The Late Cde Hugo Chavez facing the
Masses
Once More on
the Mass and the Vanguard
The political field of South Africa, within which we live
and act, can be divided like this:
- Political Parties and voluntary mass organisations
- Local State: Councils, Ward Committees, Community-Police Forums, School Governing Bodies
- The National State and Provinces: Elected Government, Ministries and Departments
- Big companies and parastatals
- Small companies and Co-ops
- Trade Unions
- Religious organisations and NGOs
Political Parties and voluntary mass organisations include
both Mass and Vanguard, and are in turn separate from the State’s ways and
means of organising the masses.
We have earlier said that the main work of the communists
has to be done outside of the confines of the Party, among people who are not
communists. The vanguard Party does not define itself outside of the
revolution. We have said that the Party itself has mass. The Party has internal
democracy, as well as centralism, and the Party’s Constitution is a good one.
In the discussion of the Mass and the Vanguard, the Party and the Class, we are
therefore not talking of two separate entities. We are not attempting to define
one, and then the other, and then join the two together. Instead, we are
talking of a relation.
We can further repeat what the General Secretary of the SACP
has said on more than one occasion: That we as the SACP accept responsibility
for this revolution.
The State organises the masses via national, provincial and
local demarcations, in elections, and in “Local State” structures. We can see
this in Venezuela, where the direct patronage of the state in the organisation
of the masses is, or is intended to be, pervasive (i.e. everywhere in the
country), touching everybody and including everybody. In South Africa we have a
local state, and we also have benefits to individuals and families that are
paid out by the state. But we also have voluntary mass democratic organisations
on a big scale.
To begin the discussion about mass organisations and the
local state, in our attached reading for discussion, we look at Venezuela via George
Ciccariello-Maher’s interview with Venezuela’s Minister of Communes, Reinaldo
Iturriza (attached). Reinaldo Iturriza is among other things “kvetching” about
what he calls “vanguardism”, including in his own Party (the PSUV), but also in
the Communist Party of Venezuela.
Iturriza sees the way forward, not through organs of
people’s power, soviets, or dual power, but in the practice of mass elections. Iturriza
seems to believe that the Venezuelan masses will always be “Chavist” and will
always vote accordingly. He does not dwell long upon the fact that in the
recent election, the overall margin of victory was only 1.5%.
It is possible that the neo-liberals will win once and then
strip the public wealth of Venezuela in record time, leaving no material basis
for a resurrection of Chavism. Venezuela will then be like Libya, which as the
late Colonel Gaddafi predicted, was turned into “Somalia” in record time; and
what Ruth First wrote about Libya may apply as well to Venezuela. i.e. that its
ideology is that of class-formation of a petty-bourgeoisie.
Here is some of what we have been able to find out about
Venezuela from Internet research:
Reinaldo Iturriza is a former journalist and/or sociologist who
is now, since the election of Nicolás Maduro to the Presidency in April 2013, the
Venezuelan Minister of the People's Power for the Communes and Social
Protection. (All Ministers in Venezuela are currently called “Minister of the
People's Power for...”)
In our South African terms, the closest equivalent to
Iturriza’s ministry would be the Minister of Cooperative Governance and
Traditional Affairs, while most of its business appears to be having to do with
what we would call development projects, such as housing. The funding for such
projects comes from central government.
Venezuelan Communal Councils approximately correspond in
size to a South African Voting District. Communes, in which at least 10 Communal
Councils are joined, form units that would be the size of several electoral
wards in South Africa. How these Communal Councils and Communes relate to the
Venezuelan voting demarcations is not known by the CU at this time. If you
know, please tell us.
The Communal Councils were first formed following the
introduction of the Law of Communal Councils in April 2006. By 2009 “30,179 had
been created and a further 5000 were in formation”. The process of forming
Communes began later, in 2010. (see here)
In Iturriza’s Ministry there are other “Social Missions” and
projects with various social purposes. These seem to resemble nationalised
non-profit organisations, funded by direct grants from central government.
The South African way of institutionalising People’s Power,
practised now for over 100 years, is to develop free-standing mass democratic organisations.
These are the ones we will look at in the subsequent items within this 7th
part of our course.
In South Africa, if the ANC loses an election, the people’s voluntary
mass-democratic structures will still be in place, as they are today in the
Western Cape Province, for example, under the DA provincial government.
This is the reason why the reactionaries are trying so hard to
destroy the ANC, the trade unions, and the Party, and conversely it is why we
are determined to defend and to grow these mass institutions.
But also in South Africa, on the other hand, we have “Ward
Committees”. These have spring from the same kind of patronising thinking that
has created the Venezuelan Communal Councils. Both were conceived by, are
regulated by, and are paid for by, central government. Instead of being the
voice of the people, as they pretend, they are the voice of government.
Mass democratic organisations have the potential to become autonomous
organs of people’s power during a dual-power revolutionary transition of power
from one class to another. Ward committees and the like, including the
Venezuelan “Communes”, have no such potential.
The living realities of revolutionary Venezuela and of
revolutionary South Africa invite objective and subjective comparisons, including
in the concept of “delivery” and “beneficiaries”, which infest both of these
societies and bring with them the temptation towards “clientelism”, paternalism
and filialism.
Our challenge is to bring on something like a Revolutionary
Subject of History to have its moment, and then to move off-stage, leaving after
all not democracy, but freedom. Lenin’s question, “What Is To Be Done” is really
about that, and Lenin’s book of that title, which we have quoted in the
previous part of this course, is itself an Induction into the relation of the
Party to the Class, and of the Vanguard to the Mass.
The next (second) item in this part will have to do with the
ANC and its Leagues, and SANCO, while noting the mass-democratic women’s
movement that could exist, but which has never taken off in South Africa. The
third item will deal with the trade unions, including but not limited to our
liberation-movement ally COSATU and its affiliates. The fourth and last item in
this part will deal with the Young Communist League of South Africa.
- The above is to
introduce an original reading-text: Reinaldo
Iturriza, Representation of the People in Venezuela, 2013.
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