Comrade VC, May you kindly send me the whole document - POLITICAL NOTES PRESENTED BY CDE MASONDO
Kindest regards Morgan Phaahla "Sometimes, if you wear suits for too long, it changes your ideology." - Joe Slovo --- On Tue, 8/11/09, Dominic Tweedie <[email protected]> wrote: From: Dominic Tweedie <[email protected]> Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] POLITICAL NOTES PRESENTED BY CDE MASONDO To: [email protected] Date: Tuesday, August 11, 2009, 3:48 AM Dear Comrades, In my opinion the principal difference between a communist party and a bourgeois party, except for the fact that they represent different classes, is that a bourgeois party seeks power for itself and a communist party does not. A bourgeois party seeks power in competition with other bourgeois parties, in terms of the bourgeois democracy, which is only one organ of the executive committee of the bourgeois ruling class, wherein the other organs include the Constitutional Court, the executive, and the military. A communist party has no business seeking power in a bourgeois executive committee. The basis for communist participation in government is not that. We do not do power politics as an organisation, but only as a class. The basis for communist participation in all mass organisations and structures is to be the peoples' tribune there, on the basis of "nothing about us without us". It is not a substitute for organs of peoples' power and for subsequent Dual Power as the tactical means of transition in revolution. Nor is it co-option into the bourgeois state. The communists do not contest for bourgeois state power. What Cde Masondo calls "organisational state power" is power of the bourgeois state. When did such a thing become the aim of the communists? Cde Masondo has not taken care to reconcile his arguments with the communist understanding of the State. This is a constant strand from the Communist Manifesto, through Marx's books on France, to Engels' "Origin of the Family, Private Property and The State", to Lenin's works and in particular "The State and Revolution", and on up to today. The communist conception of The State is integral to our understanding of class and of class struggle (e.g. "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"). Without the communist understanding of The State, the entire communist theory of class struggle, transitional socialism, and final classless, stateless communism, collapses. There are not two communist understandings of The State. There is a different, indistinct, lazy and vulgarised bourgeois usage of the term, and then there is a provisional, intermediate, hybrid term called "developmental state" that is used as between people who do not yet agree as to the nature of the state. This spectrum of different meanings creates a temptation to use the term "State" in the same text, now with one meaning, now with another. I am afraid that this is what Cde Masondo has done. He has not committed to one or other meaning of the word, because he wants to have his State cake, and eat it, too. Cde Masondo's repetitive new phrase, "mode of entry into the state", is pregnant with mistakes. The communists are not entryists! Nowhere are we entryists. Not in the ANC, not in COSATU, and not in the bourgeois democracy. As communists, we deal by open advocacy. We do not take on the clothes of a bourgeois party, even when we contest elections. If we stand for election as Communists in a bourgeois democracy we do so with an intention of challenging it, root and branch, and we must be open about that with the electorate. If we do not stand as Communists, then we stand in relation to the bourgeois assembly as we stand in relation to any mass organisations where we give leadership as common members, such as the ANC and COSATU and any other mass organisations, and this is well covered by Rule 6.4 of our SACP Constitution. The communists cannot have a double agenda. The communists "disdain to conceal their aims". VC State power and SACP’s independence in the state 17. Smiso also understood that it is one thing to have an interest in something. But it is another thing to have power to achieve what you want. It is for this reason, that he spent a lot of his time organizing student power through building and leading SASCO to fight for the immediate interests of students in institutions of higher learning. He also built the working class’ organisational power through building the SACP. 18. He was clear in his mind that for the working class to exercise its organisational power, the Party must be independent. It should be able, amongst other things, to decide on what it wants to do, including democratic control of its cadres in the state. 19. The key question we should answer in memory of Smiso is: whether our SACP will be in a position to exercise its organisational power in the post-2009 state within the current institutional make up of the Alliance. 20. My answer to this question is : our SACP will face two constrains within and outside the state, namely (a) institutional constrains arising out the current configuration of the Alliance and (b) class power of business on the state. 21. And to overcome these constrains, a. There must be institutional change in the SACP’s the mode of entry into the state as well as accountability mechanisms; and (b) there must be popular working class campaigns will be necessary to shift the balance of class power against business 22. What is not my argument? a. This is not an argument for breaking of the Alliance. Instead it is an argument for its real reconfiguration. It is an argument for a democratic marriage between the SACP and ANC. (b) This is not an argument for abandonment of the Communist contest for the ANC. And (c) this is not an argument against SACP’s participation in the state. Cautionary notes 22. In discussing this issue we should not (a) exaggerate the presence of the SACP in the state (b) Or under-estimate our presence in the state (like the ultra-left do) and (c) we should not discuss this question from what the ANC wants and thinks. That is to say, we should start by asking if the ANC will agree or not – important as this is. Instead we should start by stating what we want. 23. Constrain Number 1 : The state’s inherent dependence on business a. The state, like workers, depends on business to reproduce itself. To illustrate, to deliver social services the state needs to create the necessary conditions for capitalists to invest. Productive investment means higher growth, which in turn means potentially more wages for workers and profits for capitalists. Thus enabling the state to grow its tax revenue base. Because states do not control significant investments, they tend to depend on business to invest their resources, which enables the state to generate its own income by taxing wages, salaries and profits. b. All successive post-1994 state leaderships have sought to lure business to invest in South Africa. The pre-2009 state leadership’s strategy had been to make the costs of doing business cheaper through neo-liberal economic policies and at the expense of the poor. c. Business, through various means, including stating its economic policy preference, has been exerting pressure on the post-2009 state. All politicians are subjected to the power of business. However, specific policy and programmatic outcomes are not inscribed in the structure of capitalism itself. There are other alternatives even within the limits of capitalism. 24. Conditions under business can be forced to make progressive compromises a. It is not out of the passivity of the working class that business makes concessions to the poor. Instead, they are forced to do so by organised and mobilized working class power. In the absence of mass struggles, there will be no reason for business to make any concessions. b. In the last 15 years, the SACP could not effectively challenge the ANC’s neo-liberalism because Communists in government were materially dependent on the ANC, but ideologically committed to the Party. And this generated political conflicts which eventually led to the out-voting of many of the cabinet ministers out of the SACP leadership. We argue that this will only happen if the working class shifts the balance of power through mass struggles, as well as making certain institutional changes in the SACP’s modes entry and exit in and from the state. 25. Constrain number 2 : Unreconfigured alliance as an institutional constrain a. Unquestionably, there have been significant consultations in the development of the 2009 ANC elections manifesto and selection of public representatives, particularly for the national and provincial cabinet committees. But the post-Polokwane and 2009 elections have not resolved a number of fundamental questions with regard to the independence of the SACP within the state. However, SACP cadres are in the legislatures as ANC members and under the whip of the ANC, and the modes of accountability as well as the tasks of communists in the legislatures in relation to the independent role of the Party in the legislatures are not very clear. b. Assigning a significant amount of power to the ANC to elect and select SACP cadres within the state generates conditions for the subordination of the SACP to the ANC leadership. ANC Premier can unfairly SACP MECs. 26. Quota for the SACP to overcome institutional constrain a. The mode of entry, exit, and accountability should change. Mode of entry of the SACP into the should include quotas. These SACP members should be deployed by and accountable to the Party. This does not mean that communists should not be elected into the ANC lists in their own right, and should abandon their communist conduct and values once they are elected to the ANC list. b. To realise the quota at the municipal level, the Alliance must agree in principle that certain wards should be contested under the banner of the SACP. In the same way as the SACP has been doing in the last elections, the ANC shall also mobilise its members to vote for an SACP candidate in these wards. Mass work to overcome business power a. Doubtless, quotas for the SACP in the legislatures and executives, will not resolve all the problems associated with being in a capitalist state, but it will provide the necessary conditions for the SACP to maintain its independence and control over its deployed cadres. Parliamentary work is not a substitute for mass work including by SACP parliamentarians. In fact, the 90% the marginalization of the Party in some provinces can be explained by its (i.e. SACP) weaknesses on the ground. b. Building and reconfiguring the Alliance should be accompanied by strengthening the Party structures capable of leading popular campaigns on the ground. Otherwise, the Party will be reduced to a political party begging for positions from the ANC leadership. c. Communist parliamentarians and ministers in their capacities as SACP activists and leaders must not hesitate to join mass actions even if they are against parliament or the state. d. The pre-condition for the strength of the Party within the state and the reconfigured Alliance, lies in our ideological and organizational strength in broader society and within the ANC. Ideological tasks of the Party in relation to the ANC 27. Who says the ANC cannot be socialist? The ANC does not have to be a communist party to fight for socialism. Therefore, there is nothing that prohibits the ANC from adopting socialism as its ultimate emancipatory vision. The ANC is a human made organization, and we should not naturalise its ideological orientation. In fact the ideological orientation of the post-Morogoro ANC had been explicit on the class question – it envisioned a socialist society. There is a lot of textual evidence to validate this claim. Issued by YCLSA Head Office For interviews contact: David Masondo YCLSA National Chairperson – 072 889 9052 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
