Massism

The YCL Johannesburg Central political school meets today at 17h00 at the SATAWU offices, 13th floor, Old Mutual Building, 29 Kerk Street, between Loveday and Harrison. They will be discussing excerpts from Lenin’s 1902 “What is to be Done?” It is this book more than any other that outlines the clear difference between “mass” and “vanguard”. Those who believe that the mass workers’ organisations on their own can emancipate the working class are called by Lenin: “Economists”. Lenin argues that over and above the defensive, experiential, mass organisations of workers (Trade Unions and others) the working class must also possess a class-conscious revolutionary Party. Hence this book is sometimes regarded as the origin of the Communist Parties as we know them. Critics of this understanding often refer to “vanguardism”, forgetting that Lenin’s idea is not of one, but of two kinds of organisation, of which the mass ones are as important as, or even more important than, the vanguard. The YCL is studying great stuff these days. Next week’s session, at the same time and place , will discuss Chapter 3 from Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” (Les Damneés de la Terre), called “Pitfalls of National Consciousness”. This work is a merciless exposeé of the post-colonial national bourgeoisie. See link below. What happens when we apply Lenin’s question “What is to be Done?” to post-colonial Zimbabwe? Firstly, there is no vanguard party of the working class there. There is a Trade Union Movement, but when it moved to promote a formation that would challenge for political power, it chose to incorporate a party of capital, and not a dedicated proletarian revolutionary party. In the external movement of solidarity for the Zimbabwean people, something like the opposite is the case. There is no democratic mass formation of solidarity. Hence, when 130 people gather in the Devonshire Hotel in Braamfontein one year after Murambatsvina, convened by the good offices of NGOs (funded by who?), the impression given is anti-climactic, or bathetic. There is a lot of condemning and calling, but really, so what? See link below. The South African Trade Union movement did not even attend this event in any form, although COSATU and its affiliates have been in the forefront of action on Zimbabwe. Only a democratically constituted mass solidarity organisation of South Africans for Zimbabwe will be able to advance from the level of funded declaratory gatherings in hotels, towards national leadership on this question. Click on these links: Pitfalls of National Consciousness, Frantz Fanon (18460 words) Acclamation of Zim Solidarity by 130 at Devonshire Hotel 17 May 06 (556 words)