Cde Floyd, comrades,
I forgot to mention an even more pressing case, which is the (nationalised!) SABC. Does the ANC YL know that the nominations are open for the (permanent, new, not interim) SABC Board? And that nominations close on 31 July 2009? Does the ANC YL have any nominees? Would you like to share that information, if any? Likewise comrades, what about the YCL? Is it not going to nominate anybody at all for the SABC Board, when it fought so hard to have the old one taken out? I will post further particulars about this, in a few minutes' time. Looking forward to your nominations, SA-VC From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dominic Tweedie Sent: 10 July 2009 07:52 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] Re: the NP govt was more socialist than the ANC govt. Cde Floyd, You say: "But it also tests the State capacity to technically manage the strategic sectors of the economy, which will be necessary under socialism." So why don't we look at some recent tests of nationalisation and its management in South Africa? Let's see if we can draw a few conclusions by reviewing a few existing cases in no particular order such as: . South African Airways . Eskom . Telkom . Denel . Sasol . Mittal Steel . BRT . Alexkor . [Botswana] South African Airways came under Saki Macozoma and then Coleman Andrews who was paid about R250 million to go away. Then there was Andre Viljoen, another disaster. Then it came under Maria Ramos. It has been bailed out to the tune of hundreds of millions several times since 1994. SATAWU can advise more about SAA. Eskom gave us the "load shedding" before and after Polokwane. There is no doubt that the load shedding was the consequence of disastrous and possibly corrupt management decisions but the management is mostly still in place and Eskom is being repeatedly rewarded for the load shedding scare that it created artificially, with price rises, and possibly further piecemeal corrupt or semi-corrupt privatisations. No comprehensive report has ever surfaced that one could have confidence in. Instead we are brushed off with nonsense statements such as "The days of cheap electricity are over". Meaning that those who do not now have, probably never will have electricity, and thereby abandoning development for the poor in South Africa. Do you see who is benefiting from this particular nationalised industry? This is why I say, nationalisation in a bourgeois state usually works for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. So a call for nationalisation is not automatically a call for socialism. Not at all. Telkom, Vodacom, scandal, high prices - another can of worms. CWU can tell us more about that. Denel: Lindiwe Sisulu reads the umpteenth turn-around plan a few days ago in Parliament, noting that all of the previous ones have failed, saying there is no reason to believe this new one, but that she wants to give them the benefit of the doubt. In other words it is out of control and it is a money drain, producing nothing. Lindiwe Sisulu gets her way. Who benefits? Sasol and Mittal have strategic monopoly positions in the economic supply-chains which they have abused by price-gouging and by the "import parity pricing" fraud. Both were developed as state-initiated and state-owned enterprises. The SACP has named these two as priority targets for re-nationalisation. This demand around these two specific concerns will have wide support, even beyond the working class. What happens to this demand of the Party's if the ANCYL is concentrating on nationalising mines? Don't you think there should be a discussion about tactical priorities, alliances and unity-in-action? Or are we supposed to have a general Cultural Revolution now and a "Great Leap Forward" all at one time? BRT is a new nationalised industry that has been created by the state. It is not yet in operation but is close to being put into operation. The petty-bourgeois taxi owners demand that it be privatised even before it is properly in existence, so that they can become suddenly rich and collect a rent from the BRT for ever more. The taxi owners are able to create a mass agitation on the streets for their benefit any time they want to, but the workers who ride the public transport have not been able to do so in their own interest, and we as a movement appear powerless in the face of this organised petty-bourgeois power of the taxi owners. Alexkor was a state-owned diamond-mining business. I don't know what happened to it but it could tell us something about how to organise mining as the state, or how not to. It is some kind of test case. Botswana (Debswana) has been mentioned as an example of how a country can benefit from a joint venture. I don't know if this is quite such a simple conclusion to make. It needs to be interrogated. Some Conclusions Something I would personally like to knock on the head is the phrase "state capitalism", which is not a communist phrase, but an anti-communist accusation. The phrase "state capitalism" is invariable used in propaganda against a proletarian state. It is a phrase that is directed against nationalisation. It tries to stress the form over the political content, or in other words to ignore the question of class power; whereas what is crucial in all cases is not the form of enterprises, but the class that is in power at state level. The corresponding communist phrase is "state-monopoly capitalism", which is Lenin's term for the situation where bourgeois monopoly has intermingled itself so closely with the bourgeois state that there is a permanently wide-open gateway between monopoly capital and state. This was the case under the old regime in South Africa and I think it is the case in Botswana. In this situation other classes suffer, especially the petty bourgeoisie and medium-sized businesses, and unemployment is likely to be structurally very high. Monopoly capital may tolerate or even encourage organised labour, hoping to turn it into a corporatist interlocutor and a tied labour aristocracy, or in the extreme, a basis for fascism. Sasol and Mittal were correctly chosen by the SACP and it was tactically correct to concentrate forces and not to "test" ourselves in an experimental way over the entire economic front. The "Mineral-Energy Complex" has specificities that should be examined as a whole before the line of march in that regard is set out. The ANC YL has not done that homework. BRT is the big "test" right now. This is a state asset that is about to be stolen from under the noses on the ANC YL. ANC YL members ride taxis every day and they will be part of the target market for the BRT. Other members will be working for the BRT. If the ANC YL cannot intervene where it has such an intimate knowledge and close involvement already, how can it expect to intervene elsewhere, where it does not have such advantages? We must stop talking as if nationalisation is a thing of the past. Nationalisation is still here. We are not dealing with a blank sheet of paper, or an ancient history that we are going to re-create again from nothing. Yours in struggle, Domza. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nyiko Floyd Shivambu Sent: 09 July 2009 05:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] Re: the NP govt was more socialist than the ANC govt. I agree with Comrade Mxolisi's clarification of both extremes, and convinced that the ANC YLs' call for nationalisation is located within a revolutionary premise. ANC YL President Julius Malema's contribution on why nationalisation said: "Our call for nationalisation of mines is in such a manner where the State will own mineral wealth and mines as a custodian of the entire South African population, and not a custodian of few big-businesses. All South Africans should equitably benefit from State owned and controlled mines and we are not mistaken when we make the call for the nationalisation of Mines. We are vividly aware of the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) which retains State control of all mineral rights, but what we are calling for is State ownership and control of both the mineral wealth beneath the soil, and the extraction and production of these mineral resources in Mines thereof". My interpretation of this assertion is that it affirms the national democratic revolutionary path towards attainment of the Freedom Charter objectives (SACP's minimum political programme). The YL's main reasoning behind the call is that we should without delay, achieve the Freedom Charter aims, but also lay a firm basis for the development of productive forces through beneficiation of mineral wealth and diversification of the economy in a labour-absorptive fashion, which in the immediate addresses our unemployment (and to some extent poverty) crisis. In addition, the State's control and ownership of minerals will bring to a complete halt, what the South African Road to Socialism calls "dependent development", because SA will no longer be solely the producers and exporter of natural resources and importers of finished consumer goods and services. But it also tests the State capacity to technically manage the strategic sectors of the economy, which will be necessary under socialism. Whatever discussion we enter into should never loose sight of the reality that Progressive Communists' struggles for a socialist future are not de-linked from the struggles to resolve the national and gender contradictions. The NDR is our route to socialism, meaning in simpler terms that the attainment of NDR objectives (Freedom Charter) lays a firm foundation for an uninterrupted transition to socialism. Our revolution is not an adventure, nor a debating society, but a theoretically and ideologically grounded battle for the emancipation of those who do not won the means of production, the black majority and Africans in particular. The temptation to dismiss State control of the key means of production will always exist, because comrades are rather paranoid of the realities that characterised other States and governments, and should raise these issues when we discuss the modalities of nationalisation, which will happen. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
