Question Everything

Communist University attendance was back up to near-record levels yesterday evening when we discussed “Better Fewer, But Better”. We confirmed that we will use Lenin’s “The State” as the stimulus for our dialogue next week. The 1997 “Transformation, not a Balancing Act” by Blade Nzimande and Jeremy Cronin, will serve us the following week. Both these texts are linked below, plus the one from Engels that Lenin recommends as a supplement to his own. Each will, in different ways, help us to get a handle on the “Polokwane” situation – that is to say, the politics around the ANC’s 52nd National Conference, due to commence on 15 December 2007 in Polokwane, Limpopo.

Somebody has written to say: “I'm trying to understand the difference between communism and socialism.” For the purposes of the Polokwane debates at least, socialism and communism are not going to be usefully treated as belief systems (like, say, Buddhism). It is not a question of which prophet we follow, but more a matter of what practical steps we are going to take. It is a question of science.

Let me offer a working definition for our current purposes (while staying open to dialogue, of course). Socialism is a class-divided society, with the working class in the leading position (just as capitalism is a class-divided society with the bourgeoisie in charge).

Communism is the word for a society with no class antagonisms. The eradication of class conflict is the strategic goal of the communists. The transitional period of class struggle between capitalist oppression and communist peace is called socialism. It’s a technical term for a period of repeated and dramatic revolutionary change. It is not a charmed plateau, or a place of rest. Socialism is indeed a lot more peaceful than capitalism, because the working class has no appetite for bloody war. But politically, it is not a quiet time at all.

For the purposes of Polokwane, fundamental questions have to asked, and then asked again.

For example: has the ANC superstructure detached itself from the mass base? In that case, is it really worth trying to attach it again? Because the objective need is not for an ANC as such, but rather for a vehicle that can carry a true revolutionary alliance of classes, wherein the classes concerned (workers, peasants and petty-bourgeois) all understand why they are in it, and why they must all be full members, and not merely tolerated, grudgingly. The communists' hammer-and-sickle symbol represents the full respect that must be given by the workers to the peasants, and vice versa. Not least, all must understand who they are allied against (i.e. monopoly capital).

Which branch members have not felt the cold wind of exclusion in ANC branches? Which branches have not felt the overbearing presence of the “Essop Pahads” of this world and the smaller Essops all the way down through Provincial, Regional and Zonal structures? Who in the ANC does not feel manipulated?

Such that if you were able (in spite of all the difficulties in your way) to “swell the ranks” in your branch with workers and freethinking petty bourgeois, you would suddenly find that your branch was “not in good standing” any more. Or that a rival group had suddenly appeared from nowhere, denouncing you and claiming all the positions. Or that new demarcation had suddenly caused the branch not to exist in its previous form. The 4000 delegates who have been chosen for Polokwane are the products of these kinds of rat-race tactics, and other ones besides.

The SACP has argued that the ANC must not be handed over intact to the bourgeois class. In that case one possible remedy would be to split the ANC first, and hand it over not intact, but split. COSATU has argued that the ANC should not be handed over because it is our (working class) property. But why should we be held hostage by our own property? If it is dragging us down, and no longer of any use, why not let it go? These are rhetorical questions, but we still need to have answers ready. We will find some of these answers if we continue our dialogue.

Click on these links:

The State, Lenin, 1919 (7209 words)

Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels, 1884 (8306 words)

Transformation, not a Balancing Act, Nzimande and Cronin, 1997 (3264 words)

A Stage-Managed Beauty Contest?

Anthony Butler, the CU’s favourite bourgeois Prof., has done some useful “codification” of the ANC’s internal democracy (See below). He has gone through the Information Sheet on NEC Nominations on the ANC web site, and the old “Through the Eye of the Needle” document, which he attributes to the late Peter Mokaba (it came out under the name of the National Working Committee).

Butler calls the latter document “profoundly undemocratic”. This may be true, but not quite in the way that he says it is. Butler lists the anti-democratic parts, but omits the balancing clauses that confirm, for example, the constitutional right of ANC members to campaign and to canvas.

The “undemocracy” of the ANC is not explicit. It is the opposite of explicit. It lies in the ANC’s love of obscurity, and in what in the British labour movement is called “fudge”, meaning the tendency to leave matters undecided, or even worse, to leave the appearance of having supported both sides of any given contradiction or controversy. The “Eye of the Needle” document is typical of this tendency.

Naturally, “fudge” plays into the hands of the corporatists, because they are the ones who want everybody pretending to be on the same side, and all together in a class-blind “national team”. “Fudge” is the enemy of the revolutionaries, who are always seeking a cathartic “sharpening of the contradictions”. That is why conferences tend not to produce revolutions, but only resolutions, unless they split first.

All agree that ANC structures function more as career paths than anything else. Those most successful at working the system are the ones who denounce it most loudly (e.g. in “The Eye of the Needle”). This brings us to the question: Can such a networking, social-climbing, scrummage, ruck, maul, or food-trough, any longer represent or assist the existence of a conscious revolutionary class alliance at mass level?

The picture painted (codified) by Makhudu Sefara in the City Press (linked below) is of just exactly the kind of unprincipled beauty contest that COSATU used to say should not take place, and it is a very plausible picture. Mosiua Lekota has challenged COSATU to produce its ideas, and COSATU has in response shown that it has prepared a large number of documents, which Lekota knows about. So perhaps what Lekota means is that the working class has no single clear slogan for Polokwane? In that case, he has a point. There are some good songs, and there are T-shirts, and there is a candidate for President, but where are the politics? In the files? Which particular files? There are indeed very many of them.

COSATU has had another exchange with Lekota, this time about T-shirts. COSATU says that Lekota “raises an issue which is symptomatic of the poisoned atmosphere which is developing around the ANC succession contest – the way in which supporters of different candidates are promoting their favoured candidates in the run-up to the 52nd National Conference”, and it complains about the “trend to focus on individuals rather than the organisation and its policies”.

So how is all this to be turned around? It would be a mistake to think that there is no serious challenge facing the working class at Polokwane. It is necessary to think through all of the possible outcomes, good and bad, and to make plans for all these possibilities. We will continue to study this question.

We meet this afternoon at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom on the 3rd floor of COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, to discuss Lenin’s “Better Fewer, But Better”. Please, please if you can, do read Sibusiso Mchunu’s very helpful reflections on this text, which he sent yesterday (Thank you, Cde Sbu!).

No apologies for another picture of V I Lenin (who attached great importance to slogans, by the way) in the build-up to the Anniversary of the Great October Soviet Socialist Revolution in fifteen days’ time.

Click on these links:

Spanners in the succession works, Butler, Business Day (911 words)

Mindpower vs Showmanship, Sefara, City Press (1333 words)

Life of a deputy; building on our small gains, Sibusiso Mchunu (1149 words)

Playing God

Henry “The Navigator” (picture), prince of Portugal and nephew of the King of England, sent ships beyond Cape Bojador in 1434. Cape Bojador is in Western Sahara, which is still a colony, the last in Africa.

This event marked the beginning of European external seaborn colonial expansion. It took the Portuguese south of the Sahara for the first time, and the first slaves were taken almost immediately. These slaves were put to work on the Atlantic island of Madeira, which The Navigator’s ships happened also to have rediscovered.

Slavery had by that time long since passed into feudalism on the European continent, in a process that started with the decline of the Roman Empire nearly a thousand years before. Even when there was slavery under the Romans, it did not give rise to racism, and was not understood in racial terms. Most of the slaves in the Roman Empire were white, like their owners.

What the Portuguese did in 1434, then, was not only to re-invent slavery, but also to do so on a new colonial, commercial and racial basis. The consequences were terrible. They include the racism that survives today as part of the capitalist exploitation that later superseded both feudalism and slavery.

Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic to the West Indies in 1492 and touched the continent of South America in 1498, the same year that Vasco da Gama reached India. By 1502 the trans-Atlantic slave trade was in full flow, initially as a Portuguese monopoly. It was to carry millions of people away from Africa to bondage on American plantations, and usually to an early death, during the next three centuries. The profits of this evil trade made Europe and the USA rich and gave birth to capitalism. The memory of it plays out in strange ways, as we shall see.

The linked “codification” for the day is by the editor of the London Guardian, Alan Rusbridger. The general title for his whole series is: “It starts with a village” and the article says that the idea of calling the patronised village “14th Century” came from an “Oxford economist”.

But it is as clear as can be that what these editors and economists really crave is a new start with Africa, on a pure and charitable basis. “14th Century” can only be a deliberate reference to the relatively innocent time before the slave-capturing voyages sponsored by Henry the Navigator. The Guardian, the Kenyan NGO Amref, and Barclays Bank, want to kid themselves that they are starting with a clean slate.

As much as the Guardian’s attempt to help an African village is no doubt both a guilt-ridden and also a highly arrogant affair, South Africans need not feel too smug about it. What, after all, is the difference between this and the widespread “delivery” efforts in our own country?

The Lubisi Dam project is one isolated example where a whole new world for the Eastern Cape was supposed to “start with a village” ten years ago, and which obviously failed. But in fact the entire “Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was, in contradiction of its own declared intentions, turned over to this kind of top-down technicist and charitable basis very early on.

What all these “developmental” projects lack is acknowledgement of the people’s political economy. Instead, there is an evident and quite explicit desire to steer the people away from any politics. These projects exemplify the “banking” theory of development, which is identical to the “banking” theory of education as described by Paulo Freire. A Freirean way forward would be totally different.

Click on this link:

The Guardian plays God in Uganda, Alan Rusbridger (2827 words)

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Lucky Dube sang to the heart. He knew the loneliness of the individual under capitalism, which is the dark shroud of the necrophilic system, and the scourge that people in a bourgeois society feel compelled to constantly use upon each other.

In capitalism the deprived and the ostracised are the necessary haunting validation of the system. Lucky Dube understood the house of exile, and the sweet longings that the lonely people have. His tender voice was like no other. He had sung our life and his own fate. How can we forget?

The beautyful ones are not yet born.

Joe Slovo was already pushing 25 years of exile when he wrote “The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution” in 1988. This work of the former SACP General Secretary towers higher with every passing year. It describes exactly what the NDR is. It can be revisited time and time again, because it is rich in meaning, and there is always more value to be got from it. It is today’s “codification”, linked below.

Michael Sachs is the defender, and reputedly one of the authors, of the draft of the new “Strategy and Tactics” document of the ANC. This document creates two categories previously unknown to Marxism or to any other literature: the “national democratic society”, and the “national democratic state” (NDS for short in both cases). These neologisms, if they have meaning at all, can only signify that the ANC thinks that history has ended and been replaced by a sterile, self-congratulatory, permanent incorporation.

Joe Slovo rejected such mediocre delusions. He wrote that yes, there are stages, but the point about a stage is that it is followed by another stage. Michael Sachs’ document holds out no such hope. After his NDS there is nothing, except more of the same - the frozen gestures of a morbidly institutionalised revolution.

COSATU’s Central Committee discussion document, The NDR and Socialism, the NDR and Capitalism, leans heavily on Slovo’s work. But the resolution actually passed by the Central Committee shows more of Sach’s influence, when it says: “We insist upon a radical national democratic state… as opposed to a capitalist state”. This is confusion worse confounded. Rejection of capitalism is now pretended to be achievable by resolution, and no longer requiring revolution. Then for encouragement, the zombie “NDS” is politely draped over with the word “radical”, like a coffin draped over with a flag.

All of this is clear evidence of the weak mental condition in which the working class is approaching the ANC Conference in Polokwane, and these are the matters the Communist University discussed last Tuesday. We have with this post concluded the task that Comrade Sbusiso Mchunu, our chairperson by virtue of long acceptance, said should be carried out, namely the creation of a record of that discussion.

We said in the previous post that what Polokwane is all about, in a nutshell, is whether we have a revolutionary class alliance, excluding the oppressor, or whether we fall for a hopeless corporatist class collaboration. This is the same stark choice as between a National Democratic Revolution, in the manner of Joe Slovo, or otherwise a National Democratic State, in the manner of Michael Sachs.

With stale promises of class-blind so-called “development”, the young one has tried hard to cloud the vision of the old departed revolutionary. But Joe Slovo’s words will not die so easily, even if the beautyful ones are not yet born to give them life at Polokwane.

We meet on Tuesday, 23 October 2007, in the SACP boardroom, 3rd floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein.

Click on this codification:

The SA Working Class and the NDR, Joe Slovo, 1988 (14985 words)

“The Social Democracy” and the Social-Democrats

At our last session, Kimani Ndungu, twice quoting the title, but not the contents, of Lenin’s “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution” voiced some doubts about Lenin’s antagonism towards reformists (see today’s “codification” links, below). Our discussion was related to the 52nd National Conference of the ANC that is scheduled to take place on 15 December 2007 in Polokwane.

This book-title has been misused elsewhere and in the past to imply that Lenin was at the time a gradualist, or in some way similar in outlook to the parties of the present-day “Socialist International” like the British Labour Party or the German Social Democrats. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Lenin wrote the work in 1905 in particular circumstances which are given in brief in the “Notes on reading Lenin’s ‘Two Tactics’”, also linked below. The party to which he belonged was at that point split, and Lenin had played a major role in that split. The two factions were called the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (“majority” and “minority”). Lenin was an unapologetic revolutionary Bolshevik, and the leader of the Bolsheviks up until, and beyond, the glorious October Revolution twelve years later, the 90th anniversary of which we will celebrate on Wednesday, 7 November 2007.

At the time Lenin’s party as a whole was called the Russian Social-Democratic and Labour Party (RSDLP). The movement in general, especially in Germany where it was strongest at the time, was sometimes referred to as “The Social Democracy” (notably by Rosa Luxemburg in her work “Reform or Revolution?”). This term had a similar, but more genuine, sense of being a formal institution of the masses, to what the current term “Civil Society” aspires to. “The Social Democracy” was democratically structured, both locally and internationally (as the Second International); whereas today’s so-called “Civil Society” tends to consist of funded voluntarist NGOs, academics, and other professional self-appointed intermediaries, charitably substituting themselves as representatives of the poor.

In 1914 most of the national constituents of the Second International opted to support their national governments in the terrible inter-Imperialist slaughter called the First World War. The Bolsheviks and some others, notably some comrades in South Africa, refused, and opposed the war totally. Only after that time did the permanent distinction grow up between the class-collaborator “Social-Democrat” parties on the one hand, and the Communist Parties on the other.

At no time was Lenin ever attached either to the Mensheviks or to the (new style, gradualist) “Social Democrats”. The book “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution” is actually a sustained blast against the vacillating sellout liberals of his day, and in favour of decisive revolution led by the proletariat, finishing up with the resounding rhetorical question: “Dare We Win?”

By the way, what is a “class collaborator”? Is class collaboration the same as “class alliance”? Absolutely not! Class collaboration is a servile abdication whereby the representatives of the working class subordinate themselves to the interests of the ruling (capitalist) class. The working class is very familiar with such collaborators. In South Africa they may be called “indunas”, elsewhere “bosses’ men”, etc.

Class alliance, on the other hand, is the necessary politics of revolution. The working class must be independent and it must be autonomous, but it must also have allies from outside of its ranks. In South Africa such allies can be peasants and small business people, professionals and intellectuals, but not the principal oppressor, which is monopoly capitalism. Class alliance serves to prevent the isolation of the working class, and to split the forces available to the dominant part of the bourgeoisie. Class alliance, as unity-in-action, can secure vital material gains and tactical victories for the working class.

The question of whether we should be in a class alliance, or in the kind of corporatist class-collaboration advocated by the writers of the draft Strategy and Tactics (now revised) which was hotly debated at the ANC National Policy Conference in June, is exactly what needs to be decided in Polokwane. This, in a nutshell, is what Polokwane is all about.

It is quite likely that there will be a few text-jugglers in Polokwane who will want to use Lenin’s book-title once again to confuse those who have never actually read the book. So read it, and be forearmed, because we must expect that the classics will continue to be abused in this way. And thanks, Cde Kimani, for bringing up this important matter.

Click on these codification links:

Notes on reading Lenin's 'Two Tactics', Tweedie, 2005 (461 words)

Two Tactics of Social Democracy, selected chapters, Lenin, 1905, (10805 words)

The entire book, on Marxists Internet Archive

Division Of The Spoils

Today’s “codification” (representation of the life situation) is a letter published in yesterday’s Johannesburg “Business Day” concerning the standoff between the South African Police Force (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). The latter includes the Department of Special Operations (DSO), otherwise known by its self-invented bravado nickname: “The Scorpions”.

In addition we have the article by our good Cape Town comrade Mervyn Bennun, to which the letter was a response, and the e-mail version of the letter, as it was sent to the newspaper. The sub-editors cut the text from about 550 to about 320 words, but they have kept the meaning very well.

The YCL exhorts readers of “The Bottomline” to “Write, write, write!” and many of them do so. They and others could draw a few lessons from the exchange given here. The first lesson is that the sub-editors know their job, and it is better to learn from them than to complain against them. From their point of view a 300-word letter is better than a 500-word one, for a start. That means keeping it short (not like our example), and as simple as possible. One good point makes a letter worthwhile. It’s enough. You can always write another letter, another day, to make another point.

Even if they don’t publish your letter, newspapers are extremely interested in what their readers are thinking. To them, letters are zero-cost, high-value market research. Editors read letters. By the way, the YCL has a discussion forum which you can join by clicking here. It’s another good way to practice writing.

Now, what about our “constitutional crisis”? Is there one, and if so, what does that phrase mean?

The Constitutional Court’s web page on the History of the Constitution confirms that the drafting of the present constitution, and the 1993 Interim Constitution that preceded it, was a continuation of the CODESA process that began in 1991. The constitution was passed by the Constitutional Assembly (both chambers of parliament) on 8 May 1996, the year of the “Class Project”, but was then rejected by the Constitutional Court, which demanded, and got, changes! It finally came into force on 4 February 1997.

Our constitution is often boasted as the “best in the world”. This phrase is politically loaded. Communists know that the State is only the “executive committee of the ruling class”. How can the constitution of an openly bourgeois state, or worse, a self-deludedly class-blind state, be “the best in the world”?

For today’s purposes, two things stand out about this constitution. One is the fiction of “Constitutional Sovereignty”, whereby the paper constitution, interpreted by the unelected judges, is held to rule over all. The other is the “Division of Powers”, whereby parliament’s power is even further restricted in a division between it and the executive (government). All of these things mean that “Power To The People”, the great slogan of the liberation movement, has been mocked and trashed in this constitution. Con Court Judge Zac Yacoob told this writer, in public, that majority rule would be “the law of the jungle”.

Between 1990 and 1996, People’s Power was found, lost, and finally stolen in this country. The thieves are still holding power today. It is their bickering over the spoils that constitutes most of our daily politics. But then, division of the spoils is what bourgeois democracy is all about, and always has been.

Frene Ginwala (pictured above) was the first Speaker of Parliament after the 1994 election. She did nothing to exert Parliamentary supremacy. Thanks largely to her, the SA parliament is commonly described as a lapdog or a rubber stamp, because it has no power - least of all over its rivals in the competition for the “division of powers”. In this constitutional league you have government versus judges, contending for the championship of the Premier Division, while parliament is relegated to one or even two divisions lower down. Below that again is “the street”, which is the electorate, the big mass organisations of the working class, and all of the poor in their base communities. The “street” is a far more reliable defender of liberty than parliament is, or ever will be.

After 1997 the judges were lording it over the constitution, but they were still hungry. They started to maneouvre for an extra bite, and for more advantage over their rivals in the “powers division”. They decided to break the power of the police and to take charge of criminal investigation, using the Scorpions as their golem. At the time of his suspension last month, Adv. Vusi Pikoli of the NPA was leading the charge. But these scorpions had gone a bit too far. The “street” had long since begun to detest them.

The aforementioned Frene Ginwala, by now an ex-Speaker, has been appointed to head a commission investigating the circumstances of the suspension of Vusi Pikoli. As a major player in the game of “divisions” since at least 1994, Ginwala is impossibly, outrageously, compromised.

Crisis, or dirty business as usual? You must be the judge. We will return to this question, and to that of The State in general, very soon.

Click on these links:

When lawyers are investigators, D Tweedie, Business Day (323 words)

Re Mervyn Bennun on the NPA, draft letter e-mailed to Business Day (552 words)

Nitty-gritty of the law, Mervyn Bennun article, Business Day (1372 words)

Better Fewer, But Better

Yesterday’s session was well attended and lively. The CU is back in full force!

We asked, among other things: If an alliance is an alliance, and a pact is a pact, then what is an alliance pact? Is it an alliance of classes, at a mass level, or is it a pact of leaders, at a boardroom level?

We asked: If “swelling the ranks” has failed, then how is binding the leadership expected to succeed?

We asked: How can a democratic state which is in fact a bourgeois state become a state that goes beyond bourgeois democracy, without a revolution first?

Our next session will take place on Tuesday 23 October 2007 at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom, 3rd floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein.

Our “codification” for this session is Lenin’s “Better Fewer, But Better”, one of the last things he wrote, done in the last full year of his life (he died in January, 1924), and six years after the Great October Soviet Socialist Revolution, as the Soviets used to call it, otherwise called the Russian Revolution. The 90th Anniversary of that Revolution is to be celebrated in a few days time on 7 November 2007.

“Better Fewer, But Better” is quite famous, and its title has been invoked by ANC President, Thabo Mbeki, particularly at the ANC Policy Conference of 2002, eight years after the South African “democratic breakthrough” of 1994.

On that occasion Mbeki was trying to explain how all cadres were to be allowed at the same time “to express themselves freely”, while they would nevertheless strictly “work to defend and implement all agreed policies”. Those who could not manage both these contradictory things at once would be removed or perhaps suspended - better fewer but better! This was not exactly what Lenin had in mind.

But read the text for yourself. Is there any similarity between the situation faced by Lenin and his Party, as compared to that faced by Mbeki and the ANC in 2002, or even now?

Lenin talks about management, and about bureaucracy, and about the merger of Party and State. This was at the time of the New Economic Policy, or “NEP”, when landowning peasants and urban small and medium-sized businesspeople had freedom to produce and sell in the Soviet Union.

The NEP policy was scrapped after Lenin’s death in favour of the three five-year plans, starting from 1928, that made the Soviet Union into a “super-power”, and gave the country the industrial strength with which to defeat the German Nazi fascist invaders in the Second World War.

On the final page, Lenin talks about things that most closely resemble our own situation, such as the survival of a revolution in one country, the prospects of a move towards socialism, and the leadership of the peasants by the workers.

Perhaps somebody else can tell us: What happened to the “Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection”? If you don’t know what that means, read the text!

Dennis Brutus plays Karl Marx at UKZN in the Howard College Theatre, 17h00, 25 October 2007.

The picture above is of V I Lenin.

Click on this link:

Lenin, 1923, Better Fewer But Better (5634 words)

From The Sublime To The Gorblimey

Although Marx and Lenin both had a well-developed sense of the ridiculous, it is but seldom in the revolutionary literature that jocularity is held to be the necessary revolutionary quality that it surely must be, if only because proletarian revolution aims at the recovery of humanity in full.

Joe Slovo did once say that a sense of humour was required if people were to hope to be able to understand dialectics. SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande and his Deputy Jeremy Cronin prefer to lead by example. Each is quick to exploit any opportunity for mirth.

Mirth, like other aspects of humanity such as love, for example, is not yet class-exclusive. For that we should be extremely grateful, and feel free to enjoy the jokes of the bourgeoisie as much as any others.

Anthony Butler is an academic at UCT. He publishes a regular column in the Johannesburg Business Day that often brings a smile to the faces of his friends and his opponents alike. See the one linked below. It can serve as our “codification” for today.

Butler’s generous consideration also extends to the sorrows of exile, which he recognises as “desperate” and “agonising”, unlike other commentators who have tried to depict exile as something easy and not oppressive. Yet still he contrives to separate exiles from others, as if none of the exiles had any prior history of action inside the country under the old regime. Whereas in most cases their exile was the direct consequence of such action, and this sequence of action and exile did not stop, but went on into the 1990s. Many are the individuals who were active inside the country, were then imprisoned (some on Robben Island) and only after that went into exile. Jacob Zuma is one such individual.

From singling out the exiles, Butler moves to singling out the communists. By this point good humour has vanished and been replaced by unpleasant fantasy, in which things are freely represented as their opposites. His purpose is to misrepresent the idea of the vanguard party of service by making it out as a grotesque “monopoly of wisdom about the character of social and political change, and an obligation to act on behalf of the masses in the light of this superior insight”.

By falsifying the relationship between vanguard and mass, Butler is looking for a “triple whammy”. First he wants to traduce the SACP. Second, he wants to tar the ANC with the same brush. And third, he wants to hide his own unsatisfactory relationship with the masses, by accusing others. Because it is he, Butler, the bourgeois academic, who is elitist, prescriptive, condescending, and usurping. The evidence is right there in his writing. Yes, he is affable, observant and smart, but he is also a snob and a hypocrite. It is he, and not the Party, who is really claiming “entitlement to command” and “monopoly of wisdom”, while seeming to preach against these things.

It would be nice if Butler could consider the possibility that his position in relation to the masses, and that of the vanguard Party, should not essentially be different. If Butler, or the Party, are going to have an honest and legitimate relationship with the masses, it will only be in a relationship of service to the masses. That service would be, precisely, to develop “a scientific understanding of history” and to put that understanding at the disposal of the masses.

The vanguard is a servant and not a master. To instead speak of an “obligation to act on behalf of the masses” is to describe a great revolutionary sin, sometimes known as “substitutionism”. This sin undoubtedly can exist. It does exist among the Robespierrean petit-bourgeoisie. But to say that such a common (bourgeois) delusion is authored by the Party is a vile lie.

The organisation-building work of the Party in South Africa over the last nine decades, including the building of an autonomous ANC and an autonomous COSATU, is incontrovertible testimony of its proper understanding of the mass-vanguard relationship. A constant battle has been fought against “substitutionism”. This battle still continues. Butler should open his eyes. The picture above is of Lenin, who described the mass-vanguard relationship very well in his book “What is to be done?”.

We meet tonight in the SACP Boardroom, 3rd floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, at 17h00. The topic/”codification” is the abridged COSATU CC resolutions.

Click on this link:

Behind Mbeki’s bid to hang on, Butler, B Day (952 words)

Editors under attack

The Communist University meets at 17h00 on Tuesday 16 October 2007 in the SACP Boardroom, to discuss the abridged resolutions of the COSATU Central Committee (see the first link below).

The previous full CU post was on 24 June 2007 (click here to read it). It explained that the CU was facing difficulties at the time. The first of these difficulties was the necessity for the CU’s writer to work on the development and production of the e-mail publication “COSATU Today” (CT). The latter mailing and its companion, COSATU Media Monitor (CMM), now provide between them a very good daily coverage of working-class concerns. Another member of COSATU’s staff has become responsible for that work.

CT is the unvarnished collected statements of the working-class mass formations, their allies and their friends. CMM is a compilation of the reactions to these statements found in the bourgeois media. You can subscribe both by clicking here (and following instructions) or by putting your e-mail address in the small box given on the COSATU home page, or in the box on the NEHAWU home page.

The CU will presume that most of its subscribers are getting the two COSATU publications, and that we do not therefore have to duplicate what is already covered, unless there is a particular reason to do so. The previous (flexible) parameters of the CU were that the linked (or attached) documents would be no more than five in number, and not amount in total to more than 200KB. The blog material, which is also the e-mailed text, was the equivalent of a single A4 sheet. The CU published nearly every day, for a long time.

Just for the record, the Communist University posts have in practice been written by one person. But the CU phenomenon in total is the product of the efforts of hundreds of people over many years.

Because we can now rely upon COSATU’s service, can manage with less CU Internet work than before. “Occam’s Razor” states: “It is vain to do with more, what can be done with less”. We can now concentrate our aim on the Freirean idea of “codification”, which Peter McLaren defined as follows:

“A codification is a representation of the learner’s day-to-day situations. It can be a photograph, a drawing, or even a word. As a representation, the photograph or word is an abstraction which permits dialogue leading to an analysis of the concrete reality represented. Codifications mediate between reality and its theoretical context, as well as between educators and learners who together seek to unveil the meanings of their existence.”

That is a lot of words to describe something that is above all supposed to be simple! In our case it only means that the texts carried by the Communist University are solely intended as a basis for dialogue, and not as prescription or dogma. Nor are they merely “course material” preparatory to an examination, or to any kind of “qualification”, or leveling, or commodification of people. The knowledge that we intend to foster is created socially, in dialogue. This is the only kind of knowledge that can animate the collective social, or democratic, human subject. It is the only kind that is socially available as a defense against dictatorship.

This is not to say that we are eclectic, indifferent, or liberal. On the contrary, at all times we strive to be intentional, and to ascend from the abstract to the concrete, and to move towards “concrete analysis of concrete situations” (Lenin’s phrase). If we have done that much, then we have done the right thing, pedagogically speaking.

So here is a short codification for today. It is from the Introduction, by Ian Birchall, to “Sketches from the French Revolution” (1890) by Ernest Belfort Bax. It says: ‘For Bax, Robespierre was a “pedantic Rousseauite prig”, and he argued: “The fact is, Robespierre was a petit bourgeois, a Philistine to the backbone, who desired a Republic of petit bourgeois virtues, with himself at the head, and was prepared to wade through a sea of blood for the accomplishment of his end.”’

Pedantic prigs are dangerous. And editors are under attack. See Justice Malala’s article, linked below. The picture above is of Sunday Times editor, Mondli Makhanya.

Click on these links:

Abridged resolutions of the COSATU Central Committee (4665 words)

Mbeki & Co reduce SA to a state of fear, Malala, S Times (920 words)

Communist University: Red Phoenix

Communist University: Red Phoenix

Red Phoenix

The Communist University has past its fourth anniversary in the middle of a strike of unprecedented scale, intensity and duration, in the South African public service, which began on 1 June 2007.

Also unprecedented is the degree of unity and cohesion between the sixteen unions involved, eight of them COSATU affiliates, and the remainder belonging to other federations.

This strike is not over. See the linked item below for the current situation. No doubt the bourgeois media will attempt to spin this plain, direct and simple statement in all sorts of ways. You have the benefit of the full text. You will be able to see that nobody is signing, that consultations with membership continue, and that there will be no grandstand moment for the Minister of Public Service unless she brings something more to the table.

Concerning the CU, we continue to make available discussions of both a theoretical and a topical nature. We meet again on Tuesday, 26 June at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom, 3rd floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein. The text this week is The Chinese Revolution and Chinese Communist Party (1939). This is a great classic of political economy – the study of the arrangement and the relative movement of class forces in society – and a model for the way that we can study the situation in our own country.

Some more detailed information is perhaps called for at this stage. Dominic Tweedie is the person who collects material for distribution to the CU’s thousand-plus subscribers, and composes this covering note, or “blog”. It is no kind of authority, but certainly assists people to place the material in some sort of context, as attested by much feedback over the years.

Two problems have recently arisen. There is no reason to expect that they will not be overcome. They are:

Firstly, the exceptional workload relating to the strike and the development and daily editing of “COSATU Today” This is a hybrid Internet/hard copy publication that has grown out of the former COSATU Weekly and carries media releases from COSATU, its affiliates, its allies and its friends. It has proved very difficult to sustain the CU mailings at the previous rate during this time. But relief is at hand.

For the record, “COSATU Today” now goes to 2255 mainly working-class readers and is rapidly developing into the workers’ daily paper that we have been talking about for so many years. The value of this work is second to none. The CU had to give way, temporarily.

Do please subscribe to “COSATU Today” if you have not already done so. The easiest way to do so is by putting your e-mail in the small box in the lower part of the COSATU home page. Alternatively, e-mail dominic.tweedie@gmail.com, indicating that you would like to receive “COSATU Today”.

Secondly, there has been uncertainty attending the sectarian attack on the Communist University that culminated in the effective excommunication of Dominic Tweedie from the Johannesburg Central Branch of the SACP since the beginning of April. This was precisely at the moment of his having to take on the responsibility for “COSATU Today” (and subsequently the strike web site, “TwelvePerCent” - please visit it).

The ugly sectarian rush in April resulted in a subsequent, equally disgraceful, and of course inconclusive, “disciplinary” charade, two weeks ago. This situation just has to be borne for the moment. Suffice it to say that the accusers are the guilty ones, but they have gone as far as they can go. They have not succeeded in liquidating the Communist University, and will not do so. They have not succeeded in interfering with the processes of the mass working-class movement, either. The running sore that these people have attempted to create in the Party will only debilitate themselves in the long run.

Note that the ANC Policy Conference begins this week, on Wednesday.

Click on these links:

Public service workers' strike, COSATU (217 words)

The Chinese Revolution and Chinese Communist Party, Mao Tse-Tung (8009 words)

Intense Class Struggle

The Communist University has been in abeyance for a few days and some people have complained about it. The reason for the gap is the intense current class struggle and the many other tasks that have to be fulfilled in relation to that.

It is true that political education should not be suspended in periods of heightened political activity. On the contrary, political education should be stepped up in such periods. The CU can only offer its archive and encourage people to download material, read, share, gather together and dialogue. Revolutionary service will be resumed in the previous manner as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, please, if you have not already done so, subscribe for COSATU Today (and COSATU Daily Labour News) at http://groups.google.com/group/COSATU-Daily-News. Please also recruit other subscribers to this list. This service is South Africa’s working-class daily. In the case of COSATU Today, it comes formatted ready for hard-copy printing as a four-page sheet.

Click here to download the latest COSATU Today, if you do not already have it. It contains the full COSATU CEC statement on the current Public Service strike.

Concerning the Public Service dispute, please also visit, subscribe and take part in the e-mail dialogue at http://groups.google.com/group/TwelvePerCent. This multi-purpose site is an archive of material relating to the current Public Service strike of around a million workers in at least sixteen unions, including eight COSATU-affiliated ones. COSATU has called for a total shut-down in the Public Service tomorrow, Friday 8 June 2007, and a full general strike of all workers including the private sector, next Wednesday, 13 June 2007, if there is no satisfactory movement from the employer’s side.

James Tweedie is a friend of South Africa. He was here last year December as a delegate from the British YCL to the YCLSA National Congress. He now works for the London working-class newspaper, the Morning Star, as a reporter, and yesterday wrote his first front-page splash. See the link below. The story by James is about the run-down of the British Public Service, especially the National Health Service. There is also a big panel on the SA Public Service dispute.

Please e-mail messages of appreciation to James via webmaster@morningstaronline.co.uk. You can also send your press releases and other news to that address in future. Click here to go to the Morning Star web site.

Click on this link:

James Tweedie, British NHS Crisis, SA Public Service Crisis, Morning Star 070607 (199 KB PDF)