*The four articles from Counterpunch *
Recently it looked as if the Counterpunch had gone off the boil. One was preparing for the inevitability of all good things coming to an end some time.
But that time has not yet arrived for Counterpunch. Like a reliable old war-horse, it is still charging hard.
I have posted four articles from yesterday's Counterpunch. They cover resistance, democracy, capitalism and war.
The main message of these articles, in my opinion, is that the means of overcoming the barbaric, murderous robbers who are our opponents on every front is _organisation_.
Organisation, organisation and organisation. Education, organisation and mobilisation. If you don't hit it, it won't fall. Organise, or starve.
You can find variations on this theme of organisation in the conclusion of Alex Cockburn's article and in the conclusion of Ismael Hossein-Zadeh's article, especially, but it runs right through.
You may also recall in this connection Steven Friedman's article in The New Age this week, posted to this list.
Friedman said that COSATU in particular had forgotten how to organise, and had become a lobbying organisation (i.e. similar to an NGO).
Immediately thereafter, we received news that COSATU was busy lobbying the G20, where instead of people deciding their own fate they are /"having it decided for them by a handful of banksters, politicians, and bureaucrats living it up at taxpayer expense at 'talks' in the French resort of Cannes on the Mediterranean"/, as Paul Craig Roberts puts it.
COSATU's lobbying has metastasized into mega-lobbying, or globo-lobbying. But Friedman was right. It is necessary to organise, not lobby.
Specifically, and from a South African starting point, this means the expansion of the organisation of the working class to at least double its present level of around 2.5 million out of more than four times that number of employed people in the country.
Then it means creating and growing more democratic and fully-structured mass movements of working women, of international solidarity (one movement per country), and of pensioners, plus other mass movements as required by all kinds of interests.
It means the massification and reticulation of these new movements, and of the existing mass movements.
It means the acceleration of the creation of SACP VD branches all over the country and the consequent actualisation of alliance structures at basic community level.
The purpose of the international solidarity movements is for us to contribute to the extension of mass organisation internationally.
Clearly, if you follow the four articles, the threat is international and must be defeated internationally, and not by lobbying Mr Sarkozy, the G20 or any other such in-house structure of what Alexander Cockburn rightly refers to as the Iron Heel (i.e. Imperialism).
What is the difference between petitioning Mr Sarkozy, and petitioning the King or Queen of England?
Our job is not to go back to the petitioning days of the South African Native National Congress, but instead to organise, extend organisation, and extend mass organisation in a democratic, self-governing way and not as a lobby, or as an NGO.
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