing only a year and a half after the Great October Revolution (quoted extensively below). Following Marx (also quoted below) Lenin is saying that the proletariat must be in charge. This is in keeping with the Tripartite Alliance’s 2002 Ekhuruleni Declaration, which says: “the working class is the leading social motive force”.

How can the dictating or alternatively leading role of the working class be reconciled with the “revolution of the whole people”? Lenin’s answer is clear: in the Soviet. And by mentioning “the Räte-System in Germany, the Shop Stewards Committees in Britain and similar Soviet institutions in other countries”, Lenin shows that he is using the term “Soviet” here as a generic term for all revolutionary counter-institutions.

The UDF and its replacement, the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), had all the makings of a revolutionary democracy. These remain, I contend, subsumed in the ANC/SACP/COSATU Alliance, and capable of being brought forth in a new outbreak of revolutionary progress. Herein lies the significance of the distinction between Party and Movement preserved by the living revolutionaries (including our President) although consciously repudiated by the bourgeois-democratic journalist William Gumede and by the rest of the bourgeois press.

The remainder of this document consists of quotations. Read, consider, and then pay attention to the forthcoming Alliance Summit.

__Quotations:__
//Given with URLs linking to the quoted documents plus word count. (For comparison, the word count of this document in full is 3,470).//

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm
 * Karl Marx**, March 1850 Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League, 6,511 words,

“While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far - not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world - that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.”

“The question is, therefore, what is to be the attitude of the proletariat, and in particular of the League towards them:

1) While present conditions continue, in which the petty-bourgeois democrats are also oppressed; 2) In the coming revolutionary struggle, which will put them in a dominant position; 3) After this struggle, during the period of petty-bourgeois predominance over the classes which have been overthrown and over the proletariat.

“… At the moment, while the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach to the proletariat general unity and reconciliation; they extend the hand of friendship, and seek to found a great opposition party which will embrace all shades of democratic opinion; that is, they seek to ensnare the workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy.”

“During and after the struggle the workers must at every opportunity put forward their own demands against those of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers as soon as the democratic bourgeoisie sets about taking over the government.”

“As soon as the new governments have established themselves, their struggle against the workers will begin. If the workers are to be able to forcibly oppose the democratic petty bourgeois it is essential above all for them to be independently organized and centralized in clubs.”

“As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers' candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled.”

“They must drive the proposals of the democrats to their logical extreme (the democrats will in any case act in a reformist and not a revolutionary manner) and transform these proposals into direct attacks on private property.”


 * V. I. Lenin**, 1st Comintern, Bourgeois Democracy and the DOP, March 4, 1919, 6,900 words, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/comintern.htm#s2

“…this argument employs the concepts of “democracy in general” and “dictatorship in general “, without posing the question of the class concerned. This nonclass or above class presentation, which supposedly is popular, is an outright travesty of the basic tenet of socialism, namely, its theory of class struggle, which Socialists who have sided with the bourgeoisie recognize in words but disregard in practice. For in no civilized capitalist country does “democracy in general” exist; all that exists is bourgeois democracy…”

“… the present defense of bourgeois democracy under the cover of talk about “democracy in general", and the present howls and shouts against proletarian dictatorship under the cover of shouts about “dictatorship in general", are an outright betrayal of socialism. They are, in fact, desertion to the bourgeoisie, denial of the proletariat’s right to its own, proletarian revolution, and a defense of bourgeois reformism…”

“But now, when the revolutionary proletariat is in a fighting mood and taking action to destroy this machine of oppression and to establish proletarian dictatorship, these traitors to socialism claim that the bourgeoisie have granted the working people “pure democracy", have abandoned resistance and are prepared to yield to the majority of the working people.”

“... It was Marx who best appraised the historical significance of the Commune. In his analysis, he revealed the exploiting nature of bourgeois democracy in the bourgeois parliamentary system under which the oppressed classes enjoy the right to decide once in several years which representative of the propertied classes shall “represent and suppress” (//ver- und zertreten// ) the people in parliament.”

“…The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the other classes — landlord dictatorship in the Middle Ages and bourgeois dictatorship in all civilized capitalist countries — consists in the fact that the dictatorship of landowners and bourgeoisie was a forcible suppression of the resistance offered by the vast majority of the population, namely, the working people. In contrast, proletarian dictatorship is a forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, i.e., of an insignificant minority the population, the landlords and capitalists. “It follows that proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail not only a change in the democratic forms and institutions, generally speaking, but precisely such change as provides an unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism—the toiling classes. And indeed, the form of proletarian dictatorship that has already taken shape, i.e., Soviet power in Russia, the Räte-System in Germany, the Shop Stewards Committees in Britain and similar Soviet institutions in other countries…”

“…Only the Soviet government of the state can really affect the immediate breakup and total destruction of the old, i.e., bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery, which has been, and has inevitably had to be, retained under capitalism even in the most democratic republics, and which is, in actual fact, the greatest obstacle to the practical implementation of democracy for the workers and working people generally. The Paris Commune took the first epoch making step along this path. The Soviet system has taken the second.”

“the fact that these Independents, who in theory and on principle have been opposed to these state organizations, suddenly making the stupid proposal to “peacefully” unite the National Assembly with the Soviet system, i.e., to unite the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat, shows that a great change is taking place among the masses.”

“Our Mensheviks traversed almost exactly the same path as that of the theorists of the Independents in Germany. At first, when they had a majority in the Soviets, they were in favor of the Soviets. All we heard then was: “Long live the Soviets!", “For the Soviets!", “The Soviets are revolutionary democracy!” When, however, we Bolsheviks secured a majority in the Soviets, they changed their tune; they said: the Soviets must not exist side-by-side with the Constituent Assembly. And various Mensheviks theorists made practically the same proposals, like the one to unite the Soviet system with the Constituent Assembly and to incorporate the Soviets into the state structure. Once again it is here revealed that the general course of the proletarian revolution is the same throughout the world. First the spontaneous formation of Soviets, then their spread and development, and then the appearance of the practical problem: Soviets, or National Assembly, or Constituent Assembly, or the bourgeois parliamentary system; utter confusion among the leaders, and finally—the proletarian revolution.”

“For example, formally we did not raise the question of the Constituent Assembly from the theoretical side, and we did not say we did not recognize the Constituent Assembly. It was only later, when the Soviet organizations had spread throughout the country and had captured political power, that we decided to dissolve the Constituent Assembly.”

“Victory can only be considered assured when not only the German workers, but also the rural proletarians are organized, and organized not as before—in trade unions and cooperative societies — but in Soviets. Our victory was made much easier by the fact that in October 1917 we marched with the peasants, with all the peasants. In that sense, our revolution at that time was a bourgeois revolution. The first step taken by our proletarian government was to embody in a law promulgated on October 26 (old-style), 1917, on the next day after the revolution, the old demands of all the peasants which peasant Soviets and village assemblies had put forward under Kerensky. That is where our strength lay; that is why we were able to win the overwhelming majority so easily. As far as the countryside was concerned, our revolution continued to be a bourgeois revolution, and only later, after a lapse of six months, were we compelled within the framework of the state organization to start the class struggle in the countryside, to establish Committees of Poor Peasants, of semi-proletarians, in every village, and to carry on a methodical fight against the rural bourgeoisie.”


 * Joe Slovo**, “The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution”, 1988, 14,985 words, http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/history/ndr.html

“Increasing numbers of our people understand the essence of Lenin's political maxim: **Without revolutionary theory, there can be no real revolutionary movement.**”

“The national democratic revolution — the present stage of struggle in our country - is a revolution of the **whole oppressed people**. This does not mean that the oppressed ‘people’ can be regarded as a single or homogeneous entity. The main revolutionary camp in the immediate struggle is made up of different classes and strata (overwhelmingly black) which suffer varying forms and degrees of national oppression and economic exploitation. The camp of those who benefit from, and support, national domination is also divided into classes.

“Some ‘learned theorists’ are continuously warning workers against talk of a ‘revolution of the whole oppressed people’, accusing those who use such formulations of being ‘populists’ rather than revolutionaries. Let us hear Lenin on this question since he was also in the habit of using the same words to describe the upsurge in Russia:

“‘Yes, the //people’s// revolution. Social Democracy ... demands that this word shall not be used to cover up failure to understand class antagonisms within the people ... **However, it does not divide the “people” into “classes” so that the advanced class becomes locked up within itself ... the advanced class ... should fight with all the greater energy and enthusiasm for the cause of the whole people, at the head of the whole people**’ (//Selected Works//, Volume 1, p.503).“


 * ANC/SACP/COSATU Alliance**, Ekhuruleni Declaration, April 7, 2002, 3,218 words, http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/pubs/umrabulo/umrabulo15/ekurhulene.html

“There is one NDR, at the core of which is the liberation of black people in general and Africans in particular. Among these classes and strata, the working class is the leading social motive force.”


 * William Mervin Gumede**, "Thabo Mbeki and the battle for the soul of the ANC", review by Maureen Isaacson, March 20, 2005, 1,824 words, http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2453285&fSectionId=1085&fSetId=

“And so it is against a background of international economic and political history that Gumede looks at our democracy. The history of the transition, from liberation movement to ruling party…

“The story of how the man who was without power within the organisation and within the ANC when the movement was unbanned in 1990 came to lead the country…


 * Thabo Mbeki**, Address to SACP Special National Congress, April 9, 2005, 2,487 words, http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/speeches/2005/sp0409.html

“…the SACP has a task to help us define the period in which we are. Where are we in the process of the NDR? And therefore what are the tasks that we must carry out? I don't know what the process is of people studying Party history, documents, etc. But I think it would be very interesting for people to study this and look at the Communist International, and what the stance was in 1962. It is still of relevance.

“What is the relationship, if any, between the national revolution and the socialist revolution? That is a question you only can ask and answer. Was the Comintern wrong? It is the same question about the relationship between the national and the class struggle. It is a question that faces the Party, not the ANC, but the ANC will be interested to hear how you answer this question.

“…we hope this Party will do as it has in the past, to help the movement define where we are and where we ought to be. We can't answer that question without raising some of these fundamental questions. Perhaps part of the reason I want to join the SACP is that I want to be part of the formation of the workers' and peasants' republic! Is this the strategic task that faces us now? If not, then what is it? It will help to define the relationship to the ANC. The Party should discuss this issue.

“It would be important for the Party meeting in Congress here to say this is where we are with regard to the advance of the NDR. It would help us to answer these questions, what should we do to move forward with regard to all these matters.”