Tweedie,+Comments,+ANC+NGC+05-06-29+Docs

=The ANC Discussion Documents for the National General Council scheduled for June 29th 2005=


 * For the full documents go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/ngcouncils/2005/index.html**


 * //Some Communist Comments.//**

00 Preamble & Contents (172 words)
The NGC brings together in one forum delegates from ANC branches and regional and provincial structures, members of the National Executive Committee, veterans, members of parliament, delegates from Alliance and other formations and cadres working across a number of sectors; it is preceded by discussions at all levels of the organisation, starting at branches. Four discussion documents have been published. They are taken one by one below.

01 Strategy & Tactics (2,100 words)
This short document suggests at first that a reason for reviewing the ANC “Strategy and Tactics” document is that it was adopted as long ago as 1997 (although it was reviewed and supplemented in 2002). However, the document goes on to raise some serious political matters. The following three paragraphs, quoted in full, cover the most substantial questions.

“The ANC also has to clarify its own positioning in the vast array of schools of thought both in our society and across the globe. The critical ideological currents against which we need to contrast ourselves, argues the 2002 Preface, are neo-liberalism and modern ultra-leftism. It then asserts that the ANC is a disciplined force of the left, organised to pursue the interests the poor. Does this require elaboration, and are there other strands that should be included?”

“In class terms, we have argued that black workers are the leading force; but also that black middle strata and the aspirant black business class constitute part of the motive forces of the NDR. This is because, objectively, they stand to gain from the programme of social transformation and therefore share a keen interest in the transformation project. Is class identity in our situation subsumed under national identity and will this apply for all time? How does the ANC manage the contradictions among the forces of change, particularly between business and labour; and should it encourage inter-racial class solidarity?”

“Within society, a variety of organisational forms express themselves, which can broadly be categorised into political and civil organisation. As the construction of a new society proceeds apace, how should the ANC manage three contradictory tendencies.

Firstly, because of its success in carrying out a mission that is in the long-term interest of the country as a whole, more and more organisations seek closer political relations with the ANC: the movement assumes the character of a representative of the nation as a whole. Secondly, a residue of society committed to the past of racial privilege becomes more rabid in its opposition to the ANC. Thirdly, under conditions of open democracy issue-based civil society structures are bound to assert narrow objectives sometimes at the expense of the common agenda.”

The document ends with a “Guideline to Discussion” which suggests that branches should read the current “Strategy & Tactics” and then propose either its retention or a re-draft, with submissions in a particular length and format. The re-draft will be done after the NGC and will be circulated for further discussion before the ANC National Conference in 2007.

02 Unity of the Movement (10,500 words)
This is the longest of the documents, but two-thirds of it in unexceptionable, being a rehearsal of the history of the ANC and the Alliance from its beginning up to the present time. It is only in the last section, called “Organising in a Democratic South Africa” that we arrive at matters that may give rise to changes in the ANC, its Constitution, or its policies.

To give an idea of what these changes might be, the following extracts are quoted verbatim:

“As a movement of the people, the ANC has since its inception been the political home of all strata and classes among the black people, the Africans in particular. The relative numerical weight of the working people of town and country among the african population meant that this too was reflected in the ANC's membership, among its support base and its electorate. Operating in an ever-changing environment, the movement had to require tactical resilience while maintaining a consistent strategic focus. These two qualities gave the ANC a capacity to accommodate diversity within its ranks and among its supporters while nurturing the unity of purpose and unity in action at decisive moments. Its evolution was not linear but characterised by periods of growth and advance, counter-pointed by others of retreat and decline. Repression at times threatened to destroy it but its inner strength enabled it to recover from these blows and move forward. “The question arises in the post 1994 environment: What threats, weaknesses and modes of operation could undermine the unity of the movement today?

“The opening up of new opportunities for many who never had a chance to pursue their own ambitions, aims and individual aspirations before has created an environment conducive to an emergence of a class of black capitalists, a stratum of very senior black managers and business executives, a stratum of black civil servants and bureaucrats, a stratum of black professionals, as well as a black lower middle class. And there is nothing wrong with this.

“As the party of government, the ANC today is regarded by a small minority as the instrument for advancing individual careers, creating new opportunities, and the pursuance of personal ambitions. The ANC has inevitably drawn into its ranks a minority of people who joined it in pursuance of personal agendas. A new phenomenon, political careerism, has now become evident in the ANC, its allied structures and among its supporters.”

At this point the document invokes the 2000 document called “Through the eye of the needle”, which is still available on the ANC web site, and which attempts to deal with the supposedly contradictory forces of ambition, service, and democratic process. But the new discussion document does not stop at the question of personal ambition and competition for positions. It tries to deal with class contradictions within the ANC as follows (selected excerpts):

“Stratification within black communities is reflected in the ANC and can produce its corollary, class conflicts in which ANC members find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. This has already generated tensions between the ANC and its principal alliance partners, the SACP and COSATU, both working class formations, who have sometimes felt that the ANC, as a movement, should tilt in favour of the working class side of such conflicts.

“These are tensions, which if not correctly managed could cause division within the movement. Denial of the conflict potential between ANC-aligned capitalists, company directors, MDs of corporations and the workers employed by them will neither dissolve such potential tensions nor offer a sound basis for managing the new contradictions that have arrived within society and consequently in our movement.

“The central issue in South African political debate is the most effective strategy for rolling back the frontiers of poverty in the immediate term, so that in the intermediate and long term we should be in a position to eradicate it. As the ANC and its allies strive for consensus about the swiftest course to follow to achieve economic growth and to wage a concerted struggle against poverty, we should be vigilant in negotiating between the reefs of capitulation and those of sectarianism. The ANC has not surrendered to free-market fundamentalism, nor has it stubbornly clung to dogmatic notions that would deny a developmental role for the private sector.”

To a great extent unity is presented in this document as a good in itself, which must be maintained for its own sake. The idea of unity in action between as the common pursuit of a minimum negotiated programme is hardly present at all in this document. Development is to come from pulling together and maintaining a middle course, rather than through class stuggle, which according to the communists is the only motor of history. The document ends with an apologia for the tactics and manoevres that have led to the inclusion of stranger bedfellows than before in the broader alliance

03 Development & Underdevelopment (7,400 words)
This document has drawn the most comment in the press and particularly in the Johannesburg Business Day, which is regarded as the voice of the dominant monopoly fraction of the bourgeoisie in South Africa. They are excited at the possiblility of deregulation of labour that is contained in a small part of the document close to the end.

The document reviews current circumstances in conventional bourgeois-liberal and developmental terms and highlights unemployment, low growth, and mass poverty as the main challenges. This is followed by a long passage that begins “In the period since the Second World War…” and concludes with a section on “Lessons of Post-War Development and the failure of the ‘Washington Consensus’”.
 * A partial review**

The communist must therefore immediately note that an apparently arbitrary point of departure has been chosen: 1945, the end of the Second World War. It soon becomes rather clear why this date is chosen, although the reason is not explicitly stated.

The period is examined in terms of three “successful development programmes”, namely the Marshall Plan, the East Asian growth and development programme, and the European Union integration programme. There is no attempt to deny that these were programmes of bourgeois class consolidation and that they had an explicitly anti-communist political purpose. This much is admitted openly in the document.

What is not admitted is that the East Asian programme did not include China and to a great extent not India, and this is remarkable considering that these are usually acknowledged as about to become the two greatest economic powers of the 21st century. China and India both used and still use the device of the “Five-Year Plan”. Each of these two countries is currently in its Tenth Five-Year Plan.

The selection of 1945 also rules out the consideration of the Soviet Union’s development path, the most important part of which consisted of three Five-Year Plans between 1928 and 1943. The Soviet and Chinese industrial revolutions have been, to say the least, among the most spectacular advances in “development” in human history; and in India’s case, though it is not yet so spectacular, we have an example of a bourgeois national-democracy not ideologically far removed from our own, beneficially following a similar path of planned development.

The selective omission of this relevant and indeed essential history exposes the partiality of the discussion document. This is not remedied in any adequate sense by the section on “Lessons of Post-War Development and the failure of the ‘Washington Consensus’”. This section merely hints at a greater tolerance of state intervention, but admits that the “Washington Consensus” has not yet been replaced – a circumstance which is easily observable using the individual naked eye.

The least that can be said about this very partial review as a basis for discussing “Development & Underdevelopment” is that it is banal and inadequate and no better than commonplace journalism. It could be alleged on the face of it that it is a deliberate attempt, as is usually the case with such journalism, to pull the wool over our eyes. In any case it fails to set the scene for the subsequent sections and it might as well be left out altogether. But there it is, and it may as well be used to remind us of what is not there, namely a serious review of economic planning in the history of development, & underdevelopment.

The second half of the discussion document does not rely upon the first except in the sense that the first denies any rational underpinning to the second. The document therefore has to proceed empirically and so it describes a puzzle: “The market economy, which encompasses both the First and Second economies, is unable to solve the problem of poverty and underdevelopment that characterises the Second Economy.” Clearly the division of the economy into First and Second helps very little other than to indicate empirical problems of some sort, which the document states boldly: “make decisive government intervention imperative”.
 * SA’s “Two Economies” and Intervention for Development and Growth**

These government interventions are described as first, investment in production to “create and safeguard sustainable jobs”; second, infrastrucuture; third, small business support, and fourth, education. All to be paid for out of reserves accumulated through tax collection. Nothing here is new. The government has been doing all of these things for years. There is no suggestion of a qualitative change or any dramatic quantitative change.

It is in the last third of the document that we come to matters of policy that may be subject to actual change. In among the motherhood-and-apple-pie statements is found mention of “a more nuanced inflation targeting policy”, meaning, presumably, lower interest rates.
 * Cost of Capital**

This section is self-consciously doctrinaire, market-oriented, and bourgeois. It states (begging a number of questions): “An increase in investment is only likely to result in an increase in employment if the cost of labour is reduced relative to capital.” This is the nearest we get to a confession of the sin of JOBLESS GROWTH.

As if walking on eggshells, the document’s author continues: “A difficult issue to broach, but one that must be confronted, is the capital requirements of financing black economic empowerment (BEE).” By the use of a tortuous example it is suggested that “policy decisions in South Africa sometimes contradict each other”. The economists don’t like BEE!

The following paragraph, quoted in full, illustrates the contradiction between intervention and its political constraints:

“Also critical is the role of South Africa's development finance institutions, such as the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), as well as parastatal corporations, in directing investment and capital access in favour of the Second Economy. In the context of sustained investment from domestic public sources, these development finance institutions will also have a critical role in leveraging further resources from global development finance institutions such as the World Bank.”

Here we are talking of state direction of investment, which is the stuff of Five-Year Plans and of serious economic planning of any kind. It has been the main tool of the Chinese “miracle”. Yet it is impossibly hedged about. It is restricted to the “Second Economy”. And it must involve the World Bank, which is the the protector of the “Market”, the Washington Consensus, Neo-Liberalism, and everything else that is contradictory to nationalist state planning. If not totally a non-starter this policy is certainly a non-finisher.

The newspapers are correct to pick out this section for comment. It should be read in full. The communist view is that there is no demonstrably effective trade-off between what are referred to as “the present bargaining arrangements” (as if they were the property of the government) on the one hand, and levels of employment, on the other. In the “Conclusion” the document returns to generalities and platitudes but it has one very useful line: “As a country with a 40% unemployment rate and a youth unemployment rate of almost 60%”. These figures, sanctified by incusion in this reprt, can now be used without fear of denial.
 * The Labour Market and Small Business, and Conclusion**

04 The National Question (3,600 words)
This document begins with some generalities but then reaffirms that: “According to the Morogoro conference: "The main content of the present stage of the South African revolution is the liberation of the largest and most oppressed group - the african people". Hence, the main measure of the progress made on the national question is the extent and depth of the liberation of african people in particular - and blacks in general.”

It lists a number of Stalin-like empirical factors in answer to the question: “What Will Make Us a Nation?” It does not in any way define the nation-state historically as a bourgeois state. In the last section, headed “What to Do?” a firm purpose of amendment to the current fragmented scene is expressed, and the last paragraph (of all the discussion papers) goes like this:

“The ANC has duty to South Africa and to future generations to deal adequately with the national question. We also have a duty to the rest of Africa and the world where there is generally a groping in the dark or an idealistic hope that the national question will one day just vanish.”