Local Class Alliance
The
politics of class alliance are well understood and well executed at national
level in South Africa in terms of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) policy developed during
the last nine decades, which led directly to the democratic breakthrough of
1994.
The NDR
remains the dominant framework of South African politics, having been refreshed
at Polokwane in 2007. At national level, the interests of the working class
continue to be well articulated through the South African Communist Party
(SACP) and the trade union movement whose largest centre is COSATU.
The petty
bourgeoisie, on the other hand, has no dedicated political expression at
national level, and nor has the peasantry. In spite of the large size of these
segments of the population in South Africa, they are compelled to rely on
others, at national level. This is a consequence of the “sack-of-potatoes” nature
of both of these two classes: the rural petty-bourgeois who are the peasants;
and the urban peasants, who are the petty-bourgeoisie.
Both these classes
are made up of individualists who aspire to live autonomously as families, with
everything of their own. The working class is compelled to represent the
interests of these mostly extremely poor sections of the population at national
level. Otherwise, the established big bourgeoisie would quickly exploit the
poorer ones as political foot-soldiers for capitalism, or possibly for
demagogic fascism.
The
monopolists also, in practice, exploit the peasants and the petty bourgeois
directly, feeding off their younger brothers and sisters in the predatory way
which Rosa Luxemburg described so well in Chapter 2 of “Reform or Revolution?”
from which our main text (attached) is taken.
Local class politics
But at
local level, in South Africa, the situation of the working-class vis-à-vis
the petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry is reversed. The organised working class
has hardly any formal presence either at electoral ward level (where ANC branches
are organised), or at voting district level. Here the petty-bourgeois
individualists are working on their home ground and at the scale of their own
business operations. COSATU Locals and Socialist Forums are in the shade, if
they exist at all.
The SACP
generates cadres, and organises and assists the masses, including the ANC, in
many different ways, but it has not stood candidates in elections for many
years. Whether its electoral practice changes, or not, the SACP is attempting
to make a major impact at local level when the entire party is re-organised
into Voting-District-based branches.
Advantage reversed at local level
In terms of
theory, there is relatively little that would serve as ideological guidance to
the working class on the topic of local development, whereas the petty-bourgeoisie
has an abundance of material and history to lean on, some of which is linked
below; and we will unpack it in more detail during this week.
The town is
the birthplace of the bourgeoisie and it is the natural territory of the
petty-bourgeoisie. The municipality is the “executive committee” of the local
bourgeoisie. Not only is it their instrument, but it is their regenerator,
whose job it is to reproduce bourgeois relations at local level and to bring
forth new generations of bourgeois-minded councillors and bureaucrats.
Organs of People’s Power
In the
past, one effective working-class tactic was to confront this concentration of
local bourgeois strength with an organised workers’ democratic power such as,
in South Africa, what were known as “Civics”. In Russia, long before the
revolutions of 1917, this movement took the form of “soviets”. The first one,
as Vladimir Shubin relates,
was set up in the textile manufacturing centre of Ivanovo in 1905. Another tactic,
problematic though it has been, is the setting up of producer and consumer
co-operatives. This series will attempt to develop both of these perspectives
in due course.
In this
part, our CU job is to review some of the debate in the literature of
petty-bourgeois development. It is not the aim of the working-class to drive
any other class to premature extinction. In the “18th Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte” Karl Marx described the peasantry, with sympathy, as a “sack
of potatoes”, because they could not unite at national level. In the spirit of
this work, the working class must unite the weaker classes and lead them, and
make provision for them in terms that will satisfy them.
For the
classic peasantry, this meant giving them land and a market for their produce.
For the petty bourgeoisie, it is the freedom to do business, and the guarantee,
in the face of the predatory monopolists, of a market. As much as they need us,
so also do we, as the proletariat, need these classes as allies against the
monopoly bourgeoisie. Therefore, as partisans of the working class, we should
read these works with a serious interest.
How will
things change? The communists must strive to reproduce, in every locality, the
same well-expressed and solid class alliance which has up to now underpinned
the NDR at the national level. This means providing for both the
petty-bourgeoisie/peasantry, and for the working class. Both must be able to
see a clear way forward, in alliance with each other, at local level, where, at
present, it is working-class organisation that is lacking.
Illustration:
The hammer-and-sickle emblem of the communists represents the alliance of workers and peasants.
- The above serves
to introduce the original reading-text: Reform or Revolution?,
Chapters 2, 7, 9 and 10, Luxemburg, Part 1 and Part 2
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment