To+The+Star+Letters+Editor+re+Patrick+Laurence

To: Letters Editor, Sol Makgabutlane, starletters@inl.co.za

From: Dominic Tweedie, 36 Byron Road, Lombardy East, 2090. Telephone 011 882 0752/

January 2 2007

Dear Editor,

The attention that Patrick Laurence gives to the South African Communist Party in “Critical year ahead for the SACP” (The Star, January 2 2007) is welcome. That he is paying some heed to Lenin, even if at second or third hand via somebody’s book on the KGB, is also welcome.

Lenin’s own books and pamphlets are plainspoken, direct and exceptionally concise. Good English translations are instantly available on the Marxists Internet Archive and from other sources. One would like to encourage Mr Laurence to read some of them. This is because in his article Mr Laurence makes some basic errors concerning both Lenin and the SACP.

Some of these are matters that Lenin dealt with in his most famous works. But one error in particular concerns a crucial difference between Lenin’s advice and the SACP’s practice. This difference is enshrined in the SACP Constitution, and it has had consequences for our country on a historic scale.

I would like to draw attention to some of Patrick Laurence’s errors, in a friendly spirit.

The first glaring example is Laurence’s reference to “the prospect of a communist government holding sway over South Africa”. A communist party is not like other parties in a bourgeois state, who compete for the temporary privilege of “holding sway”. A communist party, as Lenin makes so very clear, is dedicated to the irreversible revolution of the working class and against the continued dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. A communist party calls the nature of the state itself into question.

No communist party has ever been the “government of the day” in a bourgeois state, because that is not the purpose of a communist party. Our SACP Constitution stipulates that the working class must be brought to power in a new kind of state by a process of education, organisation and mobilisation.

It is not the job of a communist party to rule. The working class must rule, through //de facto// working-class leadership of new institutions of popular power. That is what we call socialism. And by the time we get to fully classless communism there will be no need for a party at all. If the party has not disappeared by then it will have to be deliberately broken up.

What has made the SACP in particular different from other communist parties is also what has ensured the success of our National Democratic Revolution to date. This is Rule 6.4 of the SACP Constitution. It forbids party members from holding caucuses “designed to influence either elections or policies” in any mass organisation (such as the ANC or COSATU, for example).

This was not Lenin’s idea. It is an SACP idea, born out of experience and necessity. If it has a precedent at all it is in the 1848 Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, which declares: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims”.

It is because of Rule 6.4 that its allies trust the SACP. Rule 6.4 is what has enabled the SACP to build the ANC, COSATU and the many other mass structures that constitute the practical fabric of South Africa’s democracy today. The SACP does not seek either control or influence (and “influence” is just a weasel word for the same idea of control). That is the point of Rule 6.4 and it is the reason why Patrick Laurence’s article is so wide of the mark as a description of the SACP’s role in South African history.

The entire SACP Constitution (reconfirmed in 2005) is available on its web site. Rule 6.4 reads as follows:

“6.4 Members active in fraternal organisations or in any sector of the mass movement have a duty to set an example of loyalty, hard work and zeal in the performance of their duties and shall be bound by the discipline and decisions of such organisations and movement. They shall not create or participate in SACP caucuses within such organisations and movements designed to influence either elections or policies. The advocacy of SACP policy on any question relating to the internal affairs of any such organisations or movements shall be by open public statements or at joint meetings between representatives of the SACP and such organisations or movements.”

With this in mind, one would hope that Mr Laurence would reconsider his reference to the “de facto defection of nominally communist cabinet ministers who have no qualms about implementing policies associated with the gurus of modern capitalism…” Not only these cabinet ministers but also all party members (and they are all supposed to be working in mass organisations) are bound by the discipline and decisions of the mass structures in which they work. There is nothing exceptional about this.

Seen in this context, it is clear that the matter of the SACP standing candidates for parliament is also not exceptional. One thing that the works of Lenin and the documents and practices of the SACP are fully in agreement about is this question of elections. All communists agree that for communists to stand for election to institutions of a bourgeois state is always a tactical decision, utterly subordinate to the strategic task of building the educated, organised and mobilised agency of the working class.

Yours,

Dominic Tweedie Communist University

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