What+Is+To+Be+Done+at+the+Special+National+Congress

What is to be done at the Special National Congress?

 * By Dominic Tweedie, Branch Secretary, SACP Johannesburg Central Branch, March 20th, 2005**

A Communist Party can be defined briefly as follows: It is the vanguard party of the working class. This means it is a generalist, concrete, and organic organisation that is therefore able to complement and give direction to topical, tactical, defensive, sectional and spontaneous mass organisations of the working class and its allies.

A Communist Party gives revolutionary leadership and opposes political gradualism and reformism wherever the people are obliged to live and work. In a bourgeois society such as South Africa today, this means that the Communist Party is present in the bourgeois institutions of society, as a rule. Boycott of institutions or abstention from institutions is exceptional and needs to be justified by special argument.

The vision behind the seven Discussion Documents for the SACP’s Special National Congress in April 2005 is at variance with the above definition. It is dealt with in the commentary below, first under the heading “Concrete”, and then document by document.

The purpose of this commentary is to develop a single view of the party and the present circumstances that will guide and assist any delegate to the Special National Congress (the writer is not one). When the Congress is over, all Party members will have to unite behind the decisions of the Congress, if there are any (it is possible that all the documents may be referred back to the CC). In the mean time it is the duty of every Party member to debate all the Congress documents and to apply the democratic part of democratic centralism, as is our right and our duty.

This commentary recommends:


 * The acceptance of Revolutionary Parliamentarism and the standing of independent candidates for local government, provincial legislatures, and the national parliament.
 * It recommends the relegation of medium term targets to a minor position behind the strategic goal of revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois class and all its institutions, and the tactical struggles of the immediate future. Our emphasis should no longer be on the vague middle distance, neither one thing nor the other, but on the tactics of today and on the strategic line-of-march.
 * It recommends the restoration of a proper understanding of vanguard and mass as described in the brief definition above, and consequently the rejection of the definition of the SACP as an indeterminate “campaigning party”, neither properly mass nor vanguard.
 * It recommends the restoration of emphasis by the leadership of the SACP on the organised working class in general and on our Alliance partner COSATU in particular.
 * It recommends the treatment of our Alliance partner the ANC for practical purposes as a mass organisation requiring leadership, and for overall political purposes as a bourgeois political party and no longer a liberation movement as such in the present time.
 * It recommends the restoration of the Party Branches as not merely constitutional apparatuses but as the only possible source of growth in the party and the primary organisers of cadres. It rejects the concept of sectoral units in particular and of centrally ordered top-down organisation of rank-and-file cadres in general.
 * It recommends the restoration of the concept of the cadre as a Communist who leads the class towards class-consciousness by taking part both in the mass organisations of the class, and also in the vanguard party of the working class, the Communist party, first and foremost at branch level. It recommends the SACP’s Constitutional Rule 6.4 as the correct way to define the practical relationship between vanguard and mass.
 * It recommends the return to true political education that is “the lighting of a fire and not the filling of a bucket”. The purpose of political education is the preparation of cadres who can think independently, apply judgment and act without immediate direction; in other words, who are leaders and not functionaries. This commentary rejects indoctrination or programming as a purported way of preparing cadres for the SACP or the ANC.

These are the positions to be fought for, in the opinion of this writer. How they are to be fought for in the tactical circumstances of the Congress remains to be worked out.

//The following is the order in which the seven documents currently appear on the SACP web site://
 * Comments on the seven discussion documents for the SACP Special National Congress**


 * Discussion Documents, SACP Special Congress 8 to 10 April 2005**

SACP Special Congress Discussion Paper No.1 **SACP Cadres** SACP Special Congress Discussion Paper No.2 **SACP Elections** SACP Special Congress Discussion Paper No.3 **Class Struggles in the NDR** SACP Special Congress Discussion Paper No.4 **SACP Campaigns** SACP Special Congress Discussion Paper No.5 **Marxist perspective on sustainable livelihoods** SACP Special Congress Discussion Paper No.6 **SACP MTV** SACP Special Congress Discussion Paper No.7 **Gender response to the class struggle document**

See http://www.sacp.org.za/Specialcongress/mainpage.html (and http://www.sacp.org.za/bua/2003/issue1.html for long version of Document 6).

Although the Special Congress Discussion Documents are given as seven, and are clearly written by different (though anonymous) individuals, they do not contradict one another and to that extent they may be said to project from a single point of view. Yet they cannot be held up as a concrete whole. The CC presents seven overlapping documents and also leaves gaps. It does not present a concrete whole, but only an unsatisfactory, eclectic, bundle of abstractions.
 * Concreteness**

This is the first criticism that must be advanced. In doing so the critic is by the same fact challenging himself to oppose the eclectic collection of papers with a single, concise, succinct, and above all concrete document.

In the discussion document currently numbered 2, on elections, the author complains that the “exact modalities of an SACP electoral campaign have not ever been tabled formally”. It is also the case that the “exact modalities” of the Special National Congress have not yet been tabled in any form. Will the Congress divide into seven workshops to consider the documents? Will it be possible, through any mechanism other than a coup of the platform, for delegates to formulate motions, debate them, and pass resolutions in a plenary session?

If the documents are taken separately then the lack of concreteness that they exhibit now will be projected on to the Party as a whole and into the future. The legacy of this Congress will then be fragmentation, or otherwise a tacit drift away from principle and in the direction of opportunism.

Marx’s way of working was to “ascend from the abstract to the concrete”. In that spirit I shall take the documents one by one in the order given above, as an approach towards what I hope will be a concretisation of matters raised and matters that should be raised. This should amount to an idea of what the SACP’s position should be immediately following this Congress, presuming it is going to be procedurally capable of resolving itself around such a concrete programme. This summary is placed at the beginning of this commentary, as page 1, above.

//__Document 1__//
The document now given as number 1 is fully titled “Our Medium-Term Vision: What kind of Communist Cadre do we need and… what kind of Party are we building?”. Hence, although in its short title, “SACP Cadres”, it appears distinct, it deals in fact with the same matters as Document 6, “SACP MTV”. I will deal with this duplication in detail when I get to Document 6. Here we must note this as a severe weakness. Why do we need this (freshly-authored) document and also the older, recycled CC document, number 6? Is it to give the incumbency two bites of the cherry?

Two versions of a medium-term vision but no long-term goal and no immediate tasks pose the question, what kind of Communist Party is this? Is it a Party that has forgotten the distinction between strategy and tactics? A Communist party exists as a necessary counterpart to the defensive, experiential, and tactical mass organisations of the working class, because it can provide a definition of the overall goal that the class must aim for, and the “line-of-march” which leads from the current topical battles to that final self-defined goal.

//“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”//

So says the Communist Manifesto. The concept of a Medium Term Vision is alien to this Communist view. It excludes both the immediate tactical necessities and also the “open declaration of ends”.

By tactical necessities I am referring to branch formation within the party (as opposed to centrally directed sectoral units), which is the only source of party growth, and also to trade union activity among the working masses. Neither of these two organisational poles, which are the practical manifestation of vanguard and mass, gets any material degree of consideration in any of the seven discussion documents. Nor does the ANC (or its Youth and Women’s’ Leagues) get considered as a mass organisation requiring Communist cadre leadership. The ANC is only considered as a monolith that is subject to “influence”.

So it is that in this Document 1 on the Cadre and the Party we do not have before us a recognisable communist view of vanguard and mass, where the mass organisations are immediate and defensive, and the vanguard poses the higher, concrete, political goal and the line-of-march towards that goal. In such a communist view the cadre has a place in both mass organisation as a leader and structural organiser, and also in the vanguard organisation, as a communist, which is to say: a learner and a teacher.

Contrary to such a communist view Document 1 proposes “tens of thousands” of individuals active in promoting a 10-12 year bullet-pointed gradualist programme (paragraph 4) that does not arrive at socialism. We might call this “Going Nowhere Slowly”. In paragraph 9 we are reminded again that a Party that has “influence”, “even over the private banks” is what we are seeking to build. The following paragraph talks of capacity for, momentum towards, and “elements of socialism” now, but not socialism as such, not even in the “medium term”. So the slogan “build socialism now” is part of a “programmatic” idea that does not include socialism in fact until the distant and ineffable future.

Paragraph 11, with its sub-paragraphs a to m, is a version of South African history that seeks both to justify and to escape from the alliance with the ANC. But the key word is “influence”. In the penultimate, and short, sub-paragraph l, the word “influence” is used five times. This is where the author tells us that SACP “Influence” on the ANC has “obviously” (presumably meaning that no evidence is considered necessary) diminished over 15 years. “Influence” is to be given by Communists setting the “highest example of respect for the democratic procedures of the ANC” (sub-paragraph j). Cadres “are built through dynamic organisational experience and through campaigning and general activism” (sub-paragraph m).

These cadres are recognisable characters. Although scarce in real life, they do exist. They are tireless devoted workhorses who can repeat the line and willingly change the line at any moment. What distinguishes them above all (in real life) is lack of political education. Sure enough, there is no suggestion so far in Document 1 of political education, which would render the cadre a generalist with judgment, as opposed to an apparatchik distinguished only by loyalty and decorum. Later on there is a warning against “dry scholasticism” and Marxist “holy scripture”, and on the other hand approval of integrating Marxism with programmes of action and of “learning from our communities”, in other words empirical learning and not true humanist education.

Paragraph 12 attacks nationalism in the African National Congress, and the rising bourgeoisie within it, without characterising the ANC as bourgeois. Instead, the author (see sub-paragraph f) proposes an option for the poor which is actually an option for the petty-bourgeoisie (“The so-called ‘second economy’ should be appreciated…”)

The author wants us to know that 64% of all commuters are transported by mini-bus taxis. This figure is the only statistic in the whole document and is used to imply that the small business class can bring development to the country. Whereas monopoly capital in South Africa long ago penetrated every part of the country’s economy, including the transport industry. Who makes the mini-bus vehicles? Who supplies the petrol? Monopoly capitalism cannot be reversed and it should not be reversed, because it is closer to socialism than the idealised Hippy-cum-Proudhon vision of this sub-paragraph f.

Paragraph 13 projects the author’s vision of a centralised party designing and ordering its campaigns from the centre and having them executed by “tens of thousands” of cadres, without the assistance of branches, although influenced by “various academic think-tanks and professionals” et cetera.

Paragraph 14 mounts a disapproving liberal attack on “post-liberation decay”, with frequent mention of Zimbabwe. But more to the point it discovers for us where the non-branch cadres are organised. In sub-paragraph e the author writes that: “A significant part of the Communist cadreship we are building is a cadreship that is already located within the state…” Here the rhetoric of “influence” comes home to roost. These cadres, too, are familiar, but not so scarce. These are the worthily deployed, the backbone of the ANC, often SACP members as well, for appearances. They have one thing in common with the dumb workhorse-type cadre: zero political education.

Paragraph 15 tells us that the cadre is a payer of levies, and if not, should be “lapsed” (expelled). On the final page of Document 1 we hear at last of branches (sub-paragraph e) but only that they are vast, dry, and administrative, and that units might be a better way to go.

//__Document 2__//
The document titled “Should the Party Contest Elections in its own Right?” comes to the conclusion that the Party shouldn’t. And the reason given is that the measure of the Party’s “influence and impact” is what counts and that centrally ordered campaigns are better for this purpose.

Assessment of the SACP’s custom and practice in regard to elections must be done “from the perspective of the Party’s programmatic objectives”, says the document. This has the virtue of recognising that participation in elections is always, for a Communist Party, a tactical question, but in practice it ties the question to the “mid-term” gradualism projected in Document 1 and other documents.

Document 2 claims a majority in leading SACP structures against electoral contestation and that the same leadership has decided to open the debate and “not shut it down”. But all the arguments are against contestation. The Special National Congress should test whether there is a majority in the Party for one side or another, but whether or not it does so will depend upon the “modalities”, which are controlled by the same incumbent leadership which already believes it owns a majority.

The document (at 7.5) asks the rhetorical question “What prevents SACP members who are ANC ministers, MECs, MPs, MPLs or councillors from more boldly asserting SACP identity?” After 11 years we may reply with a question: What, indeed? (We may assume that the author of this document is just such a government official.) But the answer to the author’s question is given in rule 6.4 of the SACP Constitution. Nobody may wear two hats at the same time. As ANC politicians they speak and act for the ANC when in office, and not the SACP.

The cheapest shot in Document 2 comes at 7.7 when the author proposes that electoral work is a question of money and that this kind of work, unlike (presumably) centralised bureaucracy, cannot generate its own funding but will be a drain on Party resources. This reads like mockery, and in a document that calls for “comradely discussion” one must hope that it is a mistake.

Bourgeois Parties and Imperialist promoters of “Orange” Ukrainian-style parliamentary putsches require plenty of money. Communist electoral work is not of this kind. It must finance itself and it must rely on the support of the masses. For us, it is not a numbers game. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not going to arrive as a result of a bourgeois-democratic election. Nobody is claiming that.

Document 2 returns to the refrain of Document 1. At paragraph 9 it once again defines the Medium Term Vision as an attempt to “impact on, and influence all sites of power”. As the bridesmaid impacts the bride with confetti, we might say.

//__Document 3__//
This is the document on “Class Struggles in the National Democratic Revolution” which has already been published, including on the Internet and in the African Communist, and discussed at public meetings. The introductory section declares that class analysis has been “virtually non-existent” in South Africa since the 1970s, a contestable claim. It then reviews the NDR, mentions that earlier documents (presumably the 1969 ANC “Strategy and Tactics”) mention class more than later ones, and finally undertakes to describe class formation and, separately, concrete class struggles of the past decade. This is also problematic, because class formation and class struggle are one and the same process. The first and longer of the remaining two sections of the document describes “structural class determination”. In practice this means abstracting things from the arena of class struggle, and presenting them as inert background facts, givens, or data. The first of these, for example, is the relocation of the primary share listings of large formerly South African companies to London and elsewhere. There is then mention of the appearance of a black capitalist class, and the question is put: “How has black capital emerged and conducted itself?” Then the document relates the large loss of jobs in mining and manufacture, described as “Fordist”, and the growth of casual employment and “informal” economic activity. All of these questions involve bourgeois class action, but they are treated as acts of God.

The general character of this section is sociological or anthropological and not political. It attempts to present the objective situation with the subjective will of the actors stripped out. In this way, class struggle appears as the result, and not the cause, of historical change.

But the last quarter of the first section of Document 3 changes in tone and content. It becomes an advocacy for a new elevation of the importance of the petty-bourgeoisie. It says: “For a number of reasons it might be important to re-consider some of the largely negative assumptions” about the “poor not employed in the formal capitalist sector”, and challenges Marx and Engels by name. Document 3 then refers the reader forward to Document 5, called “Towards a Marxist approach to the struggle for ‘sustainable livelihoods’”. We shall see that Document 5 is an attempt to reopen the controversy of 1847 between Proudhon and Marx, and Engels’ later work, “The Housing Question”. It is an attempt to rehabilitate Proudhon’s “Philosophy of Poverty” and make a virtue of the necessity of survivalism.

We have at this stage reached the heart of the polemic for the future of the South African Communist Party. The discussion documents whether taken in parts or taken all together abdicate from the struggle against big capital, and alongside the big battalions of organised labour. Instead of taking part in this decisive fight the SACP, if it adopted these documents, would be sidelined into a doomed struggle for a petty-bourgeois utopia. This is precisely the point from which, in the history of communism, Marx and Engels departed. They rejected utopian socialism in favour of scientific socialism and correctly opted for the organised working class.

An option for the petty bourgeoisie (whether peasant, small business, or co-operative) over the working class is an option for the liquidation of the communist party. The hammer and sickle motif stands for alliance between the two, but with the clear understanding that the industrial proletariat will supercede all other classes, at which moment there will no longer be any class conflict. The supercession of the hammer by the sickle is, on the other hand, a return to the past, an abdication of the historic role of the proletariat, and a betrayal of our communist mission.

The third section of Document 3 returns to the tactical class struggles within what the document takes as given “sites of struggle”, abstracted from the struggle as a concrete whole. The main “site of struggle” considered is the state, which is no longer treated as the instrument of bourgeois class rule, but instead as a free-floating neutral entity just as it appears in bourgeois ideology.

The next “site of struggle” considered is the ANC that is not treated as a mass movement or as a bourgeois party, but empirically, as another free-floating entity of undefined nature.

The effect is to remove the section into the realms of “Kremlinology” and finally, constitutionalism. The effect of Document 3 is not to produce the description of South Africa’s political economy that we need. On the contrary, the great tradition of such surveys (e.g. Marx, 1850 and 1852, Mao, 1939) is kicked into touch. In the name of political economy we are given a script that is not different in character to bourgeois journalism, and is of no greater use.

//__Document 4__//
Document 4 is called “SACP Campaigns: Building a Vanguard, Campaigning and Activist SACP to realise our Medium Term Vision”. The title takes for granted the view of a communist party as a primary mass organisation, which undertakes quotidian campaigns designed and directed from the centre.

Thus the use of the word “vanguard” in the title is misleading. If the distinction between vanguard and mass is blurred or ignored, as is the case here, then the word “vanguard” can only be construed as meaning “leadership-cult”, “elite”, or even “role model”. In other words it becomes bourgeois. The political, communist meaning of “vanguard” is the political and communist party which complements the topical mass movements of the day, but is not identical with them.

This concept of the “campaigning Party” is a variation of the “economism” of Bernstein which Lenin opposed with “What is to be Done”, thereby defining the Communist Party. Bernstein was happy to leave matters to the mass movements, and particularly to the trade unions. Lenin said, no, you must have a general-purpose, organised political body, the Communist Party, which can describe the line of march for the whole movement, and not from the point of view of any narrow part. This is what is called the “vanguard” – not an elite, but a generalist organisation. Not tactical, but strategic. Not abstract, but concrete. Not eclectic, but organic.

By converting the SACP to a “campaigning” organisation, the generalist role of the party is lost. The fact that the campaigns will change from time to time renders it more eclectic, not more generalist. The fact that the Party now directly organises sectoral coalitions means that there is a conflict between its status as a leader and as a partner, as we have seen.

As much as the Party’s generalist nature is threatened, so also is the autonomous collective subjectivity of the actual mass organisations of the people. No longer does the Party seek to create a “class for itself”, but now substitutes itself for the class. Bernsteinism and Stalinism inevitably become one and the same thing in practice. Document 4 is in five parts. The Introduction claims that “Campaigns are about organising people and are the lifeblood of any revolutionary party”. This takes for granted that the party runs the campaigns, and does not any longer promote mass organisations to run campaigns for themselves, as in the past. As a historical statement it is not true. The parties that have run all their campaigns from the centre in the past were not communist parties, nor were they truly revolutionary parties. They were and are ultra-left parties, objectively petty-bourgeois and counter-revolutionary. The so-called “social movements” of South Africa are a case in point. They turn out the same crowd for every cause, because in fact they are an undifferentiated mass of rebellious enthusiasts. That is to say they do not represent any specific mass interest, and nor do they offer a generalist strategic lead. The same can be said of the international “anti-globalisation” or “anti-capitalist” (but actually petty-bourgeois) movement of our times. It may be the case that our Party Central Committee is saying to us in this document: “We can’t beat the social movements and the anti-capitalists, so let us emulate them.” In that case, the Special National Congress should tell our leadership, “Comrades, think again”.

At 2.4, Document 4 has the following to say: “It is this interconnection between immediate struggles and longer term goals, not just in theory and propaganda, but especially in the consolidation of working class power and confidence in society and in the state, that ensures that the immediate reforms that our struggles achieve have a transformational or revolutionary potential, and are not just reformist short-term victories that are subsequently overwhelmed by the persisting systemic dominance of capitalism. It is this strategic approach in theory and practice that distinguishes a revolutionary from a reformist party.”

This is a pretty apple, but it contains a worm, or even two. The paragraph seems to describe exactly the same relation between mass and vanguard as has been recommended above. But the “longer term” that is referred to here is not revolution or the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is only the “Medium Term Vision”. What is described is a half-baked vanguard, or a half-way ticket.

The other worm in the apple is the reference to “reforms… that are not just short-term…” It is only revolution that can make reforms permanent. This is a statement of gradualism, which in the next line claims to be revolutionary. It is sophistry and text-juggling. In the next section, 2.5, there is a clear and extended warning against taking lessons from the revolutionary heritage. Rather, it tells us, we should read “the classics” “from the standpoint of what they say about our current campaigns”. “We must also guard against a fundamentalist approach to the classical texts”.

This paragraph displays a fear of education. It appears to say innocuous things but in effect it seeks to prescribe both inputs and outcomes of political education. It does so because it is aware that the criticisms of Lenin and many others bear directly against the path proposed in the seven Discussion Documents.

Let us hope that those with experience of political education will be able to inform the Special National Congress that education is not indoctrination. Education, worthy of the name, is always intentional. Its purpose is to attack oppression and to lead to action to change the world. It has no fear of any text, because it is conducted in dialogue, and not in private.

The third part of Document 4 begins with a redefinition of the class alliance, the unity in action that brought our liberation, but calling it a “multi-class bloc”. It states the SACP’s intention to be “the vanguard of South Africa’s working class” but avoids mentioning the greatest formation of that working class, the Trade Union Movement, or our ally COSATU, and leads us right back to campaigns. Let us note that there is no document dealing with the organised labour movement among the seven. Therefore the idea of the Party as “campaigning” and vanguard as meaning the same thing is exclusive. The SACP in effect is proposing to by-pass the organised labour movement. COSATU holds up the SACP as the vanguard Party of the working class, but the SACP is looking elsewhere, towards its own campaigning role and agenda.

Document 4 proceeds to mention at length (15 paragraphs), consumers (as such), petty-bourgeois, black bourgeoisie, traditional leaders, women (as such), the undifferentiated poor, and “a wide variety of class and social forces”.

It is impossible not to conclude that the SACP now contains advocates, at leadership level, of the politics of “new social forces”, otherwise known as “Eurocommunism”, which destroyed so many good Western communist parties prior to the “fall of the Soviet Union”. The SACP was right to oppose Eurocommunism in the 1970s and 1980s and it will be wrong to embrace this post-modernist, eclectic politics now.

Part 4 of Document 4 is a review of the SACP land, financial sector, Co-operative, and International Solidarity campaigns. It is unfortunately the case that none of these campaigns have succeeded in instituting any separate organisation independent of the Party. At the very least this means that the Party is burdened with supporting these campaigns indefinitely, or letting them die. It means that the scope for new campaigns is limited. It is particularly unfortunate that the there are no autonomous international solidarity movements to compare with the anti-apartheid solidarity movements for South Africa in other countries in the past.

Part 5 of Document 4 is an exhortation to join a “Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign”, linked to the financial sector and land campaigns, but not, for example, to COSATU’s recruitment campaign. The decision to launch this campaign from the Special National Congress, on its last day, has already been taken, thereby pre-empting the Congress (see 5.2).

The last paragraph, 5.2, asks, “How do we use this campaign to build strong CPFs, SGBs and Ward Committees?” All these are state structures. At 3.14 earlier in the document, the question is put, but not answered: “Are ward committees not essentially an extension of the council system, thus incapable of acting independently to take up developmental challenges facing the urban poor?” Of course, the answer to this question is “Yes!” Yet here at the conclusion of the document this question is ignored and the recommendation is given that the Communist Party becomes an “extension of the council system” and of the School Governing system, and of the Police. Working-class organisations such as COSATU’s Locals and the Alliance Socialist Forums are omitted from mention, on the other hand. The meaning is clear.

//__Document 5__//
Document 5 returns to the Party’s “strategic perspective”. The document is called “Towards a Marxist approach to the struggle for “sustainable livelihoods”. It is in five parts, the first of which identifies the South African government’s initiatives in support of the petty-bourgeoisie with SACP “influence” on the ANC.

In part 2 the document constructs an argument based on slight acquaintance with Rosa Luxemburg and through her, Frederick Engels, to prove that the working class is really not capable of revolution at all! At 2.8 there is a contradiction to the argument of the document, where it is admitted that the subordinate “communal”/household subsistence mode has collapsed. This undermines the premise of the rest of the document, which pins its hopes on progress (or at least sustainance) based on the development of this “subsistence mode”. Part 3 floats a theory (from somebody called Michael Lebowitz) that amounts to making a virtue of the retreat of the industrial working class into survivalism. It amounts to an advocacy for the return of rural subsistence subsidising urban workers, as in the past.

The next paragraph, 4, is called “Relative de-linking of working class households and communities from capitalist accumulation”. This is a direct affront to those who have been insisting, as COSATU for example does, on the socialisation of labour through full employment. The section makes a virtue of de-socialisation of production in the following terms: “affirming the potentially POSITIVE and inherently DIFFERENT trajectory of the “second” economy,” The whole of section 4 is Proudhon dressed up for the 21st century, and section 5 continues in the same vein.

//__Document 6__//
This is a return to the Medium Term Vision. It is divided into four parts, after a short preamble that betrays the document’s origin as an old CC discussion document. It is from July 2003, and appears in Bua Komanisi on the SACP Web site.

The first section is a revision of the main headings of the past decade: NDR, GEAR, and the SACP scheme of building socialism element by element, in the present bourgeois conditions. The second projects forward into the next ten years, hoping not for socialism, but for more of the same. The third introduces the phrase “Mid-Term Vision”, described as a “10-year plan if you like”.

“Our ability to impact and shape current developments rests primarily on our overall medium term vision.” This has never been a communist view in the past.

The third part is a set of abstracted statements that are not concretised, and concludes with this statement: “…these perspectives should be taken forward to our Special National Congress to be held sometime in 2005 for enrichment, further elaboration and adoption. “ Presumably this is why the document is carried forward from 2003 to 2005.

The final part is a truncated but refers to an extensive summary “below” of “of how the CC envisages to implement aspects of the discussion document through the building of sectoral units, workplace structures and Party Discussion Forums in all provincial legislatures, local and district municipalities throughout the country.” This extensive summary does not appear “below” in the version for discussion at the Special National Congress but can be found at the web site. In short, it is a proposal to move away from the party branch structure towards structures that will respond to direct commands from the party centre.

//__Document 7__//
This document is a response to the paper on class struggles in the NDR, and is called “Class Formation, Class Struggle, and the liberation of women”. It is a pity that there is no positive document, but only a “me-too” response of this nature. This is a criticism of both the Party as a whole and of the women’s’ lobby which is here found playing catch-up. The document has the virtue of raising the fundamental fact of labour expended in reproduction of labour, and its place in Marx’s theory of surplus value. But it draws incorrect conclusions. Just as with sustainability of survivalism as treated above, the petty-bourgeois option of escape from socialisation of production is chosen, instead of embracing socialisation, as we should do. The document concludes with a weak appeal for more evaluation.

The SACP should be able to advance a positive lead on the question of the socialisation of women’s’ labour and of the nature of the family as it will be affected by revolutionary change. There is hardly any advance in communist theory from Engels’ “Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State” or from these remarks of Karl Marx, From “Capital”, Chapter 15, Section 9:

“However terrible and disgusting the dissolution, under the capitalist system, of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, modern industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of both sexes, creates a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes.”

If Engels was able to trace the development of marriage up to an including its bourgeois form, out of previous forms, why should it not be possible to develop an idea of the proletarian form of marriage? Why has nobody troubled to investigate the existence of this form of marriage in fact? How have the phenomena observed by Marx turned out? The Special National Congress should consider commissioning a study, or “evaluation”, in positive terms, and not in terms of comparative entitlement, which is the weakness of Document 7.