{"id":609,"date":"2019-09-05T18:23:07","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=609"},"modified":"2019-09-05T18:23:08","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:23:08","slug":"appendix","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=609","title":{"rendered":"Appendix"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The SACP and the Case of S.P. Bunting<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

S. P. Bunting was a founding member of the Communist Party of South\nAfrica, as the SACP was then called. He became its chairman in 1924. He edited\nthe Party paper, The International<\/em>.\nHe was one of those responsible in the 1920s for turning the party away from a\nconcentration on white workers to becoming SA’s first non-racial party with a\nblack majority of members and leaders.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, along with leading African militants \u2013 T.W. Thibedi, Gana\nMakabeni, etc. \u2013 he was expelled from the Party in 1931 in a Stalinist purge.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 58 years of silence, the\nSACP’s Political Bureau last year admitted that Bunting and his comrades were\n“unjustly expelled”. “The reasons given for his expulsion were\nflimsy to the point of being ridiculous,” they concede. His expulsion was\n“an act of betrayal from which he never recovered”. In fact, he died,\na broken man, in 1936.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Political Bureau says Bunting\nwas expelled for “appealing for leniency when defending political\nprisoners in court, and … speaking from the same platform as members of the\nANC and ICU”. But this totally covers up the hysterical witch-hunt which\nwas launched against Bunting and his comrades by the Party at that time \u2013 and\ncovers up the underlying political basis of his expulsion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Since the expulsion of\nBunting and his few supporters…for their white chauvinist, reformist, right\nopportunist policies and anti-Party activities”, raved Umsebenzi<\/em> (CPSA newspaper),\n(22\/10\/1932), “they have gone over completely into the camp of the class\nenemies of the people’s revolution. From the role of hidden agents of British\nand Africander Imperialism within the ranks of the revolutionary movement, they\nhave come out more openly as the direct representatives of Imperialist\nexploitation and subjection… Together with Hertzog, Pirow and Smuts [i.e. the\npolitical leaders of white racism] they are attacking the working masses and\nits proletarian vanguard.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a second<\/strong> article in the same issue, Bunting is described as\n“prominent son of Sir Perceval Bunting, an aristocratic British peer and a\nfirm fighter for British imperialist domination”. S.P. Bunting himself was\n“a rich lawyer and an absentee landlord now exploiting Natives on a wattle\nfarm in Natal”. His fellow-expellees were the “local tools and\nunderstudies of Lord Bunting”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A third<\/strong> article, by J.B.Marks (later to become Chairman of the SACP)\n\u2013 notes that Bunting was allied with Thibedi, who Bunting had formerly himself\nexpelled from the Party. “Now the dog has turned to his vomit”, wrote\nMarks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bunting and his supporters were\npromptly labelled as “Trotskyists” by the CPSA Stalinists.\n“These renegades from Communism” \u2013 wrote the same issue of Umsebenzi<\/em> \u2013 “have now joined hands\nwith the International enemy of the world Proletarian revolution, Mr\nTrotsky”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Trotsky and his cult”\n\u2013 it continued \u2013 “the champions of ‘permanent revolution’ contend that it\nis impossible to build Socialism in a single country, such as ‘in a backward\ncountry like Russia’. And as the mighty achievements of victorious Socialist\nConstruction in the USSR \u2013 the land of\ncomplete National freedom and Social emancipation [!]<\/strong> \u2013 stand triumphantly\nbefore the world refuting this assertion, as the working class and peasants in\nthe Soviet Union under the leadership of the CPSU march forward from victory to\nvictory, constantly improving their material and cultural position and are\nsuccessfully building the new classless society, Socialism \u2013 Trotsky and his\nfellow renegades launch ever more vicious attacks against the Soviet Union and\nclamour for world imperialism to speed up its military preparations to attack\nthe USSR \u2013 the Fatherland of the working class and all toilers.”(!!) (Our\nemphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bunting has now been\n“reprieved” by the SACP. But, as is shown by Dialego, they have not\nceased their slanders against Trotsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, in rehabilitating\nBunting, the SACP wants to claim that by “speaking from the same platform\nas members of the ANC and ICU”, he had “the courage and foresight to\ninitiate what would in time become the settled policy of the entire mass\ndemocratic movement”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this they imply that Bunting\nsupported the “two-stage”, Popular Frontist, programme now advocated\nby the SACP. This is typical Stalinism. A person is “rehabilitated”\nto prove \u2013 that he had the policies that the Party pursues now. It is far from\nthe real truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Political Bureau statement\nonly hints at the real reason for Bunting’s expulsion when it says that he\n“had some doubts about certain aspects of the ‘Black Republic’ policy\nadopted at the 6th Congress of the Comintern in 1928”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “Black Republic”\npolicy of 1928 is celebrated in SACP history as marking the abandonment of\n“white chauvinist” errors which had marred their early years, and for\nthe first time recognising the Principle of majority rule in South Africa. This\nmay be the truth. But the strategy put forward in it for achieving majority\nrule was fatally flawed by the policies of the Stalinist Comintern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In parallel with the\n“stageist” policies which led to the defeat of the Chinese\nrevolution, the “Black Republic” was put forward by the Comintern\nas… a “stage” towards a workers and peasants government… itself\nonly a “stage” towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Comintern\nhad abandoned the lessons of the permanent revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bunting, though not a trained\nMarxist, spoke from his experience among the African working class in\nopposition to the Comintern resolution. In a first speech at the 1928 Congress\nhe said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I should like in all modesty to point out that the Communist International gives insufficient attention to [the proletarian character] of the colonial masses…. the draft programme of the Communist International… says that there are two main revolutionary forces: the ‘proletariat’ in the countries at home, and the ‘masses’ in the colonies. I beg to protest against this bald distinction…<\/p>

The fighting strength after all of the colonial masses, for any objective, consists very largely in their working class, particularly in a country like ours where a native movement, proletarian or nationalist for that matter, has no chance for the present of being an armed movement, it must depend on its industrial weapons, on strikes and on political struggles and on little more for the present. It is in the field of industrial strikes that the greatest militancy is shown…<\/p>

In South Africa… our large ‘peasantry’ is continuously drawn upon to supply workers for the mines and other large industries or for the farms. These workers are peasantry part of the time and workers part of the time so that the working class is really very widespread, and it is also by far the strongest section of the native population when it comes to action…<\/p>

…big enterprises of all kinds show that ours is not just a medieval, feudal, peasant country. The power of labour, therefore, is of very great importance… this ‘uncivilised’ labour as it is called in our country, may play as important a part in the attack on capitalism as the highly civilised labour, of e.g. the United States.<\/p>

Of course the native labour movement in South Africa is only an infant movement; but it is a good, healthy, lusty infant, very responsive to our propaganda and is growing fast…. In spite of the special disabilities placed upon them as a subject race, nevertheless, I say these are as real proletarians as any in the world, they are as nakedly exploited, down to the bone; the relationship of master and servant, employer and employed, exploiter and exploited, is as clear and classical as it could be.<\/p>

The first native strike in Johannesburg was a strike of \u2018sanitary bucket boys\u2019, i.e. engaged in the most degraded kaffirs’ work. In a native school which we are earning on in Johannesburg, we use the Communist Manifesto<\/em> as a text book, reading it with workers …in the factories, mines, workshops, stores, etc. We read the well-known characterisations of capitalism and the proletariat in the Communist Maniftsto<\/em>, and the pupils always agree, after arguing and studying about what they have read, how completely and correctly every single characterisation applies to themselves. ‘We recognise’, they say, ‘how we have become workers, how we have been driven off the land, onto the industrial markets, how we are deprived of family life, of property, of culture, etc.’ exactly as in the history of the European countries. And they have the advantage over the European workers, that they are not sophisticated with petty bourgeois or imperialist ideas (except religion, and even that is not native to them); which all helps in the work of making them revolutionary…<\/p>

There is no reference in the draft programme, or in Comrade Bukharin’s speech to the colonial proletariat, as such, to the class power of these colonial workers: as a class they are relegated to inactivity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In a later speech at the Congress\n\u2013 admitting that “we Party members in South Africa…are only amateurs\nwhen it comes to theorizing” \u2013 he pointed out how the ‘Black Republic’\nresolution conflicted with Lenin’s program for emancipation of the masses in the\ncolonial countries: “In an earlier debate… I ventured the opinion, in\neffect, that it might not be universally true that the chief function of a\ncolonial people was to engage in a national struggle (predominantly agrarian in\ncharacter) against foreign imperialism and for independence; and that in South\nAfrica, at any rate, the class struggle of the proletariat (chiefly native)\nappeared more capable of achieving the task…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is often said that the colonial theses of the 2nd Congress of the Comintern is authority to the contrary, but I do not find anything to that effect in the theses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He was referring to Lenin’s\ntheses approved by the Comintern in 1920, and he quoted from them: “The\npolicy of the Communist International on national and colonial questions must\nbe chiefly to bring about a union of the proletarian and working masses of all\nnations and countries for a joint\nrevolutionary struggle leading to the overthrow of capitalism, without which\nnational equality and oppression cannot be abolished.<\/strong>” (Our emphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pointed out how, with class\npolicies for national liberation, the CPSA was gaining a big echo among black\nworkers: “Our work among the native masses, so far mainly as a working\nclass movement… is limited only by our ability to cope with it. We have 1,750\nmembers, of whom 1,600 are natives, as against 200 a year ago…We are also\ncombating and slowly overcoming white labour chauvinism, which we find yields\nwhen confronted with organised masses of native fellow workers face to face. We\nhave also put through joint strikes of white and black which were victorious…\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Native workers and some peasants are pouring into the Party in preference to joining the purely native bodies, whether national or industrial, which have let them down and fallen into the hands of the bourgeoisie. They fully appreciate the ‘vulgar Marxist’ slogan of ‘Workers of the World Unite’, of joint action by black and white labour against the common enemy; and at the same time they see that the Communist Party sincerely and unreservedly espouse their national cause as an oppressed race.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To a comrade in the Party,\nBunting wrote after the Congress,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the language about ‘stages’ represents ideological rather than chronological sequence (though I think it was dictated by the analogy of a bourgeois democratic revolution in China, but of course I didn’t say that) as really no black republic in SA could be achieved without overthrowing capitalist rule. And I think the ‘stage’ part of the formula is verbiage<\/strong>. (Our emphasis)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Though Bunting \u2013 through loyalty\nto the Soviet Union \u2013 supported the expulsion of Trotsky from the Russian\nParty, he was an instinctive supporter of ideas of permanent revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in the SACP’s\n“rehabilitation” of Bunting, all this is concealed. Instead we are given\nthe impression that he was a forerunner of the SACP’s present theory of\n“stages” in the SA revolution and alliance with the bourgeoisie!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his disagreements,\nBunting loyally turned to applying the Comintern’s \u2018Black Republic\u2019 resolution.\nBut, in the meantime, the Comintern swung from its Menshevik policies in China\nto the ultra-leftism of 1929-1933. For implementing policies with which he\ndisagreed, Bunting was expelled from the Communist Party, as the SACP PB now\nconcedes: “during the great ‘purge’ carried out by international\ncommunists of alleged \u2018right-wing deviationists\u2019 ” \u2013 and, as we have seen,\ndenounced as an agent of imperialism, a collaborator with the arch\ncounter-revolutionary Trotsky, etc!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Political Bureau today claims\nthat “a misguided clique of Party members who had gained control of the\nCentral Committee” were responsible for Bunting’s expulsion \u2013 but it fails\nto name who these were. This is because to do so would be a further\nembarrassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among those responsible for\nexpelling him were Lazar Bach and P. and M. Richter, whom the 1989 Congress of\nthe SACP was compelled to “posthumously reinstate” as Party members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Richters were executed by\nStalin’s regime in 1938. Lazar Bach died in a Soviet labour camp in the same\nperiod \u2013 of so-called ‘natural causes’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also out of loyalty to the Soviet\nUnion, these party members carried out the purge of Bunting and other\n“right-wing deviationists”. But then, when the Comintern veered back\nafter 1935 to policies of collaboration with the bourgeoisie, they were called\nto Moscow, imprisoned and murdered!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more than fifty years, the\nSACP uttered not a word in criticism of these crimes, any more than it did\nregarding the expulsion of Bunting and his comrades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now it “posthumously\nreinstates” Bach and the Richters only “In the light of information\nreceived from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the effect that [these\nthree] had been expelled from the Communist Party and convicted on the basis of\nfalse evidence extracted from them by the Soviet security authorities” (African Communist<\/em>, 4th Quarter 1989).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even now, the SACP\n“rehabilitates” these comrades only on the authorisation of the\nbureaucracy in the Soviet Union! Even now, there is not a word to explain how\nsuch crimes were committed in a supposedly “socialist” country \u2013 any\nmore than why the Comintern should have been capable of travelling through such\nbizarre zig-zags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dialego’s article on “What\nis Trotskyism?” provoked controversy even among loyal readers of the African Communist<\/em>. The editors reported\n(3rd Quarter 1989) they had “received a number of contributions from\nreaders examining, at some length, the role of Trotsky before, during, and\nafter the Russian Revolution”. But they “decided not to publish the\ncontributions we have received”!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their excuse was that\n“undertaking a general reappraisal of Trotsky and Trotskyism is not the\ntask of our journal. We have the special responsibility for developing\nMarxist-Leninist thought in an African and South African context”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the typical national\nnarrow-mindedness of Stalinism. Behind it lies the fear of the SACP leadership\nin raising questions about the international role and essential nature of the\nRussian bureaucracy. For the same reason, they provide no real explanation for\nwhy their former comrades were persecuted and murdered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These “rehabilitations”\nare merely futile attempts to revive the waning credibility of the SACP. But\nthis Party remains tied to the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. It has nothing\nin common with Marxism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The SACP and the Case of S.P. Bunting S. P. Bunting was a founding member of the Communist Party of South Africa, as the SACP […]<\/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-609","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\/609","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=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":610,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/609\/revisions\/610"}],"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=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}