Draft notes on the ANC draft 2012 Strategy and Tactics document: ANC Limpopo Provincial Perspective
Introductory notes Since 1969 the ANC Strategy and Tactics documents have always been important in guiding the ANC’s political practices in pursuit of the revolutionary change under different conditions. These notes serves as a critique of the current draft 2012 Strategy and Tactics document (hereinafter refereed to as S&T) to be discussed in the forthcoming ANC National policy conference and finally adopted in the 53rd ANC elective conference to be held in Mangaung. A strategy is a plan to achieve a particular goal, and tactics are means by which that goal is supposed to be achieved. Tactics may be offensive or defensive and they may also be revolutionary or reactionary or reformist. This means not all tactics are revolutionary. It is not enough to identify a goal, plan and tactics, a strategy must also identity and analyse the strength and weakness social forces objectively and subjectively against and for the identified goal. This means strategists and tacticians ought to take seriously the conditions under which they have to pursue their plans and tactics; otherwise they will design plans and tactics that are not realizable, thus defeating their goals. The draft S&T shows that since 1994 the ANC-led government has mainly achieved political democracy, with less economic transformation. And argues that techno-institutional defects of the state such as lack of skills, low levels of industrialization, corruption and inability to maintain economic and social infrastructure accounts for the absence of through-going transformation. The ANC-led government did not sell out the revolution, as the ANC critics would argue. Instead tactical detours were taken without loosing strategic commitment to the vision of the NDR due to particular set of balance of forces, the draft S&T argues. It then suggests that the second transition should be embarked upon to build the ‘national democratic society’ based on mixed economy, developmental state, and nebulous notions human solidarity and best human civilizations. The S&T also lays out the economic global situation, and argues that there is a shift towards the global south. Lastly, it identifies the social class forces that will carry out the project of building the national democratic society, albeit without carry out an analysis of the contemporary South African class structure. These critical notes will judge the current S&T document against foregoing elementary conception of what a strategy and tactic ought to entail. These notes basically show that the draft S&T discussion document fails to systematically identify the strategic class opponents of the national democratic revolution. As a consequence it has no adequate explanation on why since 1994 the ANC-led government has not fully realize the strategic economic goals of the Freedom Charter, and what is to be done to overcome underdevelopment challenges facing working class and its allies in the National Democratic Revolution. We start by showing the pitfalls of the concept of the ‘second transition’, and then re-state how the ANC-led movement has conceptualized transition from the ‘colonialism of a special type’ to a national democratic and revolutionary society. The second transition? The draft S&T has introduced the concept of the ‘second transition’ as a way of setting out the strategic tasks for the next 30 to 50 years (Bullet 7). In order to spell the pitfalls in the concept of second transition, it is worth laying out how the ANC-led has historically conceptualized the transition from ‘colonialism of a special type’. It is worth noting that there are different levels of thinking about transitions. Firstly, there is transition from one mode of production to the other (e.g. transition from capitalism to socialism). The other is about transitions within a particular mode of production (e.g. transition from colonial capitalism to neo-colonialism; from social democratic capitalism to neo-liberalism capitalism). In each of these transitions, there are stages, in which for instance a class owning the means of production conquers political power, which in turn it is used to transform or reform economic power relations. The political transition (revolution), which simply requires the smashing of the political superstructure acting as a fetter for the bourgeoisie economic interests (e.g. American Revolution). It could be a non-owning class, which captures and transform the state power to change economic relations and other social relations (e.g. Russian revolution). The ANC Strategy and Tactics since 1969 had been anchored in the national democratic revolution – which is an anti-colonial and working-class led multi-class strategy designed to overthrow colonial power and set favorable conditions for a socialist transition in colonialized societies such as South Africa. So, in itself, the national democratic revolution is not a socialist revolution, but it is not anti-socialist revolution since it creates more favorable conditions for a socialist transition. The ANC’s strategy is supposed to bring about the national democratic revolution. What is a revolution? Succinctly put, a revolution is about a transfer of power from social group of people defined in terms of class, nation and other identifies. What do we mean by power? Power is ability to do what you want. So power and freedom are deeply related in that without power one is without freedom. There are different forms of power. Economic power for instance, refers to the ability to transform nature to realize one’s material interests, and political power refers to ability to change or defend certain power relations – which may be on oppression or equality; exploitation. Political power is concentrated in the state. In South Africa, white people as a whole led by white monopoly capital dominated black people as a whole. White monopoly in the main exploited white working class and super-exploited the black working class. It is for this reason, in its historical documents particularly after 1969 until the early 1990s; the ANC has always identified white monopoly capital as the strategic opponent of the national democratic revolution. This was borne out of its role in the development of colonial capitalism in South Africa, in which it carried out the colonial revolution through amongst other things dispossessed the Africans of their land and other means of production as a necessary condition to install capitalism. The ANC’s revolutionary change is about the transfer of both economic and political power from a class alliance of the nationally oppressed under the leadership of the working class. This power is transferred from white monopoly capital, which has been the leader of the white minority in South Africa, to the working class in the main, but also to the non-proletarian classes from the nationally oppressed. The ANC’s revolutionary change is not merely about the transfer of power, but it is also about the transformation of power. In other words, the ANC revolutionary’s objective is not to transfer power in order to reproduce oppression and gender oppression as well as super-exploitation of the working class as the 1969 Morogoro Strategy and Tactics document states that our nationalism ‘…must not be confused with the classical drive by an elitist group among the oppressed people to gain ascendancy so that they can replace the oppressor in the exploitation of the mass’. The Freedom Charter is also very elaborate on how power should be transformed. Amongst other things, it states that ‘The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole’. The 1985 Kabwe further pointed out that: ‘Though the Freedom Charter is not a programme for socialism, it must, nevertheless, be distinguished from a conventional bourgeois-democratic programme. In its third and fourth clauses, the Charter projects the seizure of economic assets presently owned either by South African capitalist firms or trans-national corporations. Such measures will strip the present ruling class of the actual substance of its power, by seizing hold of the commanding heights of the economy. People`s power, as conceived within our movement, will therefore entail a democratic revolution of a new type, in which the interests of the working people, of town and countryside, will be pre-eminent. At the same time the democratic state will secure the interests of the small property-owner, the petty commodity producer, the artisans, traders and professional strata’. In short, in our South African context the transition has been understood as a transition from the colonialism of a special type, marked by the first dismantling of the CST politico-ideological superstructural power concentrated in the colonial state and its economic structure based the Freedom Charter. What is wrong with the concept of the ‘second transition’? The first substantive problem with the notion of second transition is that it exaggerates political democracy. It does not only disregard the reproduction of the legacy of despotism in the countryside through traditional authorities, which also re-enforces tribal identities and consciousness, thus undermining revolutionary national and class consciousness. But also fails to acknowledge the 1994 political breakthrough has installed a political superstructure with elaborate legal and repressive apparatuses that reinforces and maintains and reproduces the colonial class relations, which includes the colonial industrial structure. Whilst there are elements of the Constitution that are progressive, it does not problematize the private property clause for instance. Furthermore, the structures, powers and functions of the old state were left intact after the negotiated settlement. For instance, the strategic independence of the South African Reserve Bank was guaranteed and codified in the Constitution. This is not to say that the entry of the ANC is not progressive. This is to simply say that the so-called ‘political transition’ did not democratize the political superstructure. It has amongst other things guaranteed universal suffrage, but maintained economic power of erstwhile internal colonizers. The task therefore is not just economic transformation, but the fundamental change in the politico-legal superstructure of the post-1994 state. The presence of the ANC led government has just increased the relative autonomy of the state from monopoly capital, but has not uprooted its structural power associated with its ownership of the economy resources. The second problem with the notion of ‘second transition’ is that it does not theorize how imperialism still has an effect in undermining political sovereignty of the states in the global south, including South Africa. States are unable to implement decisions partly because of the imperialist treaties that they enter into such as the WTO and Investment Laws etc. Thirdly, the mechanical separation of the political and economic transitions is misleading, and politically dangerous. It is unthinkable to carry out economic transformation without politics since politics is about means by which social relations including economic relations are transformed or defended. The emphasis of the economic transition may have the demobilizing effects of the popular forces resulting in the defeat of the revolution itself. Political opponents of the Freedom Charter, namely white monopoly capital and their compradorial allies, will obviously constitute an oppositional the political force within and outside the ANC-led movement to oppose the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy. The concrete forms of this opposition cannot be known a prior, but will include investment strike and subverting democracy within and outside the ANC-led alliance. Lastly, the S&T does not also critically look at how state institutions over time have been used to deal not with counter-revolution, but dismantling the democratic culture within the ANC-led movement. To illustrate, use of the intelligence instruments as a surveillance of fellow comrades within the ANC to settle political differences. We should also discuss how liberation movements once in power treat democratic dissent and critique as a counter-revolutionary and racist, thus quelling artists and intellectuals into silence, but praise jesters. It should be remembered that many revolutions were lost not mainly because of external imperialist forces were that powerful, but because organizations that were established to liberate the oppressed and exploited were turned against the very oppressed and exploited (Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, USSR under Stalin etc.). As a consequence, these erstwhile revolutionary organizations became instruments for class upward mobility for the privileged stratum within these organizations. Militants threatening the dominant privileged stratum were branded as counter-revolutionary, purged, including massacred through secret state policing and intelligence services. White monopoly capital - the strategic class opponent/obstacle of the NDR The draft S&T fails to identify the strategic class opponent of the National Democratic Revolution in the current phase. The S&T only pose this as a question, and then suggests that the central task of the NDR is eradication of socio-economic legacy of Apartheid, which includes the issue of super-exploitation . Implicit in this proposition is the idea that the legacy of colonialism is the strategic enemy of the NDR. This argument does not only fail to explain how and why the legacy of colonialism is reproduced, but does not identify the key social classes responsible for the reproduction of colonialism since 1994. After failing to identify the key class opponent of the NDR, the S&T cites technocratic reasons for failure of the ANC-led government to carry out radical economic programs as entailed in the Freedom Charter. Amongst other reasons for are low levels of industrialization, corruption, weakening of state institutions, skills and capital flight and lack of maintenance of infrastructure (Bullet 104). Important as these techno-institutional issues are, but in themselves do not fully explain why as the ANC-led movement we have not fully utilized our political power as demonstrated in the electoral support and mass organizational power to fully implement the Freedom Charter. The explanation for this should be sought in identifying mechanisms and dominant class agents that produce and reproduce these problems. We argue that part of the obstacles to our ability to fully deal with the legacy of colonialism of a special type is white monopoly capital and its compradorial class forces. To end legacy of national oppression of black majority constituted largely by the black working class, there has to be a significant transfer and transformation from white monopoly capital to the democratic revolutionary state and other collective forms of economic ownership. We therefore argue that white monopoly capital rooted mainly in agriculture, mining, energy and finance is still the strategic class opponent of the NDR. Why? To begin with, its economic ownership enables it to continue to dominate both the state and the working class, and all other motive forces. The ownership of the economic resources provides the white monopoly capital to determine where to invest, and where to invest. States are inherently interested in the investment and they are forced to set conditions for capitalists to invest, otherwise there will be no employment and tax revenue. White monopoly capital as well as transnational capital has used its structural power rooted in the ownership of the means of production with the quiescence of our democratically elected government, to impose anti-poor economic policies such as Growth Employment and Redistribution, and macro-economic policy assumption entailed in the current New Growth Path. GEAR is presented in the draft S&T is presented as a tactical detour to deal with certain economic circumstances at that time. It is not our intention to rehearse the criticism of the GEAR policy here, except to say if indeed GEAR was a tactic, then it was a reactionary tactic. Furthermore, the draft S&T does not explain why this neo-liberal ‘tactic’ codified in GEAR is being reproduced in the post-2009 ANC-led government’s New Growth Path. In the context of increased capitalist global competition, monopoly capital has increased the rate of exploitation of the working class hence the growing racialized inequalities. Through the narrow BEE program, white monopoly capital has also co-opted the historically oppressed into structures of its accumulation. Many of the co-opted historically oppressed act as political agents, including within the ANC itself for white monopoly capital, hence they will also be opposed to radical economic transformation, thus reproducing underdevelopment. With the quiescence of our democratically elected government, white monopoly capital has also embarked on capital flight, which denied South Africa’s financial resources to address the legacy of colonial underdevelopment facilitated by white monopoly capital. To illustrate, companies such as South African Breweries (SAB-Miller), Anglo-American and Old Mutual are listed abroad. Because of its failure to connect the economic policy choices our ANC government made, the draft S&T expresses its dismay at the government failure to investment in social and economic infrastructure, but cannot explain why it failed do so (Bullet 43 and 44). The relationship between state, capital and working class The relationship between capital, state and working class is conceptualized as a mere unity and struggle of the opposite (Bullet 97). Two points are worth noting here. The first is that the unity and struggle of the opposites between capital, labour and state are inherent under capitalism. So, this formulation does not add any strategic value to the S&T discussions because it is stating the obvious. To illustrate, the working class enter into a relationship with business because it needs to earn wage-income in order to materially reproduce itself. On the other hand, capital needs workers to produce profit, and they enter into both complimentary and conflictual relationship in that a worker is better off under capitalism as along as he is employed and a capitalist is better off as along as he has productive workers. But they struggle over the working conditions and the distribution of what workers have produced. The ANC’s conception of the relationship between working class and monopoly capital in the ANC S&T documents had not just been of mere unity and struggle of the opposite, but also of negation of monopoly capital in line with Freedom Charter and other historical documents of the ANC. That is to say, the leading motive of the NDR – the working class and its class allies cannot just engage itself in permanent unity and struggle of the opposite with white monopoly capital, but it must seek to obliterate white monopoly in line with the Freedom Charter. For this reason, the erroneous suggestion by the draft S& that monopoly capital can be eliminated through government competition policy must be rejected (Bullet 99). After competition still takes place amongst monopolies or big companies. Business competition is not a function of size of a firm. Furthermore, the reduction of the NDR to mere ending Apartheid property relations (Bullet 40) as opposed to ending monopoly capital must also be rejected. The capacity of the developmental state is merely defined in terms of technical capacity without building its economic capacity through nationalization of the strategic industries, amongst other things. Global context The draft S&T is not anchored in the rigorous analysis of global capitalism and its imperialist form. It has an eclectic theory of crisis. The current global economic crisis is presented as a multiple crises, without capturing the essential cause of the crisis. In fact the draft S&T treats effects – intellectual, financial and economic crises as causes of the on-going economic crisis. The current crisis of capitalism should be located within the on-going falling rates of profits, which forces capitalists not only to re-invest in technological change, but invest overseas in search for cheap labour, raw materials and markets. So, the attack on workers’ wages, imperialist military attacks on the states in the global south such as Libya and Iraq, relocation of investment to China and possible to Africa should be understood as amongst other attempts to restore the falling profit rates through seeking cheap labour, markets and raw materials, nd other imperialist geo-strategic interests. The draft S&T has no analysis of the superstructure of the global capitalism and its imperialist form. It takes the UN, WTO, World Bank and other multilateral international organizations as given. It does not question how these institutions have been used to pursue capitalist imperialist agenda throughout the world, and how the global south should position itself. It only mentions the military power of the USA. But it does not show how imperialism and its militarism play themselves out in Africa, including in South Africa. The USA had military presence in 140 countries, including in Botswana. Furthermore, the draft S&T does explore the conscious or unconscious sub-imperialist role of South Africa in Africa. Conclusion? Our general conclusion is that the draft S&T is revisionist and reformist in the sense that it significantly departs from the ANC’s revolutionary analysis of the social world and how to change it. For this reason, it must be significantly redrafted based on rigorous reading of the concrete world - not impressionistically as it is the case with the current draft S&T. In doing, so, it should anchor its programme on the Freedom Charter, and lay out strategy and tactics to defeat white monopoly capital and its compradorial class forces. This will assist the ANC in its 53rd conference to adopt a well informed Strategy and Tactics to inform our revolutionary practice. 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