Faster Connection?
26 July 2010
01 June 2010
Stalinism, a threat to the revolution
Che Guevara
Stalinism, a
threat to the revolution
School
Introduction – 5th Session
This is the last of five prepared “openings to discussion”
for the school that is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning in Benoni. The other
four are (linked to the relevant blog-page):
Each of the five was originally chosen so as to problematise
a critical question. Each is linked to at least six reading texts that may be suitable
to serve as “codifications” and stimulate dialogue. The five prepared sets have
subsequently been adapted to accommodate those who may want to “break up into
workshops” on the basis of a further prescriptive division. Therefore each “opening”
is divided into three abstracted parts, plus a fourth potential part that would
potentially synthesise and restore the concrete wholeness of the original
question.
In practice, the school will discuss what it wants to discuss. Preparation is done with the aim of making critical dialogue possible.
More bourgeois
than the bourgeoisie
In the 4th session, based around Lenin’s “The
State and Revolution”, we saw that Lenin in 1917 conceived of the problem of
revolution as being in the realm of freedom. He treated the question of the
withering away of the state as a priority.
After the October, 1917 revolution Lenin survived for little
more than five active years, some of which time was passed in warfare against the
“White” reactionaries and their Imperialist allies. Lenin instituted the
principles of National Democratic
Revolution in the Communist International, and at home in the Soviet Union,
the New Economic Policy.
Lenin’s writings survive in great abundance. After Lenin,
the record is much more obscure. The late Cyril Smith, a former Trotskyist,
considered that Lenin was far in advance of the other Bolsheviks, but that none
of them, and particularly not Trotsky, had a sufficient command of philosophy
to be able to guide and lead the revolutionary processes that they had
unleashed.
If Smith’s view is correct, and notwithstanding his personal
aversion to Stalin, then it must follow that the problem of “Stalinism” was not
a Stalin problem, but was a general reversion to bourgeois thinking by all of
the Bolsheviks, except Lenin, who in any case died at the beginning of 1924
after a year of serious illness. This reversion was not so much to a reliance
on the State as such, but to reliance on a State that was a resuscitation of
the bourgeois State. This resurrected State contained the germ or DNA of
bourgeoisdom, long before the fact of actual bourgeois restoration some sixty
years on.
This kind of reversion has infected other communist parties
at different times, and quite commonly in the name of anti-Stalinism, or
Euro-communism, trends which managed to be more Stalinist than the alleged
Stalinists they attacked.
For all that, the phenomenon is real. In South Africa, the
SACP is relatively, but not completely, free of dogmatism and utilitarian
objectivism. The mass movements and the mass organisations of the working
class, however, remain at risk.
Problematisation
How can South Africa be guarded against the “revolution
eating its own children”? Is it the case that political education is the thin
line that stands between the revolution and its own reversal? How can political
education itself be safeguarded from authority, dogmatism and indoctrination?
The
NDR
In the “Communist Manifesto” Marx writes of a “vast
association of the whole nation” in which “the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all”
The principal documents of the South African
National Democratic Revolution are in keeping with this vision of Karl Marx’s.
The purpose of the National Democratic Revolution
is to develop the collective power of the people through organisation at every
level and from border to border of the nation.
As Lenin pointed out, and which we have already
quoted, the greater the democracy, the closer will be the moment when it
becomes possible to transcend the state of democracy and to enter the post-state
realm of full human freedom.
The bourgeois aspect of the state is its reversion
to authority, whereas the direction of the true proletarian revolution is
towards freedom and the full redundancy of the state, to be replaced by fully
human life without class conflict.
Problematisation
Using the two given documents, Strategy and
Tactics, and SA Working class and the NDR, can it be shown that the on-going
revolution is assured? If these documents have become antiquarian and without
living support, then how can we revive their revolutionary character and
currency?
Freedom
The bottom line is always freedom, or “power to the
people”. To paraphrase Christopher Caudwell, we are communists because we
believe in freedom.
Freedom is the power of “The Subject”. Freedom is
“agency”. Freedom is “free will”. Human freedom must first be individual, but it
must also be social, or collective. Freedom is humanism.
The discourse of freedom runs through the entire
literature of historical human culture. Shadowing it has always been its
irrational, anti-human opponent, the consequence of class-divided society’s
necessity to justify its unjust existence and to rationalise the irrational.
Gramsci, in his last, unfinished piece of writing
before his incarceration (Some Aspects of the Southern Question) managed to
synthesise the questions of class struggle, human intellectual leadership,
culture and freedom.
James Heartfield, confronting the irrational
post-modernists who are still our contemporaries, though weaker than before,
succeeded in reminding readers of the titanic struggle between rational
humanism, of which Marxism is the vanguard, and the irrational fatalism that
suits the degenerate Imperialist bourgeoisie of today.
Ron Press, more lucid and candid than both of
these, though no less profound, manages to shine a light forward so that his
readers can see that freedom is the stable choice. Mathematically as well as in
terms of political science, freedom turns out to be the resting condition of
humanity, and its rule rather than its exception.
Problematisation
How to propagate freedom? How to do so in the
masses, and how to do so in the structures.
Synthesis
All our struggles are not the same, but the struggle for
freedom is common to all other struggles. Caudwell said that freedom is the
good that contains all other goods.
How can this understanding, this enthusiasm, be revived?
The struggle for freedom is ours. How can we retain it and
prevent others from stealing the clothes of the freedom fighters, when they are
not freedom fighters at all?
Amilcar Cabral
31 May 2010
Are we ready for revolution?
Are we ready for
revolution?
School Introduction -
4th Session
Why “The State and
Revolution”?
In the classic revolutionary literature one work, an
unfinished work, stands out for its immediacy and for its closeness to the
frontier of political thought, where experience and theory meet the unknown.
This is Vladimir Lenin’s “The State and Revolution”, commenced in between the
two Russian Revolutions of 1917 but interrupted half-way through by the Great
October Revolution led by Lenin himself.
This school has to anticipate the most difficult kind of
decision-making, which is precisely the kind that has to be done at the
creative frontier beyond the safety of practiced moves and wide consensus.
This is where Lenin found himself in the months before the
October Revolution. What he did was to rehearse the revolutionary record, so as
to secure everything that could be secured in terms of theory and recorded
practice. It is of great interest what he chose to revise.
Lenin went back to Marx and Engels. The first three of the
six chapters focus successively upon the eighteen-forties, the 1848
revolutions, and the Paris commune of 1871, through the eyes of Marx and
Engels.
Problematisation
The question that Lenin puts unavoidably in front of us is
that of the State. The problem that appears is: whether or to what extent the
State can be treated as benign, or developmental? We do not repudiate Lenin, yet
we still praise state ownership and state “delivery”. How are these things
reconciled? If the State is benign, then why would we want it to wither away?
If the state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie [Marx/Engels, Communist Manifesto], and “an Instrument for the
Exploitation of the Oppressed Class” [Lenin, State & Revolution] then how
can it at the same time be beneficial?
Here are two texts that may assist:
Permanent
Revolution
Taking a cue from Lenin, we can find in Karl Marx’s work the
same kind of on-the-edge writing in decisive moments. In 1850 Marx was heavily
involved, working from England, in revolutionary agitations in Germany. As
always, the whole matter depended upon the balance of class forces from moment
to moment, with the “democratic petty bourgeoisie” constantly vacillating and backsliding.
The working class was obliged to ally with them, but according to Marx, in the
last sentence of this speech, the proletariat should look forward to a “Permanent
Revolution” when the gains made would be for practical purposes irreversible.
In the “Critique of the Gotha Programme” when the social
democrats were attempting to unite, Karl Marx reluctantly (he was ill) went
through the documents and marked all the “newspaper scribbler's phrases” that
he could not swallow, which was many.
In parts III and IV Marx deals with the the state and “present-day
society” with impatience. It is clear that Marx is facing the same problems
among his comrades and allies as Lenin was facing in 1917, which are also the
problems we face today. Marx rejects “state aid” to co-operatives. In effect,
Marx is rejecting what we would now call “developmentalism”.
Problematisation
If Marx rejected developmentalism, who are we to restore it?
And why would we want to do so? Is there any way to reconcile the Critique of
the Gotha Programme with today’s developmentalism?
Withering Away of
the State: an urgent question
Lenin thought that the Withering Away of the State was a
matter of urgency. He wrote a full section of his Chapter One on the matter,
and then came back with a full chapter on it (Chapter 5, download linked below).
In Chapter One, Under “The "Withering Away" of the
State, and Violent Revolution” and after quoting Engels at some length, Lenin
wrote:
‘The current, widespread, popular, if one may
say so, conception of the "withering away" of the state undoubtedly
means obscuring, if not repudiating, revolution.
‘Such an "interpretation", however,
is the crudest distortion of Marxism, advantageous only to the bourgeoisie. In
point of theory, it is based on disregard for the most important circumstances
and considerations indicated in, say, Engels' "summary" argument we
have just quoted in full.
‘In the first place, at the very outset of his
argument, Engels says that, in seizing state power, the proletariat thereby
"abolishes the state as state". It is not done to ponder over the
meaning of this. Generally, it is either ignored altogether, or is considered
to be something in the nature of "Hegelian weakness" on Engels' part.
As a matter of fact, however, these words briefly express the experience of one
of the greatest proletarian revolutions, the Paris Commune of 1871, of which we
shall speak in greater detail in its proper place. As a matter of fact, Engels
speaks here of the proletariat revolution "abolishing" the bourgeois
state, while the words about the state withering away refer to the remnants of
the proletarian state after the socialist revolution. According to Engels, the
bourgeois state does not "wither away", but is "abolished"
by the proletariat in the course of the revolution. What withers away after
this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state.
‘Secondly, the state is a "special
coercive force". Engels gives this splendid and extremely profound
definition here with the utmost lucidity. And from it follows that the
"special coercive force" for the suppression of the proletariat by
the bourgeoisie, of millions of working people by handfuls of the rich, must be
replaced by a "special coercive force" for the suppression of the
bourgeoisie by the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). This is
precisely what is meant by "abolition of the state as state". This is
precisely the "act" of taking possession of the means of production
in the name of society. And it is self-evident that such a replacement of one
(bourgeois) "special force" by another (proletarian) "special
force" cannot possibly take place in the form of "withering
away".
‘Thirdly, in speaking of the state
"withering away", and the even more graphic and colorful "dying
down of itself", Engels refers quite clearly and definitely to the period
after "the state has taken possession of the means of production in the
name of the whole of society", that is, after the socialist revolution. We
all know that the political form of the "state" at that time is the
most complete democracy. But it never enters the head of any of the
opportunists, who shamelessly distort Marxism, that Engels is consequently
speaking here of democracy "dying down of itself", or "withering
away". This seems very strange at first sight. But it is
"incomprehensible" only to those who have not thought about democracy
also being a state and, consequently, also disappearing when the state
disappears. Revolution alone can "abolish" the bourgeois state. The
state in general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only "wither away".’
At the end of Chapter 5 Lenin describes the transition to
communism (shortened)
‘Accounting and control--that
is mainly what is needed for the "smooth working", for the proper
functioning, of the first phase of communist society. All citizens are
transformed into hired employees of the state, which consists of the armed
workers... All that is required is that they should work equally, do their
proper share of work, and get equal pay; the accounting and control necessary
for this have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost…
‘The whole of society
will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labor
and pay.
‘But this
"factory" discipline, which the proletariat, after defeating the
capitalists, after overthrowing the exploiters, will extend to the whole of
society, is by no means our ideal, or our ultimate goal. It is only a necessary
step for thoroughly cleansing society of all the infamies and abominations of
capitalist exploitation, and for further progress.
‘The more complete the
democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more
democratic the "state" which consists of the armed workers, and which
is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word", the more
rapidly every form of state begins to wither away.’
Our own SACP comrade, the late Ron Press, in his “New tools
for Marxists”, shows how the new mathematics of “chaos theory” has made it
possible to understand how the kind of society described by Lenin can and must
work.
Further, Ron press shows, as Lenin understood, that the
withering away of the state was an urgent matter, and the contrary danger is
always imminent, which is that the worker’s state becomes once more a bourgeois
state.
Problematisation
How can these undoubtedly true conceptions of the state,
democracy and the withering away of both the state and democracy, be preserved
when the language of the current conjuncture is all in favour of democracy and
the state? How can the urgency of decentralisation of power be transmitted when
we are still in the process of centralising power? Here are two downloadable texts that can assist:
Synthesis
Lenin realised that the transition to communism had to be
secured in the process of the transition to socialism. Lenin realised that
there was a moment of danger when it would be possible that the worker’s state
could redevelop the characteristics of the bourgeois state. This is what
happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the eventual consequence was the
collapse and break-up of the Soviet Union into a scattering of bourgeois states.
The revolution was not permanent, after all. The undead bourgeois
state re-grew itself.
How can we institute the kind of freedom envisaged by Ron
Press, so that it, and not the reverse tendency, will be the permanent result
of our revolutionary work?
NUM scheme is for 31% state ownership only
NUM tables new plan for state mining
Florence de Vries, Business Report, Johannesburg, 31 May 2010
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Friday challenged
previous proposals on the structure of a proposed state-owned mining firm.
And it said nationalisation of existing mines should remain
on the agenda.
Addressing Parliament's portfolio committee on mining at the
weekend, NUM spokesman Madoda Sambatha said the union gave its full backing to
the establishment of a state-owned mining company and called for it to be
established by June next year.
Sambatha opposed the idea of the state owning the majority
stake in the company and said private investors, "irrespective of race or
gender", should hold 49 percent while the state held only 31 percent.
"A further 10 percent shareholding should be allocated
to an employee share ownership scheme and another 10 percent is to go to the
community, traditional authorities or worker co-operatives," said
Sambatha.
ANC Youth League president Julius Malema last week proposed
that the state hold a minimum of 60 percent shares in the company and that
private corporations would hold the remaining 40 percent and be responsible for
the payment of royalties and taxes.
Matt Brenzel, a portfolio manager for Cadiz Asset
Management, said NUM's proposal appeared to favour private investors, but that
"the state could co-opt the other shareholders in a blocking move".
"It would also have to be established how the projects
will be funded and whether state resources will be utilised, because if the
state chips in the money, one has to wonder whether these resources could be
better utilised elsewhere.
"Interestingly, there might be private investors for
whom the profit motive is not that important, whereas security of supply is.
China is a vast consumer of resource products and might be less sensitive to
the profit argument, as long as its appetite is fed," he said.
Sambatha also said there was a need for a comprehensive
mining strategy, which he believed was not currently the case. "The
National Planning Commission, the Department of Mineral Resources, organised
labour and organised business should play the most active role in this
regard."
SACP: "Towards a new growth path" et cetera
SACP Central Committee Press Statement, 30 May 2010
The SACP Central Committee met in Johannesburg on the 28th
and 29th May. The CC discussed a comprehensive political report, and it
reviewed the Party’s organisational gains and international work. Also on the
agenda was an input to the CC by the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Gill Marcus.
The SACP wishes
Bafana Bafana good luck
The CC joins fellow South Africans in conveying to our
Bafana Bafana team best wishes. We are confident that they will do our country
proud. The SACP also looks forward to a World Cup that will be celebrated and
enjoyed by all South Africans and by the hundreds of thousands of guests coming
from all parts of our continent and the world at large.
Let us make sure that the coming weeks will lay down a
lasting legacy of goodwill, a sense of common South Africanness, and a platform
for ongoing development in our communities and schools. The SACP urges all
involved to ensure that this event also benefits the workers and the poor of our
country. Let this be truly a World Cup for All!
Towards a new growth
path
For several years the SACP has been advancing the
perspective that the key strategic task of our democracy is to place our
economy upon a new and different growth path that is job creating and more
egalitarian in its outcomes. This requires, amongst other things, a break with
many of the formerly dominant neo-liberal dogmas of the recent past. The CC is
pleased to note that this general perspective is gaining ground within the broader
ANC-led alliance and in government itself.
Part of what is impelling this is the undermining of
previously held neo-liberal certainties occasioned by the global recession of
2007-9. The SACP said a year ago that, far from being over, the crisis was
likely to break out in new epicentres. The deepening crisis within the European
Union is evidence of this. Choked by the strictures of a monetary union that
favoured bankers and undermined sovereign national social policies, countries
like Greece and Spain are being forced into swingeing budget cuts that will
only make recovery more difficult, with a very real possibility of major
countries in the developed world going into sovereign default. Locally, some
who still cling to the old dogmas, are insisting that the crisis in southern
Europe is due to the fact that they “lived beyond their means”, and that this
is a “lesson for us in SA”. While economic discipline is important, the
question to ask always is: discipline on behalf of whose class interests? The UK
actually has a much bigger deficit than Spain, but because it is not part of
the monetary union, it has greater room for manoeuvre.
In the context of charting a new growth path policy, the
SACP is active in its own right and within broader Alliance structures. The CC
engaged with a discussion paper on the critical role of our mineral sector in a
new growth path. The paper notes the central and ongoing strategic importance
of this sector to our country. Contrary to the common view that the entire
sector is now a “sunset” industry, a recent City Group study estimated that SA
has the largest reserves of minerals (excluding oil and coal) by value, and is
the second in the world in terms of estimated reserve life-span, at 184 years.
This is a major national asset, and the key question is how to ensure that this
asset is used wisely in ways that ensure a sustainable growth path that
benefits all of our people and over many generations to come. In addressing
this question, the CC was particularly critical of the role of narrow BEE
interests in the mining sector, and called for major changes in the Mineral and
Petroleum Resources Development Act to address this and other issues. The CC
discussion paper will be released shortly.
The CC also commended the leadership role played by the
Young Communist League in convening a Youth Summit on Jobs which brought
together youth formations from a wide range of sectors and political formations
– including the ANCYL, COSAS, SASCO, the DA Youth, and Solidarity Youth. The
struggle against the crisis of youth unemployment requires the maximum
participation and mobilisation. The SACP will continue to support our YCL in
playing a leading role in confronting the many challenges facing our youth in
South Africa.
The fight against corruption
The greatest threat to any nation-wide effort at placing our
country onto a new job-creating growth path lies in the corrosive impact of
corruption in the private and public sectors. The red lights are flickering on
this front. We require decisive action. Corruption loots public resources, it
bedevils organisations and it saps the capacity of the state to play an
effective developmental role. Corruption in the private sector robs our fiscus
of billions of rands and becomes an added burden on the working class.
The CC received reports on the SACP’s April month of
heightened activism against corruption. We also noted and saluted the role that
SACP branches and provinces have been playing in this crucial fight.
As we take up this struggle, together with our allies and
all others in our country who abhor the impact of corruption, we can expect
fierce resistance. Already SACP lives have been lost. In Mpumalanga a fearless
and outspoken critic of corrupt practices, cde Bomber ‘Radioman’ Ntshangase, was
murdered on the night of 4 May. Other senior SACP leaders in the province have
been threatened. We are deeply concerned that no arrests have yet been made in
these cases. We express our full support for our comrades in the province and
together with them we resolve never to be intimidated.
In KZN the SACP has been active in mobilising against
corruption. In particular, SACP structures in the province have been raising
questions around the role of Ithala Bank. In our interaction with the Reserve
Bank governor, the CC learned that, apart from two small mutual banks, Ithala
Bank is the one bank in our country that has an exemption from Reserve Bank
regulatory oversight. Why does it enjoy this exemption? The exemption must be
lifted. Ithala is a very strategic development finance institution and must
come under the full regulatory oversight of the Reserve Bank.
The Reserve Bank and
vulture share-holders
In what Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus concedes is an
anomaly; our central bank has private share-holders, although the bank is a
legal personality in its own right and is not owned by these share-holders.
Nonetheless, a small clique from among the current share-holders has been
running a campaign, trying to force the bank to buy them out (to “nationalise” their
shares) at a hugely inflated price. Other central banks have faced similar
“vulture” share-holder raids.
It is in this context that the SACP fully supports the
intention behind legislation currently before Parliament’s Finance Portfolio
Committee. It is legislation that seeks to avert the danger of this kind of
predatory behaviour.
In our interaction with the Reserve Bank delegation, the CC
welcomed the refreshing openness and spirit of engagement of the governor and
her team. We respect the constitutional operational independence of the Bank.
However, it was agreed that this necessary independence of the Bank does not
mean that the Bank should or could operate in ignorance of the key challenge of
placing our country onto a job-creating and more egalitarian growth path.
We call for stability
in the SABC
The SACP is concerned that the SABC is once more showing
signs of returning to its chronic instability of previous years. The SACP calls
for stability in our public broadcaster and for good governance and collective
rather than individualistic approaches. We need a public broadcaster that
indeed represents the broad public of SA and particularly the great majority of
workers and poor. Poor governance in the SABC also sets a poor example for
governance in all of our public sector entities.
Freedom of speech and
respecting cultural diversity
The SACP has noted Friday’s back-down and apology from the
Mail & Guardian and its cartoonist Zapiro. The newspaper has conceded that
it needlessly offended many members of the Muslim community. In welcoming this
apology, the SACP believes that both the Mail & Guardian and Zapiro (and
indeed all of us) should use the opportunity to consider other instances,
affecting other communities, in which cartoons, for instance, have displayed
gross insensitivity.
The SACP certainly upholds the critical right of freedom of
speech. After all, it was the SACP that was the very first victim of
apartheid-era banning and attempts to silence our members and our publications.
Many of us went to jail for defying these anti-democratic measures. We
certainly all need to have a sense of humour and be able to laugh at ourselves.
But any journalist or graphic artist with a general commitment to building a
non-racial and tolerant democracy in SA should always weigh the right to
freedom of speech against the responsibility for not perpetuating demeaning
racial or other stereotypes – whether intentionally or otherwise. As many
progressive and moderate members of the Muslim faith have commented over the
past week, gross insensitivity simply aids and abets chauvinism and
backwardness on every side. But what applies to the Muslim faith also applies,
and with even greater force in our situation, to racial stereotyping.
It is in this broad context that the SACP welcomes President
Zuma’s proposed national dialogue aimed at promoting a country-wide discussion
on our cultural unity and diversity.
100 years since the
Union of South Africa
Monday 31st May marks 100 years since the establishment of
the Union of South Africa. While it is not exactly an anniversary to celebrate,
it is an occasion to look back and reflect upon a key moment that shaped our
shared and often highly conflictual reality.
The Union of South Africa for the first time established the
geo-political space that we now take for granted as our country. Its formation
was preceded by two-and-a-half centuries of colonial wars of dispossession and,
in many cases, genocide. The 1910 union was also preceded by a major war
pitting two semi-feudal Boer Republics against a British Imperial Army and two
local British colonies. It was essentially a war for control over the gold and
diamond mines and over the super-exploited labour required to work them.
Following the defeat of the Boer republics, in a pattern
that was to be repeated somewhat in its own way many decades later, Boer
generals and Randlords made peace and formed, in effect, the first government
of (white) national unity – the better to ensure profits and stabilise the
accumulation process.
The Union of South Africa bestowed a common citizenship on
white South Africans and excluded the great majority of blacks. 1910 marked the
beginnings of a shift from external colonial domination to what the SACP was to
describe as colonialism of a special type – in which the colonial power and the
colonised majority occupied the same national territory. The unjust exclusion
of the majority in 1910 was the immediate catalyst for the formation of the ANC
in 1912.
While the Act of Union changed the state form in SA to a
special colonial state of white minority rule, this politico-juridical change
served to strengthen and perpetuate the capitalist accumulation path set in
motion in the last quarter of the 19th century with the mining revolution. That
accumulation path integrated us into a global capitalist system as a primary
commodity exporter and an importer of capital and luxury goods.
The 1994 democratic breakthrough abolished the
special-colonial state of white minority rule and replaced it with a new, non-racial
democracy. However, 100 years after Union, and 16 years after the democratic
breakthrough, the same fundamental accumulation path that reproduces racialised
inequality remains hard-wired into our reality. Placing our economy onto a
radically different trajectory is now the central task of our democracy.
Issued by the SACP.
Contact
Malesela Maleka, 082 226 1802
30 May 2010
Marx's Capital Volumes 1, 2 & 3
Marx's Capital
Volumes 1, 2 and 3
School Introduction –
3rd Session
First division:
Overview
The Communist University Course on Capital, Volume 1 is in
24 parts. The design problem for this course was a matter of dealing with all
of the work’s 33 chapters, which are of very uneven length, and to have some
kind of key to the work that would carry the study through the entire work.
This key is provided by Marx. His quest throughout Capital
Volume 1 is for “the secret of the self-increase of capital” and his constant
answer is the same: surplus-value, being the excess product of labour worked,
over the value of labour-power paid for.
With this key it is possible to follow the development of
Marx’s thought from the 1847 “Wage Labour and Capital”, at which point he had
yet to make the crucial distinction between “labour-power” and “labour”,
through several preliminary essays and through all of the chapters of the
Volume 1 which Marx had published in 1867.
The set of introductions to this Communist University course
are linked below this section; they can serve as a short version of Capital,
Volume 1 or as a “crib” to the work, and they contain all necessary links to
the actual work itself, whether as printable documents downloads or as links to
the book on Marxists Internet Archive.
At the very moment when this course had been finished in the
second half of 2009, certain meetings and publications that took place showed
clearly that in SACP leadership circles and in ANC government circles, as well
as in the academy, Capital Volume 3 was being widely consulted and quoted.
The Capital, Volume 1 benchmark had been surpassed. Or had
it? Does Capital, Volume 3 supersede Capital Volume 1? This was now a
challenge.
Frederick Engels seemed to think that Capital Volume 3 was boss.
In his Preface to Volume 3 he says that it contains “the most important parts
of the entire work”.
This challenge to Volume 1 turned out to be the key
problematisation that made it possible to deal with both Volume 2 and Volume 3.
The key question to apply was “Is Capital Volume 1 made obsolete by these
further writings?”
It becomes clear, and clearer the more you go along, that
the answer to this question, repeatedly given by Marx himself, is an emphatic “No!”
Volumes 2 and 3 confirm Volume 1, build on Volume 1, and repeatedly
return to Volume 1 to emphasise that there is nothing in the world of finance,
or of landowning, or of any other kind or variation of capital, that adds value
under capitalism other than surplus-value. All else is an apportionment of
surplus-value, if realised, or otherwise it is a financial fiction, ruse or swindle.
The Communist University’s introductions to the ten parts of
Marx’s Capital Volumes 2 & 3 are linked immediately below.
Problematisation
For a first division, if necessary, we can take the two sets
of Introductions covering the entire work, and interrogate or test the above
argument. Is it the case that Capital, Volume 1 is nothing but a very gentle,
sometimes repetitive, but comprehensive proof of the proposition that
surplus-value is the one and only cause of the “self-increase of capital”? And
having shown that it is, is it then also the case that Volumes 2 & 3 are
concerned with the further division of the increased capital, but do not
discover any new source of it?
One might add that whereas Volume 3 in particular examines
the derivative machinations of banks and other “financial institutions”, there
is nothing in the recent “global economic meltdown”, or in the current “debt
crisis” in Europe, that is not clearly anticipated by Marx.
Finally, the Law of
the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (Volume 3, Part 3) is no more or
less than the a confirmation that the only source of increase under capitalism
is the excess labour realised over labour-power paid for; and that this being the
case, all increases in “capital-intensiveness” that result from the constant
advance of science and technology will tend to reduce profit. Therefore, it is
necessary to show the capitalists that this is so. It is necessary for them to
see that higher employment is the only way to more profit.
Second division: Capital
and the Working Class
The working class of South Africa faces a problem of unemployment
that is worse than most other countries.
On the potential up-side South Africa’s existing and
well-organised working-class can, if it is brought to a condition of steady expansion,
become the generator for a transformation of the entire continent of Africa.
In Value, Price and Profit, a lecture given by Karl Marx
that is a short version of “Capital”. In this lecture, Marx reminded his
working-class audience that labour-power is in normal circumstances paid for at
its full value. Trade union combination is necessary to prevent employers from
reducing pay below that value. Trade union struggle is a prerequisite for political
struggle.
In Lenin’s “What is To Be Done”, Lenin makes clear that
trade union organisations are not adequate for the political struggles of the
working class and trade unions or federations of trade unions cannot play the
role of political parties. The working class requires a dedicated political
party - a communist party.
In South Africa, the demand of the working class, addressed
to the bourgeoisie, is: Employ more people! In other words, both COSATU and the
SACP are to that extent demanding more capitalism.
The strategic aim of the working class is to increase its
size as a proportion of society, to increase the socialisation of production,
and to organise itself both defensively and offensively.
Problematisation
In this set of circumstances, what is a “different growth
path” as described as desirable in the media statement of the Central Committee
of the SACP (30 May 2010)?
In China, the bourgeois class is permitted to expand its
operations under the rule of the People’s Republic, led by the communist party.
One consequence of this has been the growth of the Chinese working class from a
numerically-small part of the Chinese population to the situation now where it
is the largest national proletariat that has ever existed on the planet.
In the new growth path, what must grow? Is it the bourgeois
way of life, or the proletarian way of life?
Third division: Topping
and Tailing Capital
Chapter 1 of Capital, Volume 1, on commodities, and Chapter
13 of Volume 3 on the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall may be the most
famous two chapters of the 106 chapters of the three main Volumes. These two
are given at the bottom of this section.
Problematisation
Also bearing in mind the presentation prepared by the
Communist University, but also looking at these two typical chapters in Karl
Marx’s words, how can the propagation of the knowledge of the three Volumes of
Capital be undertaken?
Presuming that this knowledge is both the highest and the
most essential political knowledge we have, and also the benchmark for all of
the rest, how can we make it familiar to millions of people, both within and
outside the SACP and SADTU?
Synthesis
Capital, the full work, is the best guide to what is really
happening in the bourgeois economy. Marx, in the book itself, constantly
upbraids the “vulgar” bourgeois economists.
The publication of Volume 1 in 1867 coincided with the
launch of the “marginal theory of value” by W S Jevons and also the “Vienna
school”. Bourgeois economists who followed included Alfred Marshall and W M
Keynes, followed in turn by the “neo-liberals” and the “neo-conservatives” of
recent years. All maintain a strict seal between themselves and the Marxists,
with few exceptions.
None of them have succeeded, and currently all of them are
out of favour in the metropolitan capitalist countries, as well as in the third
world.
South Africa has a substantial body of intellectuals both
academic and actively political, a relatively large communist party, and a
vigorous press. South Africa presents a “public realm” where, perhaps for one
of the first times in world history, it may be possible to conduct a proper and
inclusive economic dialogue that pays proper attention to the insights of Karl Marx.
While the Marxists appear to have a bias in favour of
confrontation with capital, yet there is not necessarily any call for this.
History will arrive in its own good time. Socialism, if it is to be the rule of
the proletariat, may actually be a boom-time for capital, as it is in China. What
the working class needs is an organised hegemony of ideas, and not necessarily
the immediate destruction of the bourgeois class and its economic operations.
Even if the current state (which is a bourgeois state) were
to nationalise parts of the economy, or develop new parts to the economy, these
would at present have to be based upon capitalist relations of extraction of
surplus value from workers. “Differential rents” in mining may be negligible or
non-existent. Nationalised industries will operate on the basis of the same
surplus-value and the same normal rate of profit in the same market as the
bourgeoisie.
Pecuniae non olet.
Money has no smell. In that case, what special features distinguish one “growth
path” from another? If the black cat and the white cat can both catch mice,
what difference does it make which one we use? (This was Deng Shaoping’s triumphant
argument.)
Problematisation
Can it be possible to develop in South Africa a constructive
dialogue with bourgeois business so that the country can have a single business
culture with two main classes, as in China? Can it be possible to restore Karl
Marx’s works, and in particular “Capital”, to the mainstream of intellectual leadership
in business? How can such an educational project be furthered?
28 May 2010
Women, a necessary democratic mass?
Women, a necessary democratic mass?
School Introduction - 2nd Session
First Part
“The feminists
seek equality in the framework of the existing class society; in no way do they
attack the basis of this society.”
“Where, then, is
that general ‘woman question’? Where is that unity of tasks and aspirations
about which the feminists have so much to say? A sober glance at reality shows
that such unity does not and cannot exist,”
Thus wrote the Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai
over 100 years ago in the document called “The Social Basis of the Woman
Question”.
For Kollontai, feminism was synonymous with bourgeois
feminism, and she thought that bourgeois feminists would always dominate any
general-purpose organisation of women. The class question came first.
South African experience confirms the tendency of bourgeois
women to turn women’s organisations to their personal and class advantage.
However, Kollontai does not settle the question of women’s
organisation. We know that the Russian revolution did establish a Working Women’s
Movement. Lenin addresses its Congress. We also know that the Communist
International rejected women’s autonomous democratic organisation. Later, in
1954 in South Africa a Federation of South African Women (FedSAW) was founded
by the trade unionist Ray Alexander and others; but it did not result in a lasting
democratic mass organisation of women. It was dominated by the ANC Women’s
League, which is first and foremost an ANC organisation.
Is there a “woman question”, after all? Referring back to Frederick
Engels’ “Origin of the Family, Private Property and The State" reminds us of the historical arrival, together, of property and the State of class-domination, and that this
catastrophe was also the occasion for the downfall of the women.
The downfall did not happen simultaneously across the globe.
In Africa, we are still in the presence of state-formation, class differentiation,
and the primary subjugation of women. It is a process that is not yet at its
lowest point.
At the same time, subjective political agitation anticipates
women’s liberation, but without the organised agency of women as a democratic
mass.
Problematisation
Is there a Woman Question? Could a mass Working Women’s
Movement organised on trade union lines be useful? Could such a movement be established
in the face of opposition from the ANC WL and others? The origin of women’s
oppression as women and as part of the proletariat are the same; can these
aspects be united again to form the concrete basis of concrete struggle?
The school offers two reading texts to place comrades in a
better position to answer such questions:
Second Part
“No Woman, No Revolution” is a slogan that approaches
the question of women from the point of view of the general revolutionary
imperatives of our time. It refers both to the current National Democratic
Revolution that has the aim of creating an organised, self-conscious collective
Subject of History, and also to the historical revolutionary stages that must
inevitably follow.
Women being more than 50% of the population, no revolution
can succeed without them. This is not in the first place an argument for women,
but for revolution. It says that without the women, revolution is not possible.
The argument develops,
to say that to enrol the women into the revolution, the revolutionaries must
initiate the same kinds of mass-membership structures for women as have been
organised by and for the working class, such as trade unions.
But the women of
South Africa have been influenced by those who have been selling an idea that constitutional
democratic organisation is odiously masculine or patriarchal in nature. Among
the women, some have been able to demobilise their sisters with this mistaken
idea.
In particular, the
opposition among women to constitutional, democratic organisation is evidenced
by what happened to the Progressive Women’s Movement. The insistence that it be
“organic – not a formal structure” has meant that no-one has rights, and even
that the PWM has not existence as a juristic person. It cannot own property. It
has no constitution, employees, or even a web site. Both policy and leadership
are decided by “string-pulling”. Transparency and accountability do not exist.
Collective mass agency, the very stuff of the NDR, is rendered impossible in
the PWM. Then, the notional existence PWM acts as a barrier to, and a blight
upon, any further organisational initiatives.
Problematisation
Is it possible to create a mass, democratic, constitutional
Working Women’s Movement as a component of South Africa’s National Democratic
Revolution? How soon can this be done? What will it require?
The given texts that may assist with these questions include
the notes to the Communist University ten-part course “No Woman, No Revolution”.
They are as follows:
Third Part
If we do not draw women into public activity, into
the militia, into political life; if we do not tear women away from the
deadening atmosphere of household and kitchen; then it is impossible to secure
real freedom, it is impossible even to build democracy, let alone socialism.
“Let the liars and hypocrites, the dull-witted and
blind, the bourgeois and their supporters hoodwink the people with talk about
freedom in general, about equality in general, about democracy in general.
“We say to the workers and peasants: Tear the masks
from the faces of these liars, open the eyes of these blind ones. Ask them:
“Equality between what sex and what other sex?
“Between what nation and what other nation?
“Between what class and what other class?
“Freedom from what yoke, or from the yoke of what
class? Freedom for what class?”
“Down with the liars who are talking of freedom and
equality for all, while there is an oppressed sex, while there are
oppressor classes, while there is private ownership of capital, of shares,
while there are the well-fed with their surplus of bread who keep the hungry in
bondage. Not freedom for all, not equality for all, but
a fight against the oppressors and exploiters, the abolition of
every possibility of oppression and exploitation-that is our slogan!
“Freedom and equality for the oppressed sex!
“Freedom and equality for the workers, for the toiling
peasants!
“A fight against the oppressors, a fight against the
capitalists, a fight against the profiteering kulaks!
“That is our fighting slogan, that is our proletarian
truth, the truth of the struggle against capital, the truth which we flung in
the face of the world of capital with its honeyed, hypocritical, pompous
phrases about freedom and equality in general, about freedom and
equality for all.
Lenin, Soviet Power
and the Status of Women, November 1919; written for the second anniversary of the Great October Revolution (and linked
below):
None of the above from Lenin is at variance with what the SACP has
published, from the pen of its General Secretary, in the Party’s fortnightly
e-mail newsletter, Umsebenzi Online, linked below.
In the most recent of these articles, Cde Nzimande wrote of “Concrete women's struggles under concrete
conditions”. In earlier articles, the SACP General Secretary had written that
the Progressive Women’s Movement should be working-class led, and that it
should not just set up structures for their own sake, without political content.
Problematisation
Where we failed before, how are we now to succeed? Why has
there been development of superstructure (PWM, Women’s Ministry) but no
recruitment of women in general into the National Democratic Revolution?
Documents given to assist this discussion are as follows:
Synthesis
The class question and the woman question have a common
origin and a common solution. Similarly, the National Democratic Revolution is
the way forward for the working class and also for women as such. In this case,
the synthesis of women in mass and workers in mass is the essence of the
problem.
The ANC Women’s League and its creature the PWM have a
virtual “monopoly” on women’s questions in South Africa, yet these are
subsidiaries of the ANC and are not dedicated to women in the first place, but
to the ANC in the first place. In practice, the ANC in this regard is largely
present in its bourgeois or middle-class aspect, and not showing its
proletarian face.
Apart from the ANC WL and the PWM, there are for practical
political purposes as women only NGOs, organised around issues of abuse and
issues relation to lesbian women. (Like the ANC WL, the Black Sash is an
organisation of women, but not primarily for women as such.)
The great Ray Alexander (pictured), Josie Mpama and Dora Tamana raised
the flag of working-class-led mass women’s organisation in the 1950s but their
work was attenuated by the ANC women’s League’s insistence that it should be a
federation, which the ANC WL was bound to dominate, and not a membership
organisation.
The UDF women’s structures of the 1980s and the Women's
National Coalition of the 1990s likewise gave way while the ANC WL survived. Will
this happen again, indefinitely? Is it the case that women as women are locked
out of politics in South Africa, forever?
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