An Open Letter to cde Irvin Jim
Dear cde Irvin,
Over the years you and I have had several debates. We have often
differed. However, I would like to believe we've always agreed on at
least one thing. If we are to build a vibrant socialist left in South
Africa, then comradely ideological engagements (even robust ones) are
a vital part of that project. Of course, as we proceed, we must
safeguard the internal democratic spaces and processes of our
respective organisations. Any factional manipulation from the outside
must not be tolerated. Public spats in which you or I reach in to
support this or that personality within each other's formations would
be out of order. On the other hand, neither of us has ever subscribed
to the bureaucratic notion that "we shouldn't air ANY of our
differences in public". When those differences are about analysing our
reality and debating broad strategy and tactics, then I think we agree
that we should open up robust, comradely engagement. This letter is
written in that spirit.
It's a letter prompted by some things you said in an interview in last
week's Mail & Guardian ("Vavi 'a victim of class conflict'", March 8).
Certain positions you adopt in this interview relate to concerns I've
wanted to raise for some time. You'll remember that in the course of
last week's interview the journalist (Matumo Letsoalo) asked: "Why is
Vavi being targeted?"
You responded: "It is not difficult to know why Vavi is being
attacked. Cosatu has a duty to implement resolutions which are in the
interest of workers. The contradiction is between two classes, the
working class and the capitalists. The state supports the ruling class
and Vavi represents the working class."
That seems perfectly cut-and-dry. In the one corner, wearing blue
shorts, is the State supporting the ruling class (= the capitalists).
In the other corner, wearing red shorts, is cde Vavi representing the
working class. But this response provokes the journalist into an
obvious follow-up: "But some of your leaders are deployed in the
state". To which you reply: "The state is not monolithic. It can be
engaged. There is nothing wrong with some of our leaders being there."
Suddenly things are not so simple. In the blue-short capitalist corner
(perhaps holding a towel and a gum-guard?) are worker leaders. What
are they doing there? Well, there is nothing wrong with them being
there, you reassure us. But isn't there a logical (not to mention
ideological) inconsistency between these responses?
I don't want to build a whole theoretical case based on a brief
interview in the Mail & Guardian. So let's rather turn to a more
substantial intervention to which your signature is attached (along
with those of the other National Union of Metalworkers' of SA
office-bearers). I am referring to your 18-page NUMSA Central
Committee press statement of September 2, 2012.
This extensive statement was issued in the traumatic weeks immediately
following the Marikana tragedy. In seeking to analyse the tragedy, the
statement betrays, I think, the very same confusion present in your
Mail & Guardian interview.
The CC statement attributes the Marikana tragedy to the alleged fact
that "the post-1994 South African state and government - a state and
government whose strategic task and real reason for existence is the
defence of the Minerals/Energy/Finance Complex - will do anything to
defend the property rights and profits of this class, including
slaughtering the working class." The post-1994 South African state and
government are reduced to a single essence. State and government are
monolithic entities whose "strategic task" and "real reason" for
existence can always be simplistically declared on the basis of the
predominant economic mode of production. In Marxism this approach has
long been characterised as "vulgar economism", as "undialectical
metaphysics".
The NUMSA statement, nevertheless, goes on to claim Marx and Lenin as
authorities for its economism: "By this singular act [the Marikana
tragedy], the police have violently reminded us once again what Marx
and Lenin taught us about the state: that it is always an organ of
class rule and class oppression and that bourgeois democracy is
nothing but the best political shell behind which the bourgeoisie
hides its dictatorship." Take note of the cut-and-dry, undialectical,
"nothing buts" that are at play in this sentence.
More seriously, note also how this particular piece of reductionist
economism depends upon an extremely problematic distortion of what
actually happened in the days before August 16 at Marikana last year.
The statement condemns the "savage, cowardly actions and excessive
force used by the police, which invariably ["inevitably"?] led to the
deaths of 44 workers…" Yes, there are grave concerns that we all need
to have concerning police violence not just in Marikana but
countrywide, day-in and day-out. But your Marikana death-toll
knowingly obscures the fact that the first ten of those 44 deaths were
not at the hands of the police. In fact, the death-toll included two
policemen, two security guards protecting the National Union of
Mineworkers' offices, and six NUM members - all killed by anti-NUM
vigilantes seeking to violently displace your sister COSATU affiliate
from the platinum mines around Rustenburg. In the months and years
before there were many more deaths of NUM organisers at the hands of
these vigilante forces. The NUMSA CC knows these facts very well. So
this cannot have been an innocent slip.
It is hard not to draw the conclusion that behind this apparently
militant anti-state, anti-police, anti-capitalist position lurks
another unspoken anti. The CC statement shows a remarkable lack of
solidarity with NUMSA's sister COSATU affiliate - NUM. Whatever NUM's
weaknesses, and surely it has many challenges, NUMSA's extensive CC
statement contains not one single expression of sympathy for or
solidarity with its sister affiliate.
The pseudo-militant rhetoric at play here becomes all too apparent
when the very same NUMSA CC statement goes on to tell us that the "CC
holds the view that organs of class rule, particularly the police,
should not be used recklessly and violently to intervene in industrial
disputes involving workers and bosses." What does this sentimental
homily actually mean (leaving aside the presumption that what was at
play in Marikana was a simple "industrial dispute between workers and
bosses")? In effect, NUMSA is pleading for the supposed organs of
"bourgeois class dictatorship" (who "will do anything to defend the
property rights and profits of this class, including slaughtering the
working class") not to be unduly reckless or violent as they go about
their slaughtering work!
The confusion thickens when, later in the same statement, economic
policy matters are discussed. The statement calls for "strengthening
of the state sector in mining in particular…" But we have just been
told that the post-1994 state and government's "strategic task and
real reason for existence is the defence" of the capitalist
"Minerals/Energy/Finance Complex"! If there is any logical consistency
in all of this, then NUMSA must be calling for the mines to be taken
over by a state that operates in the interests of mining capitalists!
(Which I don't think is NUMSA's intention - but it was certainly the
motivation behind the "nationalisation" rhetoric of certain ex-ANC
Youth Leaguers).
The same confusion and underlying opportunism is evident in the final
section of the NUMSA statement, which deals with the "political crisis
facing Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality". NUMSA is absolutely right to
express concern at the intra-ANC factionalism in the metro, much of it
directed at the now outgoing executive mayor (and former NUMSA
leader), cde Wayile. And it is absolutely right to assert that "if the
ANC fails to deal with these challenges…we might soon find ourselves
occupying the opposition benches in the Council Chambers."
We couldn't agree more…but hang on, if the current state and
government are inherently condemned to be the organs of bourgeois
dictatorship, then (if we are to bother with elections at all)
shouldn't we be occupying the opposition benches as a matter of
principle until socialism arrives, even if we have an electoral
majority?
Now of course, cde Jim, in your follow-up last week to the Mail &
Guardian journalist you had second thoughts. You began to shift
towards a more accurate and constructive position. You said: "The
state is not monolithic. It can be engaged." But you can't have it
both ways. You can't, on the one hand, with pseudo-Marxist militancy
paint everything into monolithic camps (the state, the government, the
police = bourgeois dictatorship; cde Vavi/COSATU = the working class).
And, on the other hand, when the occasion suits pragmatically declare
that, well, actually the state, for instance, isn't monolithic. This
inevitably leads to an unbending fundamentalism in strategy, and a
pragmatic opportunism in tactics.
Let's be clear. Saying that the state is not monolithic doesn't mean
that anything goes, of course. The state is not a shapeless amoeba,
nor a purely technocratic machine, floating in a classless vacuum. As
Marxists we have a responsibility to always discern and act upon the
main class trajectories, the diverse class tendencies and
contradictions at play within the state, across its various sectors,
spheres, departments and specific policy programmes. We need to
analyse how certain state configurations might be more favourable to
one or another class. We need to figure out how popular mobilisation
can alter the class balance of forces outside and within the state.
Equally, our own formations and our policy programmes are not
monolithic or inherently progressive. A trade union (particularly a
vigilante union) is not guaranteed to be advancing the interests of
the working class. A call for nationalisation is not necessarily
progressive. A demand to increase wages by, let's say, 15% is not
necessarily more socialist than a lesser demand that nonetheless is
inserted into an agenda that seeks not a better price for labour-power
on the market, but aims to build working class power and hegemony in
order to decommodify work itself. And, yes, a party that calls itself
communist is not therefore by self-proclaimed definition necessarily a
vanguard of the working class.
In pledging the SACP's respect for the struggle inside COSATU (free of
outside interference, including by the Party) to re-build unity within
the federation and between affiliates, I look forward to your
response.
Yours comradely
Jeremy Cronin
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