What is the NDR?

The Communist University meets this evening in COSATU House, 1st Floor, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein. Start time is the usual 17h00 but we will be gathering from 16h30 to partake of some small refreshments for once. We are honoured to have Cde Buti Manamela, National Secretary of the Young Communist league, to open today's discussion on SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande’s article from the current Umsebenzi Online called “What is the National Democratic Revolution?” Other suitable reading for this discussion includes COSATU’s 9th Congress resolution on the National Democratic Revolution and Socialism, and possibly the liberal-bourgeois Patrick Laurence’s article for the Helen Suzman Foundation called “Withdrawal from the ANC alliance in the offing”, which speculates on a right organisational split from the class alliance. The venue for the next session (November 3rd) will be decided today. The topic will be “1000 Days of Popular Unity”, which is an examination of the reasons why it was possible for the Chilean military to mount a coup d’etat on September 11th, 1973 against a broad alliance government which enjoyed great popular support, including that of the Chilean Communist Party. The question before us is: Could it happen here? Peter Bruce is the editor of the Business Day newspaper. He has written an article called “Saving Capitalism”, for a monthly magazine called “Maverick” (see the article link below). It seems that the bourgeois ideologues have, like the communists, realised that it is not possible for things to go on as they have been doing. The article is notable for being (a) very silly, and (b) quite in keeping with the spirit of the (ANC) government of the day, which, like Bruce, is looking around for any kind of lifeboat to carry the tattered remnants of capitalism’s credibility to some hoped-for safer shore, somewhere, somehow. One sure sign of a revolutionary situation is the inability of the ruling class to rule in the old way. Hence the attraction of wacky, solecistic “social credit”-type schemes such as the one proposed by Bruce, or otherwise of “businessmen’s government”, or even of the Chile option, from the point of view of the bourgeois class. Another sign of a revolutionary situation is the appearance of institutions of dual power. In “Some aspects of the Southern Question”, Antonio Gramsci wrote as follows: “The Turin communists posed concretely the question of the ‘hegemony of the proletariat’: i.e. of the social basis of the proletarian dictatorship and of the workers' State. The proletariat can become the leading [dirigente] and the dominant class to the extent that it succeeds in creating a system of class alliances which allows it to mobilize the majority of the working population against capitalism and the bourgeois State.“ Comrades, are we playing games or are we serious? The Chilean fate lies in wait like a hidden rock, whirlpool or quicksand for the unwary. The late Comrade Yasser Arafat used to say that peace is for the brave. Others say that if you want peace, prepare for war, and that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. There is to be a Chris Hani Institute Seminar on Swaziland on November 10th. It appears from their announcement that the main part of the presentation will be a reiteration of PUDEMO’s current paper position, strategy and tactics. What is really needed, but what has been continuously postponed, is an AGM of the Swaziland Solidarity Network. Without an organised, democratic, mass movement of South Africans in solidarity with the people of Swaziland there is almost nothing that can be done for them in Johannesburg apart from making speeches. Click on these links: Saving Capitalism, Peter Bruce, Maverick (2173 words) CHI Seminar on SSN, November 10 (notice)