{"id":605,"date":"2019-09-05T18:18:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=605"},"modified":"2019-09-05T18:23:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:23:24","slug":"chapter-six","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=605","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Six"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tasks of\nthe South African Revolution <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The drama of the South\nAfrican revolution is unfolding in a decade likely to prove the most explosive\nin the history of the century.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite eight years\nof upturn in the advanced capitalist countries, despite the turn of the\nStalinist bureaucracies back towards capitalism, the boasts of the ideologists\nof capitalism in a rosy future for their system will turn to their opposite.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the advanced capitalist countries renewed recession, or\neven slump, is likely during the 1990s, with growing conflicts among the major\npowers and ‘blocs’. The crisis of the Stalinist regimes is insoluble, by\ncontinued bureaucratic rule or a return to capitalism. Unsolved, it means\nattacks on the living standards of working people, and increasing national\nconflict. The “Third World”, wracked with the desperate misery of\nmillions, will go through enormous upheavals and convulsions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In every sector of the globe, explosive movements of the\nworking class are on the agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the Russian revolution, the world balance of forces\nhas altered massively in favour of the working class. The huge growth of the\nforces of production under capitalism since World War II has concentrated ownership\nof production in fewer hands and vastly increased the size, organisation and\npower of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Stalinist world, with the development of the economy\neven under the bureaucracy, the working class, taken as a whole, is the\nstrongest and among the most educated in the world. In the “Third\nWorld” also, unlike 1917, the working class now forms a majority in many\ncountries — including in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Trotsky explained in the 1930s, the prospects for the\nworld socialist revolution will again come to reduce to the question of leadership<\/strong>. The mass organisations of\nthe working class need to be built, rebuilt, and trans-formed: to cast off the\nshackles of reformist and Stalinist leadership and become imbued with the\nperspectives and program of Marxism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

SA capitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In South Africa, capitalism has developed for a hundred\nyears — in mining, agriculture, and modern industry — at the expense of the\nimpoverishment of the masses and the national oppression of the black and African\nmajority. Capitalism has ruled by reinforcing the old settler system of white\nprivilege and racism, and shackling the Africans under the reactionary and\ndivisive institutions of tribal and chiefly rule. Combined and uneven development\nis present in extreme form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to pre-1917 Russia, the bourgeoisie has established\nits own rule, economically and politically. The economy is dominated by\nmonopoly capital, domestic and foreign. The state is an exclusively capitalist\nstate, having established its rule through conquest and war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than in most “Third World” countries the economic bases<\/strong> of tribalism, feudalism\nand peasant society have been swept away by capitalist development. The\noverwhelming majority of the people have been trans-formed into a working\nclass, dependent on the earnings of wage-labour for survival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using the state to hold down the working class and to\ndevelop locally-based industry, SA has grown to a giant in Africa. But it\nremains a backward power in the world economy, relying on gold, agriculture,\nother minerals and semi-processed products to earn foreign exchange, and forced\nto import most of its capital goods (machinery etc.) from the advanced\ncapitalist countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The basis of modern development is the ability to compete in\nthe world market<\/strong> with manufactured\ngoods. With a relatively low productivity of labour, with the domestic market\nlimited by the impoverishment of the majority, SA capitalism cannot develop the\n“economies of scale” to compete on equal terms with the multi-national\nmonopolies in these spheres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite continued growth, the economy, for these reasons, falls\nfurther and further behind the advanced capitalist countries. For the past\ntwenty years, growth has not been sufficient to absorb new entrants to the\nlabour market, resulting in an increase in unemployment to an estimated 4-6\nmillion. Since the early 1970s there has been chronic inflation, of between 10\nand 20 per cent a year (on official estimates).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More and more, SA capitalism comes into conflict with the\ndemands of the black majority for national liberation and full citizenship in a\nmodern society, and with the rising power of the black working class,\ndetermined to achieve democracy and decent conditions of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state has ruled by military-police dictatorship over the\nblacks, buttressing itself by conceding democratic rights and privileges to the\nwhite working class and middle class in return for their support for\ncapitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 1948, the NP government proved the most effective\nparty-political form for cementing the bulk of the whites together, under the\nbanner of Afrikaner nationalism. This has been a form of Bonapartist rule<\/strong>, serving the interests of monopoly capitalism\nwhile excluding the big capitalists and their “English-speaking”\nmiddle-class supporters from direct control of government. While complaining\nabout the “excesses” of the apartheid regime, these were\nfundamentally content so long as it provided conditions for profit and social\nstability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post-war boom — and the defeat inflicted on the mass\nmovement at the end of the 1950s — secured this for a whole period. But in the\nearly 1970s the SA economy began to encounter relative limits to further\ndevelopment on the basis of import-substitution. This coincided with the end of\nthe 1950-74 world capitalist boom and the resurgence of a strengthened movement\nof the organised black working-class and the working-class youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Durban strikes of 1973; the uprising of the youth in\n1976; the rise of the trade unions; the growth of the youth Congresses; the\ninsurrectionary movement of 1984-6 in major cities and small towns; the birth\nof COSATU and the UDF; regional and national general strikes; the uprising of\nZulu youth against Inkatha; the revolt of the masses in the rural areas and the\nBantustans — all this has presented an\nincreasingly deadly threat to the South African ruling class.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This revolutionary movement arises under the banner of\nCongress and the Freedom Charter — with the demands for majority rule, for\ndecent wages, jobs, homes, education, and health for all. South African\ncapitalism is incapable of satisfying these demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From beginning to end this is a proletarian<\/strong> movement — of working-class women, men, and youth in\nthe workplaces, the townships, the schools — striving by proletarian<\/strong> means for national liberation and an end to capitalist\nexploitation. The unity of the African nation itself–the bringing together of\nXhosa, Sotho, Zulu, Tswana etc. — is formed above all in the urban industrial\ncentres, in the struggles against the bosses and the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boldness and the sweep of this movement has inspired working\npeople around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carried to victory, through the establishment of workers’\ndemocratic rule, it would open the way to prosperity and peace for all working\npeople in South Africa, black and white, liberate the middle-class from the\noppression of the monopolies, show a way forward for enslaved workers and\npeasants throughout Southern Africa and Africa, and be a beacon for the whole\nworld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporters of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the African\nNational Congress in the trade unions, the youth and community organisations\nstrive shoulder-to-shoulder with all the oppressed to achieve these goals, and\ncall on every struggler to join with us in building a mass ANC for workers’\npower to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky, in 1935, wrote a letter to a group of his\nsupporters in South Africa:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Three-quarters of the population of South Africa\n(almost six million of the almost eight million total) is composed of\nnon-Europeans. A victorious revolution is unthinkable without the awakening of\nthe native masses. In its turn, that will give them what they are so lacking\ntoday — confidence in their strength, a heightened personal consciousness, a\ncultural growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Under these conditions, the South African republic\nwill emerge first of all as a ‘black’ republic; this does not exclude, of\ncourse, either full equality for the whites or brotherly relations between the\ntwo races — depending mainly on the conduct of the whites. But it is entirely\nobvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from slavish\ndependence, will put a certain imprint on the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Insofar as a victorious revolution will radically\nchange the relation not only between the classes but also between the races and\nwill assure to the blacks that place in the state that corresponds to their\nnumbers, thus far will the social<\/strong>\nrevolution in South Africa also have a national<\/strong>\ncharacter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We have not the slightest reason to close our eyes to\nthis side of the question or to diminish its significance. On the contrary, the\nproletarian party should in words and deeds openly and boldly take the solution\nof the national (racial) problem in its hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Nevertheless, the proletarian party can and must solve\nthe national problem by its own<\/strong>\nmethods. The historical weapon of national liberation can be only the class struggle<\/strong>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terminology and details in this passage would require\nalteration today. But, though Trotsky pointed out that he was not fully familiar\nwith SA conditions, it anticipated the central thrust of the SA revolution —\nthe struggle for national liberation through the rise of the organised and\nconscious power of the proletariat, aiming to overthrow the present state\nrooted in white privilege, and establish its own democratic rule. This\nperspective — the perspective of the permanent revolution — has been shown a\nthousand times over in the practice<\/strong>\nof our movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The new turn<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beset by economic and social crisis and the revolutionary\nmovement of the masses, the SA ruling class can no longer rule successfully by\nundiluted white minority dictatorship. It is searching for a new way to rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pathetic “reforms” of the Botha period were\n“too little, too late”. At the same time, the repressive machinery of\nthe state — for all its fire-power, and its social base among the whites — is\nproving increasingly inadequate to hold a determined majority in subjection and\nenslavement. Botha’s repression, the most severe in the history of SA, created\nsetbacks for our movement, but could not defeat the best-organised bastions of\nworking-class resistance in the workplaces and communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, from last year, the regime began to face a new\nupswing of revolution in which, added to campaigns of defiance, strikes, etc.,\nthere have been signs of the crumbling of black junior partners in the state:\nmutinies of kitskops<\/em>, the defiance of\nLieutenant Rockman, revolts of Bantustan armies, the formation of POPCRU,\nstrikes and demonstrations by black police and prison warders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing on the road of undiluted repression, the ruling\nclass can see, threatens increasingly open civil war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under all these pressures — and encouraged by the continued\nworld capitalist upturn and the collapse of Stalinism — the new De Klerk\ngovernment has decided to chart a fresh course to preserve capitalist rule. Its aim is to trap the leadership of the\nCongress movement into government to share in the responsibility for holding\nback the revolutionary movement for majority rule and socialism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

De Klerk and his government promise to negotiate a new\nconstitution ‘without pre-conditions’. They promise it will be based on\n“one-person-one-vote”. But\nthey are not offering, and cannot offer, real majority rule.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are insisting that the constitution should have\nprovision for “protection of minorities.” Our movement should support\nguarantees protecting language and cultural rights of all; protecting all\nindividuals by law against racial, religious or sex discrimination. But the De\nKlerk government stands, not for this, but for the protection of minority privilege<\/strong>, economically and\npolitically. They demand a constitution that will retain effective veto powers<\/strong> for the whites and\ncapitalists — and that will deny the majority\nof the people the ability to exercise their power in government according to\ntheir numbers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protection of minority privilege is also an essential weapon\nfor the ruling class in maintaining the cohesion of the white core of the state\nmachine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ruling class is being forced to retreat under the\nrevolutionary pressures of the mass of the black people. But — despite the disaffection of blacks within the state –its\ncentral instrument of power remains intact.<\/strong> Despite all the repression, the\nhuge military firepower and technical capacity for destruction resting in white\nhands has thus far been little used. So long as this is at its disposal, the\nruling class has no intention of surrendering control over the economy and\nsociety to the will of the majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Stalinist Dialego rejects the standpoint of the Marxist\nWorkers’ Tendency of the ANC. He rails against our journal, Inqaba ya Basebenzi<\/em>, because it\n“continually exhorts the ANC leadership to ‘openly proclaim a programme of\nproletarian revolution as the only basis on which the demands of the Freedom\nCharter can be carried through.’ “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SACP General Secretary Joe Slovo — in a pamphlet titled The South African Working Class and the\nNational Democratic Revolution<\/em> — makes similar criticisms: “despite\nthe fact that the ANC has an understandable bias towards the working class it\ndoes not, and clearly should not, adopt a socialist platform which the\nso-called Marxist Workers’ Tendency (expelled from the ANC) would like it to\ndo.” (p. 24)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not, in fact, the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the\nANC, but four supporters of it, who were unconstitutionally suspended (in 1979)\nand then expelled (in 1985) from the ANC for putting forward these political\nideas. But the “anti-Stalinist” Slovo, who claims to stand for\ndemocracy within society and political organisations, finds nothing strange in\nthis — and even unilaterally ex-tends the expulsion to every supporter of our\ntendency! But let us leave that aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What program does the\nSACP claim to advance within the ANC instead? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against Marxism, Dialego asserts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If the democratic revolution is spearheaded by the\nworking class as the leader of a dynamic and united popular movement, then it\nbecomes possible to move in an ‘uninterrupted’ fashion from the struggle for\ndemocracy to the construction of socialism. The one revolution passes over into\nthe other, the revolution becomes permanent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This explains the fact that South African communists\nprefer to speak of a ‘national democratic rather than a ‘bourgeois democratic’\nrevolution, lest the latter is taken to imply a bourgeois revolution led by the\nbourgeoisie which merely entrenches capitalism. In a South Africa dominated by\nforeign and domestic monopoly capital (which connive with the colonial\nautocracy), the destruction of apartheid is only possible through a democratic\nrevolution spearheaded by the working class — a revolution which unleashes a\nmomentum that will compel a democratic South Africa to set its sights on the\nbuilding of socialism.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo makes similar points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In South Africa, in contrast to [Russia in] 1905 and 1917, it is our bourgeoisie (and not a feudally-based aristocracy) which wields economic and political power. Our bourgeoisie is the ruling class in every sense of the term. It has achieved and maintained its hegemony precisely through the mechanism of denying ‘bourgeois-democratic rights’ to the majority of the population.<\/strong> [His emphasis] The specific route which capitalism took in South Africa has led to the creation of a virtually inseparable bond between capitalist exploitation and race domination.<\/p>

With the exception of a very tiny and economically weak black bourgeoisie, our capitalist ruling class in general continues to be opposed to the universal extension of democracy (as normally understood) to the majority. On the main issues our capitalist class as a whole is, and can be expected to remain, on the side of the retention of race hegemony, albeit by mechanisms which involve some form of power-sharing…<\/strong> [His emphasis]<\/p>

…We therefore believe that it is misleading to use the words `bourgeois-democratic’ to describe the present stage. The words National Democratic<\/strong> are closer to our reality…<\/p>

…the present phase of our revolution contains elements of both national and social emancipation; it is not the classic bourgeois-democratic revolution nor is it yet the socialist revolution…<\/p>

…the historically-evolved connection between capitalist exploitation and race domination in South Africa creates a link between national liberation and social emancipation. In our conditions you don’t have to be a doctrinaire Marxist to conclude that a liberation which deals only with a rearrangement of the voting system and leaves undisturbed the race monopoly of 99% of our wealth, is no liberation at all. Any honest black nationalist understands that white political privilege has been the device to create and protect white economic privilege.<\/strong> [His emphasis]<\/p>

It is therefore impossible to imagine any real form of national liberation<\/strong> which does not, at the same time, involve a fundamental rearrangement of the ownership and distribution of wealth…<\/strong> [His emphasis]<\/p>

Compared to analogous phases (the Russian 1905 and February 1917 revolutions) certain of the key elements of our democratic revolution are, therefore, much more closely ‘interwoven’ with the longer-term socialist transformation.<\/p>

The shortest route to socialism in our country is via a democratic state…. which will at once be required to implement economic measures which go far beyond bourgeois-democracy. These economic measures, dictated by the most elementary objectives of our national liberation struggle, will erect a favourable framework for a socialist transformation but will not, in themselves, create, or necessarily lead to, socialism.<\/p>

A speedy advance towards socialism will depend, primarily, on the place which the working class has won for itself as a leader of society.<\/strong> [His emphasis]<\/p>The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution<\/em>, pp. 15-18<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here Dialego and Slovo appear\nto<\/strong> stand for a “democratic revolution spearheaded by the working\nclass”, rather than a proletarian revolution in which the working class\nitself takes power and establishes workers’ democratic rule. But if Slovo or Dialego take one word in\nthese passages seriously, then on what basis is the SACP now supporting\nnegotiated compromise by the ANC with the De Klerk government and the state? On\nwhat basis has General Secretary Joe Slovo actually taken part in these\nnegotiations himself?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the idea that the working class should spearhead a\ndemocratic revolution, but not take power in it, Trotsky long ago replied.\nAnswering the left-wing of the Mensheviks — who claimed to want the Russian\nworkers to fight “at the head of the all-national struggle for the\noverthrow of the monarchy”, but without taking power, he wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the words ‘at the head’ do not simply mean that the politically conscious workers must shed their blood more freely than anyone else without understanding exactly what they will achieve by so doing, but that they must assume political leadership<\/strong> in a struggle which will, above all, be the struggle of the proletariat itself, then it is clear that victory in this struggle must transfer power to those who have led it, that is to say, to the social-democratic proletariat.<\/strong><\/p>“The Struggle for Power<\/em>“, 1915, printed in 1905<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But the real point in the case of Dialego, Slovo and the\nSACP is even more serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us just re-emphasise what these gentlemen say. Dialego\nstates: “the destruction of apartheid is only possible through a\ndemocratic revolution spearheaded by the working class.” Slovo asserts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our bourgeoisie… has achieved and maintained its hegemony… through… denying ‘bourgeois-democratic rights’ to the majority of the population… our capitalist ruling class in general continues to be opposed to the universal extension of democracy (as normally understood) to the majority. On the main issues our capitalist class as a whole is, and can he expected to remain, on the side of the retention of race hegemony, albeit by mechanisms which involve some form of power-sharing… <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Quite so. Regarding the new constitution Gavin Relly of\nAnglo American, for example, has made his position abundantly clear: there is\nno question of a British-style democratic government “with its ‘winner\ntake all’ constitution”. This “would not work for South Africa.”\n(Financial Times<\/em>, 15\/2\/1990).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, The Path to\nPower<\/em>, the new SACP programme, adopted only last year, has this to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We should be on our guard against the clear objective\nof our ruling class and their imperialist allies who see negotiation as a way\nof pre-empting a revolutionary transformation. The imperialists seek their own\nkind of transformation which goes beyond the reform limits of the present\nregime but which will, at the same time, frustrate the basic objectives of the\nstruggling masses. And they hope to\nachieve this by pushing the liberation movement into negotiation before it is\nstrong enough to back its basic demands with sufficient power on the ground.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Whatever prospects may arise in the future for a\nnegotiated transition, they must not be allowed to infect the purpose and\ncontent of our present strategic approaches. We are not engaged in a struggle whose objective is merely to generate\nsufficient pressure to bring the other side to the negotiating table.<\/strong> If,\nas a result of a generalised crisis and a heightened revolutionary up-surge,\nthe point should ever be reached when the enemy is pre-pared to talk, the\nliberation forces will, at that point<\/strong>,\nhave to exercise their judgment, guided by the demands of revolutionary\nadvance. But until then its sights must be clearly set on the perspectives of a\nseizure of power.” (African\nCommunist<\/em>, 3rd Quarter 1989, pp. 124-25. Their emphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have these conditions now been fulfilled?! Does our movement\nnow have “sufficient power on the\nground<\/strong>” to enforce our demand for majority rule? Do Dialego and Slovo\nperhaps believe that de Klerk’s concessions represent a “democratic\nrevolution”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the African\nCommunist<\/em>, (3rd Quarter 1990, does, incredibly, claim that “dual power\nhas emerged in South Africa. The regime controls the civil service and the\nsecurity apparatus, but the ANC controls the streets.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

A democratic revolution?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Dialego, we have seen, February 1917 was a\n“democratic revolution”. Let us for now accept this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What made February 1917 a revolution<\/strong>, bringing about a situation of dual power<\/strong>, was that the\narmed state power<\/strong> of the Tsarist regime disintegrated. Power passed into\nthe hands of workers and soldiers in the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole truth is that the fabric of the regime had completely decayed; there was not a live thread left”, wrote Trotsky in his brilliant description of the February days. There was “an irresistible crystallisation of the masses around new axes. These innumerable crowds have not yet clearly defined what they want, but they are saturated with an acid hatred of what they do not want. Behind them is an irreparable avalanche. There is no way back. Even if there were someone to scatter them, they would be gathering again in an hour, and the second flood would be more furious and bloodier than the first.<\/p>

After the February days the atmosphere of Petrograd becomes so red-hot that every hostile military detachment arriving in that mighty forge, or even coming near to it, scorched by its breath, is transformed, loses confidence, becomes paralysed, and throws itself upon the mercy of the victor without a struggle… There was not to be found anywhere in the country any groups of the population, any parties, institutions or military units which were ready to put up a fight for the old regime.<\/p>

There was not to be found anywhere in the country any groups of the population, any parties, institutions or military units… ready to put up a fight for the old regime.<\/strong><\/p>History of the Russian Revolution<\/em> , pp. 148, 150-1, 158<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

— those were the realities in February 1917 in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian army, mainly oppressed peasants, disintegrated\nunder the pressure of fighting in the First World War and the movement of the\nworking class. Under Bolshevik leadership then, a workers’ state could have\nbeen established immediately. However, with the Mensheviks and the Social\nRevolutionaries still commanding majority support among the masses, the\ntottering state machine was propped up for months — until the majority swung\nto the Bolsheviks to lead workers’ insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The situation in SA today is entirely different. For all the\nrevolutionary heroism and sacrifices of the mass movement, the white-based\nstate machine of the ruling class is mighty and intact and is the fundamental\nobstacle in the way of majority rule and socialism. No “democratic\nrevolution” has taken place — nor can it, until the working class itself\ndevelops the power and the program, at the head of all the oppressed, to take\non this machine, paralyse and disintegrate it politically, and smash<\/strong> it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC does not oppose\nnegotiations with the regime in principle. After decades of bloody struggle,\nand huge sacrifices, many black workers and youth are no doubt hoping there is\na peaceful way to freedom. There must be many whites too who imagine that\nNelson Mandela, with his enormous authority, can produce miracles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But negotiations are a trap for our movement unless they are\non the basis of demands which can ensure immediate transfer of power to the\nmajority. These include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* A Constitutional Assembly, with delegates all freely\nelected on the basis of one-person-one-vote from every part of SA (including\nthe so-called “independent home-lands”) to draw up a new constitution;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* The equal right of all people irrespective of race to bear\narms for their own defence. The right of local people to form militias for\ndefence purposes in all residential areas, and of the trade unions to form\nworkers’ defence guards in all industrial areas and on buses and trains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what is the position of the ANC and SACP leader-ship on\nthese points?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1989 COSATU Congress in July, and the Conference for a\nDemocratic Future in December, resolved that only a democratically-elected\nConstituent Assembly had the right and duty to define a new constitution and\nthe form and social content of a new and just society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a message to the December conference, Comrade Tambo\nstated: “Let us demand and act to achieve a Constituent Assembly,\nsovereign and representative of all the people of our country on the basis of\none-person-one-vote; a democratic assembly which will decide what kind of South\nAfrica the people of our country want.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Comrade Mandela has now declared that the ANC will not\ninsist on a Constitutional Assembly to decide the new constitution. What does\nthe SACP leader-ship say to this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where is the ANC and SACP leadership putting for-ward the\ndemand for the right of all people to bear arms for their defence, and for\nmilitias and defence guards in the communities, industrial areas, and on\ntransport? Instead comrade Mandela told the heroic youth fighting the Inkatha\ngangsters in Natal to throw their arms into the sea. Instead the leaders of MK\nare negotiating with representatives of the SADF for the merging<\/strong> of the guerilla units into the present repressive state machine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comrade Mandela, in a document presented to the government,\nemphasised he understands the insistence of whites on “structural\nguarantees” in the constitution. This is a fatal compromise of democracy\nand national liberation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the government intends was recently explained by Gerrit\nViljoen, minister for constitutional change. Be-cause of the “expectation\nof the blacks”, “a mere majority system would not work”, he told\na British journalist:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Not that they would off-hand reject one-man-one-vote\nas a component of a new order. A two-House Parliament, one House elected on a\nsingle roll, and the other House elected specifically to protect minority\nrights, especially on vital issues — such a combi-nation was on the\ntable.” (Independent<\/em>, 13\/3\/90)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is, in other words, a constitution like that proposed by\nthe KwaZulu\/Natal Indaba. It would thus mean:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“that bills require the agreement of the executive,\nboth Chambers and the relevant standing committee before they can become law…\nit is impossible for a majority party, irrespective of its size, to obtain\napproval for proposed laws without gaining the support of members of other\npolitical parties.” (Peter Mansfield, “Checks and Balances”, Leadership<\/em>, 1987)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a government would not be democratic. It would be a new form of Bonapartism<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entering into such a government, the ANC would be forced\ninto a form of coalition with the NP and other bourgeois parties. It would lack\nthe power to implement legislation needed by the majority to end poverty and\nsocial inequality and redistribute wealth. It would he paralysed from\nundertaking decisive measures to implement the Freedom Charter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet informed journalists are already speculating that the\nANC leadership are prepared to accept this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A temptation exists to say a deal has already been\ndone… as officials have privately indicated this week, already at this early\nstage the two sides are quietly examining the possibility of hitting upon a\ntwo-chamber system of government, one elected by simple majority, one perhaps\non a regional basis in such a way that the factor of race would he accommodated.”\n(Independent on Sunday<\/em>, 6\/5\/1990)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dialego and Slovo claim to stand for “democratic\nrevolution”. More than that. Dialego claims to stand for “a revolution\nwhich unleashes a momentum that will compel a democratic South Africa to set\nits sights on the building of socialism.” Slovo claims to stand for:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“a fundamental rearrangement\nof the ownership and distribution of wealth….<\/strong> The shortest route to socialism\nin our country is via a democratic state… which will at once be required to\nimplement economic measures which go far beyond bourgeois-democracy… [and]\nwill erect a favourable framework for a socialist transformation”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On another occasion, Slovo spoke of “a real democratic\nsociety” where “the question of an advance to socialism will be\nsettled in debate rather than in the streets.” (London Observer, 1\/3\/1987)\nEven on the present negotiations, Slovo said in April: “We cannot go to\nthe negotiating table ready to abandon majority rule, we cannot go there ready\nto forget that over 90 per cent of all productive property is owned by the\nwhite group. If we went to the table\nforgetting that, we would not be negotiating, we would be discussing terms for\nour surrender.<\/strong>” (Independent<\/em>,\n30\/4\/1990. Our emphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the SACP has no opposition to the undemocratic deal now\nbeing struck between the ANC leaders and the government. As Slovo said at a\nrecent press conference: there are “no basic differences between the two\norganisations.” (Independent<\/em>,\n20\/6\/90)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo has now addressed an “open letter to\nbusiness” in which he claims that the profit motive is “the most\nimportant engine of growth”, but begs the monopolies to permit some state\nintervention to redistribute wealth to the masses. (Business Day<\/em>, 3\/7\/90)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the profit system is the cause of the impoverishment of\nthe masses in SA. And the experience of the working class around the world is\nthat the monopolies will not allow any government to impede their drive for\nprofits while their state remains intact. The monopolies may offer some limited\nconcessions to try to hold back the tide of revolution. But SA capitalism can\nafford in this respect no more than mere spoonfuls of water, when oceans of\nfresh water are required to fulfil our needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To provide decent wages, jobs, homes, education and health\nfor all, the big monopolies, banks, mines and farms must be taken out of the\nhands of their capitalist owners, nationalised, and brought under the\ndemocratic control and management of the working class. To achieve this, the\nworking class needs state power in its own hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo, we saw in Chapter 5, has “forgotten” the\nfundamental lessons of Marxism on the state — that, to achieve socialism, the\nworking class cannot merely take hold of the existing state and use it for its\nown purposes — even under the most democratic of bourgeois constitutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the SACP stands\nfor the position that it can `advance the struggle for socialism’ by accepting\nan anti-democratic Bonapartist constitution which protects the interests of all\nthe privileged in SA society!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim of Dialego, Slovo and the SACP to reject the ideas\nof Marxism in favour of a “democratic revolution” that precedes a\n“socialist revolution” is in reality all words, to try to confuse and\ndisarm those revolutionaries who still accept the authority of the SACP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phrases about “revolution” are a cover for\ntheir real policies of compromise with capitalism and undemocratic compromise\nwith the state. The idea of “stages” is intended to hide<\/strong> from the working class the need\nfor it to take state power to achieve majority rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Moscow bureaucracy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind them lies the Moscow bureaucracy, which, facing\nincreasing crisis at home, is more desperate to reach compromises with\nimperialism — at the expense even of the democratic<\/strong>\ndemands of the black majority in SA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We now have the incredible position, reported by bourgeois\njournalists, that the NP Government looks more positively at the Soviet\nbureaucracy than at US imperialism! As the UK\nIndependent<\/em> states (31\/5\/1990):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Our feeling,’ a senior National Party MP said, ‘is ‘Stuff America!’ If we didn’t have to deal with them ever again we wouldn’t give two hoots.” The same MP, who asked — for obvious reasons — to remain anonymous, said that the Russians had a much finer understanding of South African politics and, besides, were ‘serious people’ who spoke with a coherent, consistent voice…. Another sign of the changing times [it continued] is South Africa’s evolving relationship with the Soviet Union, which barely a year ago Pretoria accused of leading a so-called ‘total onslaught’ — with the ANC as its chief revolutionary vehicle –against South Africa.<\/p>

Quiet official contacts between the Soviet Union and South Africa — as well as more open academic exchanges — have been increasing over the last year. Mark Phillips, a researcher at Johannesburg’s Centre for Policy Studies, recently visited Moscow where he spoke to leading Soviet policy-makers on Southern Africa. Mr Phillips, an ANC sympathiser, discovered to his sur-prise a remarkable understanding of Mr de Klerk’s insistence on the need for special ‘group [meaning white] rights’ to be guaranteed in the constitution for a post-apartheid South Africa — a notion which, officially, is anathema to the ANC and Washington.<\/p>

‘Some South Africans may one day be surprised to discover that the Soviet Union, the South African government’s traditional enemy, could in fact be more sympathetic to constitution-ally entrenched group rights than their traditional ally, the United States of America’ “, it reports Mark Phillips as saying.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Imperialism fears majority rule and workers’ revolution in\nSA. But it is quite content for the Soviet bureaucracy to do the ‘dirty work’\nof trying to restrain the demands of the masses in SA, and of encouraging\nundemocratic compromises by the ANC and CP leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inqaba ya Basebenzi<\/em>\nin 1987 drew attention to the proposals of a leading Soviet policy maker, Dr\nGleb Starushenko, that the ANC should accept a constitution with\n“comprehensive guarantees for the white population”, including veto powers for whites<\/strong>. These views, we\npointed out, were “unfortunately, not those of an eccentric Soviet\nacademic. They are consistent with the\nwhole foreign policy of the Soviet leadership.<\/strong> (No. 23, April 1987) This\nstandpoint is now again confirmed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo has claimed Starushenko was giving his “personal\nopinion”, and that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it is certainly not an acceptable starting point for a negotiating agenda for our liberation movement. Apart from other considerations, the racists’ own insistence on ‘group rights’ is undoubtedly linked to the preservation of control over the means of production. If this control is maintained, through the granting of minority veto powers, the most fundamental features of race domination would be perpetuated…<\/p>The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution<\/em>, pp. 34-35<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But, in one form or\nanother<\/strong>, the ruling class intends to retain measures for the protection of\nminority privilege in the new constitution. The Moscow bureaucracy is\nencouraging this. The ANC leadership is expressing its willingness to accept it.\nThe SACP leaders have “no disagreement” with the ANC. Such are the consequences of being tied to\nthe apron-strings of the anti-revolutionary Moscow bureaucracy. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dialego, we have seen, denounces Inqaba ya Basebenzi<\/em> because it “continually exhorts the ANC\nleadership to `openly proclaim a programme of proletarian revolution as the\nonly basis on which the demands of the Freedom Charter can be carried through’\n“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His quotation is taken from Inqaba’s<\/em> publication, South Africa’s Impending Socialist\nRevolution, (1982), in which we looked forward to the time “when Comrade\nMandela is eventually freed from the clutches of the enemy and is able to take\nhis place in the active leadership of the ANC.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We continued: “It will be vital for him as it is vital\nfor all the ANC leaders, to openly\nproclaim a programme of proletarian revolution as the only basis on which the\ndemands in the Freedom Charter can be carried through.<\/strong>” These remain\nthe tasks for our Congress movement. With his huge authority, were comrade Mandela\nto make this call, millions would respond, and our movement could be taking big\nsteps towards power. The SACP, too, could push in such a direction. But this is\nnot what is taking place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In South Africa today” — we continued —\n“such is the intensity of the class struggle, and such the impasse of the\nruling capitalist system, that all those who shrink from a struggle for its\ntotal overthrow are obliged also to water down their democratic demands.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only too tragically, this proves to be the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his cheap attack on “Trotskyism”, Dialego attempts\na joke!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Like Trotsky before them, the \u2018workerists\u2019 in South\nAfrica get the relationship between socialism and democracy precisely wrong.\nOnly fairy tale revolutionaries believe that workers can first achieve\nsocialism and then set about establishing the conditions which would make this\nrevolution possible. It is rather like arriving at your destination and then\nlooking around for the trans-port to get you there. It can’t be done!” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Powerful wit indeed… were it directed accurately at its\ntarget! Let us leave aside the question of so-called “workerism”, which\nwe have answered in previous material (see Inqaba<\/em>,\nNo. 27, November 1988).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Socialism, of course, cannot be “achieved” in\nisolation in SA, or any single country. The claim that we stand for\n“leaping into socialism” is a complete red herring. Yet Dialego, who\nbelieves Stalin’s totalitarian dictatorship was “socialist” —\nlectures Marxists for wanting socialism before democracy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC stands, not for\n“achieving socialism” before “democratic revolution” — but\nfor proletarian revolution<\/strong> as the\nmeans of achieving majority rule and opening the way to socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what do Slovo and Dialego stand for? They believe that\nthe leadership of our movement can, without even a democratic revolution, sit\ndown with the SA capitalists and the custodians of its vicious state machine,\nand secure from them not merely majority rule, but conditions in which socialism\ncan be achieved by debate!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The working class can construct socialism… without ever\ndefeating the existing state or establishing its own rule! It can arrive at its\n“destination” without ever clearing away the most fundamental\nobstacle in its path!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whose “theory” is guilty of “jumping\nstages”, comrades? Who are the “fairy tale revolutionaries”? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere in his diatribe against Trotsky, Dialego claims:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky’s all-or-nothing approach to world revolution… stemmed from his failure to get to grips with the national question…. This problem becomes particularly acute in countries (like South Africa) where the democratic revolution itself has not yet taken place so that workers do not even enjoy a common citizen-ship with their exploiters. In theory Trotskyists should stand aloof from the struggle from national liberation since the logic of their position asserts that unless the revolution is socialist in character and world-wide in its scope, betrayal and defeat is the inevitable consequence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky, like any genuine Marxist, placed the struggle for\nnational liberation foremost on the banner of the SA revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, while they slander Trotsky in this way, Dialego and the\nSACP support a deal with the De Klerk\ngovernment that leaves the fate of the oppressed and exploited black majority\nat the disposal of the armed might of the SADF, the SAP and their auxiliaries\n— of the torturers and murderers of the people. <\/strong>Who is guilty of\n“standing aloof from the struggle for national liberation”? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Alliances<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ANC, maintains Slovo, “should not adopt a socialist\nplatform which the so-called Marxist Workers’ Tendency… would like it to do.\nIf it adopted such a plat-form it would destroy its character as the prime\nrepresentative of all the classes among the oppressed black majority.” (p.\n24)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By adopting a “socialist platform” of course, the\nANC would not renounce<\/strong> the struggle\nfor national liberation. Nor, by standing for proletarian revolution, would the\nANC renounce<\/strong> the interests of other\noppressed classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mass of the “middle strata” in black society\nhave an interest in throwing off not only national oppression, but economic oppression\nby the monopolies — in supporting<\/strong>\nthe overthrow of the existing state and capitalism and the establishment of a\ndemocratic workers’ state in which the commanding heights of production are\ncon-trolled and managed by the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In such a state there will he ample room for redistribution\nof land to those who want and need it, and room also, for a whole period, for\nexpanded possibilities for small business-people to contribute to the\ncirculation and the distribution of goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Slovo takes his argument further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By rejecting class alliances and going it alone<\/strong>“, claims Slovo, “the working class would in fact be surrendering the leadership in the national struggle to the upper and middle strata.<\/strong> This would become the shortest route towards a sell-out reformist solution and a purely capitalist post-apartheid South Africa under the hegemony of a bourgeois-dominated black national movement. Along this path, ‘class purity’ will surely lead to class suicide and \u2018socialist\u2019-sounding slogans will actually hold back the achievement of socialism.<\/p>

The black middle and upper strata constitute a relatively significant political force, particularly in community struggles. Whether we like it or not they will participate and, often, take a leading part in such struggles.” (His emphasis)<\/p>p. 8<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A socialist program in the SA revolution, let us re-peat, is\nnot<\/strong> a program for “going it\nalone” by the working class, but for the working class to lead<\/strong> all the oppressed in a revolution\nto establish majority rule and end capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The working class cannot establish and lead such an alliance\nby hiding its aims. On the contrary<\/strong>,\nit is the boldness<\/strong> and consistency<\/strong> of the program of the\nworking class that provides a pole of attraction for the middle layers, who\notherwise vacillate under the pressures of the conflict between the main\nclasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Slovo wants the working class to hide its aims –because\nthe black middle class is a “significant political force”! In\nreality, for all the efforts of the big capitalists to build up “black\nmiddle and upper strata” as a buttress of their rule against the working\nclass, they remain few in number, and insignificant as a real force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The African Bank, established in 1975, was to be a flagship\nfor the development of African business. But its first chief black executive,\nMoses Maubane, left in dis-grace in 1986, when the bank was rocked by a foreign\nexchange scandal. Now the bank has been taken over by a white managing\ndirector, Jack Theron!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “black taxi service” is hailed by the big\ncapitalists as an example of rising black entrepreneurship. But in recent\nmonths black taxi drivers have been out demonstrating against their indebtedness\nto the monopolies!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “black middle and upper strata” may sit on committees\nof the Congress organisations in the townships. But, as any active black youth\ncould tell comrade Slovo, it is workers and working-class youth who play the\n“leading part” in struggles<\/strong>\nin the communities, as well as in the workplaces and the schools. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were there any fundamental conflict of interest be-tween the\n“black middle strata” and the overwhelmingly working-class black\nmajority, it would be defeatism for the working class to renounce its aims. But\nthere is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But such an alliance of the working class with the\noppressed, on the basis of its own programme, is an entirely different matter\nfrom an “alliance” with any\nsection of the capitalist class or its political representatives.<\/strong> For all\nthe sweet talk of the ‘progressive’ capitalists — the Ogilvie Thompson’s etc.\n— their material self-interest in ownership of the means of production makes\nthem implacably hostile to the demands of the majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same holds for those “liberal” politicians who\nclaim to represent the interests of the “white middle class”, but in\nreality defend the interests of the big capitalists and the state. These have\nnothing to contribute to a struggle<\/strong>\nfor majority rule, but only serve to hold it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality it is these<\/strong>,\nand not the mass of the middle class, whom Slovo — in true Menshevik fashion\n— does not wish our movement to “offend” by adopting a\n“socialist platform.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Equally, our movement has nothing to gain and every-thing to\nlose by trying to “ally” with agents of capitalism and its state\namong the blacks: Buthelezi, the Inkatha warlords, the Bantustan leaders, etc.\nThere is no place in a democratic movement for those who promote pre-feudal,\nanti-democratic institutions of chieftainship and tribalism that serve to\ndivide the black masses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo claims that, by adopting a socialist program, our\nmovement would open itself to the danger of “a sell-out reformist solution\nand a purely capitalist post-apartheid South Africa under the hegemony of a\nbourgeois-dominated black national movement”!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what is the reality? It is that, because our movement is not being built on a socialist program<\/strong>, the\nleader-ship of the ANC and SACP are entering into an undemocratic compromise\nwith the capitalist state. The new constitution of this so-called\n“post-apartheid South Africa” will not establish the\n“hegemony”, i.e. domination of government and the state, by the\n“black national movement”, the ANC. On the contrary, this\nconstitution is intended to try to paralyse the political movement of the\nmajority from implementing its demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky and his followers” [– claims Dialego –] “argue that a democratic revolution can only benefit the capitalists.<\/p>

But this is merely a half-truth. Marxists have never denied that as a result of the democratic revolution, some capitalists (usually the smaller Ones with national roots) benefit. Lenin acknowledged this in Russia, and Nelson Mandela has made the same point about the Freedom Charter (as the critics of the liberation movement are never tired of pointing out). The fact that the oppressed sections of the bourgeoisie will benefit should hardly surprise us — after all, as Lenin stressed, ‘the democratic revolution is bourgeois in nature. It is not a proletarian revolution: it is a revolution of ‘the whole people’.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Were a democratic revolution possible in SA without ending\ncapitalism, it would, in fact, benefit not only the capitalists but the working\nclass. But that idea is utopian. To achieve majority rule, the working class\nneeds to over-throw the capitalist state and establish its own rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dialego here again bases himself on Lenin’s perspectives in Two Tactics<\/em> (1905), which, as we showed\nin Chapter 1, he modified in the course of the Russian revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, even in 1905, Lenin’s main concern was not, as Dialego\nimplies, to reassure “small capitalists”, etc. that they would\nbenefit from the revolution, but — as we have shown — to devise tactics for\nthe working class and the peasantry to ensure that the capitalist class would benefit the<\/strong> least<\/strong> in what he then saw as a democratic revolution!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy,\nwhich not only permitted the rise of small rural capitalists but made provision\nfor local and even foreign capitalist enterprises, under the regulation of the\nstate: what Lenin termed the “state capitalist sector”. This was a\ntactical retreat from “War Communism”, to promote industrial\ndevelopment and preserve the support of the peasantry for the revolution while\nit remained isolated. But the precondition for such a tactic was that the working class held state power in the\nSoviet Union. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Nelson Mandela made the same point about the Freedom\nCharter” — about benefits to ‘smaller capitalists with national roots’ —\nsays Dialego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1956, Nelson Mandela wrote an article on the Freedom\nCharter. He said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“the realisation of the Charter is inconceivable, in\nfact impossible, unless these monopolies are first smashed up and the national\nwealth of the country turned over to the people. The breaking up and\ndemocratisation of these monopolies will open up fresh fields for the development\nof a prosperous non-European bourgeois class. For the first time in the history\nof this country the non-European bourgeoisie will have the opportunity to own\nin their own name and right mines and factories, and trade and private\nenterprise will boom and flourish as never before.” (“In Our Lifetime”,\nLiberation<\/em>, June 1956)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comrade Mandela then imagined that the African people could\nachieve their liberation as a “bourgeois nation” — through the\nreplacement, if you like, of white capitalism by black capitalism. But this is\nutopian. The “African nation” in SA has arisen too late in world\nhis-tory to take this path. Such capitalist development as has been possible in\nSA has been undertaken — in its own distorted way and by its own ruthless means\n— under the domination of the white minority, and, in particular, of Afrikaner\nnationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The monopolies — Anglo American, Barlow Rand, etc. — are\ndefended by the state. Their owners will never con-sent to their “smashing\nup” and “redivision” while this power (its police, army, courts,\njails and administration) remain intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But capitalism has created an overwhelmingly proletarian\nAfrican people, producers of the wealth which is stolen by the owners of the\nmonopolies. “Turning the wealth over to the people” means bringing\nthese monopolies under the democratic control and management of the working\nclass. For this, it will be necessary to break the power of the present state\nmachine, and replace it by the power of the armed people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this achieved, the idea of “breaking up” the\nmonopolies and turning them over to an aspirant black capitalist class would be\nridiculous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Perspectives and tasks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many workers and youth look to the relaunched SACP as the\nguardian within the Congress movement of the interests of the working class.\nThe reality is the opposite. The SACP recipe of “revolution in\nphases” –whether the “first phase” is labelled\n“bourgeois-democratic”, “national democratic”, or anything\nelse — turns out to be a recipe for no\nrevolution at all<\/strong>. To accept these ideas would be to accept submission<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To implement the\nprogram of the Freedom Charter, as the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC has\nconsistently maintained, the working class needs to build the ANC under its\ncontrol, at the head of all the oppressed, on a program for proletarian\nrevolution.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new constitution — whatever its precise form –will be\na recipe for legislative and executive paralysis. Neither advancing the interests\nof the majority nor protecting minorities, providing neither social justice nor\npeace, it will guarantee increasing extra-parliamentary conflict along race and\nclass lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the huge opposing pressures of the different races and\nclasses it will sooner or later break down, with government assuming an even more\ndictatorial Bonapartist character, perhaps in the hands of the military\nthem-selves. These are the dangers that open up if the leader-ship of Congress\npursues its present course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mass of the oppressed cannot and will not give up the\nstruggle for decent wages, jobs, homes, education and health for all. The\nintolerable conditions imposed on them do not allow that. Equally, the ruling\nclass will not abandon the use of their bloodthirsty armed forces, security\nguards, and vigilantes in trying to hold down and crush our movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless political power is taken decisively by the op-pressed\nmajority out of the hands of the ruling minority, black working people will\ncontinue to he cheated even of the most basic real reforms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually the new constitution will become as irrelevant to\nprocesses in society as that of Lebanon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The danger for our movement is that compromises with the\nregime can foster splits and divisions in Congress — weakening the unity which\nthe black working class has struggled to build over the last two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rank and file need to build and transform the ANC and\nall the Congress organisations into instruments of workers’ power, to compel a\nchange from the present course. Under the banner of the ANC we need to build a\nmass workers’ army, politically and physically armed to defend itself against\nthe bosses, their state and their vigilante agents, and to defeat their\nchallenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike in Russia in February 1917, the South African state\nwill not collapse “spontaneously”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In SA the core of the\nstate machine are privileged whites taught for generations by their racist\nleaders to fear and hate the black masses. They will not desert capitalism and\nits state spontaneously to come over to the side of a democratic and socialist\nrevolution.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facing growing economic crisis, and under the huge pressures\nof the black working class, white society is already in the early stages of\ndecay. This will intensify as working and lower middle-class whites lose\nconfidence in the ability of the ruling class to find a way out of its\npredicament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, left to their own devices, the majority of whites will\nturn to ultra-right reaction, inside and outside the state. In the future,\ndespairing at the paralysis of government, fearful of loss of privilege, seeing\nno alternative, the ranks of the whites can be drawn not merely to the KP\ndemagogues, but to the open armed reaction of the now-isolated AWB and other\nneo-Fascist organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White domination can never again be re-established in the\nold way. The rising numbers of the blacks, the power of the black working class\nin production, the refusal of the majority to be ground down again into passive\nslavery, precludes this. But the ultra-right reaction can cause huge havoc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If our movement is not mobilised and taken forward to a\nsuccessful workers’ revolution, the alternative will not be stable bourgeois\ndemocracy, nor constitutional Bonapartism, but all-out racial civil war,\nsetting not only white against black, but black against black, with the\nslaughter of millions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The leader of the racist Blanke Veiligheid vigilante group\nin Welkom, Hennie Muller, declares he wants to meet Chief Buthelezi. “We\ncan join forces with him” he says. “We have the same intentions — to\nrestore law and order.” (Sunday Star<\/em>,\n1\/4\/1990) That the white fascists and the Inkatha warlords could really unite\ntheir forces is a pipe-dream. But this statement shows that the forces for\nchaos and anarchy among the whites recognise their counterparts among the\nblacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the hands of state-backed vigilante organisations like\nthese, the future of SA would be a nightmare. To cut across this, and to defeat\nthe state, our movement needs to have clear policies not only to raise the\norganised power of the working class to its full height at the head of all the\noppressed, but to split the whites along\nclass lines.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not an abstract question of class unity. It is first\nand foremost for practical<\/strong> reasons\n— that the state can-not be defeated\nunless its core of white support is stripped away and neutralised or won to the\nside of our revolution.<\/strong> And there can be no real national liberation unless\nthe state is defeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clinging to white privilege and capitalism can guarantee\nneither continued prosperity nor peace for the whites. Our movement must prove\nin action its power and its de-termination to create a new society, a workers’\ndemocracy, without privilege for anyone — which, by breaking the chains of\ncapitalism, can vastly expand the wealth at the disposal of society to serve\nthe needs of all working people, black and white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armed with the ideas of Marxism — the legacy handed down by\nMarx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky — the working class in SA can be victorious.\nIt is with state power in its hands, and only then, that the working class will\nbe able to ensure (in Slovo’s words) “a fundamental rearrangement of the\nownership and distribution of wealth” in society, and (in Dialego’s words)\nto “move in a ‘uninterrupted’ fashion from the struggle for democracy to\nthe construction of socialism.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A workers’ revolution in SA would rouse all Africa\n–bringing Bonapartist dictatorships down like a pack of cards under the\nhammer-blows of the movement of the oppressed masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A workers’ revolution in SA would be an inspiration to\nworking people everywhere on the planet. Under the often confusing surface of\nevents, a race is on — between the political revolution in the East, and the\nsocial revolution in any major capitalist country. It will be decided by where\nthe forces of Marxism first rise to the head of the movement of the working\nclass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But just one workers’ revolution, in any of these countries,\ncan re-ignite the world socialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a speech to an audience of Social Democratic Youth in\nCopenhagen in 1932, which he titled “In\nDefence of October<\/em>“, Trotsky summarised the experience of the Russian\nRevolution and its aftermath, and the balance-sheet of developments in the\nSoviet Union. In his conclusion he declared:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfil its essential function: the raising of the level of human power and human wealth. humanity cannot remain stagnant at the level which it has reached.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the decades since the Second World War, which Trotsky did\nnot live to see, capitalism has developed the productive forces massively. Yet,\neven at its peaks, it has proved unable to “raise the level” of power\nand wealth of the majority of those who live under its sway. In the period\nahead, new stagnation threatens. The democratic and social gains of the working\nclass in even the most advanced countries will come increasingly under attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky continued with remarks whose relevance will again\necho in the stormy decades which lie ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a powerful increase in productive force and a sound, planned, that is, socialist organisation of production and distribution can assure humanity — all humanity — of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses — first of all man will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his life to physical toil. Second, he will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on the blind and obscure forces which work behind his back. He will build the economy freely, according to plan, with compass in hand.<\/p>

This time it is a question of subjecting the anatomy of society to the X-ray through and through, of disclosing all its secrets and subjecting all its functions to the reason and will of collective humanity. In this sense, socialism must become a new step in the historical advance of mankind…<\/p>

The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rises up to the stratosphere, who converses on invisible waves from the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy. The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and — every man and woman, not only a selected few — become a citizen with full power in the realm of thought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How much more true is all this today!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months before his assassination, Trotsky wrote:\n“Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil,\noppression and violence and enjoy it to the full.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is within the power of the generations now living on this planet to achieve all this. Let our continued struggle for these goals be our tribute to Trotsky’s memory!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue to Appendix<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tasks of the South African Revolution The drama of the South African revolution is unfolding in a decade likely to prove the most explosive in […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":574,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-605","page","type-page","status-publish","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\/605","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=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/605\/revisions\/612"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}