Left faces new challenge
T
THE LEFT
HE birth-pangs of democracy have always been difficlass and poor, which would be participatory, ensuring popular involvement in must regroup its scattered forces if it is to meet the many new
Africa, with the death agonies of a social challenges which lie system (apartheid), the horrific events ahead. Carl Brecker, which result serve to obscure the underlying political processes. It is time to exiled for stand back and take another look.
many years, explains why, cult. When this is combined, as is the case with South all decision-making structures, and with the right to recall elected representatives
- is not what has arrived in South Africa.
Imperfect democracy and identifies the issues and debates which will become
The Left expected the democratisacentral if a resurgent Left tion of South Africa to be the result of a is to emerge.
revolution, including an armed uprising, against an intransigent apartheid regime.
Our politics were geared to this end.
CARL BRECKER
But, despite the long years of struggle, sacrifice, and (too many deaths, it did not happen this way.
What seemed impossible a few years ago has come to pass: the African
National Congress (ANC) and the
National Party (NP) are forming a
...important abbreviations
ANC — African National Congress
SACP — South African Communist Party
COSATU - Congress of South African
Trade Unions
MDM - Mass Democratic Movement
UDF - United Democratic Front
PAC — Pan-African Congress
NP -National Party
Revolution deflected?
government of national unity.
Everyone was given a nominally equal vote and were free to vote for whosoever they chose. Democralong cy, enjoyed by
"Whites
Only", has arrived for the Black majority, but it did not arrive by the path
What has arrived instead is bourgeois democracy based on the separation of politics from economics. Although the boss and worker now have one vote each, there is nothing else about them which is equal. The Constitution and the way in which parliament will function excludes the possibility of voting to transfer ownership and control over the economy from the bosses to the workers.
The central issue which de Klerk would not concede during the negotiations was the checks and balances which ensure that the ANC cannot tamper with the sanctity of private property. Once de Klerk, who is acting on behalf of big business, was assured that the ANCAlliance had accepted the terms of the new Constitution he could be generous in all other matters — he could grant a Volkstaat, a Zulu Kingdom, or greater regional powers. He gave a mile to the Right but not an inch to the Left.
The reality of this election is that the social character of the new government will not reflect the votes cast by the vast majority of the Black working class and poor. The government of national unity will be shaped by the political deals struck during the negotiations, in which
DP - Democratic Party
VF - Freedom Front
WOSAWLP — Workers' Organisation for
Socialist Action/Workers' List Party
GNU - Government of National Unity
RDP — Reconstruction and Development
Programme
International Viewpoint #257 June 1994 which h a d been mapped out by the Left
— neither in the form or content we expected.
Our vision of a revolutionary democracy — a new state shaped by, and in the image of the working minority parties (probably the NP, PAC, DP, VF) are even guaranteed seats in the cabinet.
We characterise the new government as class collaborationist because the NP/DP-bloc represents big business and the middle classes, while the ANC/SACP/COSATU-bloc represents the Black majority — the workers, poor and a small Black middle class as well. The fact that the ANC will hold the majority of seats in parliament will not alter the reality that the bourgeois alliance (NP/DP/VF) remains the dominant class power.
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DOSSIER THE South African Left
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International Viewpoint #257 June 1994
Secondly, the form of regional government gives undue weight to the old ruling class parties (Inkatha in Natal, Holomisa in Transkei, NP in Western Cape), which again robs the actual vote of its class content. Thirdly, all the preconditions which limit the powers of the constituent assembly to amend the constitutional guide-lines, also limit the democratic process.
The Black majority is expecting the ANC to act in their interests not knowing that political deals have tied the hands of Congress to the interests of capital. It is an urgent task for the Left to expose the Government of National Unity (GNU) as a government of class collaboration, but how we do this will determine the success or failure of our ventures in this new historical period.
The measure of democracy
The democratic gains won are a very far cry from the demands contained in the Freedom Charter. Nonetheless, inadequate as South Africa's form of bourgeois democracy will be, the Left would do well to recognise the political space it provides, and indeed defend it against destabilisation from the Right.
The Left must not underestimate the scale of changes made — the end to White-minority rule, the lifting of all apartheid laws, the agreement on a bill of rights - and what effect this has had on the consciousness of the masses. To ridicule these gains as being against the historical interests of the Black majority, is absurdly dogmatic.
The Left should seize, by whatever means necessary, every opportunity to consolidate and extend these democratic gains. Primarily this should take the form of direct mass action to achieve material gains in every social field — for example, jobs, wages, land, and housing. This is especially important at a time when parliament will increasingly become the focus of change, now that the liberation struggle has formally ended.
Who rules, who reigns
After the elections, its back to business as usual for capitalism. Whilst they will have lost the extra-economic controls over the work-force which were provided by apartheid laws, business is looking forward to better times. They expect that Mandela in power will be good for business. What then can the poor expect from the ANC in government?
Given that the ANC has agreed to share even cabinet control, Mandela will be left with little more than the power to enact laws which influence how tax revenue, from the profits of business and the wages of workers, can be redistributed to pay for the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). They can also borrow money to carry out their plans, but only after they achieve consensus in the cabinet (decisions are not by majority vote). Effectively the NP/DP-bloc hold a veto.
Saying all this is one thing. Only experience will shatter the popular belief that the ANC can freely decide on economic policy. To paraphrase Finance Minister, Derek Keys: the decisions which will determine economic growth are not taken by government. Rather, they are taken in the board rooms of businesses around the country. The ANC will find it cannot rule without the consent of those who reign.
Mandela will be free to pass laws which stimulate the the economy in ways which make business more profitable. But the ANC will be opposed whenever the bourgeoisie considers that their policies are bad for business. Notice how keen ANC spokespersons are to re-assure investors that much of the money for new budgetary priorities (education) will be found by re-arranging former spending patterns - in this case, by reducing military spending Plans for growth will not include expropriation, and only as a last resort will it involve deficit financing.
This is why capitalists have already made it clear they have no fundamental
Off the streets and into parliament...
problem with the RDP, except those aspects which may limit their profit margins. After all, the basic purpose of the RDP is to stimulate the economy and that is always good for business. Alrea dy foreign investors, local business, as well as the IMF/World Bank, have been assured that an ANC government will not undermine the health of the economy.
There is however, a contradiction: the ANC will find that it cannot keep both the capitalists and the workers happy at the same time. They will move to equalise spending on education and health for Whites and Blacks, move to stimulate house construction, and create work programmes to build a new social infrastructure — all of which is necessary and important, but it does not conflict with capitalism. And that is an impor tant point, because it implies that a central component of the Left's strategy will be to push this contradiction to breaking point.
Class encounters of special kind
The ANC is about to receive lessons in how bourgeois democracy works. There will be great verbal battles in parliament between those who speak for capital and those for labour. Yet the real struggles will take place elsewhere. The movement will learn that what is achieved in parliament will first have to be won on the streets!
The ANC in government will steadily erode the ability of Congress structures to lead mass struggles. Hundreds of ANC activists will be absorbed into the State's structures. A new leadership capable of filling this political vacuum
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS 7
International Viewpoint #257 June 1994 needs to be constructed.
DOSSIER
How the Left positions itself in relation to the mass movement will directly effect the ability of the ANC centre-right to curtail mass action. Now more than ever, these extra-parliamentary mass struggles need to be connected in ways which build class understanding among the workers and poor about the limits of bourgeois democracy. This will require exposure of the practical ways in which class collaboration works against the interests of the majority and in the service of the bourgeoisie. The Left cannot become ascendant until the classcollaborationist character of the government of national unity has become popularly understood. ...this first democratic election, despite all its shortcomings, represents the virtual completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution in South Africa
The lessons of Zimbabwe are telling. There, the self-styled marxist-leninist government of Robert Mugabe had overall political control from day one, including control over the army and police. But the government did not control the economy and could not therefore solve the social crisis. Furthermore, the early gains made in health, education, and job creation, have been severely eroded over the years because the five-year reconstruction and development plans could not be implemented.
The political revolution in Zimbabwe, as today in South Africa, did not smash the bourgeois state, or seriously challenge the relations of production. Neither did it seek to bring the law of value (the market) under control, nor seize the commanding heights of the economy. Fundamental changes such as these, as Zimbabwe has taught us, cannot be achieved by incremental reforms or by the passage of law.
They are the substance of an anticapitalist revolution, a task still waiting to be completed in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Without revolutionising the way in which society produces, distributes and consumes the wealth it creates, in ways totally different to the drive for profit, no radical government will be able to solve the social crisis.
Yet, to simply say that the overall task of the Left is to continue the struggle against capitalism in South Africa, is banal in the extreme. What every leadership has to say is how they see this task being undertaken in the new South Africa. If a new political period has opened up what are the strategic implications for the Left?
### Revisiting old doctrines
Until recently, Left activists fell into two main ideological camps and were sustained by the theoretical certainties of their own particular group. Today those certainties are challenged by the ascendant ideologies of neo-liberalism of the NP/DP and the reformism of the ANCAlliance, both of which are local expressions of the ideological changes which have ocurred internationally.
Of the two revolutionary camps, one envisaged the overthrow of the apartheid system by a broad coalition of democratic forces — a process which would replace apartheid with a radical democratic regime (stage one). Economically this meant that, except for changes to the power of monopolies, the capitalist system would remain largely intact. However, the radical regime would open the road to socialism (stage two), allowing fundamental change to be achieved through cumulative reforms, thus making a second revolution unnecessa-
Clearly this is not what happened with the negotiations process. These changes, led from above by the bourgeoisie, cannot be equated with the national democratic revolution driven from below by the masses in struggle (although the Slovo/Cronin axis in the SACP seems to have difficulty remembering this).
The other camp saw apartheid and capitalism as symbiotic and almost inseparable. They envisaged the overthrow of apartheid-capitalism by the organised working class and its democratic allies, at the head of which stood a revolutionary party. They hoped to combine, in an uninterrupted way, the smashing of the bourgeois State with the take-over of the commanding heights of the economy and the socialisation of the means of production. A new workers' state, based on democratic socialism, would guide the transition through socialism toward the future classless society of communism.
The Left has had difficulty coming to grips with the fact that none of this happened. Their perspectives were further confused by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Together these historic events produced a certain dislocation on the Left, exposing some of its worst dogmatism, and producing a surge of ultra-leftism amongst those who began to scream because they felt history was passing them by. Groups split everywhere as they struggled to overcome their strategic paralysis.
A period of regroupment has begun on the Left among those who have survived. As yet however, the Left has neither gathered its scattered forces nor formulated a way forward in order to respond strategically to this new consolidation of bourgeois rule. A balance sheet is urgently required. How we proceed depends on how we see the tasks. And that depends on how we read history.
In our view, this first democratic election, despite all its shortcomings, represents the virtual completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution in South Africa. This process was stunted by the racist Act of Union of 1910 and further hindered by apartheid laws. Nevertheless, the process became increasingly unavoidable as the industrial economy expanded through the
The process of reform which has led toward democratisation was steered from above by a combination of bourgeois forces over a period going back to before the Weihahn Commission of 1980. The process inevitably zig-zagged, stopped and started, and retreated (especially in the face of mounting mass struggle) until it finally got into the home-strait with de Klerk's palace coup.
The events of 1976/1984-6 had convinced the ruling class that the mass movement could not be defeated. They could not risk the further radicalisation of the proletarian forces (that is, organised labour in solidarity with the urban and rural poor) who were increasingly identifying the capitalist system as their enemy.
A reluctant bourgeoisie had finally to recognise that racial capitalism's once lucrative period of growth had run into a
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International Viewpoint #257 June 1994 structural impasse. The malformations which apartheid bred in the economy, the rise of a strong union movement and the mounting mass struggles — when coupled with changes in the international division of labour - forced the ruling class to "adapt or die".
The task of removing the apartheid incrustation in order to restructure the capitalist economy was a complex and risky process of political engineering, involving such difficult tasks as changing the composition of the ruling bloc, changing the forms of work, the shape of the industrial work-force and the face of industrial relations.
To achieve these changes in the economy meant haste in making the relevant changes in the political domain. The NP government, acting in the interests of financial and industrial capital, had to ditch the traditional white-worker/white-farmer electoral base (causing the right-wing backlash) in exchange for a new social contract with the moderate leadership of the ANC and the Black middle classes.
This process was fraught with danger and the outcome could not be foretold. It is not surprising then that it came after the defeat of the 1983/6 uprisings, when the ANC and the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) had "given its best shot": achieving a level of ungovernability, but failing to topple the regime. The negotiations began when neither side could be wholly defeated.
Still, the bourgeoisie would not have achieved the same degree of success with negotiations if it were not for the retreat of the intellectuals who dominated the leaderships of the ANC, COSATU and the SACP. This paralleled a retreat among the intelligentsia world-wide as the international bourgeoisie went on its free market offensive against the crumbling economies of Eastern Europe. Dressed in a variety of post-modernist clothes, the intellectuals abandoned the uncertainty of revolution for the measu-
It was never possible by this negotiated route to achieve the Freedom Charter, a reality understood by the leaderships on both sides of the negotiating
Acknowledging the retreat
To achieve the Freedom Charter would have required a political revolution of a different kind: namely, a process of change which was driven from below, involving an armed struggle which resulted in the defeat of the White regime, and its replacement with a radical alternative. This is what thousands of cadre sacrificed everything for, and what the ideologues called the national democratic revolution.
The aim of the bourgeoisie was clearly to cut off the possibility of revolution from below, a precondition for continuing with the urgent task of restructuring the economy, and this in itself needed a certain collaboration between State, capital and labour. The shift towards corporate unionism by the COSATU leadership coincided perfectly with the interests of the bourgeoisie.
However, getting the struggle off the streets was not a straight-forward process. It involved depoliticising the mass organic structures of organisation (not too difficult in a downturn), disempowering the shopfloor (by shifting power to the union structures) and restraining the effervescent mass struggles. The muffling of union struggles against mass redundancies, the shift from mass action to harmless forms of protest in the face of Boipatong, Bisho, Hani and the Inkatha massacres, and so forth, were all part
This was further aided and abetted by the exile leadership as well as sections of the internal leadership of COSATU and the UDF/MDM. Today the grave danger exists of serious demoralisation among the Left in the ANC-Alliance as they realise that the negotiated settlement they have supported has effectively secured the rule of capitalism in southern Africa for a whole period.
We must move swiftly to undo the damage. The Left in the ANC-Alliance, especially those in the SACP, cannot avoid a balance sheet of their behaviour: did they do enough to warn the class militants and explain what was happening? And what next, now that the AlliancelsAcP is in power and shares responsibility for the State?
Can Black workers break through capitalism too? What are the current balance of forces
We recognise the current downturn in struggle and the weakness of working class leadership and of organisation generally. We can also see that the balance of forces internationally are not favourable. Yet we do not believe that the movement feels defeated or demoralised. What has sapped organisational strength, and disorientated people generally, is the on-going violence which is designed to stop or derail the process of democratisation.
Last year saw the largest mass demonstrations and general strikes ever, as well as a series of civic struggles and public service strikes, most of which were political in character. These struggles remain as turbulent and effervescent as ever. What has changed is the strength of mass organisation compared with the uprisings of 1984/6, or of union meetings in the early 1980s. Yet this is only one yardstick. Another, equally telling one, is the millions who turned out
The feverish election campaign, itself a new experience and on a propaganda scale never experienced before, has raised mass interest in politics to a new height. Expectations were pinned on the ANC winning the elections, and now on whether it will implement its promises. And this is where the problems start. People are expecting change.
Can the government of national unity deliver what is expected of it? We do not believe so, even if everyone who aspires to rule is aware of the anger simmering just below the surface, and will respond accordingly. The period of grace which the mass movement will grant the new government, in order to get its act together, cannot be guessed at.
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International Viewpoint #257 June 1994
DOSSIER We do not expect, in
the short to medium term at least, to see large scale rebellion from the Black masses with the intention of bringing down the new central government. Hopefully struggles will be mounted which force a divide between the Alliance and the NPbloc over material issues, thus breaking up the government of national unity. But
It would take a high level of mobilisation to force the ANC-Alliance to break the constitutional deals, confront the bourgeoisie and initiate elections for a majority government. It is more likely that the initial social struggles will be directed by the unions against the bosses over wages and working conditions, and by Civic organisations against the new local and provincial governments. How the Left positions itself in relation to these struggles, and the ANC in government, is crucial.
The negotiated end to apartheid rule has thrown everything into flux. Old class alliances are disintegrating within both the White and Black body-politic as a new social compact (based on evolving forms of political, economic and social regulation) slowly takes shape. This cannot be a process free of conflict. What is certain is that the government of national unity will be very unstable.
However, overall, the bourgeoisie has not done badly at all. The new constitution not only enshrines private property, but it also protects existing property rights, and curbs the powers of parliament to make changes in this regard. They have retained the loyalty of the army, police and part of the security forces, and have won the voluntary integration (neutralisation) of yesterday's armed liberation forces.
The ANC is off the streets and into parliament with joint responsibility for running the bourgeois State and reconstructing the economy. But whether they can do so in ways which redress the imbalances of apartheid without destabilising capitalist investment, profit margins and market interests, is unlikely.
As we explained above, the overriding task of the Left is to expose the class-collaborationist character of this government to the working class and poor, by subjecting its policies and prac10 tices to systematic criticism, but also by posing clear class alternatives. No group on the Left is capable of doing this alone, which makes regroupment quite urgent if ultra-left sloganeering is to be replaced with real alternatives.
An unstable iterregnum
If our assessment is correct then it means that after the elections South Africa will experience an unstable democratic interregnum of unspecified duration. Unstable, because we expect the unions, civic organisations, and other mass formations to act to fulfil their expectations - workers wanting jobs num do боровен and higher pay, the rural poor wanting land and infrastructural development, and everyone wanting houses, health and education. Interregnum, because we do not believe that capitalism can provide sufficient relief to the social crisis to avoid a new rise in anti-capitalist struggles.
In the White-bloc the racial privileges which linked White labour to capital no longer has legitimacy. However, concessions to the White civil servants in the form of guaranteed jobs and pensions (Sunset Clauses), along with concessions which allow for a Volkstaat and Inkatha's regionalism, may yet prove insufficient to avoid sabotage and violence.
The danger is that these concessions, rather than pacifying these forces, will tend to strengthen their will to oppose democratisation. Sporadic right-wing terror, secessionist moves from Inkatha and the Volkstaaters, as well as sabotage by right-wing civil servants is not excluded. They are already bombing the industrial heartland of the PWV region.
The most stable group is the NP/DPbloc who represent the general interests of financial, commercial and industrial capital. They fought the elections on the promise that they will protect market interests, private property and individual rights. Their economic model (which put profits first will come into general conflict with the intentions of the ANC as expressed in the RDP (which seeks to put people before profit).
The ANC-Alliance are also new to government. They are unschooled in the art of ruling, lack historical ties with the State, and have no economic base. They hang suspended between the anvil of the bourgeoisie and the hammer of the proletariat. They were elected to parliament in order to represent the interests of the
Black majority, who, by demanding fulfilment of election promises, should make sure they never forget it.
With this range of class interests represented it is still unknown quite how the cabinet will function. One prediction of the Left, stated with the certainty of dogma, is that bourgeois democracy with its market economy is incapable of resolving South Africa's extreme social contradictions. The slogan: "forward to socialism" is like a cry in the dark. It provides not a single clue to the complexity of social forces at work.
### Problems of strategic orientation
We prefer to argue that there are limits to capitalist reform under conditions of capitalist crisis, and whereas the reformist GNU will be able to deliver a measure of reform in the short-term the crisis will determine that this is insufficient and short-lived, giving rise to new struggles.
Rather than proclaim our certainties we should try to position ourselves in relation to the mass movement so that we will be heard when we raise our transitional demands and, therefore, be in a better position to benefit from the rise in struggles tomorrow.
The reformist challenge, as we see it, is to achieve a certain redistribution of social wealth, a level of job creation with equal opportunities and pay, some redistribution of land, some provision of housing, health and education, as well as improving the unequal infrastructural provision that was entrenched under apartheid.
Undoubtedly some of this will be achieved - unless exogenous events catapult us into an early crisis of such proportions that only revolution can resolve it. However, if moves toward a social rupture happen before a socialist leadership capable of giving direction has emerged, we fear that it would flounder and dissipate. Hence our sense of urgency regarding Left regroupment.
What we have to recognise is that reformism will attempt to respond on an acceptable level to social demands. By involving large numbers of people through the programs of the RDP they could create a sufficient sense that change is in motion. To paraphrase the ANC election message: We may not give you everything at once, we may not give you all that you demand, but we certainly will give you more than you have now.
International Viewpoint #257 June 1994
The alternative, the reformists say to their critics, is to return to the armed struggle which, they add, is impossible given the fall of the Soviet-bloc, the international balance of forces (which favours imperialism) and the legitimacy of South Africa's first democratically elected government. We do not accept their arguments. However, we do believe that the Left faces new challenges.
Under the over-arching struggle to defend and extend democratic demands, a crucial task for the Left is to get COSATU and the mass movement to launch struggles which force the government to implement the radical aspects of the RDP. Such an approach will run into resistance from the ANC parliamentary mainstream and will certainly clash head-on with the rest of the GNU. However, it is essential that the class collaborationist character of the GNU becomes popularly understood. The best way to expose them is through forms of direct action.
Winning the full RDP would not make it a socialist programme, far from it. But the struggle to achieve it will help push bourgeois democracy to its economic limits. And that is where we can try to rebuild the anti-capitalist revolution. Failure to win radical reforms gives COSATU good reason to break away from the ANC-Alliance. This could also pull the SACP out of the honeymoon bed, although it would probably not wreck its shameful marriage with the bourgeoisie.
The Left must recognise that yesterdays political formulas are inadequate for today's strategic problems. A new strategic line of march and new forms of struggle need to be developed; struggles which relate to the form of the new democratic State (with its national, provincial and local government structures, and which reckons with the evolving post-apartheid social relationships.
Steps on a new line of march
The Left cannot be seen to reject reforms, no matter how limited, not when every reform will bring needed relief to mass suffering. We need a dual strategy which recognises improvements yet pushes for more; which exposes shortcomings yet does so by presenting viable alternatives; which watches every parliamentary manoeuvre yet relies upon direct mass action; which seeks the widest range of allies yet represents a clear programme of demands; which always strikes together yet marches separately.
The Left should build a strategic response which says to the masses: "Take every reform, fight all reformism". If reformism is the belief that fundamental social change, including the final eradication of capitalist crisis — hunger, poverty, and mass unemployment -can be achieved over time by small incremental improvements (reforms), the tension in the formula is obvious.
The tactical problem is how to position ourselves in relation to both the mass movement and the ANC in power. To simply condemn the ANc as class traitors will not dent their hegemony, and will not break away their mass support. The Left has to develop a critique of reformism based on its ability to propose alternative economic and social policies capable of addressing mass needs.
The purpose of such a critique is not propagandistic in that it seeks to expose the illusory nature of incremental reforms (an impossible task in this form). Rather it is that demands should be pushed to their limit, exposing capitalism's reluctance to deliver anything which eats into its profit margins. We will seek to establish confidence in our socialist programme by building an anticapitalist momentum.
Our programme thus becomes the summation of our anti-capitalist proposals and builds upon the work of comrades in different areas. It becomes a guide to mass action because the strategy we propose builds on the class instincts of the masses, sharpening and extending them in ways which strengthens leadership and organisational autonomy.
Our programme becomes transitional, not because of ideological incantation, but because it starts from the level of mass consciousness, relies on a real balance of forces, posits demands which extend the system to breaking point, and builds the necessary organisational forms and class consciousness which emboldens the masses to act in their social interests; so that, at the time of rupture, the people are able to build a society in their own image.
With this orientation we will show that we have no interests over and above those of the working people and can join hands with all class struggle militants in a non-sectarian way. When this has proceeded to the point where hegemony can be broken we can talk about a mass workers party.
What attitude to the Mass
Workers Party
An independent class organisation which protects working class interests is long overdue. To simply return to the Workers Charter would be insufficient. Now the Charter has to be linked to a comprehensive political programme intended to counter the ANC-Alliance in power. This will push the need for an independent workers party into the centre of debate in the unions. Yet the outcome is far from certain. Similar
A Mass Workers Party (MWP) is not an alternative to union activity, nor is it an insurrectionist vanguard party. It is a broad based political organisation of the working class which contests for state power by entering elections. It may have a radical programme but it is not, per se, a revolutionary organisation. To get workers to vote for it requires a political reciprocity between unions and party, much as COSATU has with the ANC.
The British Labour Party, while it still has the backing of the union movement, is today a bourgeois party of the working class. It is not revolutionary and when in power it rules in the interests of capital, although it does so in the name of the workers. By way of contrast the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT) is this year hoping to get elected on a broad anti-capitalist platform although it has not yet experienced government power. It too has the support of the unions but it will be unable to break the rule of capital without a revolutionary rupture. The PT in power could soon end-up like the Labour Party.
Every mass party contains a wide variety of political opinions. It may or may not permit the existence of various political tendencies within its ranks (the PT does, the Labour Party does not). A mass party displays all the cultural and ideological unevenness which characterises the majority of working people. A MWP does not replace the need for other more revolutionary forms of organisation. To imagine that the MWP is an ideological home in the same way that programmatic groupings are, is to confuse a "broad church" with a far left group.
To call for the formation of a mass workers party, as WosA/WLP has done, before winning the support of several big battalions of the unions is putting the cart before the horse. A mass workers party is not built through individual
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International Viewpoint #257 June 1994 recruitment. It involves shifting both union and political loyalties on a grand scale, something which happens only rarely around major class events.
How the Left conducts itself is therefore of crucial importance. The Union leaderships, as well as large numbers of shop stewards, still see their current political allegiances as sufficient to protect their class interests. Only experience will break this illusion. Until then, clarion calls to build a mass workers party will fall largely on deaf ears. The Left will have to demonstrate that an independent workers party can include workers from all political camps by uniting them around a programme of clear class demands. It would have to win mass confidence in its ability, once elected to power, to deliver the goods which the ANC failed to do.
The ANC in power will enjoy a certain honeymoon period despite all the displeasure individual workers may express toward its politics. Therefore, if we want to shift the consciousness of the majority of workers, we must act in ways which capture their attention. To reject the RDP out of hand by asserting that "it must fail because only socialism can solve our problems", will not help to win the support we need from COSATU unions to build a MWP. Although this assertion about socialism might be true in the final analysis, life is not lived in that mystical place.
Far better to extend the proposals of the RDP to a point where the bourgeoisie refuses to support them, better to demand fulfilment of electoral promises, and to support union efforts to win these demands through direct action. Such an approach is far more likely to win union support for a radical programme of political demands. Unionists will only support a MP once they have broken their allegiance from the ANC-Alliance.
To break the hegemony of the ANC is easier said than done. The SACP could agree to fight the NP/DP-bloc to extend the RDP but probably would not agree to challenge the ANC for power, not unless they break ranks or the ANC splits. This is no more likely than a split in the SACP. Again, unless CoSATU breaks from the Alliance the chances of rebuilding a radical shop-steward movement are poor.
Without such a radical layer the chances of a mass shift toward a workers party are slim. It is incumbent on the Left to help pry cosaTu loose from the Alliance around a demand for class independence based on its members interests. But to appear willing to split 12
COSATU in an endeavour to build a mass party would be politically counter-productive. Interest in a MwP will have to be demonstrated through careful criticism of the policies of the Alliance in power.
Despite the government of national unity, the unions will continue to build militancy around wage demands and the movement directed against government policies. We build in this way because the ultimate solution which socialism poses, namely the eradication of the capitalist wage system, can never be achieved otherwise. Only the foolish stand aside from union struggles to preach the socialist goal from their pulpits.
Some persepctives
The socialist project is in grave danger not only from the ideological onslaught of neo-liberalism and reformism, but also from its own inability to present a programme and strategy to the unions and other mass formations which can win the support of the leading militants. Without their active involvement we cannot win mass support.
Radical working class consciousness will need to grow through a series of struggles which seek to extend strikes to work-ins, occupations to take-overs under workers control, and eventually to transform nationalisation into socialisation of the means of production. This is a daunting, but unavoidable set of tasks for the Left. It is impossible to guess at what tempo or in which order this pro-
In periods of downturn the tasks we foresee may seem enormous and impossible. Yet in periods of upturn, general working class consciousness can leap forward in great bounds. It is impossible to predict what sort of social event could trigger a major upturn in struggle. Who could have guessed that the Bophuthatswana rebellion would happen the way it did?
During upturns those mass actions which appear so spontaneous are really the harvest of patient agitation and propaganda work done by the Left over time. This is the work waiting to be done
There is an urgent need in South Africa today to move from the politics of national liberation to the politics and struggle of class-against-class. Of course there have always been elements of both present, but the shift needed today is definitive. This is necessary if we are to break the hegemony of nationalism, as expressed by the ANC, PAC, an so forth. The Left has a huge task in trying to refocus popular perceptions and sharpen general demands by linking it to class alternatives exemplified in our transitional programme.
Equally urgent is the task of building a new national, class conscious leadership rooted in the unions and mass formations. This is difficult given the enormous social weight of AN and cannot be built by ignoring that organisations leftward-moving militants. Finding the political language with which to talk with these militants is a long overdue
The tiny far left groups, for their part, still show little appreciation of the problems obstructing regroupment Many still think regroupment is about mergers or agreeing on precise texts, rather than about a common orientation which allows many flowers to bloom. They still argue abstractly about the quality of different swimming strokes when, in fact, they have yet to get in the water and learn the basics.
The fight for Left politics will be uphill for a whole period. Several waves of struggle, those around land, around housing, around every social need, will have to build and coalesce into a new revolutionary rise. To be part of this new upturn and to be capable of giving it useful support is a huge responsibility for the Left. To prepare ourselves for these tasks is today's priority.
The Left's task is to build a mass consciousness which involves a critique of bourgeois society - both its democracy and economy. Only when the working majority are prepared to act in their own class interests, and have built the organisations with which to do this, will they be able to overthrow capitalism and
We all need to draw a balance sheet of our theory and practice if we want to be capable of defining a strategic line of march which is relevant to the new historical period our country has entered.
We have no interests over and above those of the working classes. Where they are we must do our work, and this will give new meaning to our general understanding that the socialist revolution will begin with the democratic struggle. It will involve presenting transitional demands as the radical alternative to reformism, so that socialist forces are built on the basis of real anti-capitalist struggles. *