*Rhetoric or Revolution “The ANCYL as the vanguard of the working class ?”*
by Awethu Amandla Zumana <http://www.facebook.com/awethu.amandla> on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 4:20pm Now that the ANCYL congress is over and the dust has settled down, it would probably be the right time deal with some of the issues raised in the congress, I say probably the right time because I at least hope now that the leadership has been elected our views will not be construed as canvassing for the election of a particular candidate at least I hope. Of particular interest to me is the assertion by the NEC political report that ANCYL must take over the role of the vanguard of the working class. The report says: *" In the absence of a vanguard of the working class politically, ideologically and organisationally, the ANC Youth League should assume the role of the vanguard of the working class. Nature does not allow a vacuum and once a vacuum is created, it will be occupied by something else, in this instance a more better positioned something else is the Youth League....................* *Comrades, our taking over the leadership role of working class struggles at ideological, political and organisational level means that we should begin to organise workers in their workplaces and speak to real working class issues* *and struggles, in particular relating to the need to change South Africa's racialised capitalist relations. The ANC Youth League should mobilise workers in mines, factories and farms, and organically develop ideological and* *political positions that will lead to their total emancipation "- ANCYL NEC Political Report* ** In order for me to be brief I will not analyse the entire report but I will just do an analysis of the above assertion and attempt to conclude whether or not can the ANCYL really take over the leadership role of the working class. In attempt to analyse the above assertion I will ask a few questions and attempt to answer them based on my understanding of the ANCYL from its documents and the NEC political report. *What is a vanguard* *of the working class* *“Comrades, our taking over the leadership role of working class struggles at ideological, political and organisational level”* The above quoted line does give a brief understanding of the question, in that a working class vanguard is an organisation that leads and channels working class struggles at an ideological, political and organisational level into a coherent struggle to achieve a stated objective. In Marxism and Leninism a vanguard’s role is to guide ideologically the day to day working class struggles into a coherent struggle for the total defeat of the barbaric capitalist system. This understanding then presupposes that an organisation that is a working class vanguard must possess a coherent and scientific ideology to mobilise the working class for the total defeat of capitalism as a system. If the ANCYL is to be the vanguard of the working class, then the question arises “does the ANCYL poses this coherent and scientific ideology necessary to arm the working in their quest to obliterate the capitalist system? The Political Report further states that *“We should begin to organise workers in their workplaces and speak to real working class issues and struggles, in particular relating to the need to change South Africa's racialised capitalist relations*”. This quoted line suggests that the intention of the ANCYL is to mobilise the working class to change South Africa’s racialised capitalist relations, in my understanding changing is not the same as the total destruction of South Africa’s racialised capitalist relations but only the changing of their racialised character but that’s just my nderstanding. The next line probably gives better meaning to the intention of the ANCYL when it says* * *“The ANC Youth League should mobilise workers in mines, factories and farms, and organically develop ideological and political positions that will lead to their total emancipation”.* Again my understanding of the total emancipation of the working class is to totally free the working class from the bondages and exploitation of the capitalist system and from a Marxist-Leninist premise workers can only be totally emancipated when they totally destruct the capitalist relations of production. Therefore the question is “Is the ANCYL calling for the total destruction of the capitalist relations of production in South Africa or phrased differently is the ANCYL advocating for a socialist/communist South Africa” ? In order for us to be able to answer this question we must interrogate what is the ANCYL and what is its ideology.* * *What is the ANCYL* The preamble to the to the ANCYL constitution gives us a brief understanding of what is the ANCYL it states that *"The African National Congress Youth League was founded in 1944 as an organisation of the youth committed to the ideals of democracy, freedom and peace, it is governed by and adheres to the policies and programmes of the ANC, and its existence derives from the Constitution of the ANC”*. It is a reasonable conclusion to say that the ANCYL is a youth wing of the African National Congress and therefore it exits to further the aims and objectives of the African National Congress within the youth sector. The NEC Political Report further states that*“Whilst appreciating the ANC Youth League's role of mobilising the youth behind the vision of the ANC, and championing their interests, we have politically and organisationally repositioned the ANC Youth League to play the role of the Youth League of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Anton Lembede. Our Youth League is politically and ideologically sound, committed and militant, and consistently raising critical issues that relate to socio-economic transformation”*. I’m not really sure what the “* * Youth League of Nelson Mandela.........etc” is but* *I * *think* *it does not change the current primary definition of the ANCYL as the Youth League of the ANC as articulated in ANCYL constitution(unless the 24th congress amended the constitution as such) *What is the ideology of the ANCYL * The constitution of the ANCYL states that “* The ANCYL shall function as an autonomous body* *within the overall structure of the ANC of which it shall be an integral part. It shall be based on the political and ideolgical objectives of the ANC".* In my understanding this means that the ANCYL does not have its own ideology separate from that of the ANC, this then means that in order to understand the ideology of the ANCYL you must understand that of the ANC of course this understanding must take into account the ability of the ANCYL to influence the ANC’s ideology but up until the ideology of the ANC is changed the ANCYL is guided by the ideology of the ANC. It is not necessary for purposes of this brief article to venture into the debate of exactly what is the ideology of the ANC but we can safely say that the ANC through the NDR seeks to create a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa. It is quite clear then that currently the ANC is not advocating for the total destruction of the capitalist relations of production in South Africa and therefore the ANCYL cannot also(the only thing the ANCYL can do is lobby and try to influence ANC to adopt this as its objective,... well until then we will wait with baited breath) *The youth as a motive force* The ANCYL is an organisation of young people between the ages of 14 and 35 from all class backgrounds, therefore its primary constituency is the youth. The youth as a whole is not a class but a strata of society, its class position is in the process of being defined this does not mean that the youth is not part of a class but it means that the youth is not a class on its own. As highlighted in the composition of the membership of the ANCYL , youth is not a homogenous grouping and its primary defining element is age. In a Marxist-Leninist understanding a class is defined by its relations with the means of production and not on the basis of age. The ANCYL mobilises its membership on the basis of age and not on that of class and therefore the ANCYL is a multiclass youth organisation with competing class interest within even though it has a stated bias to the working class. *The ANCYL’s capacity to mobilise* A vanguard’s capacity to mobilise the working class behind its ideology is critical in ensuring that its objectives are finally achieved(this actually applies to all organisations but is critical to a vanguard party). Then it follows that if the Youth Leagues is to assume the role of the vanguard it must then posses this requisite organising and mobilising capacity. It is therefore important to assess the ANCYL’s current capacity to mobilise, If we look at the ANCYL organisationally, we clearly see that contrary to what the its NEC may have us believe in its reports, the YL mostly has seasonal branches that only spring up in the run up to conferences of which mostly are bogus anyway as they only exist in First National Bank , besides not having real branches the YL’s campaigns are only campaigns in the media but are not found on the ground where young people continue to languish in poverty and unemployment. The report further states that “*The ANC Youth League should be the voice of the petrol attendants, waiters and waitresses, and tellers in retail chain stores because they do not have a voice. We should be the voice of farm workers, of garbage carriers, of street sweepers, of manufacturing workers, of the unemployed reserves of workers*”. The majority of the people mentioned here are youth so the YL does not need the title of a vanguard to mobilise them actually it should have already mobilised them. The sad reality is that the YL only mobilises the youth when its elections or in the run up to conferences and throughout the year the youth remains unorganised, so maybe if the YL is to be the vanguard, workers should know they will only be organised in the run up to conferences and elections *Conclusion * If we use Marxist-Leninist tools of analysis as ANCYL NEC political report says we should, we should be able to clearly understand that the total emancipation of the working class can only be achieved by the total destruction of the capitalist relations of production and the ushering in of a society based on socialist/communist relations of production. Secondly we should understand that the day to day struggles of the working class need to be channelled into a coherent struggle for the total destruction of the capitalist system. Thirdly the motive force of this revolution is a conscious working class lead by a scientific and ideologically coherent vanguard party. To be a vanguard is not a matter of a pronouncement or a title but its based on possessing the scientific, ideological, political and organisational capacity to be able to provide leadership to day to day working class struggles. It is therefore the conclusion of this article that scientifically the ANCYL cannot be the vanguard of the working class irrespective of how desperately it would like to be one and the pronouncement that it can be in ANCYL NEC political report just displays ideological incoherence and a clear lack of understanding of what a vanguard from a Marxist-Leninist point of view. This conclusion is based primarily on the fact that the ANCYL scientifically is a multiclass youth organisation that does not have its own ideological and political independence but is youth wing of a multiclass National Liberation Movement. Further besides not possessing the scientific, ideological, and political capacity necessary to be the vanguard of the working class the ANCYL currently does not poses the requisite organising and mobilising capacity this is clearly displayed by its glaring inability to mobilise the youth around their day to day struggles. We therefore further conclude that there’s more rhetoric than revolution in the ANCYL’s assertion that it wants to be vanguard of the working class. Plato defines rhetoric as the persuasion of ignorant masses within the courts and assemblies, he further says that rhetoric, is merely a form of flattery and functions similarly to cookery, which masks the undesirability of unhealthy food by making it taste good. In my view the ANCYL is trying to flatter the South African working class by using revolutionary sounding rhetoric when in fact there is no scientific basis for their assertions. -- 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] .
