{"id":215,"date":"2019-08-27T07:31:27","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T05:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=215"},"modified":"2020-08-17T12:45:13","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T10:45:13","slug":"the-workers-party-we-need","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=215","title":{"rendered":"The Workers Party We Need (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

17 July 2018<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Sheri Hamilton<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SA Federation of Trade Unions\u2019 25 April national\nstrike potentially signals a decisive shift in working class struggle. The estimated\n100,000 workers silenced Saftu\u2019s critics.  Millions now look to Saftu as an alternative\nto Cosatu and as a point of reference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was in fact the first conscious political\ngeneral strike against the ANC government post-apartheid. The Cosatu-led\ngeneral strikes against Gear and privatization, as well as the public sector\nstrikes of 2007 and 2010, were against particular policies<\/em><\/strong> of its alliance\npartner – the ANC government. Whilst the 25 April strike was called to oppose\nthe new poverty-level minimum wage and attacks on the right to strike, there is\nno doubt that for the workers taking part, this strike was a rejection of both\nthe ousted Zuma-led -ANC and the \u201cnew\u201d Ramaphosa one. This\nposes the question of a workers\u2019 party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ANC leadership under Ramaphosa remains\nfirmly committed to neo-liberalism. The ground continues to be prepared for a\nsocial explosion. In anticipation, the strategists of capital are preparing for\na possible coalition government from some combination of the DA, ANC and even\nthe EFF. The working class is lagging behind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

SACP\u2019s treachery<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political vacuum on the left has been\nmagnified by the degeneration of the SACP-led Cosatu. In reality the early\nCosatu was a quasi-workers party in the struggle against apartheid and capitalism.\nSaftu\u2019s challenge now is to complete the retying of the\nknot of history politically and ideologically. In 1982, Joe Foster, general\nsecretary of Cosatu\u2019s predecessor, Fosatu, warned prophetically that the lesson\nof independent Africa was that unions should protect their independence against\ncapture by post-colonial governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Foster did\nnot draw the conclusion of the need for a workers\u2019 party that his position\nimplied. Recognising that this was the logic of his argument, the SACP denounced\nFoster for not recognising it as the \u201cvanguard\u201d of the working class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SACP \u201cvanguard\u201d\nbarred the way to the development of an independent workers party, captured Cosatu\nand trapped it in the ANC-led Tripartite Alliance. Acting as the shock troops\nof the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) \u2013 the first stage of the bankrupt\ntwo-stage theory \u2013they engineered the derailment of a potential socialist\nrevolution. Confused by the SACP, the Cosatu leadership was absorbed into the capitalist\nstate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marikana exposed\nthe ANC as the party of capital like nothing before. But even before the\nmassacre, a survey of shop stewards showed support for Cosatu to form a workers\nparty had reached 65%.  The mineworkers\u2019\nsupport for the launch of WASP, NUMSA\u2019s 2013 Special National Congress\nresolutions and the significant increase in the number of communities standing\nindependently in elections confirmed this.  The working class was yearning for is its own\nparty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately,\ndespite all of this, Saftu\u2019s \u201cindependent but not apolitical\u201d policy goes no\nfurther than Foster in 1982. But unlike Foster, Saftu has the benefit of the\nexperience of 24-years of ANC rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cosatu, Nactu\nand Fedusa\u2019s collaboration on the national minimum wage and attacks on the\nright to strike shows that abstention from party politics does not guarantee independence.\nIndependence is a class question. Political parties represent the interests of\nclasses or fractions of them. Cosatu\u2019s betrayal was caused by collaborating\nwith a capitalist party \u2013 the ANC. Saftu must form an alliance with a political\nparty with a programme based on the interests of the working class. By\nconcluding from the experience of the struggle against corruption that it will\nbe necessary to remove the ANC government in the North West Saftu is\nreinforcing the need for a workers party.  \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Party of struggle<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SACP imposed\nitself on the working class as a pre-fabricated \u201cvanguard\u2019 with a programme manufactured\nbehind the backs of the working class, shielding itself from accountability. A\ngenuine workers party must answer the question: \u201chow do we take our struggles\nforward?\u201d Therefore it must become the furnace that forges the fighting unity of the working\nclass; it must be a party of struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What must be the party\u2019s guiding political\nprinciple? In our view a socialist programme is the only possible one \u2013 the aim\nof a society run by and for the working class. The foundation for this is the\ncall for the nationalisation under democratic working class control of the\nbanks, the mines, the commercial farms, the big factories and other big\nbusinesses. A new workers party must be based on a programme of action that\nlinks the immediate issues faced by the working class to the need to\nfundamentally transform society on a socialist basis. As an example, we propose\nthat the struggle for a living wage be championed by the new party through a\ndemand like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organise the workplaces to win R12,500!<\/strong> Build industry- and sector-wide action-committees that unite workers in a campaign of rolling mass action. Lock-out the bosses in non-complying industries through workplace occupations that demand nationalisation under workers control. Mass defiance of laws that stop workers defending themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We propose the new party works out similar demands for the struggles (1)\nto end unemployment, (2) win service delivery and houses, (3) high quality free\nhealth care, and (4) genuinely free and decolonised education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new party must\nallow for open and free debate, maximum democracy, collective development of a\nmanifesto and programme of action. As well as individual membership, the party must\nhave a federal component allowing for the fighting unity of existing working\nclass organisations. The party\u2019s leadership must be elected on the principles\nof the right of recall and that a workers\u2019 representative must earn only a\nworkers wage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Working\nClass Summit initiated by Saftu for 21-22 July must place on its agenda the\nquestion of consciously filling the political vacuum with a new party \u2013 a\nvacuum Saftu\u2019s own 25 April strike again underlined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 July 2018 by Sheri Hamilton The SA Federation of Trade Unions\u2019 25 April national strike potentially signals a decisive shift in working class struggle. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":428,"parent":212,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-215","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"_hostinger_reach_plugin_has_subscription_block":false,"_hostinger_reach_plugin_is_elementor":false,"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1945,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/215\/revisions\/1945"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}