YA BASEBENZI Journal of the Marxist Workers' Tendency of the African National Conqress January 1982 No retreat from the YA BASEBENZI Freedom Charter!

The ANC is 70 years old ihis year. and therefore on brutal dictatorship Unless the ANC leadership is And il is 26 years since Ihe ANC lo secure Ms profits in SA. Now, prepared, consciously and openl). programme, ihe Freedom Charier, with world capitalism in crisis, Ihe to organise ihe struggle for the over­ was adopted al (he Congress of Ihe bosses in SA are all Ihe more throw of capitalism—il will be forc­ People. threatened by a programme of ed to retreat from (he demands in The Freedom Charter is Ihe most democracy and social reform. Ihe Freedom Charier. Inevitably, far-reaching programme for change To implemenl Ihe Freedom Ihe demands for national liberation ever put forward by a mass political Charier and build a new society, il and democracy would have lo be organisation in SA. will be necessary lo overthrow ihe walered down. Today we are in a new period of bosses and end capitalism. Other­ Anticipating Ihis problem, many mass movement—broader, more wise, even if the ruling class is forc­ of Ihe middle-class leaders in SA to­ conscious, and more militant than ed in a lime of weakness lo concede day who proclaim the Freedom ever before. With Ihe workers Ihe partial reforms, Ihey will fighl Charter advocate only its "prin­ driving force, Ihe bosses and their viciously al Ihe first opportunity lo ciples" while failing lo publicise its government do not know which wa> reverse ihem. concrete democratic and social to turn. The cornerstone of Ihe Freedom demands. The Irade unions, Ihe youth, the Charter is the demand for na­ Instead of helping lo mobilise a community organisations are rally­ tionalising Ihe banks, mines, and mass revolutionary force headed by ing ever more boldly around ihe call monopoly industry. Only by ending Ihe organised workers, they argue lo implemenl ihe Freedom Charier. private ownership of the main lhal agreement can be reached with The banner of (he ANC is being means of production can Ihe way be Ihe rulers of SA al a National Con­ displayed more openly al workers' opened to secure our democratic vention to implemenl the Freedom meetings and in the townships. and social demands. Charier. This is impossible, and This reflects Ihe popular desire of But the slate machine is Ihe in­ would lead lo retreating from Ihe Ihe oppressed lo build one mass strument which the bosses depend Charter. political organisation to unite the on for maintaining control over Ihe The task of all consistent struggle against Ihe present factories, banks, mines and land. So democrats, as well as socialists, is lo system—and overthrow il complete­ long as police can be called into the prepare Ihe mass movement for the ly- factories and the army into the revolutionary overthrow of the Is Ihe Charter an adequate pro­ townships, the bosses retain the stale. We must build Ihe ANC as a gramme for abolishing white power ultimately to reverse Ihe gains mass organisation above all of the supremacy and national oppression: of Ihe mass struggle. millions of oppressed workers and for fully democratising society: for No demand in Ihe Charter can be their families, on a clear programme eliminating poverty; for ending all secure until Ihis state is swept away. to establish a democratic workers* oppression and exploitation: for Only a new stale, buill and controll­ stale. That is Ihe only way lo ge­ beginning to build a socialist ed by the working people and based nuine liberation for the working society? on their own armed power, can class and the oppressed middle class too. The Freedom Charter is not a secure liberation, end poverty and programme of socialist revolution. implemenl Ihe reforms in the While arguing for a socialist pro­ But its radical democratic demands, Charter. gramme for the ANC, supporters of and the immense reforms which it A democratic workers* state INQABA will implacably oppose all spells out in Ihe fields of housing, would also pass on lo Ihe tasks of attempts to retreat from the transport, education, wages, work­ socialist construction. Freedom Charter. We will join ing conditions and welfare are im­ The great weakness of ihe wholeheartedly in every struggle to possible for the capitalist system to Freedom Charter is its failure lo ex­ carry ihe demands of the Charter in­ afford. plain these realities of our struggle to force. Each victory along ihis Capitalism has always depended and point Ihe way forward to road will strike a real blow against on cheap labour, on mass poverty, workers' power. Ihe racist and capitalist enemy. 3 Ha Ho Khutlelo Morao Ka Freedom Charter YA BASEBENZi

Selemong stria ANC e Memo li Africa e Boroa a oele feela ho ba Charier ke ho hloloa ho hlalosa lin- mashome a supileng e Ihehiloe. Ke kaholimo pusong. Ka ho lemoha nele Isena Isa nloa ea rona le ho lilerno tse mashome a mabeli a met- hore mafalse a kapitale a lebane le bontsa basebelsi Isela ea lokoloho. so e Iscletseng leano la ANC* "The maihala a maholo, bailailapi ba SA Ha eba baelapele ba ANC ba sa Freedom Charier**, le amohelsoe ba Isosilose ke leano la sechaba ka ikemiselsa ho loanlsa le ho hlola lekhotleng la sechaba. ho loanlsa llallapo le khalello ho bollatlapi, ba lla tlameha ho ikhula Ka leano lena (Freedom Charier) llisa lokoloho ho bohle. ho Freedom Charier. Ha ba sa la sechaba sa Africa Boroa, Ho phelhahalsa Freedom Charter ikemiselsa puso ka sechaba lipheloho Ise bonahalang li lla ba ho aha bosechaba bo senang molemong oa sechaba e ke ke ea teng. llallapo, hoa lokela hore ba bonoa lokoloho Africa Boroa. Re le sechaba sa Africa Boroa, re kaholimo—bailailapi—ba keloloe Malebana le maihala ana, kajeno ipopa le ho fela pele ho loanlsa sera ho felisa khalello. Le ha ho ka ha el- baelapele ba bangala Africa Boroa sa sechaba. Basebelsi ke bona sahala hore lequloana lena la ba hlalosa hore Charier e emela baetapele ba lokoloho* bailailapi le bahalelli le leke ho felisa Ise ling Isa leano la eona empa ba hloloa ke ho muso oa bona ba Isielsing, Hkhalello, le lla balla mano a mang phallalalsa ka bophara lilokelo le Ele ho Isehelsa Freedom Charier, a ho khulliselsa linlho morao. bosechaba balhong Africa Boroa. mekhallo ea kopano, bacha ham- Molheo oa Freedom Charier ke Ho fapana le ho Ihusa ka ho moho le sechaba ba sebetsa ka hore libanka, limaene le indasleri, e lhaoia le boiho la nloa ea lokoloho Ihala. Balho ba scbelitseng ka malla be Isa sechaba, eseng li be llas'a Ilasa basebelsi, ba re lilumellano li lilibelong ea ANC, ba bonahala ka Isamaiso ea balho ba 'mala bal- ka fihleloa le babusi (ba basoeu) ba kolloloho liphulhehong Isa soereng puso. Re ka fumana bona Africa Boroa e le "National Con* basebelse esila le makcisheneng. ha feela ho ka elsoa hore moruo oa venlion" ho phelahatsa leano la Ka hoo ho bonahala hanlle hore naha o se ke oa eba oa balho ha Freedom Charier. sechaba se halelelsoeng se ilseng empa oa sechaba ka kakarel- Hona ho ke ke ha phelahala ka ha ikemiselilse ho ipopa ho loanlsa le so. e le ho Isoileng Iseleng ea Charier. ho felisa ka hohle Isela ea puso e Empa puso ea joale ke eona e Ke mosebetsi oa bohle ba emelang Africa Boroa. fang bailailapi bana malla a ho puso ea sechaba ele ka "nele ho elsa Freedom Charier na e be ke leano isamaisa lifeclori, libanka, limaene liiokiso Isa ho ketola *muso ka nloa le malla a lekaneng ho felisa esila le mobu. Ha feela mapolisa a ea boikelso. Re llameha ho aha boikhohomoso ba bailailapi ba nlse a sebelisoa Hfeklori le masole ANC ele mokha oa I'millione isa basocu le ho llosa khalello ea liahelong Isa balho ba balso Africa basebelsi ba halelelsoeng hammoho sechaba ka kakaretso, ho llisa puso Borwa, bahalelli bana le bona ba le malapa a bona, ka mohoo o ea sechaba ke sechaba, ho felisa Isoelapele khalellong ea ho selisa hlakileng oa ho Iheha sechaba se bofulsana, ho felisa khalello le sechaba ho loanlsa llallapo. lokolohileng. Ke eona Isela feela e llallapo, le ho aha sechaba se secha Ha ho lelho le ka fumanchang ka lebisang lokoloho ea *nete ea se senang khalello? Ilasa Charier haeba muso oa basebelsi le ea bohle ba halelel­ soeng. Freedom Charier base leano la ho bailailapi o sa keloloe. "Muso o llisa lokoloho ea socialism. Kmpa mocha a ahiloeng, o bileng o Nakong ea ho aha molheo oa bo- seo e se emelang ka malla laoloang ke basebelsi Ilasa malla a socialist ho ANC, balsehelsi ba IN- molemong oa sechaba, ke bolulo ba bona ke oona feela o ka sirelelsang QABA, ha ho pofang, ba lla ba balho, mokhoa oa lipalangoang, bolokolohi, o ka felisang bohloki le khahlanong le ho n>ahlalsoa ha Ihtilo, mepulso, boemo ha khiro, bofulsana esila le ho elsa ka hohle Freedom Charier, Ke lla kopana re bophelo le boikello ba sechaba ka seo Charier e se hlokang molemong le pelo *ngoe linloeng Isohle Isa kakarelso. oa sechaba. lokoloho ho phelhahalsa Freedom Puso ea bailailapi e ilsellehile I^cfalse la puso ea basebelsi le ka Charier. Tlholo e *ngoe le e "ngoe holim'a basebelsi ba fumanang nlselsa pele mokhoa oa ho bopa Iseleng eena e lla o lla ka malla mepulso e llase, le bohloki bo sechaba ho se ea phelang ka mofui- khallanong le bahalelli le pharalclseng, esila le khalello ea so oa phalla ea e mong. bahanyapelsi bana bao eleng sera sa basebelsi, e elsang hore maruo a Hofokoli bo boholo ba Freedom sechaba. 4 Akukho Ukurox'umva YA BASEBENZi Kumgaqo we Mfilidomu Tshatha (Freedom Charter)

Inkongolo foe min>aka eyi-70 uhudala dilili wahanlu ngephango lendlala. ngedabi klhu. nokwalalha indlela es- kulonsaka. knakhuna sisil hubu ngoko ke. fulhi* ekulawnlnn ingisa ekulaw ulwen i kwelizwe seminyaka eyl-26 ukusukela mhla ngongalonkulu okhohiake!e>o khona ngabasebenzi. uludMl1 l^.lllljh.lll^MiiiklllMllko uku/e buqiniseke ukufumana ingenelo- Ngaphandle kokuba ubunkokheli tMlllidoinu Ishafha) kwa*un>elwana mali (polofithi) e-M/anlsi Afrika, Ngalo heNkongolo bu/imisele.ngokucacileyo n^Mu eNllanganisweni (>esi/we> m/u/u, ubungxowankulu bcli/we lonke ngengcinga nango kuphandle, ya Bantu. jikelelc huscngxingweni Rungoku nje. ukuququzelabuhlanuanise idabi loku • Mfilidomu I shalha yiyo kan>e \a ubungxowankulu heli/we lonke bhukuqa umbuso wobunjix- kanohom elhe u*gqithisa nganxa /onke jikelelc busengxingweni, oongx- owankulu—buya kunyanzeleka bubeihe ukubhenge/a amabango ahhekiselele owankulue— M/anlsi Afhka bankwan- ngezinenlsenle kuphasalake lawo ckuguquleni umbuso esakhe sabekwa lylSWa ngakumhi ngamabango mabango akwiMfilidomu Tshalha. ngumhulhu wohupolitika womndilili enkululeko. nenguqulwana enllalweni Ngokuqinisekileyo, amabango e-M/anKi Afrika. yobu/we. I kuphume/a amabango enkululeko yesizwe, neyomnlu wonke enkululeko eMfilidomu Tshalha, aya kupalyalaka. Namhla oku. kulsha nje, singenc nok^akha ubu/wc obulsha, kuya ku- kwiihuba lenishukumo > nmndilili nvan/eleka kuwiswe umbuso WORKX- Ekulindelekeni kwale ngxaki, uninzi (wahanlu abanhundu aba- oHankulu* nohun^xowankulu. Kungen* Iwenkokheli zophangwana, namhla, i*ine/elwe>o| — ehan/i. ehla/i>eke jalo, nokuba udidi longxonankulu olu e—Mzanlsi Afrika. ezifunga ngeM* ngakumhi ngcngringa. fulhi, kamhe lawula\o lulhe Iwanvan/cleka ngexesha filidomu Tshalha, zishumayela ekhahphe ukudlulisa amat huha olulhe luaxinga el>eni* ukuba Inen/e "ukulunga" kwayo ngelixa ziso yisakala angaphambili. Bejongenenabaseben/i. iinKuqulnana e/ingephi, luya kulhi ukuqononondisa ubunzulu bayo jsilshilshilshi somlilo w enkululeko. nutk nihil lokuqala clinokulifumana kwidabi (enkululeko, naku mabango oongxowankulu norulumenle wabo lilwcle ukufa ukohlulha e/ont>u- obu/we. ba>at)hwal>hwa aba/i tikuha ba/a quUana, Kndaweni yokuba bancedise ekuqu- kuphamhukela phi na» quzeleni ukuhlanganisa umndilili wenl- I mi bulhu ya bUC ben 2i elwa un- Ilsika >e Mfilidomu Tshalha lihantin shukumo y o k u bhukuqa umbuso ; cukufho M :h u n v .mi• ••. ulutsha, lokohluiha ongxonankulu iibanki, im- woongxowankulu, ekhokhelwe >im- ncmihulho >ase /ixekweni uvidolophini i^odi, nokuphelisa uburamnco* bumba yabasebenzi, babeka ikhondo nasi* maphandlenil, ngobukrolika/i, lit* njixoHankuluobulaHula iifcklrt—/onke el i I hi isivumelwano ngeMfilidomu sho inllaba mkhost edabini lokulwrla e /in I sika /endyebo /ibe phanlsi Tshalha singen/iwa nabacinezeli, amalungelo ahekwe >i Mfilidomu kiiliivMiin Inesi/Me sonke. Kuxa kulhe oongxowankulu boMzanlsi Afrlka, I\hatha. I si I sab u sika Nkongolo kuphela kuaphclisna ubumnini-ndedwa eNgqungqulheleni yeSizwe. I nolshe, eli sihonakaliswa ngoku phandle geqc hama/iko amakhulu en/a indyebo likhondo lokurox-umva kumgaqo weM- 1 tvinltangantsweni /abasehen/i nasi >eM/we apho kun;;;i vuleka indlela filidomu Tshatha. zilnkishini, y ukufumana inkululeko >e(hu, namabanK" obu/we afanelekile>o. Umsebenzi, obanzi nonzulu, wabo Oku kuhonakalisa ulanga/elelo bonke abanyanisekileyo ukuphelisa in- Iwahacine/elwewi lokufuna ukwakha Kod^a. urulumenle ligqudu oongx- gcinezelo, kwakunye naba kumkhosi umhulhanele ukul- e/ifeklrini, nomkhosi lamasoja) unoku ngumbulho Homndilili, ngakumbi umn­ shahalalisa ikratshi lubulungu. ngena ngendlo^'ayinKeni e/ilokishini. dilili we/igidi zabasebenzi ncngiine/clo \e%i/we; ukwakha ubu/w? oungxt>wankulu hasaphelhe iinlambo ezicinezelweyo nenlsapho zazo, ohukhululekiley o ngoku/ele> o; /okulawula aba/i^eben/isa. ekug- yakhelwe phezu komgangalho ocacileyo ukuphelisa indlala: ukupht-lisa /onke qibeleni, ukohlulha oko kulhe wokwakha umbuso wabasebenzi iinilobti rengcine/cln nantukutho; k^a/u/eka edabini lomndilili. norulumente walHi olawulwa ngabo ng* qo. Le yiyona ndlela ekukuphela kwayo ukwakha ubu/we ohungena hugong- Akukho n el in ye ibango kwi qongqohongxowankulu? eya enkululekweni eyinyaniso Mfilidomu Tshalha elingafumaneka yabasebenzi, nophangwanaaba* I Mfilidomu Tshalha a>i beki kuphele de kube urulumenle woongx- cinezelweyo ngokunjalo. mabango anokwen/a, okan>e owankulu uhhukuqiwe, Ngurulumenle angabangela kuguqulwe umbuso wongx- omlsha kuphela, owakhiwe, ulanulwa Nangani simelele ngoku ngalhan- owankulu ube ngumbuso waba*eben/i. ngabaseben/i, usekelwe, fulhi, phe/u dabuzekiyo imibono yeNkongolo Kambe, um*ungamo wa>o kwamandla ne/ixhoho zabasebenzi ejongise ekulawuleni kwabasebenzi, ngokubhekiselele ku mabango ongenza kufumaneke inkululeko ye- ahalandeli INQABA baya kuphikisa enkululeko. nenguqul<> ezitsho nyaniso, uphelise indlala. umise ngokuqinisekileyo onke amalinge kanobom kummandla we/indlu. kwakhona, ngeyona ndlela ifanelekileyo okubuya umva kumgaqo we Mfilidomu wetilanisipoti, wemfundu, wemirolo, iinguqulo ezifunwa ylTshalha. Tshalha. Siya kungena ngokuzimisela yezimo /ok use benza, kwakunye Urulumenle (Hombu^o)waba^ebenzi ngokupheleleyo kwidabi ngalinye ell- nenxa&o-nllalo yabanlu ngenxa zonke, uyakulhi kananjalo ugqithe ngomi- qhubela phambili ngamandla amabango a/inakufumaneka phanlsi kombuso shakoI sho wikhe ubuzwe eTshatha* Impumelelo ngan>e edabini kule ndlela iya kuba ngumvalho wohungxowankulu. ubukhululekileyo phanl&i kolawulo wegalelo elinamandla lokugqobhoza in* rhungxuwankulu basoloko bux- Iwabaseben/i.L'kufinyelela okukhulu homekeke ekum iphiseni ixabiso lloko yolshaba eli ngungxowankulu, eli beM filidomu Tshalha kukoyisakala calula licinezela ngebala. lamandla abasebenzi ekubelheni umn- ukuchaza, nokucacisa ezinyaniso 5 Geen sta terug van die Freedom Charter!

Die ANC is vanjaar 70 Jaar oud. in Suid-Afrika veilig le maak. Nou gooi—sal hulle gedwing word om En dis 26 jaar gelede dai die ANC- dal die kapilalisme oor die hele lerug le val van die eise in die program, die Freedom Charier wereld in krisis verkeer, word die Vryheidshandves. Die eise vir na­ (Vryheldshandves), aangeneem is op base in Suid-Afrika nog meer sionale bevryding en demokrasie die Congress of the People. bedreig deur 'n program van sou dan onvermydelik afgewaler Die Vryheidshandves is die mees demokrasie en sosiale hervorminge. moel word. vergaande program wal ooil deur Om die Vryheidshandves uil le Hierdie probleem word 'n massa polilieke organisasie in voer en 'n nuwe samelewing op le vooruilgeloop deur baie van die Suid-Afrika uilgebring is. bou, sal dii nodig wees om die base middelklasleiers in Suid-Afrika van­ Vandag verkeer ons in *n nuwe omver le gooi en kapilalisme le dag, wat die Vryheidshandves pro- lydperk van massabeweging—breer, beeindig. Anders, selfs al word die klameer maar net sy 'beginsels' bewusler en slrydbaarder as ooil heersende klas in 'n lyd van bepleit, terwyl hulle stil bly oor sy (evore. Mel die werkers as dryfkrag, swakheid gedwing om bieljies her­ konkrele demokraliese en sosiale weel die base en hul regering nie vorminge loe le gee, sal hulle woe- eise. meer waarnaloe hulle moel keer nie. dend veg om dii so gou moonllik In plaas dat hulle help om 'n mas­ Die vakbonde, die jeug, die weer lerug le vat. sa revolusionere mag agter die township-organisasies skaar hulle al Die hoeksieen van die Vryheid­ georganiseerde werkers le hoe slerker agier die oproep om die shandves is die eis om die banke, mobiliseer, beweer hulle dal 'n Vryheidshandves uil le voer. Die myne en monopolie-induslrie le na- ooreenkoms mel die heersers van ANC-vlag word al hoe openliker op sionaliseer. Nel deur privaalbesil Suid-Afrika op 'n Nasionale werkersvergaderings en in die van die belangriksle produksiemid- Konvensie bereik kan word om die townships verloon. dele le beeindig kan die pad Vryheidshandves uil le voer. Dit is Dit weerspieel die veriange van oopgemaak word om ons onmoontlik, en sou beleken dal die onderdrdkie mense om een demokraliese en sosiale eise le daar leruggeval word van die Hand­ massa polilieke organisasie le bou verse ker. ves. om die slryd leen die huidige sisieem Maar die slaalsmasjien is die In­ Die laak van alle slandvaslige le verenig—en dii heeliemal le ver- strument waarop die base reken om demokrale, sowel as soslaliste, is om nielig. beheer oor die fabrieke, myne en die massabeweging voor te berei vir Is die Handves 'n voldoende pro­ land te behou. Solank as die polisie die revolusionere omverwerping van gram om wil baasskap en nasionale na die fabrieke geroep kan word en die slaal. Ons moel die ANC opbou onderdrukking af le skaf; om die die soldate na die lownships, hou as 'n massa-organisasie veral van die samelewing ' heeliemal le die base die mag om uileindelik alles miljoene onderdrukle werkers en demokraiiseer; om armoede weg le wal die massaslryd bereik hel, weer hulle families, rondom 'n duidelike neem, om alle onderdrukking en uit- lerug le vat. program om 'n demokraliese builing le beeindig; om *n Geen eis in die Handves kan werkersslaat te veslig. Dit is die sosialisliese samelewing le begin werklik verseker word voordal hier- enigsle weg na werklike bevryding bou? die staal weggevee word nie. Nel vir die werkende klas en die onder­ drukle middelklas ook. Die Vryheidshandves is nie *n 'n nuwe slaal, gebou en beheer deur program van sosialisliese revolusie die werkcnde mense en gebaseer op nie. Maar sy radikale demokraliese hul eie gewapende mag, kan die Terwyl ons opkom vir 'n eise, en die geweldige hervormings bevryding verseker, armoede beein­ sosialisliese program vir die ANC, wal dii beleken op die gebied van dig en die hervormings in die Hand­ sal INQABA-ondersleuners huisvesting, transport, onderwys, ves uitvoer. vasberade alle pogings leengaan om lone, werkloeslande en welsyn kan Die grool swakheid van die Hand­ van die Vryheidshandves terug le onmoonllik deur die kapilalisliese ves is dal hy hierdie werklikhede van wyk. Ons sal mel harl en siel sisieem bekoslig word. ons slryd nie verduidelik nie, en nie aansluit by elke slryd om die eise Kapilalisme was nog aliyd op die weg aanwys na werkersmag nie. van die Handves uit le voer. Elke goedkoop arbeid afhanklik, op Tensy die ANC-leiding voorberei oorwinning langs hierdie weg sal 'n massa-armoede, en daarom op *n is om bewus en openlik die slryd le ware slag slaan teen die rasisliese en bruiale dikialorskap om sy profyle organiseer om kapilalisme omver te kapilalisliese vvand. Build A Mass ANC On A Socialist Programme!

"...it is a sign of the times in South Africa—as well as outside South Africa of course—that the labour field is slowly but surely becoming the focal point of the political situation. Indeed this is the case throughout Ihe world." S.P. Botha, Minister of Manpower, speaking in Parliament on 6 August 1981.

In wave after wave of strug­ Against this system each struggle gle, now continuing without By Daniel Hugo | of the masses for the slightest social pause for over two years, improvement reveals the need for massive sections of the black and Richard Monroe J the complete democratic rcorganisa- ' people have been drawn into tion of society. calculating its effect on the militant Thus the rising tide of mass strug­ action against the crushing army of black labour. gle raises a nightmare to haunt the burdens of apartheid and the As the workers discover in strug­ ruling capitalist class. cheap labour system. gle their ability to inflict blows Defending their profits in a In the factories, mines, schools against the oppressor, their move­ period of world capitalist decline, and townships, a new generation ment more and more acts as a they are even less able than in the has come to the fore that refuses to magnet around which the whole past to afford cracks in the cheap submit to poverty and baasskap, mass movement gravitates. In­ labour system. What they are forced and will fight with selfless dedica­ dustrial struggles—at Eveready, to give with the left hand they must tion to end It. Fatti's and Moni's, Rowntrees, and struggle the more viciously to Workplace struggles over wages, elsewhere—have become a focus of recover with the right. jobs, conditions, and union rights; action also for the youth and sec­ tions of the middle class. Finding their ruthless police state campaigns against bus fare and rent methods ever less able to hold back increases; militant explosions At every point, the developing the mass movement, but only arous­ among the youth; resistance to new struggle comes up against the force ing it to greater fury, the bosses are repressive measures—all these have of the state. Wage strikes bring the nevertheless incapable of ruling by combined into a mighty tide of mass police to the factories, and result in any other means. struggle which, through all its ebbs arrests and detentions. Township All the new devices which they and flows, has strengthened the self- campaigns lead to head-on confron­ confidence of all the oppressed. concoct to try to clothe their naked tations with the officialdom of the dictatorship and stabilise their In this mass movement it is above regime. Even the demand for better rule—such as the President's Coun­ all Ihe power of the organised black education is met with armed repres­ sion, turning a whole generation of cil, Carlton I and II—only further workers which has emerged as the expose their bankruptcy. driving force and pushed the ruling black youth onto the road of class on the defensive. political struggle. Significantly, most strikes over Capitalism in SA, dependent on Early stage the past year have ended in partial cheap labour, has developed only on or total success for the workers. Out the basis of merciless repression. All this underlies the deepening of the veld fire of industrial strug­ The state is a military-police dic­ splits in the ruling class and the gles the independent trade unions tatorship over the black majority to regime, and the divisions opening have increased hugely in member­ enforce the system of migrant ship and strength. up among their white supporters. labour and national oppression, On the side of the mass move­ No step can be taken by Ihe thereby creating an army of cheap ment, on the other^hand, there is capitalists or their regime without labour. growing confidence, unity, and 7 strength. These, won in biiter strug­ dent trade unions in Cape Town young and old. gle, are instilling the perspective that reflected the pressure towards na­ In scores of existing organisa­ the vicious system of exploitation tional unity among the organised tions—youth organisations, action and oppression can soon be over­ workers. But this has been only a commitlees, womens' groups, even thrown—not just "within our first step, that has still to be the churches—activists are seeing no lifetime*', but even within the translated into united organisation way to country-wide unity except by decade. and action at branch and factory rallying around the banner of the Undoubtedly, the SA revolution- level. ANC. Also the trade unions, as they is only beginning to unfold. The come into increasing conflict with disintegration of the ruling class and the state, are experiencing the need the regime is still at an early stage. Unity in action to fight back by political means. Ac­ The magnificent struggles of today tivists in their ranks will raise the de­ have drawn in only a small part of mand to join the Congress move­ Encouraged by the granite foun­ ment. the forces that will be needed to dations of the factory movement, a defeat the regime and achieve na­ host of local organisations have The increasingly open turn to tional and social liberation. sprung up in the townships, the Congress heralds a new period in the To take the next decisive step for­ 'squatter camps' and the coun­ liberation struggle. ward will require the development tryside. Unable to crush the trade union of organisation that can co-ordinate The black youth have been at the movement by brute force, the ruling the struggles of the oppressed into a forefront of the mass struggle on all class will also find it impossible to single country-wide movement, sides, and have infused broader suppress the political organisation united around a clear programme* layers with their own revolutionary of the working people. capable of overwhelming the forces spirit. of the oppressor. But they have found themselves In the trade union field, bold and unable to defeat the regime decisive­ Freedom Charter effective organisation has been built ly through localised community by the workers in many places of struggles. Increasingly the need for Already the anti-SAIC campaign, work, and national unions organise country-wide political unity in ac­ culminating in the October workers in ' several industries. tion is becoming clear—for mass conference in Durban, developed in­ But—with the exception of the organisation, based on the organis­ to a demonstration of support for magnificent political general strikes ed strength of the working class, Congress. This gathering, like the of 1976—the workers' struggles linking together (he struggles in fac­ earlier one in Lenasia, endorsed the have been mainly spontaneous and tory, township and countryside, of Freedom Charter, programme of local. employed and unemployed, migrant the ANC since 1955. The August meeting of indepen­ and non-migrant, men and women, Significantly, not only veterans of

Marching behind the A AC Jlag—Alexandra, June 1981 1 the ANC and Congress movement more than the bludgeon historically to such a point that open platforms were involved, but also some established by the capitalist class in . for all democrats, such as that in representatives of the new genera­ SA to enforce its domination over Durban, can no longer be entirely tion of workers and youth—for ex­ the working class. suppressed. It is the early stirrings ample SAAWU, GAWU, COSAS The capitalist class, clinging to its of that power which compelled the and AZASO. ownership of industry, will never withdrawal by the regime of the The Freedom Charter calls for consent to dismantle this brutal ap­ Pensions Bill, a victory for all the huge social reforms in the fields of paratus of baasskap. Thus the oppressed. housing, transport, education, democratic struggle to end white The working class, to free itself wages, working conditions, and minority rule, national oppression, from the chains of poverty, the pass welfare which have been placed on and dictatorship is at the same time laws, the migrant labour system, has the agenda of struggle by the nothing other than the class struggle no choice but to continue this lifc- masses. The Charter, and the wor­ to smash the capitalist state. Only or-death struggle until the bosses' kers and youth in struggle today on this revolutionary basis can the rule is ended. recognise that these social reforms social and democratic demands of In organising the destruction of cannot be achieved without ending the Freedom Charter be secured. capitalist power, the working class will at the same time need to create its own organs of armed power to Securing Ihe demands of the Freedom Charter replace capitalist rule. depends on the destruction of the capitalist state By the nature of its existence, the working class can only exercise its power in a collective way. The national oppression and establishing The defeat of the apartheid workers' method of rule, as Lenin genuine democracy. regime involves the complete explained, is the creation of condi­ But nowhere in the world is the dismantling of all its forces of tions for the fullest possible question of democracy an abstract repression—the police, the military, democracy. question: the struggle for the prisons, the bureaucracies of the The key characteristics of democracy is rooted in the struggle state and the Bantustans—and their workers' democracy, as the between the classes. replacement by new organs of self- workers' movement has discovered In SA the ruling class cannot rule created by the masses in the course of its history," can be allow the working class—the over­ themselves. summarised as: whelming majority of the Only the organised working class • power to be exercised through people—to gain democratic control aroused and conscious of its task, democratically elected councils of of society precisely because and leading all the oppressed, has the working population; capitalism allows no room for the power to defeat this monstrous * all officials to be elected, sub­ significant and lasting im­ capitalist regime. This potential ject to immediate recall, and official provements in the conditions of life power is present a hundred times duties rotated so that no of the masses. over in the factories, mines and bureaucracy develops; SA cannot be reorganised along townships. • no official to receive a higher in­ the lines of the Freedom Charter so It is the power of the oppressed come than the average wage of a long as capitalism exists. black workers, still barely awaken­ skilled worker; This is why the cornerstone of the ing, which has paralysed the regime * no standing army but the people entire Charter is the demand to transfer SA's mineral wealth, banks, and monopoly industry to the ownership of the people as a whole, combined with the demand that "all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well- being of the people". But the Freedom Charter fails to make clear that securing this and its other demands depends entirely on the destruction of the capitalist slate and its replacement by democratic workers' rule. Every day, new arrests and bann- ings, strikes broken by the Dolice, nammer ho-ne that the wealth and property of the bosses is protected and defended by the power of the state—the police, the military, and m as the apartheid bureaucracy. At its core, white minority rule is nothing J y armed, so that no military or police can be reached on the peaceful The Freedom Charier, in con­ power can be the tool of a minority dismantling of white minority rule. trast, stipulates clearly that the against the majority. This promise is false through and mines, the banks and monopoly in­ The "democratic organs of self- through: the capitalists will dustry "shall be transferred to the government" demanded in the negotiate only when faced with ownership of the people . Freedom Charter will be realised in defeat—and then only about alter­ whole." It is "all other industry and practice only along these lines. ing the form of their rule, in the trade'* which shall merely be "con­ Already, within the trade unions hope of preserving its substance. trolled to assist the well-being of the and other organisations of the SA For this they must preserve the arm­ people.'* working people, these democratic ed bodies of men (the state) on "Control" refers to those things forms are emerging in embryo. which their power depends. which are not intended to be owned Thus the struggle for democracy. Unfortunately, there are some in in common by the people. Yet the In essence, is the struggle for the fold of the mass movement Durban 'Charter* drops the demand workers' organisation and workers* already falling into (his trap being of common ownership completely. rule. prepared by the capitalists. Some It would leave the private property With workers' rule, the na­ middle-class democrats sincerely of the capitalists subject merely to tionalisation of the main means of believe that, by watering down the an undefined "control". production would be achieved under demands of the mass movement and It completely abandons the cen­ the control and management of the removing any open challenge to the tral plank which makes the Freedom workers themselves, subject to a capitalist system, they will pave the Charter a programme for revolu­ plan of production democratically way to negotiations with the tionary struggle by the working drawn up by the working people. 'liberal' bosses which will allow the class. Not only would this speedily secure Freedom Charter to be implemented At the same time the concrete the implementing of the whole of bit-by-bit. demands of the original Charter— the Freedom Charter, but, in laying for a forty-hour working week, a the foundations of socialism, the national minimum wage, paid an­ programme of the Charter would Altered nual leave and sick leave for all rapidly be surpassed. workers, maternity leave on full pay The recognition that its very sur­ At the Durban conference of the for all working mothers, full vival as a ruling elite is threatened anti-SAIC campaign, the 'Charter* unemployment benefits, an end to by the unfolding mass struggle that was endorsed was not in fact the pass laws... strikes terror into the SA capitalist the original Freedom Charter, but a ...do not appear at all in class. programme altered from it in many the Durban version. Hence, while clinging to the whip important respects. Naturally, under police state con­ of baasskap, they are also sowing The most blatant example of this ditions, there are limits to what can the illusion through their press and concerns the demand for the sharing be stated openly. Yet where the elsewhere that 'democratic reform* of South Africa's wealth. mass movement has developed the can be achieved which will leave in­ The Durban 'Charter' calls mere­ power to express public support for tact the 'free enterprise' system. At ly for "control of South African a banned organisation and its pro­ a 'National Convention' to be con­ resources by the people" to "ensure gramme, no security considerations vened as a last resort at some time in its utilization towards the benefit of can justify diluting that programme the future, they suggest, agreement the people as a whole." to the point where all hint of the need to break with capitalism is hid­ den, and where the concrete demands of the working people are erased. This hides nothing from the capitalists, who are perfectly well aware of the real demands of the people—and will, where they can, lock up diluters of the Charter too. What is hidden is hidden from the masses in struggle. A programme from which the workers' concrete demands have been eliminated can­ not serve as a rallying point for the life-and-death struggle which lies ahead. Failing to take forward and clarify perspectives and programme, it would become a recipe for divi­ sion, confusion, and demoralisa­ tion—which, in the end, poses the danger of crushing defeat. The need is rather to translate the 10 aims of the Freedom Charter, Around such a programme all the Building the ANC in this way, the already supported and struggled for oppressed can be rallied. To such a workers in struggle will be able to in the mass movement, into concrete programme, supported by the full impress their policies, strategy and demands and campaigns that can force of the black working class in tactics on the movement as a whole. link the ongoing struggles in the fac­ action, many white workers could By ensuring the widest discussion tories, schools and townships into a also eventually be won. This would possible under prevailing condi­ nation-wide movement against the weaken the support enjoyed by the tions, and collective decision­ capitalist enemy and its savage wat­ oppressor and limit the potential of making, the ANC will become chdog, the apartheid state. white reaction. enriched with all the experience and The ANC is being called to take ingenuity of the workers, and all the its place in the factories, mines, uncompromising revolutionary spirit of the youth. Dangerous schools and townships, to provide a fighting lead, to combine the day to The workers must ensure that the Failing to prepare for the task of day battles into organised country­ policies put forward in the name of destroying the capitalist state wide struggle for the overthrow of the ANC correctly reflect the tasks machine will leave the enemy in the regime. of the struggle, as a rallying call to possession of his most deadly But a fighting mass ANC will not still broader layers of the oppressed weapon. Armed and dangerous, the drop into our midst ready-made. It and to the working class of the capitalists will be able to play for will need to be built through the world. time as long as the odds are against organisation of (he masses now Any open assemblies that can be them—and then unleash the moving into action on all sides. It organised under police-state condi­ counter-revolution as soon as condi­ will be built through combining tions must be as widely represen­ tions allow this. legal with illegal, open with tative as possible. Elected delegates, These are the lessons of Chile in underground, work. discussions giving maximum time 1973. Implementing reforms that Working-class activists, together for participation by all, elected con­ threatened capitalist power, the with the youth, must take the lead in tinuation committees which can workers' leaders stopped short of all the organisations formed by the carry out decisions arrived at, will mobilising the workers to dismantle oppressed and explain the perspec­ help to strengthen the fighting unity the reactionary capitalist state. They tives and tasks which lie ahead. of the working people against the accepted instead the promises by the Underground ANC committees regime and the bosses. generals of 'respect for must be formed in every factory, On these foundations the ANC democracy*—the same generals mine, township, university, high can be built as an invincible fortress who, when the time was ripe, laun­ school, etc., linking up regionally of the working people, capable of ched a bloody counter-revolution. and nationally, with the aim of leading the mass armed insurrection The developing movement for assisting and guiding the struggle of to establish workers* rule, democracy in SA can be sustained in the masses as a whole. abolishing poverty, privilege and action only by the working class, The leaders of the ANC in exile racial oppression, securing building the ANC on a socialist need to throw their full weight and democracy and a decent life for all, programme—a programme con­ all (he resources of the organisation and beginning the construction of cretely linking the struggle for behind this development. Only if the socialism# democracy to their own struggle to ANC is rebuilt as an instrument of take power and cast off the crushing the unity and power of the working burdens imposed on their everyday class will it be able to rise to its life by the bosses. tasks.

SIGMA "MOR CORPORATION

Strike at Sigma, Rossiyn Hands off the trade union The announcement by the e that SAAWU and By Gerald Desai SA trade unionists, among and others, are to be put on trial is a challenge to the whole work­ Jake Wilson ing class of South Africa. Over the last few months there has been a sharp Increase In deten­ firings of workers. of Wiehahn into the lap of the tions and banning* as the regime The regime is making every effort security police murderers—the lashes out against the growing op­ to discover the weaknesses of the defenders of cheap labour and the position to Its role. Acting with trade unions and frustrate their bulwark against trade union growing desperation now that all growth. It is trying to crack open the freedom. promises of reform are turning to unity which is being built. The trade union movement, dust, the bosses are turning their at­ But it is the workers' struggle that which has suffered no decisive set­ tack on the workers' movement In has forced openings in the 'united back in the last period, is entering an attempt to stamp out the rising front' of the employers. The strikes into a serious struggle in the fac­ demands of the masses. against the 'no payout' Pensions tories, townships, courts and police Bill brought about a free-for-all cells. It is reported that almost 200 peo­ fight between different employers. ple are currently being held in deten­ In the end, all they could agree on Any sign of weakness, any hesita­ tion by the security police. The ac­ was that the regime was to blame. tion in defence and reorganisation, tual number is much higher, as the will be taken full advantage of, not defence committees formed by At other employer meetings, only by the police and prosecutors, relatives of detainees and activists leading bosses have argued that the but by every employer facing have shown. non-racial trade unions have a organised workers. After toying with the idea of in­ legitimate political interest, especial­ Since (he regime is at this stage dustrial reform, the strategists of ly in housing and transport. testing the strength of the non-racial the ruling class have now concluded And again, in the ultra-cheap trade unions, the impending trial of that this is inadequate to stem the labour textile industry, even the the detained leaders provides enor­ rising militancy of the working close friends of the security police mous opportunities for trade union class. Fearful of the resistance that have been forced to offer the non- defence. A spirited defence by the could be provoked by an all-out at­ racial trade union national negotia­ accused, turning the spotlight onto tack on the trade unions, sweeping tions outside the framework of the the regime and exposing the bosses' away all existing leaders, the regime industrial council. complicity in trade union repres­ is trying to intimidate the whole sion, would win great sympathy trade union leadership by cracking throughout the country and interna­ down on some. tionally. The bosses and the regime are Bosses weakened Mass meetings, marches, and worried also at the prospect of a resolutions demanding the release of strong trade union movement, All these developments have the accused are essential to their determined to defend its recent signalled flashing danger signs to defence. In this way the unorganised gains, at a time when the economy is the regime—the top defence majority of the working class, the moving into a downward curve. organisation of the bosses. They youth, and community groups can They want the utmost flexibility in mark the growing weakness of the be drawn into the struggle. the factories to fend off the pressure bosses in defending their dictator­ The old slogan 'Hands off the on their profits, which could be ship in the factories and mines. trade unions' has to be carried for­ wiped out by hard struggles to de­ ward on a country-wide basis to ral­ fend wages and to stop layoffs and And so the question of trade unionism has moved from the hands ly the detainees committees, com- 12 munity and youth organisations, facing all workers: underground leadership, secure and all others struggling against the against attacks from the regime, •a national minimum wage of regime, behind the leadership of the should not be neglected. The RIOO a week, with automatic in­ working class. building of an underground net­ creases index-linked to the cost of The defence of the detained trade work of trade union activists will living (or formulated to ensure the unionists should be taken up at all make it more difficult for the police levels of the workers' movement. In widest possible unity in struggle); to identify the leaders of the move­ each province and area it should •trade union freedom, and the ment. It will ensure that, even in the become a campaigning issue for right to strike against all laws op­ event of a general clampdown on organising the solidarity committees pressing workers. the trade unions, the workers in the proposed by the trade union unity factories will not be left leaderless. Most importantly, the roots of meeting in Cape Town last August. (he unions in the factories and docks A combination of underground By drawing together the whole need to be tended. A trade union and open organisation can lay the trade union movement, great oppor­ movement made up of two layers basis for a mass Irade union move­ tunities are raised for a mass drive only—generals and soldiers—is ment which will force the regime to to organise the unorganised, par­ vulnerable to having its head retreat from bannings, detentions ticularly the migrant workers, cut off. Leadership must be and show trials. around fighting demands. strengthened at all levels. Factory Armed with a national minimum The task of defence is not to cover committees must become the firm wage demand and a well organised the line of retreat. Now more than foundation of defence within the campaign of Irade union defence, ever the question of defence has to trade unions—the training ground the target of I million Irade union be linked up with a concerted for workers to take up the reins of members is wilhin reach effort to build the trade leadership. union united front around the issues The task of developing a layer of

GEORGE PEAKE Class fighter World War. Parly municipal councillor in the In 1953 George was a founding town of Slough where he lived. member of the Coloured People's But George always retained his Congress, allied lo Ihe ANC, and orientation to Ihe South African soon became ils national President. freedom struggle. He was active in He was a delegate to Ihe Congress of the A nil-A pari held Movement and, ' Ihe People in 1955 where the In 1980, helped to launch the South Freedom Charier was adopted. African Labour Education Project. As a powerful spokesman against As an honest socialist, George the regime, George inevitably suf­ matched his life-long struggle fered his share of persecution. From against the exploitation and oppres­ 1956 lo 1958 he was one of Ihe sion of his class with equally stub­ defendants In Ihe Treason Trial. In born opposition against ideas and 1956 and again in 1961 he was bann­ methods on the part of the leader­ ed. During Ihe Emergency of 1960 ship whkh he found damaging to he was imprisoned without trial. the struggle. In 1961, George was elected lo the George only made contact w(ih Cape Town City Council by Ihe peo­ the ideas of Marxism comparatively ple of District Six. In this period he late In life. But recognising in those became one of the first lo volunteer ideas the conscious expression of for Umkhonto we Sizwe. In 1962, everything he had been fighting for, arrested for sabotage, he was im­ he unreservedly made (hem his own. prisoned on Robben Island. An ever fresh enthusiasm for the On his release he was pul under struggle was George's outstanding house arresl until he left the coun­ quality. He continued to invigorate try, moving lo Britain in 1968. younger comrades with his lively In exile as al home, George spirit, his humility, his wealth of ex­ In early October I9HI utrurg, unreservedly threw himself into Ihe perience and his intimate knowledge Peake died a tragic and premature struggle of the working people. of the liberation movement which death in exile. Employed as a building worker, he never tired of sharing. Born in 1921, he was a bricklayer he served as a shop steward until he George Peake has earned an by Irade, becoming active in the was elected a full-time convenor for honourable place in the annals of Western Province Building UCATT, the building workers' the workers' movement bolh In Workers* Union after Ihe Second union. He was also elected a Labour South Africa and Britain. 13

This is the firs! in a series of articles on armed struggle. In Guerilla struggle order to fully understand this question, it is necessary to examine guerilla war as it developed in the revolutionary upheavals in Asia, Africa and and the Latin America. Further articles will analyse guerilla struggle and the use of armed force in workers' movement the South African revolution.

The period following the Second World War has been one of unprecedented tur­ bulence in the colonial and underdeveloped countries with continual revolutionary uprisings against national oppression and imperialist domination. In many of the countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa, the strategy of guerilla war in the countryside and even urban guerillaism, has been adopted by leaders of the struggling masses. Guerilla struggle has been hailed as the only way towards victory over the oppressor, and a means by which socialism could be achieved. Today the working class, moving into struggie in all parts of tries was based in part on the super- exploitation of the masses in the the former colonial world, encounters many organisations and former colonies through these une­ leaders which put forward these ideas. In South Africa guerilla qual terms of trade. struggle is the official policy of the ANC and other This process has drained these organisations. For this reason it is important for the workers, countries of wealth and submerged the youth and all revolutionaries to understand clearly what this them hopelessly in debt. Seeking to method of struggle has to offer the working class, and when and expand cash-crop exports, they have become net importers even of basic where it can further the struggle against the capitalist enemy. foodstuffs from the advanced Even during the long post-war capitalist world. boom in the advanced countries, the Production has become more and continued grip of capiialism over more dominated by the narrow pro­ the 'Third World" has meant one fiteering interests of the multina­ uninterrupted nightmare for the I). Sikhakhane tional monopolies, taking advan­ masses. and tage of cheap labour. Indeed the explosive struggles of R. Monroe In some 'Third World' countries the peoples of the underdeveloped there has been a certain growth of countries forced imperialism to industry, based on the 'leavings' of retreat from direct political-military ble and emaciated, having entered the world economic upswing. But domination. The old colonial em­ the scene far too late to play any this has fuelled the demand for im­ pires, despite desperate and often positive role in the development of ports of machinery, resulting in barbarous measures by world society. ever-increasing borrowing from the capitalism, disintegrated. Dependent and fragmented, these Western banks, and loading the The achievement of political in­ economies cannot hope on a economies with crippling interest dependence in the countries sub­ capitalist basis to challenge the repayments. jected to colonial rule has been an dazzling industrial development of The land question in general has irreversible step forward. the Western powers. Most have con­ remained unsolved. Most But during the boom period of tinued to serve in their colonial role agricultural land has remained in 1950-1974, despite political in­ of exporting agricultural and the hands of reactionary landlord dependence, the economic mineral raw materials to the advanc­ classes. The peasant masses, at the stranglehold of capitalism over most ed industrial countries, and pro­ mercy of the capitalist market, of the 'Third World*—over the viding markets for the products of unable to compete with large-scale means of production as well as Western capitalism. modern agriculture and increasingly trade—tightened. Over the period since the Second dependent on capitalist industry and Monopoly capital now completely World War, the prices of their pro­ bankers for their implements etc., dominated the capitalist world. This ducts have generally fallen in rela­ have been trampled deeper into meant in turn that the capitalist tion to the prices they must pay for poverty and debt. class (national bourgeoisie) of the manufactured imports. The upsw- Capitalist rule has generally con­ undcrdeveloped countries was fee- ing in the advanced capitalist coun­ solidated the age-old oppression of 14 the peasantry by the landowners. portions of mass starvation and This process was set in motion in The capitalist class, weak and lack­ epidemics. the Russian Revolution of 1917, ing a social basis, could maintain More and more, these conditions when the working class took power itself only by entering into political have forced the masses to move. and established its own democratic alliances with the landowners. There is no way forward on the state. But the socialist tasks cannot In this atmosphere, no basis ex­ basis of capitalism. .be completed within any single isted for stable political democracy. country, especially an Democracy opens the way for the underdeveloped country. The masses to press for social reforms, revolution needed to spread to the for which there is no lasting room Revolution more advanced capitalist countries. on a capitalist basis. The experience of the Russian If this had happened, world Even where the regimes arc Revolution of 1917 confirmed the history would have been different. nominally 'democratic', that fact—brilliantly anticipated by If the working class in Western democracy cloaks a hell of exploita­ Trotsky in the theory of the perma­ Europe had taken power at this tion and poverty, enforced at nent revolution—(hat the capitalist time, it would have ignited the hot various times by 'stales of emergen­ class of an underdeveloped country flame of social revolution cy' and martial law. is incapable of carrying through the throughout the colonial world. Most of the capitalist countries tasks of a bourgeois-democratic But in fact, opportunities for car­ of Latin America and Asia revolution. It can solve none of the rying through the social revolution are ruled by dictatorships, com­ inherited problems of poverty, semi- in Europe in 1917-1923 were missed, pletely suppressing the trade unions feudal structures, landlessness, im­ and the Russian Revolution remain­ and workers' parties. They are perialist domination, arbitrary ed isolated. Under these conditions, marked by terror, torture and tribal and national divisions, and a privileged bureaucratic caste was massacre. Most of the independent the absence of mass markets, able to usurp power in the Soviet states in Africa have also become because it is tied to the imperialists Union, crushing workers' one-party regimes or military and the landlords. democracy and raising itself into the governments, not allowing any Under these circumstances the sole commanding stratum. organised opposition whatsoever. task of taking power and carrying • These regimes are weak and through the tasks of the bourgeois- unstable. Coups are followed by democratic revolution falls on the Delay counter-coups. Military govern­ shoulders of the working class. But ments give way to civilian rule and the working class, leading the All that remained of the October then military government again. peasantry and the majority of the Revolution was the abolition of Unable on a capitalist basis to nation, cannot stop at the ac­ capitalism and landlordism, solve any of the problems, they can­ complishment of these tasks. It will together with a pian of production, not indefinitely hold back the struggle to pass on to the socialist in a bureaucratically distorted form. relentless pressure of the masses. tasks—the expropriation of Again after the Second World Hence they balance between the capitalism, etc. War huge revolutionary possibilities pressures of imperialism on the one hand, and that of the workers and peasants on the other. The state, serving the interests of capitalism, becomes partly elevated above the masses locked in struggle. repressing the masses for the benefit of the capitalists and landlords, but enforcing reforms at the capitalists' expense when the struggle of the masses becomes threatening. Only in exceptional and tem­ porary circumstances has there been any advance in the living standards of the colonial workers and peasants. Conditions of life for the overwhelming majority of the peo­ ple of the capitalist 'Third World' have not only dropped further and further behind those of the advanc­ ed capitalist countries, but have become absolutely worse. Incomes, the prospect of secure jobs and health have all deteriorated. Poverty, squalor and disease have increased to the pro­ 15 The Chinese Revolution of 1944-1949, which brought Mao's Red Army to power, was the first of these revolutions. Removing nearly one quarter of the world's people from the grip of landlordism and capitalism, its historical importance is surpassed only by the Russian Revolution itself. The Chinese Revolution shifted the world balance of forces against imperialism and has secured the transformation of China, in 30 years, from a broken and weak semi-colony into a mighty power. It is only necessary to compare China with India today to see the enor­ mous advantages for the masses resulting from the nationalisation and planning of production. But, in contrast to the Russian The Chinese Revolution 1944-49: ihe Red Army under Mao came 10 power Revolution, where the working class took power and later lost it to the opened up for the working class in The capitalists, with expanding Stalinist bureaucracy, workers' con­ both Western and Eastern Europe. new resources, could offer conces­ trol over society and Ihe state never But the socialist revolution in the sions in response to working-class existed in China. major capitalist countries, the pressure. The Stalinist and reformist In China, the workers' state was decisive areas of the world, was leaders came to echo the claims of based from the outset on the rule of derailed. the capitalists that crisis and class a bureaucratic caste, raised above Thus the national awakenings and conflict were things of the past. the workers and peasants, its aims revolutions in the underdeveloped They lulled themselves with the restricted to the national develop­ countries took place under un­ belief in an unending future of ment of China alone. favourable international conditions. gradual reform. This was the inevitable conse­ The defeat of the social revolu­ quence of a revolution based on the tion in ihe West, and its distortion peasantry and led by the middle in Eastern Europe, was a direct Distorted revolution class. result of the policies of the Soviet Not for nothing does Marxism ex­ bureaucracy. The delay in the European revolu­ plain that the socialist revolution In Western Europe the workers tion meant thai no genuinely and the building of socialism is the looked to the Communist parties for socialist lead and no industrial basis task of the working class. This is not a revolutionary lead, because of the was provided for the workers and accidental, but because the specific role played by Russia against Nazi peasants in Ihe underdeveloped role in production of the working Germany and the activity of Com­ countries. class gives it a specific capacity and munists in the underground But the masses in the 'Third consciousness possessed by no other resistance against fascism. World' could not wait until the class. But the Soviet bureaucracy, revolutionary struggle of the work­ It is the working class alone, needing to maintain control over the ing class in the advanced countries organised by the organisation of in­ Soviet working class, had everything was resumed. Their problems were dustry, which has the social position to lose from the unleashing of the too crushing. and can develop the collective con­ workers' revolution internationally. Thus the colonial masses have sciousness to create a planned Stalin, at the Yalta and Potsdam hurled themselves forward in a economy and a democratic workers' conferences, agreed secretly with tne whole series of epoch-making strug­ state, without bureaucracy or Western leaders that Western gles that have snapped the chain of privileged strata. Only on the basis Europe should remain in the hands world capitalism at one link after of workers' democracy can the way of imperialism. another: China, Cuba, Burma, to genuine socialism be opened. The treacherous policies of Syria, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Mozam­ The Chinese Revolution was not Stalinism ensured that the socialist bique, Angola etc. based on the mobilisation of the revolution in the West was delayed In some cases the immediate working class under a Marxist for a whole historical period. This cause of the break with capitalism leadership, struggling for workers* provided the political basis on which was a military coup, resting on the democracy and socialism. It was capitalism, severely weakened by support of the peasantry. In many rooted in the heroic struggles of the the war, was saved. A new era of other cases the driving force has peasantry against landlordism, and capitalist growth was ushered in for been a peasant army mobilised in led by middle-class elements appall­ all the advanced countries. protracted rural guerilla warfare. ed by the oppression and suffering 16 of the masses. creating socialism, through the factories and welcomed htm with In general this has also been true means of a people's guerilla war. red flags. of the social revolutions in other In fact it was no part of Mao's underdeveloped countries. conscious programme to abolish Often even more than the work­ capitalism. Prior to the revolution, Cuba ing class, the peasantry suffers the the Chinese Communist Party pro­ most horrendous oppression under claimed that a "new democracy" Fundamentally similar processes capitalism, and struggles fiercely and "fifty years of national took place in Cuba in the late 1950s. against the landlords and the state. capitalism" lay ahead. The guerilla army gathered together Why then cannot the peasantry Il was the objective conditions by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara carry through a revolution which which enabled the middle-class consisted of peasants, ex-workers, leads to socialism in the same way as leaders of the Chinese Revolution to and the unemployed. It based itself the working class? take power, and left them no alter­ on a bourgeois-democratic pro­ The peasantry approaches social native but to take industry into state gramme for the removal of the questions from the standpoint of a ownership, turning China onto the Batista dictatorship with no sugges­ class of individuals who are not road of modern development. tion of abolishing capitalism. bound together in production. The Chinese capitalists, linked to The only real participation of the As a class scattered in the coun­ the landlords, were too bankrupt workers in the struggle was in the tryside, isolated from the centres of and decrepit to develop the forces of last stages when a general strike was called in support of Castro's march on Havana. The fall of Havana meant the col­ lapse of Batista's hated police state. Power fell into the hands of Castro at the head of the guerillas. But the abolition of capitalism and landlor­ dism did not take place as the result of a conscious plan. Taxes were imposed on the capitalists by Castro to raise money for basic reforms. American im­ perialism, controlling nine-tenths of the economy, violently objected and imposed a blockade on Cuba in retaliation. As a reprisal for the blockade, the Cubans seized the American assets. ;: peasants ride in support of agrarian reform Thus nine-tenths of the economy fell into the hands of the state. They industry, the peasantry cannot act production. Chiang Kai-Shek, the collectively as a democratic organis­ then proceeded to nationalise the bourgeois leader, saw his army of remaining tenth. ing force in production. The peasants in uniform disintegrate as peasantry tend to follow the class or the soldiers, offered land by Mao, Thus the economic foundations stratum which commands power in flocked over to the side of the of a workers' state came into ex­ the towns. revolution. The lesson was clear: to istence but with power in the hands Where the working class strives to gain land, the peasantry needed to of the former guerilla leadership. socialise the property taken away rise up against the capitalist- These military leaderships rapidly from the exploiters, the tendency of landlord regime. consolidated themselves into bureaucratic regimes, modelled on peasants is rather to divide it among Imperialism, exhausted by the Se­ themselves. The advantages of col­ the 'socialist' bureaucracy in cond World War, was unable to Moscow. lectivisation do not occur naturally come to the assistance of the to them, but must usually be Chinese ruling class. The Soviet Starting out from conditions of demonstrated by others. bureaucracy, emerging strengthened indescribable economic destitution, Where the working class must from the war, provided Mao with the new regimes were able to strive to solve problems on a na­ material aid as well as the model of organise considerable economic tional and international scale, the a bureaucratic workers' state. progress because of the superiority of a planned economy compareu peasantry experiences problems on a Though Mao's victory led to the local scale and is sceptical of na­ with decaying eapuausm. starvation abolition of capitalism, at the same could be abolished, schools built for tional planning which appears to time it crushed the independent curtail its independence. all and life expectancy increased. movement of the Chinese working This provided them with massive Because of the Chinese Revolu­ class against (he capitalists. So far support among the working popula­ tion and the similar revolutions was Mao from the example of the tion. which followed, some intellectuals Russian Revolution that on entering have concluded that the peasantry Shanghai and other cities, he shot At the same time, the severe con­ now has the historical role of down workers who had seized their straints on production within a 17 single, underdeveloped country, brought under workers rule can the torious guerilla movement had no governed by the world market, ruled crushing burdens of imperialist option but to take over the economy out the all-round development of in­ super-exploitation and from the fleeing capitalists. (By this dustry and agriculture to create (he underdevelopment in Asia, Africa stage the guerilla war had escalated conditions of material abundance and Latin America be altogether into virtually a full-scale conven­ thai could form the foundations of removed. tional war.) socialism. The Russian and later the Chinese In Mozambique and Angola the As was shown in Russia after bureaucracies have supported na­ guerilla struggle contributed to the 1923, even a healthy workers' state, tional liberation struggles but, in the weakening of Portuguese particularly in a backward country, interests of 'detente* with im­ capitalism. This resulted in the Por­ will degenerate unless the social perialism, have opposed all efforts tuguese revolution in 1974 which, in revolution spreads to other advanc­ to organise the working masses con­ turn, placed power in the colonies in ed countries. In conditions of sciously for the overthrow of the hands of the guerilla leader­ generalised poverty and shortages, capitalism. Their programs are iden­ ships. Faced with the flight of the privileged elites will always arise and tical: first 'national democracy* on a capitalist class, they also were oblig­ graft themselves onto the backs of capitalist basis, while the struggle ed to take production into the hands the masses. for socialism is relegated to the dis­ of the state and initiate economic As Trotsky pointed out, when tant future. planning. bread queues form, there will have Where peasant struggles have led In other countries, similar to be officials to distribute the bread to the collapse of rotten capitalist- deformed workers' stales have come and policemen to keep the queue in landlord regimes, the Russian and into existence not as a result of order! And it is easy to see who will Chinese bureaucracies have been guerilla warfare, but of a crisis help themselves first—and most. faced with an accomplished fact. In within the existing slate machine. In Like their counterparts in the these countries they have supported Ethiopia, sections of the officer underdeveloped capitalist countries, the establishment of bureaucratic caste staged a coup to replace the the bureaucratic regimes in the regime that would confine degenerate feudal absolutism of countries where capitalism was themselves to building 'socialism' Haile Selassie by a constitutional overthrown could only maintain within their own borders, appealing monarchy. What compelled ihem to themselves by balancing between the neither to the workers of the West, act was a famine imposing classes. Unable in the long term to nor of Russia and China themselves, devastating suffering on the masses. satisfy all the demands of the to struggle for workers' democracy. But, with the collapse of the workers, peasants and middle monarchy, the feebleness and rot­ classes, they are forced to maintain tenness of the capitalist class—its in­ rigid political control. Reforms are Spread ability to take the country for­ launched in response to pressure ward—was obvious. It could not from the masses; at the same time Similar objective conditions have command the state or impose its the regimes remain vulnerable to the led to the defeat of capitalism stamp upon society. pressures of capitalism and im­ through drawn-out guerilla strug­ Feeling the intense pressures of perialism internationally and are gles in other countries of the forced to adapt to these. the peasants and workers beneath underdeveloped world, and the rise them, and only a vacuum above, Thus, for the working class in the of deformed workers' stales. the officers had no alternative but to underdeveloped countries, (he task In Vietnam, all the barbarity of base themselves on the support of to broaden their struggle interna­ French and US imperialism could (he masses. tionally is a central part of (he strug­ not prop up the decrepit capitalist Initiating a programme of land gle to solve their daily problems. class. First in North Vietnam (after reform, they won the support of the Only when the commanding heights 1954; and then in the South (after peasants, expropriated the of the world economy have been 1975), the leadership of the vie- landlords, and took the remainder of the economy under state control. I 1 Leaders of guerilla armies often claim that 'victory is certain*. The bankruptcy of capitalism in the underdeveloped world, particularly in its most backward areas, con­ tinues to create conditions in which guerilla struggles based on the peasantry can result in a distorted social revolution. But these victories are not automatic. With a more developed base of capitalist production, the capitalist class may not disintegrate completely under the pressure of the Since the elimination of capitalism and landlordism, Chinese industry has made guerilla war. They may crush the great advances guerilla struggle (as was the fate of 18 Che Guevara's aitempi to wage guerilla war in Bolivia) or, where deadlock is reached, may force the guerilla leaders lo compromise. In Algeria and Zimbabwe, for in­ stance, guerilla siruggle has resulted, not in the overthrow of the capitalist class, but in the former guerilla leadership forming a government with the state machine and property of the capitalist class largely intact.

Way forward

The examples of the distorted Castro with Brezhnev and Kruschev in 1964 social revolutions in China, Cuba etc. have been attractive to the mid­ in its form. scious force for Ihe capture of dle class because they pose no threat Yet, starting from backwardness, power, the overthrow of capitalism to its privilege. The middle class in developing production in the limited and the establishment of workers' those countries became transformed framework of a single country, the democracy. The methods of into a privileged bureaucracy stan­ advances are tiny in comparison guerillaism can lead at best to ding over and above the mass of the with what would be achieved on the deformed workers' states in which people. basis of the socialist transformation the working class is ruled by Ihe of the world. armed forces and the bureaucracy. All that these states have in com­ mon with workers' democracy is Today conditions for the world The way forward for the working state ownership of the means of pro­ socialist revolution are once again class in the underdeveloped world is duction and economic planning. On re-emerging. World capitalism has through the development of its own this basis they can develop the pro­ entered a new period of prolonged programme within its own mass ductive forces at a pace impossible death agony, which is arousing the organisations, winning the support on their former capitalist basis, and working class of Western Europe, of the oppressed peasantry in its can begin to feed, clothe, house and the US and Japan into mighty strug­ struggle for the socialist transforma­ raise the educational and cultural gles which will develop over the next tion of society. Above all it will need level of the people. 10-15 years towards revolutionary to link up with the struggle of the situations. working class internationally. Its These gains by the masses provide In Russia and the other developed model should be, not the Chinese the historical justification of the col­ and Cuban revolutions, but the Rus­ onial revolution, however distorted Stalinist countries, the bureaucratic regimes have turned into an ab­ sian Revolution of 1917. solute fetter on the development of At the same time, especially production. As in Poland, the where the working class is a small workers of these countries will again force, a guerilla siruggle of the and again be impelled to rise up in peasantry can have an important an effort to overthrow the auxiliary role in the struggle for bureaucracy and establish workers' workers' power. In these conditions democracy. the proletarian revolution, based in A single revolutionary victory in a the cities, must be assisted by the developed, industrialised country peasant war in the countryside would spread like a bush fire, far under the overall leadership of the faster and with more profound ef­ workers. fects than even the Russian Revolu­ The main task is to build the con­ tion of 1917. It will raise the level of scious movement of the working the working class internationally to class for workers* power and heights never seen before. socialism. The recent general strikes In every major country of the in countries such as Argentina, Sri underdeveloped world, the working Lanka, India etc. have shown that class, with the crisis of world also in the underdeveloped world capitalism loaded on its back, is the working class is the key force to engaging in huge struggles against change society. the bankrupt bosses and rotten The crisis of capitalism will com­ regimes. pel these workers to take their place For the working class in struggle, in the front ranks of the world the methods of guerillaism offer no movement of the working class for The 'honeymoon': Castro with US Vice- solution. Guerilla struggle cannot the socialist transformation of President Nixon in 1959 mobilise ihe workers into a con­ society # 19 WORKERS ORGANISE! PUTCO profits from workers Throughoul the country PUTCO is putting in for higher bus fares despite increases in Pretoria in January and on the Witwatersrand in July last year. Even though the company made a profit of R13.7 million in 1981, the shareholders of PUTCO are deman­ ding that the workers should be charged higher fares. On top of this PUTCO also has the advantage of deciding new routes, and can keep out competition from other bus companies. Overcrowding on Port Elizabeth buses Not only are the workers forced All workers would agree that bus can public transport as a whole be to live far outside the cities, with fares must be stopped from rising. planned in the workers' interest. long hours to and from work every The solution is not 'black' bus com­ The struggle against the increased day. They also have to put up with panies, which will have to exploit PUTCO bus fares must be taken up whatever services the PUTCO the workers in the same way in order by the trade union movement, par­ monopoly decides to run, and pay to be profitable. ticularly the unions which include whatever it decides to charge. The answer is nationalisation the bus drivers. With rising costs, PUTCO's pro­ under workers* control and manage­ No more profiteering al Ihe fits depend entirely on raising bus ment of the bus companies and the workers' expense! No increase in fares for the workers. whole transport system. Only then bus fares! J.W.

Right at the start of 1982 the Zim­ babwean railway engine crews went on strike for belter pay. From Bulawayo, the strike spread quickly Zimbabwe workers on strike across the country, bringing the railways to a standstill. in the rural areas...The gap between Irom tneir jobs without listening to Within days, over 250 of the the nurses* wages and those of the them. strikers (about 400 in all) were ar­ sisters was as vast as the gap bet­ One of the delegates said: "When rested and sentenced under Smith's ween the North Pole and the South we tried to argue, he ordered us out Law and Order Maintenance Act. Pole...Some (teachers) earn 84 or he would call the police and have They were given 6 months suspend­ dollars and others 384 us thrown out." ed sentence on condition that they dollars—teachers with the same When the nurses came out, over returned to work immediately. qualifications." 500 were arrested in a demonstra­ During the strike, the government The striking teachers besieged the tion on the first day. The next day, also passed emergency regulations Ministry of Education, fruitlessly Prime Minister Mugabe threatened increasing the penalties for railway demanding a hearing. Hundreds them and the teachers: "It is not dif­ workers who strike. were arrested. The rest were told to ficult to arrest them and throw them Last October the teachers and return to work or be sacked. into the bush for two or three mon­ nurses were on strike. A Sunday Their strike was unofficial, and ths in order to make them feel the Mail columnist, though opposing they were not satisfied when the kind of hardships freedom fighters the strike, nevertheless reflected the Minister consented to see only an and peasants in the rural com­ opinion of most workers in the official delegation from the Zim­ munities suffered.'* towns: "Both the teachers and babwe Teachers' Association, in Five days later, after army medics nurses had good cases. Their wages, which they had no faith. Later the had been moved into the hospitals set during colonial rule...have Minister saw the elected strike com­ always been sub-human particularly and the government had promised mittee, but only to dismiss them to investigate the grievances, the 20 WORKERS ORGANISE!

nurses relumed lo work. These recent aclions—following in ihe wake of strikes by many White workers join thousands of less skilled workers over Ihe last eighteen mon­ ths-shows a change In the mood of independent union mass enthusiasm which swept Mugabe to office. Among the work­ ing class there is a growing deter­ Seventy-five workers from the least able to defend their members' mination to sec the promises of whites-only Ysler en Staal union interests. As a result of the resigna­ socialist policies turned into reality. have left to join a predominantly tion of these members, the Ysier en black union affiliated to FOSATU. Staal leadership is now, belatedly, But the "real power" in society, establishing courses for their as Prime Minister Mugabe pointed This happened because NAAWU shop stewards at the Volkswagen shop stewards to train them in effec­ out on January 16th, overwhelming­ tive wage bargaining! ly lies in the hands of plani in Uitenhage were successful those who control "the minerals in resolving the problems of these Bui the future lies, not in a and farms, commerce and in­ white workers, where the Yster en resurgence of sectional struggles by dustry"—the same bosses and lan­ Siaal shop stewards had failed. while workers, but in the movement downers as before independence. This is a small but clear sign that of the mass of the black if the black workers' movement can workers. The black workers' move­ The demands of ihe workers, show a militant lead to all workers ment musi grasp the opportunities skilled and unskilled, can only be and offer unity in action, then white ihai are opening up to show to met, and white privilege can only be workers can begin to swing to ihe broader layers of white workers that finally swept away, if the leaders of camp of the black workers. their fate is tied up with that of the ZANU and ZAPU break with the working class as a whole. constraints of Lancaster House and Apart from short-lived 'consumer mobilise the workers and peasants booms', white workers* living stan­ Without making the slightest con­ against capitalist power. dards have declined steadily since cession to while privilege, ihey musl the early 1970's. Sections of white explain that building a mass trade Such a movement would have workers are beginning to see that union united front is indispensable overwhelming support from ihe there is no future by clinging to the to the fight for all workers' in­ mighty black working class of South capitalist class, to bankrupt white terests. Africa, who have ihe power lo racism, or to the white union paralyse all efforts by the capitalists The Ysier en Staal example shows bureaucracy. or the SA regime to attack the Zim­ lhat even workers who in the past babwean revolution—and to lead In fact, it is precisely the reac­ had followed the most reactionary the way to the socialist transforma­ tionary right-wing trade union union leaders can be pushed to ihese tion of Southern Africa as a whole. leaders of Ihe Arrie Paulus and Ys­ conclusions. ier en Siaal type, collaborating most On ihis basis, winning further sec­ closely with the bosses, thai are tions of the white workers, the black S.F. workers' movemeni can seriously weaken the bosses' forces of reac­ tion and ease the road to the victory '9?6 over the apartheid regime and the <9JI boss class. The leaders of the ANC and SAC- TU musi campaign resolutely for a programme of revolutionary working-class unity in struggle. On this basis, the example of the Yster en Staal workers can be an early chord of the music of the future, in which our sociely will have been cleansed of violence, class and racial oppression, and hold the prospeel of prosperity and security for all working people.

Y.F. 21

F Zambia on a time-bomb

:** i«H DailTMaiV'M W*^ fV* COXtfry l W-rhout (ear ex to*w Labour leaders detained ^'W'* """' " —i. Ml - ^^r~T

&

Seventeen years after winning independence, Zambia is in of Kaunda and his UNlP govern­ economic stagnation and deep social crisis. ment, ruling on the basis of After studying the situation at the request of President capitalism, to modernise society and overcome the problems of Kaunda, Rene Dumont, an agronomist, made the following backwardness. The policies of chilling remark: "rich men's pigs have a better diet than the "Zambian humanism", failing to average /am hi an." break the grip of capitalism, have Ai dawn each morning long not relieved the appalling human misery. queues are formed in front of the By Jasper Smith state-owned shops, which are ir­ The Zambian economy is over­ regularly supplied with basic essen­ and whelmingly orientated to a single ex­ tials like mealie meal, cooking oil, Yusuf Fakir port product, copper. The copper salt, flour, wheat and sugar. But mining industry is 51% state-owned people often return home empty (South Africa's Anglo American handed even after an eight hour Corporation owns the rest). This vigil. tries in Africa, starving to death has partial state-ownership has done When patients are admitted to become common. Forty per cent of nothing to alleviate the suffering of hospital, they have to take their own children die before they reach the the Zambian masses—in fact, it has food. Sharing a bed is not uncom­ age of 5, and 30% suffer from been used by the capitalists to mon. Drugs are not always severe rrlalnutrilion. This reflects squeeze even greater profits out of available. Unemployment is at a the economic impasse, verging on Zambia. record level, and could increase by utter catastrophe. Copper accounts for 48% of pro­ 100 000 in 1982. The crisis is the heritage of British duction and 92% of exports by There has been a savage decline in imperialist rule, and the domination value. The price of copper, decided living standards. A peasant now has of the economy by foreign in the world market, has a decisive to grow three times as much maize monopolies. Within the capitalist effect on the economy of Zambia. as he did during the 1960's to buy a world market, dominated by the big in A heavy slump in copper prices in similar shirt, blanket, or hoe. imperialist powers, the bourgeoisie the mid 1970's deprived the govern­ Despite the continued massive in­ in a former colony like Zambia ar­ ment of vital revenue, and that jection of capital from the Interna­ rived too late on the scene to slump is now repeating itself. In tional Monetary Fund, none of the develop the productive forces. 1974, copper and cobalt provided economic problems have been solv- It is the capitalist class that is 54% of the government income. ed. In one of the most fertile coun- responsible for the chronic inability Between 1977 and 1979, they pro- 22 vidcd nothing. Only Kw41m (R24,6m) came from this source in 1980 when the copper price fell from £1 375(R2 540) a tonne in February to under £800(R1 430) in December. A negligible amount of revenue is expected for 1981. At the same time, oil costs have risen by 60% in 1980 alone, while the maize harvest has failed for two seasons running. This has led to maize imports, worth Kwl0m(R6m) in 1979 and at least Kw49m(R30m) in 1980.

Confrontation

As this crisis-ridden economy continues to eat away at the living The price of copper critically affecls the Zambian economy standards of the Zambian masses, the inevitable confrontation bet­ the Zambian economy. July, he was shouted down and ween government and workers has During the war in Zimbabwe, the mobbed by angry strikers, who exploded yet again into the open. Zambian masses were prepared to refused to join him in singing the Even the party-controlled Times make sacrifices in solidarity. Now, national anthem. Then they tore his of Zambia was forced to describe to paper over the economic crisis official car apart! the situation on the Copperbelt as a and growing class tensions, Kaunda In another incident in September, "time bomb", as tens of thousands seeks scapegoats. His expulsion of when miners were striking against a of mineworkcrs continue to strike two US diplomats as CIA spies, and decision to stop credit sales of meat, over a range of economic and accusations of an impending coup miners and their wives stoned union political issues, bringing production have done nothing to dampen the officials who stood in their way. It is to an abrupt halt at all copper and seething anger of the mineworkers. precisely through struggle, that the cobalt mines—the nerve centre No doubt the CIA is hard at work workers will increasingly put their in Zambia. But, as one Zambian leadership to the test. lawyer put it: "As fa* as the or­ While it is undoubtedly the dinary man in the street is concern­ 400 000 Zambian mineworkers who ed, he couldn't care less if it was the hold the key to the political future CIA or the KGB that was plotting of Zambia, and are in the frontline against who. It's the bread and but­ of the struggle, other sections too ter issues that are of concern to are clamouring for increased wages him." and political reform. The The spate of wildcat strikes which mineworkers have been joined by a swept the country at first oil the section of the railway workers issue of pay increases, have quickly demanding equal pay and condi­ matured into direct political con­ tions for alt Zambian railway frontation between workers and workers. government. Kaunda has accused Further strikes have broken out trade union leaders of inciting among district council workers strikes with the aim of toppling the demanding payment for the last two government. Unable to ride out the months which they had not receiv­ storm with his customary ed. In 1980 a total of 21 921 work­ "diplomacy", Kaunda and UNIP ing days were lost as a result of 90 have been panicked into wielding a 'illegal* strikes. In 1981, by June sledgehammer against the workers alone, these figures were totally sur­ by gaoling Frederick Chiluba, passed: 46 329 working days had chairman-general of ZCTU and been lost as a result of 84 strikes. other ZCTU leaders. This reveals the growing militancy The mineworkers, however, are in and maturity of the workers and the no mood to be steam-rollered. increased tempo of the class struggle When Minister of Labour and that is developing. Social Services, Basil Kabwe, at­ It is precisely this growing strug­ President Kaunda: unable to solve the tempted to make the peace between gle that persuaded the Lusaka High economic impasse on a capitalist basis government and striking workers in Court to order the immediate 23

release of Frederick Chiluba. The ZCTU leader was greeted with wild jubilation and cheering, clapping and shouis of "Long Live ihc ZCTU". Shortly afier the release of Chiluba. Newsiead Zimba, general secreiary of ihe ZCTU, was released as well. The depth of the capitalist crisis and the rotten and corrupt ruling class will provoke even greater resistance on the part of the workers, which will lead inevitably to the masses taking openly offen­ sive action. The workers have demonstrated through strikes their determination to use their increased strength and confidence. What is needed is a leadership of the workers' organisa­ tions, with a revolutionary deter­ mination, a conscious socialist pro­ gramme to mobilize the workers and the peasant masses, and transform One of the most fertile countries in Africa, yet many areas are impoverished and the situation completely. depopulated have often argued for denationalisa­ the economy. tion of mining and industry, and State ownership of the main other measures supposed to rein­ means of production constitutes the force capitalism. economic foundation of a workers' One process The fact that workers tolerate state. Ii would be a huge step for­ such support for capitalism on the ward, permitting some further part of their leaders shows the con­ development of the forces Of pro­ In the absence of a Marxist fusion which has resulted because duction. But in the absence ol leadership and a programme Kaunda's bankrupt capitalist democratic control and leadership capable of uniting and leading the policies are dressed up as by the working class, such a regime workers towards the overthrow of "humanism" and even "socialism" in Zambia would be in the hands ol capitalism, it is possible that the in UNIP government propaganda. a bureaucratic elite. It would be a struggle could take a number of The workers want an alternative deformed workers' state, essentially distorted forms. to the present system. Bui Chiluba's no different from the regimes in Under present conditions, the policies would be an utter disaster, Mozambique. Angola. China, or grievances of national minorities with further savage cuts into the liv­ the Soviet Union iiself. could rear their head. Opposition to ing standards of the working peo­ But I he needs ol the people can­ Kaunda and UNIP has already ple. This would rapidly unleash not be fully met, nor can a socialist begun to harden around discrimina­ mass resistance, not least among the democratic society be built, within tion against the 18 Bemba-speaking ranks of the trade unions the confines of a single countr>. lei alone a country suffering Ihe underdevelopment of Zambia. Bankrupt capitalist policies are dressed up Zambia is dominated and con­ trolled by the same capitalist as "humanism" and even "socialism" plunderers who control the wealth of South Africa. The rcvolulions in Zambia and South Africa arc pari tribes which comprise 35^0 of the themselves. of one process—the liberation of population, many of them Kaunda himself, however, is not Southern Africa from the grip of the mineworkers organised in the yet a spent force. It cannot be ex­ South African ruling class and the ZCTU and with historical allegiance cluded that with the impasse of imperialist interests which ii en­ to the UPP (which was Kapwcpwe's Zambian capitalism and the forces. party). unrelenting pressure from below, he Frederick Chiluba. himself a (or a successor drawn from UNIP or Bemba-speaker, is being widely tip­ the army) would be left with no ped as a future leader in the event of alternative but to mobilise the Kaunda's overthrow. But Chiluba masses for the expropriation of the and other leaders of the ZCTU. big capitalists and (he nationalisa­ echoing the ideas of Kapwepwc. tion of the commanding heights of Western Europe is the cradle of world capitalism and modern imperialism. Marx and Engels developed their analysis of capitalism, and their perspective of working class revolution, on its soil. For the twenty-five years after the Second World War, it seemed as if the class struggle in Western Europe had died down. Many cynical 'left* intellectuals —in Europe as well as the col­ onial world—claimed that the whole European working class had finally been 'bought off* by the capitalists. This showed a complete lack of understanding of the real situation. But today, against a background of world economic and social crisis, fresh signs are appear­ ing in Western Europe of explosive movements that will change the course of human history.

What lies ahead has been clearly ed the very day after the elections by foreshadowed in the election vic­ the biggest trade union in the Greek By tories this year of workers' parlies in Electricity Corporation (DEI): "We France and Greece. In France, the greet the victory of the working peo­ Simon Freedman Socialist Party (PSF) was placed in ple in the elections...and we ask you office in the biggest electoral victory to carry out the (asks of cond World War. capitalism has for the workers in French history, CHANGE...starting from today, rebuilt powerful economic founda­ defeating the right for the first lime we. the workers of DEI. begin to tions in Western Europe—even in 23 years. put into practice the decisions of the overtaking the United States. In In Greece. PASOK.(Socialist Par­ Greek people. Real power within 1979, 19 countries in Europe pro­ ty) won a crushing victory, with the our company is now transferred to duced 45,2% of the output of the left getting 60^o of the vote. This, the hands of our workers and other Organization for Economic the second largest vote ever received representatives of popular power, Cooperation and Development by the workers' parties in any in­ who will implement the slogans that (OECD), whose 25 members include dustrially developed country, placed the Greek people were shouting in all the advanced capitalist countries. them in office for the first time. the streets: "the people and PASOK West Germany, France, Italy and The mood of the workers was in power!" Britain together produced 30,3^o of clearly expressed in a leaflet publish­ Since the devastation of the Se- OECD output. The United States produced only 34,8^o. And yet the capitalist class of Western Europe, even in those countries where the working class has gained the most benefits from the boom, is no longer able to con­ tain the class struggle. In 1980 Sweden, the showpiece of modern social-democracy, was paralysed by a near-national general strike and lockout. 1981 has been a year of turmoil. In February a military coup was at­ tempted and failed in Spain, spark­ ing off a demonstration of 500 000 in Madrid opposing a return to dic­ tatorship. The barren inner cities of Britain, further devastated by the policies of Thatcher, were stricken by a wave of protest and rioting. In rich West Germany, Holland, Austria and even Switzerland the youth during the last few years have been vigorously protesting against the housing shortage and lack of facilities. In October and November huge PASOK rally in Greece into the 1980s 25 peace demonstrations, with ihe resurgence of capitalism in Europe. 'mixed economy', i.e. capitalism youth much in evidence, have taken Many other factors played a fur­ with some measures of state in­ place in Bonn, Brussels, Rome, ther role. The war left United States tervention, and reforms for the Paris, Amsterdam, London, and imperialism in an absolutely domi­ workers where these could be af­ Madrid. Well over a million people nant position in the capitalist world. forded. took part, many for the first time in Under its sway, measures were their lives, to oppose the stationing taken to increase trade and the divi­ of yet more nuclear weapons in sion of labour on a world scale. Growth slows Europe. Under Marshall Aid huge US loans were pumped into Europe. But by the I960's it had become Production was revived on the basis apparent that economic growth was Capitalist boom of demand for consumption goods slowing down, and inflation began and machines postponed by war, to rise ominously. A breakdown in All this clearly signals the end of and the modernization of machinery the international monetary system the social stability made possible by replacing that destroyed in the war. in 1968-711 leading to sharp rises in The collective imperialist exploita­ the oil-price from 1973, helped the longest and strongest boom in tion of the workers and peasants of precipitate a simultaneous recession capitalist history, which Western the Third World was intensified. in nearly all capitalist countries. Europe shared in after the Second This was a stunning shock to the World War. Thus capitalism got onto its feet capitalists. The Second World War was the again. But, at the same time, with culmination of decades of economic the recovery of production, the In fact, this recession marked the stagnation and political crisis in working class increased in numbers end of the post-war period of Europe. In the aftermath of war, and strength. The enormous power capitalist growth. Basically, Europe remained ripe for social of the labour and trade union move­ capitalism was once again jolting up revolution: in several countries the ment forced a phenomenal rise in against the limits of the world working class could have taken living standards, and the develop­ capitalist market. Production had power. ment of 'welfare capitalism'. The been increased at break-neck speed. The struggle for socialism But instead of taking the lead in possibility of radical change in Now the markets were being glutted these movements, the social- Europe seemed to grow more and and the capitalists could sell less and democratic and communist leaders more remote. less of their products at a profit. of the workers' parties helped sup­ From 1950 to 1974 the capitalists The result of decades of heavy press them. They argued in effect bubbled over with effusive self- borrowing and massive investment, thai the first task was not confidence. They thought they had has been a falling rate of profit for for the working class to take power succeeded in banning crisis from capitalist production as a whole. and reconstruct Europe on a their system forever through the use For example, the net rare of profu socialist basis, but to rebuild the of inflationary measures to control of companies in the UK declined war-shattered economies on the and stimulate the economy, based steadily from an average of 11,6^0 basis of capitalism. on the theories of the capitalist in 1960-65 to 4,9^0 in 1980. All over These disastrous policies, witchdoctor Keynes. the capitalist world profit rates resulting from deals struck between The reformist leaders of the dropped sharply when the crisis of the imperialists and the Soviet labour movement shared in these il­ 'over-production' set in in 1974-5 bureaucracy at the end of the war, lusions, and became even more After a weak recovery between laid (he political basis for the committed in "heir support for the 1976 and 1979, there has been 26 renewed, and deeper, simultaneous The amount of new investment by Because under capitalism produc­ Recession in Western Europe. capitalists has been drastically tion lakes place only for Ihe profit The OECD forecasts that the reduced. High interest rates make it of Ihe bosses, and nol Ihe needs of economies of its European members expensive to borrow the money to society, even Ihe best-paid workers will grow 0,6% in 1981, and 2,2% in invest. World trade is barely grow­ in Ihe world are now faced with 1982. In October 1981 President ing. The opening up of trade with declining living standards. Reagan admitted that the US Eastern Europe and China has given Marxism explains that when an economy had entered its second only temporary relief to the Western economic system can no longer recession in two years, dashing European economies. develop the forces of production, hopes of a quick recovery in The reasons for this economic crisis and social revolution are Europe. crisis are organic lo Ihe system of printed in capital letters on the agen­ The outlook for the future is now capitalism itself. Marx showed that da of history. This is the basic one of continuing decline, with crisis is inherent in capitalism reason why the working class of short-lived periods of feeble because of its built-in contradictions Europe are increasingly being forc­ recovery, followed by new and (obstacles to the further develop­ ed into struggle to defend their deeper crisis. ment of the productive forces). gains, and the youth their future. Unemployment in the European Private ownership of Ihe means nf For, though less and less capable OECD countries in 1980 was production and the nalion-slale are of developing production, the 7,1%— and is forecast to grow to in conflict with the need for the capitalist class has no intention of 9,5% in 1982. In human terms this organisation of production on an giving up its wealth and power means an estimated 28 million peo­ ever-increasing scale. voluntarily! ple without work in the advanced capitalist countries as a whole. In the 9 countries of the European Economic Community (EEC) alone, When an economic system can no longer 10 million people arc suffering the misery and dislocation caused by develop the forces of production, crisis unemployment. and social revolution are on the agenda of For the youth in particular, capitalism offers a bleak future. In history several countries more than one in every five young people are out of In an age when, due lo the fan­ In Western Europe the capitalists work. In Italy, Holland and Luxem­ tastic advances in technology, space are desperately trying to restore burg the under-25*s total half the shuttles can lake off from the earth their profit rates by taking back the unemployed, and 40% in France and return to it, millions are depriv­ gains made by the workers in the and Belgium. ed of the most basic needs. The post-war period. Inflation has continued to rise, anarchy of the profit system throws In nearly all countries, govern­ eating into workers' wages and millions of people onto the scrap ment spending on social services is eroding businessmens' confidence . heap of unemployment, as un­ being cut, usually first hitting those In the EEC between April 1980 and profitable factories are closed down weakest and least able to defend April 1981 prices rose on average by or produce at only part of their themselves. The aged suffer pension 12,4%. capacity. cuts; the disabled and unemployed suffer cuts in their social security payments. GROWTH RATES IN THE EUROPEAN OECD Spending on the health and COUNTRIES, 1961-1981 education of the working class is generally being slashed. In some 6% — — countries, trade union rights are under heavy fire from governments 5% J — and employers. The 'justification* for all this is 4% J — that if money is taken from the workers and put into the pockets of 3% J ihe capitalists, their higher profits — will supposedly encourage them to invest more. In this way, they claim, 2* J — the engine of capitalist growth can be started up again. 1% J | — These policies, ul cuts and strict state control of the supply of money 0 1 in circulation, are associated with 1136 1 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72~73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 the name of capitalism's new guru, •1% — • Milton Friedman, and go by the name of 'monetarism'. But there is 27 lidle new in ihem. Having seen thai Also internationally the capitalist working class, freshly emerged from Keynesian policies fuelled ihc fires class is in disarray. Only 5 or 6 years the experience of Francoism, would of inflation, ihe capitalists are retur- ago, many capitalist strategists still not have tolerated renewed dictator­ ning 10 pre-Second World War had the Utopian dream of in­ ship for more than a few years. The policies—which at that time had tegrating the EEC to such an extent convulsions necessary to overthrow proved disastrous. that all its members would use ihc such a dictatorship would ihcn have In fact 'monetarism', leading to same currency. posed a severe threat to the survival economic slowdown and higher Precious little remains of that of capitalist rule itself. This was why unemployment, has not been able to dream today. Constant little trade the majority of the bourgeoisie, and reduce government budgets and tax­ wars arc breaking oui between the Spanish king, in the end refused ation levels, even in the drastic European countries, e.g. France's to support the February coup. forms practised by the Tory govern­ blockade of Italian wine in 1981. In fact, dictatorship could only be ment of Thatcher. Rising unemployment means governments must spend more on benefits—unless they can crush the workers' organisations. Slow growth, unemployment, and levels of taxation still too high for them means capitalists hold off from reinvestment, because they have no expectations of sufficient markets or profit rates. Capitalism's gravediggcr, the working class, has grown in ab­ solute and relative numbers since the Second World War. The workers' strategic importance in production has increased also with the technological complexity of the economy. Today many groups of workers (miners, dockers, power workers, lorry drivers, water Capitalist anarchy: apples being destroyed in Greece workers), acting on their own, can dislocate the entire economy. The percentage of the workforce Of course, the economic crisis lastingly re-imposed by the destruc­ organised in trade unions has also and resulting clashes among the tion of the workers' organisations in increased enormously. In most capitalists do not in themselves a civil war as in the I930's. Western European countries today mean that the end of capitalism is But these measures will become the trade union federations are the automatically just around the cor­ seen by increasing sections of the largest single organized group in ner. The capitalists will fight on capitalists as necessary in their ef­ society. In a country such as more desperately as they are driven forts to break the resistance of the Sweden. 90wo of manual workers against the wall. Capitalism will sur­ workers. arc organised, and 70°?o of white vive until it is consciously over­ Ai the same time, in Spain there collar workers. thrown. will be enormous opportunities for With no way out of the economic Despite the immense latent power mobilising ihe workers' movement crisis, confronted by a powerful of the working class, the capitalists, against the decaying capitalist working class, the capitalists are in­ to preserve their rule, will increas­ system. A victory for ihe PSOE and creasingly uncertain, divided, and ingly have to resort to head-on at­ PCE, the workers' parties in Spain, afraid of provoking a serious con­ tacks. possible ai the next election, frontation. This is reflected in grow­ Whai the fuiure can have in store could have even more explosive ing strains in their political parties. throughout Europe is shown in a repercussions than the lefi eleciion In the British Tory party, That­ country like Spain, which never victories in France and Greece. cher's 'hard-liners' arc opposed by benefited as much from the boom as It could spark off a major con­ the 'wets', who would basically like its northern neighbours. Living frontation between the Spanish to impose the same cuts and attacks standards are far lower. Starvation workers, taking matters into their on the workers, but packaged in a prevails in some areas, and class ten­ own hands, and the capitalist class. way which they hope will be less sions are far less disguised. This in lurn, like the revolutionary provocative. In Spain the ruling The attempt at a military coup in struggles in Spain in the 1930s UCD parly is openly split—with the February shows that some sections would have a profound effect on the previous Prime Minister resigning of the Spanish bourgeoisie are toy­ workers' movement throughout from it. In France the capitalist par- ing with the idea of rc-insialling a Europe. tics are plagued with similar dif­ military-police dictatorship. In northern Europe the crisis ferences. If the coup had succeeded, the biles more slowly into ihe living disintegrate over time. Similar processes are at work in the Communist Parlies, in the areas in southern Europe where these have mass support. Because of the degeneration of the Russian revolution and the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy, their leaders have become as reformist as the social-democrats. Nowhere do they pose the tasks of defeating capitalism. The pressure of their supporters looking for alternative policies has resulted in recent waves of expul­ sions from the Communist Parties in France and Spain. In France and in Greece the new governments of workers' parties have made extensive promises to remove unemployment, curb the ef­ fects of inflation, and restore cuts in Spain: Socialist Parly leader Gonzalez with former capitalist Prime Minister Suarez social services. Nationalisation of important in­ standards of the workers. The West This was the course followed by dustries is being carried through in German workers have experienced a the 1974-9 Labour government in France (though even these measures decline in real wages in 1981 for the Britain, discrediting it in the eyes of will bring only 16^o of production first lime in a generation. But the in­ the workers, and disastrously pav­ under social ownership). PASOK in evitable assaults of the capitalists on ing the way for Thatcher; Greece has promised nationalisation the standard of life and rights of the In the same way, right-wing social of energy, public transport, utilities, workers, will produce conditions of democratic leaders in Holland and steel, shipyards, cement, mining, social unrest, increasing in frequen­ Norway have in 1981 suffered fertilisers and pharmaceuticals. cy and intensity, alternating with serious election defeats, because periods of seeming calm. they let down the workers' expecta­ Through the experience of attacks tions. Latent power and of struggle, the mass of the At the same time, in times of workers will search for alternatives crisis, workers everywhere tend to These governments are already lo the bankrupt policies of right- turn towards their traditional under heavy pressure from the wing trade union and labour organisations to defend their in­ workers to keep their promises, or leaders. terests. Thus the French Socialist risk losing their support. Unless Party saw a 40% increase in its they move forward, mobilising the membership between the May elec­ workers for a decisive break with Workers' leaders tion and October 1981. The workers capitalism, the bosses will in time be will lest and retest their leaders and able to regroup the forces of reac­ During the post-war period it was policies, and draw conclusions from tion. possible for the workers' leaders to their experiences. Reactionary developments are in­ negotiate rises in living standards Already this is leading to increas­ evitable while the workers* leaders with the employers. Rank and file ed divisions on policy in many Euro­ shrink from the struggle to over­ workers during the boom experienc­ pean social-democratic parties, e.g. throw the capitalist stale and replace ed less need to be active in their West Germany, France, Spain. it with a democratic workers* state. trade unions and political parties. In Britain, political storms are Today the workers' movement Many people, particularly from the raging in the Labour Party and in­ throughout Europe has a latent middle class, saw opportunities to creasingly in the trade unions. Here power unprecedented in history. make careers by grabbing positions a section of right-wing Labour With a Marxist leadership of the in the labour movement. leaders have been encouraged by the trade unions and mass workers' par­ With the capitalist system in a capitalist class to form a new party, ties, the capitalist state would col­ generalised downward movement, the SDP, in an attempt to stop lapse like a house of cards and a the right-wing leaders arc unmask­ Labour's return to power. Projected peaceful transition to socialism ing themselves. The smallest reform as a "new force" that will change would be quite possible. now requires a bitter fight. Instead the face of British society, it is in With the working class held back these leaders bow to the pressures of fact built on unstable middle-class by timid leadership, however, the the capitalist crisis, and carry out support. It has no policies except the resolution of the present crisis is the counter-reforms demanded by already-discredited ones of former likely to be protracted. In Italy, the the bosses. Labour governments, and will weakness of the capitalist class, 29 combined with the weakness of the workers' 'communist* and 'socialist leaders, has produced a stalemate between ihc classes—a prc-rcvolutionary crisis existing for over twelve years. Similar crises have begun to develop in Portugal and Spain—where the workers* leaders have abandoned oppor­ tunities for a decisive break with capitalism—and could spread lo France, Britain, and elsewhere. The central (ask in the European labour movement now is lo develop a steeled, fighting leadership in the mass organisations, capable of uniting working people around a programme to break the Amsterdam Ford workers march to save their factory stranglehold of the capitalist class over the means of production, for arms around them in celebration of the nationalisation of the big firms PASOK*s victory, asking: "Is In the European labour move­ under workers' control and manage- Papandreou (PASOK*s leader-Ed) ment as a whole, shon-ierm fluctua­ mcni. going logive us trade union rights at tions and temporary setbacks can­ not conceal the reality that a gradual A few incidents from 1981 reveal last?** And they added: "The new government must move fast while but relentless turn lo the left is tak­ glimpses of the polential support the ing place. The actions and demands labour movement can draw on, by Ihc generals and police chiefs are stunned." of the masses show that they arc just offering a bold lead. beginning lo draw revolutionary conclusions under ihe pressure of world crisis. ...workers will learn enormously from their ex­ Sections of the politically advanc­ perience in the sharpening class struggle. ed workers are becoming convinced that the working class has no way Even some of the notorious riot In November 1981 the capitalist out bui the road of socialism. The police in Paris celebrated the elec­ Financial Times matter-of-factly forces of genuine Marxism in the tion victory of the socialists under reported on the front page that a workers' mass organisations arc Mitterand by driving around with West German police union leader growing in strength and influence. the hooters of their vehicles blaring. said the force might strike or refuse Using correct strategies and tactics, In Greece, some PASOK activists to act against demonstrations if an understanding can be built in the were astonished on election night political solutions to unrest were not labour movement of ihe processes at when three policemen flung their found. work and the socialist tasks explain­ ed. The workers will learn enor­ mously from their experience in the sharpening class struggle and in­ H~ 9en ce evitable social upheavals of ihc next -•—jiim .^ one or iwo decades.Their mass organisations will be transformed and rciransformcd.

The decisive victory of the work­ ing class in any major European couniry would put the question of a socialist Europe and a socialist world very much on the agenda. An end to world poverty, and undreamt-of human development, would be brought within our reach. This is not wishful thinking. It is a genuine possibility on the basis of the awakening strength of the big battalions of the world working class in Western Europe and America today—and the only alter­ native lo capitalist anarchy and the threat of nuclear holocaust # French workers queue up at the employment bureau The case for workers' control

Last year, ihe state tried to ram a ty to do so: SA capitalism depends '•Preservation of Pensions Bill" By Rocco Malgas on cheap labour. down the workers' throats. and Jake Wilson The migrant labour system has The workers greeted this attemp­ long served as the basis of cheap ted robbery with strikes throughout labour. The existence of the the country, drawing also plantation gle over it, in fact exposes the total workers into the struggle. Mine 'reserves' served as an excuse for the inability of the SA profit system to workers, too, came out in protest at ruling class to disclaim any respon­ the attempt to introduce a similar satisfy basic needs of the working sibility for the aged—as well as the death benefit scheme. people. sick, unemployed, etc. The In the first place, the private pen­ 'reserves* are used as dumping The sircngth of worker resistance sion schemes which the Pensions grounds for unwanted workers. has forced the government to Bill was meant to regulate have their Thus the state pension for postpone introduction of the Bill—a hold over the workers only because African workers has always been set major political victory for the the capitalist state refuses to provide at a paltry level. The smallest of ad­ workers. an adequate pension scheme for all ditional earnings, or even "no­ But this victory is far from settl­ working people. tional" earnings, by the retired, dis­ ed. It is a partial victory because the qualifies them from the pension. Bill has not been scrapped The South African capitalists have shirked the responsibility of Only a fraction are receiving such altogether. This gives the bosses a pensions. breathing space to work out a better providing for the needs of retired strategy. The labour movement workers not only because of their But even this is too much for the should thus not be lulled into a false rotten meanness and greed, but capitalists! The real vicious mean­ sense of security, but should now. because of their worm-eaten inabili­ ness of the 'liberal' bosses is blurted prepare to defeat the bosses decisively in the next battle.

"Shocked" The capitalist press were "shocked" at the irresponsibility of those workers who struck against Pensioners the Bill, claiming they were "throw­ queue ing away their pension rights". But overnight what is the reality? In fact, the Pensions Bill was for pittance. designed to take away a limited 'right' enjoyed by the workers. In­ stead of being able to withdraw their contributions to private pension funds when needed, they would have been prevented from doing so until reaching retirement age of 65. This Pensions Bill, and the strug- 31 out by the Financial Mail: "An market" could serve as a new source any compensation, while the bosses' essential element of a free-market from which to grab money. As a contributions are tax deductible. economy is (hat all individuals who result the number of African Generally, the pension a worker are able to do so must provide for workers in pension schemes rose to can expect to gel is a miserable 2°Ja their own retirement. The failure of between 30 and AOVo in 1980. Now it (for each year of continuous service) many citizens to plan for the future must be even higher. of the last annual wage earned results in increased pressures for before retirement. And even this welfarism." amount will mean the worker In other words, in the view of the forfeits the state pension! capitalists, the workers themselves So just by paying contributions to must provide out of their starvation a private pension scheme, the wages for their old age to avoid worker is saving money for the placing responsibility for welfare regime. onto the bosses or the regime! Migrant workers have a worse This, of course, (as the Registrar deal. The bosses insist on a 'qualify­ of Financial Institutions said ing period'—up to 10 years—before recently) allows the bosses' govern­ the worker can receive employer ment to "spend more money pension contributions. Then they elsewhere", i.e. on the military and make it almost impossible for the police. migrants to get their contributions back by making workers wait up to three months before being paid out their money. Who can afford a Robbers special trip from the Bantustans to get the money back? Taking advantage of this situa­ tion, the insurance companies step* ped in. Until recently, it was mainly Difficult white. Coloured, and Indian workers—through their organisa­ On top of it all, when a migrant tion in the registered unions—who dies the insurance companies make were enrolled in private pension it very difficult for a widow to claim schemes. In 1976 only 5 or 6^o of Whether these pensions fall under unless there is a marriage certificate, African workers were enrolled in industrial councils or are provided etc. Without the help of a trade these schemes. by the company, they are under the union, the country woman is com­ This was jusl another of the many control of the employers and in­ pletely lost; and the money stays in weapons for dividing different sec­ surance companies. At best the the pockets of the capitalists. tions of workers. bosses allow a few trade union But the biggest trick of all played But in the recent period the in­ bureaucrats into the pension discus­ by the capitalists is this. To squeeze surance companies with greedy en­ sions on the industrial councils. No the maximum funds out of the thusiasm have rushed the employers report backs arc made to the schemes, they have tried to withhold and the industrial councils into workers. payouts until the worker reached a private pension schemes for African Thus no workers contributing to retirement age of 65. Yet their own workers. pension schemes—not even the research has shown that the average This was not because they wanted white union members—have a real lifespan of black workers, sucked decent pensions and sick benefits say about what happens to their dry through daily slave labour. Is for all workers, but in order to in­ money or what the rules of the pen­ sion scheme should be. In the case 55. crease the wealth from which lo Workers, in other words, are only reinvest for profit. of the African workers, the pension schemes were introduced, and to be allowed to retire after they are It is not only through exploiting deductions made from workers' pay expected lo have died! our labour at the point of produc­ packets, without even any negotia­ Thus the ruthless bamba zonke tion (in the factories, etc) that the tions with the independent unions. methods of the employers, in­ bosses rob us to make profits for surance companies, and the regime themselves. Also the pension funds, mean that the workers' money ends invested with the insurance com­ up simply guaranteeing the panies, provide a means for these Tricks capitalists more profit—and pro­ capitalists to share in exploitation, viding the regime with more money by grabbing a share of the workers' To squeeze the maximum irom to oppress them with the murderous wages and reinvesting it in company the workers, the bosses of the pen­ police and army and vicious Ban- shares, Defence Bonds, etc. sion schemes use all sorts of tricks. tustan regimes. Already squeezing all they could Even where workers and bosses From the start, in fact, the from the white workers' wages, the contribute equal amounts to these workers have seen through these bosses of the insurance companies funds, the workers' deductions are tricks and turned the pension came to realise that the "African taken from their earnings without schemes to their own ends. They 32 have withdrawn their contributions ward, we need a carefully worked for winning the support of the white when they lost their jobs, wanted to out and detailed programme able to workers. Despite their privileges, change jobs, or went on unite in the struggle over pensions retired white workers also suffer strike—even if this meani they all sections of the working class deprivation under capitalism. The forfeited the bosses' pari of the con­ across racial lines. deep contempt the bosses have for tributions to the funds. Ihe entire working class is shown by Minister Lapa Munnik who said that pensioners could live on R20 a These fighting demands can rally not only the organis­ month. An organisation for white ed workers, but also the unorganised and the pensioners has already been unemployed. established to press for a living pen­ sion. Out of the battles which have This is the use to which workers been, and are still being fought Other demands raised by the have put the pension schemes around pensions there can be put trade unions must also be sup­ because there is no adequate and together the general outline of such ported: workers' control of all pen­ comprehensive unemployment a programme, much of which has sion funds, and the redirection of benefit scheme provided by the already been raised by the indepen­ pension fund investment into social­ bosses' regime. dent trade unions: ly desirable areas. Until such a scheme can come in­ *a single state social fund (bring­ Against the monstrous to existence, and a realistic retire­ ing together the existing workmens' bureaucracy hostile to the interests ment age is established, it is clear compensation, unemployed in­ of the workers, black and white, that no pension scheme based on surance, pension and sick funds) to which now administers the state and contributions from workers paid provide for workers in all cases of private welfare funds we must strug­ starvation-level wages can guarantee incapacity (accidents, sickness, old gle for the full management of all them adequate insurance for old age age, disablement, pregnancy and such funds by elected worker or just compensation for a life of childbirth, benefits to widows) and representatives from the trade work. unemployment; unions. The Pensions Bill was introduced "alt workers and their families precisely to close off the loophole must be included; being used by the workers: it would "payouts should be al 100% of have prohibited any payouts to earnings, and not less than R100 a Stranglehold workers until the age of 65. week; This would have meant an enor­ *no contributions from workers earning less than K100 a week. The funds can be brought mous increase in forced savings together into a single socially owned from the workers, as the bosses •monthly pension payouts; fund through the nationalisation of could then have invested a worker's •adequate payout offices near the insurance monopolies, as called contribution during his or her entire workers' homes; for in the Freedom Charter. lifetime—and often kept it per­ •scrapping the means test of ihe manently after death. existing state pension system; It is only on this basis that the •reduction of the retirement age stranglehold of the profit system It was to protect access to this over social benefits can be broken small fund that could be used in to 55. and the needs of the overwhelming hard times that the workers went on Linked to the struggle for a na­ majority of working people met. strike. tional minimum wage of RlOO a week indexed to the cost of livirjg, But the capitalist class in SA Yet, to build up a 'stable' base of depends completely on cheap labour funds for profitable reinvestment, these fighting demands can rally not only the organised workers, but also and police dictatorship. It will never the insurance companies will con­ consent to giving up control over tinue to press for restrictions on the unorganised and the unemployed. these vital areas of society. withdrawals from the pension This means that the reorganisa­ funds. To carry the struggle for- These demands are also a basis tion of social welfare in the interests of the working people can only be achieved when the existing state is INQABA YA BASEBENZI appears quarterly. PostaPostal subscriptionss replaced by the democratic rule of for readers outside South Africa cacan be ordered from the following the working class: the trade union . addressi: BM Box 1719, London WC1WCINN 3XX. demands must be linked up to the political struggle for national libera­ Subscription rates, IncludinIncluding postagepostage, for 4 Issuesissues: tion, democracy, and socialism. Africa £2-40 [airmail £6-80]. At the same time every advance in Britain and Europe £3-20. the pension struggle will be a blow Rest of world £3*20 [airmail £7-90]. struck against the bosses and the regime, and a giant step forward for Cheques or postal orders payable to INQABA YA BASEBENZI should the entire workers' movement accompany all orders. 33 C'iskei independence

from the bosses to the police sta­ tions. He has said that he will screen every worker before he is employed. He will keep a list of all the "troublemakers" and recommend workers to the bosses. This is the task that South Africa itself could have performed. But the capitalists feared that when the workers moved against such repres­ sion, there was no way in which the South African state could escape. Now they are trying to create a situation in which the repression will be linked with the "homelands" The ruling class in Soulh Africa rather than the regime itself. This has again been proved lo be By Headman Sasa would have forced the whole SA desperate and confused. Deafened and D.Sikhakhane working class to move; now it would by the roar of Ihe growing strength ( ) only be confined to particular ii of Ihe working class, il is attempting the workers and weaken their reserves to put into effect what history has forces. long sidekicked—"independence of What reason would the Tswanas, Self-Deception the tribes". Sothos, Vendas and others have to Again, as was the case with Tran- fight against the Ciskeian "govern­ Of course this is self-deception on skei, Bophuthatswana and Venda, it ment"? What about their own ihe part of the bourgeoisie. There is was not necessary to run from place "states"? In this way the ruling no way in which the struggles of the to place in search of an ally—Chief class hope their South African state workers, anywhere in SA, cannot Lennox Sebe was there waiting with will be left free. also be directed against the SA state. open hands. At the same time, the task of The history of SA is inextricably Chief Sebe—greedy, dull-minded, screening and victimizing the mili­ linked with the state. All the strug­ troiting after the ruling class as after tant workers is made the task of the gles of the workers, also at the fac­ an older sister, carrying confusion "homelands" rather than SA itself. tory, are political. wh'erevcr he is—chose to be indif­ Already the Scbe's are busy with the The capitalists arrived in SA, set ferent to the opposition by the detention and the harassment of the about destroying tribal socieiy, and workers. He accepted without trade union leaders. created their own bourgeois state. shame the "independence of the Charles Sebe, the head of the This was necessary for the develop­ Ciskei." police, has already threatened to ment of capitalism. It rooted the take the work of recruiting away workers out of tribal society and Desperation The bosses today are finding themselves in a very desperate posi­ tion. There is no way in which they can solve the problem of unemploy­ ment. The future of the economy looks very bleak. They cannot af­ ford higher wages. As a result, the workers have grown more and more militant. Trade union membership is on the increase and strikes are part of everyday life. In an attempt to fight against these developments, the ruling class bring "homeland independence". They hope that this move will divide Fight for the organisation oj the mini,/in wineworkers! 34 plunged ihcm into the industries where they got transformed from tribesmen into workers. ECONOMY 1982 : It is absolute lunacy to think that the workers can go back to 4A tough, stormy year tribalism. In fact, there is a whole 1 tradition of struggle against tribal ahead —thai is the forecast of divisions and the rule of chiefs. top bourgeois economists By Florence Bosch The Pondoland revolt of 1960 looking towards develop­ was a struggle led by migrant ments in the economy for The increase of production and workers against the very same 1982. investment in 1980 was a spur to the system (hat the ruling class is again Following the record growth rate black workers. Feeling the tempo of trying to reintroduce. The workers of s% in 1980, they expect that production quicken, they lost no came out vehemently against this growth in the economy in 1981 will time in pressing forward demands system and tried to link it up with turn out to have been 4-5^o follow­ for better wages and working condi­ the country-wide struggles that were ed by 2-3% in 1982. tions. going on against the oppressive This slowing down in the Strikes have swept nearly every machinery of the SA state. Put to economy will be accompanied by the test, the leadership of all the ex­ sector of the economy in the past 18 slower rates of investment and pro­ months. Trade unions have grown isting organisations failed to build duction. The rise of real fixed in­ the necessary unity between rapidly as weapons of the workers in vestment (that is, investment in this struggle. workers' struggles in the coun­ buildings, machinery etc) will in all tryside and the cities. Now that the economy is slowing probability fall from 8-10"% in 1981 down, the already high levels of to 4% in 1982. unemployment and prices will It was these same knowledgeable become even worse. As the capitalist Workers Struggle gentlemen, we must remember, now class feels the pinch, so it will try to so gloomy, who proclaimed the draw the noose even tighter about These lessons of the 1960's should 1980s a 'golden decade* of unheard the necks of the workers and their not be forgotten by the working of health, wealth and happiness for families, resisting ever more fiercely class today. 'all' South Africans. the struggles for higher wages. Of course the struggles today Slackening economic growth in have reached a higher level. Militant SA is linked to almost complete trade unions, now the weapons of Record Misery stagnation in the major capitalist hundreds of thousands of workers, economies such as the USA, West have become far more powerful in­ But instead, as those in the Germany, and Britain; upon whom struments of struggle than in I960. townships and rural areas know, SA depends for trade. But the majority of migrant there has been record unemploy­ SA's ability to sell abroad workers in the mines are nol ment, record homelessness, record minerals, metals, and agricultural organized. The call has already gone price increases, and record misery. products and to a much lesser extent oul for mass trade union unity and And this in spile of the 8% growth manufactured items, is the lifeline the creation of a union for the rate in 1980—the highest since 1945. of the whole economy. When world unemployed. Bui it is equally im­ portant to fight for the organization of the migrant workers in the mines. This will make the struggles of the SA working class far more effective. It is only when this issue is taken up by the whole labour movement that the Bantustan system can be suc­ cessfully fought. This is not the task of any par­ ticular trade union or particular workers. Every worker in SA is fac­ ing the threat of this brutal system. This means that the unity of both migrant and non-migrant is essen­ tial. It is only with the mass force of the working class, united under a socialist programme, thai the South African state and all its policies of "separate development" can be overthrown. Black housing outside Capeim,/,. no re/ease on the basis of capitalism in crisis. 35 A tough, stormy year ahead'

stimulated on the basis of domestic consumption (what can be sold within SA). By this they mean mainly selling to private customers—because the regime is following tight spending policies in everything except the military and the police. But the rate of growth of con­ sumption spending has been slowing down. Santam predicts that private consumption in real terms will in­ crease by only 4ty> in 1981—and fall by 3% in 1982.

Squeeze

This shows the very slender basis for growth by means of expanded internal consumption—because of the constraints of the cheap labour The bosses' attacks will only fire the determination of workers, such as these on economy. strike at Gundle Plastic. East Rand. Domestic consumption will be further eroded as the government is markets shrink. South Africa, as a mainly due 10 the fall in the gold forced to impose tax and price in­ weak participant, is squeezed to one price. creases to pay for the increased debt side. Imports, on the other hand, have that it is running up. This reduces the growth of export grown nearly 30^o, if Ihe figures for The bosses, of course, are not sales, and, in turn, ihe pace ol the first nine months of 1981 are feeling the squeeze like the workers. economic growth as a whole. Ex­ compared with the same period in Profits remain enormous and arc panding export sales are a vital 1980. still growing but at a slower rate. necessity in paying for the raw Ii is unlikely thai there will be any The profits of 26 companies repor­ materials, machinery, and equip­ significant improvement in the ting their six-monthly figures at the ment which SA imports from growth of the economies of the ma­ end of August and September 1981 abroad. jor capitalist countries and world showed a drop in average earnings growth from 77ul4 itself hard pressed to finanpe (his and community organisations, in 1980. debt. swelling the ranks of the organised From January to September 1981, Because exports are slowing workers lo rid society of these exports were \4% lower than the down, capitalist economists are now parasites and manage the economy equivalent 1980 figure. This was hoping that growth can be in the interests of all (he people 0 36 CHOLERA EPIDEMIC

blame The SA capitalists boast that South Africa is the best equip- respiratory infection or gastro- ped country in the continent to deal with medical emergencies. entiritis. Tuberculosis is the most common Yet a raging epidemic of disease among blacks while the so- cholera—unprecedented in By Lesley Reed called 'diseases of affluence' are modern SA—has been sweep­ most common among whites. Bet­ ing through the rural parts of ween January and September 1981, Natal, Norlh-Easlern The scourge of cholera is a direct 40 000 TB cases were reported in Transvaal, the Eastern Cape result of wretched living condi­ South Africa, as well as thousands of cases of typhoid and malaria. and Bophuthatswana. At least tions—too title food, no purified 80 people have died of the pipe water, overcrowding and bad All these diseases could be disease so far, and thousands sanitation. Together with migrant eradicated world-wide for as little as labour and forced removals, these one four-hundredth of the world's are suffering its agonies. military spending, which could pay Worse is to come. "Cholera is are the harsh payments the 1 capitalists give the workers. for the immunisation of every child here to stay *, predicts a on earth. medical expert. The callousness of the capitalists and their indifference to workers' In South Africa the capitalists Living conditions in most rural lives can be seen in the death rate of spend lavishly on medical rural black children—who face technology for themselves. 98 cents areas are just breeding grounds for in every Rand of the medical budget diseases. In Kwazulu most people seven times more danger of death in their first year than white children. is spent on curative medicine for the have infected river water as their on­ rich. ly water supply, and open pit In the Inanda-Ndwcdwe area of latrines, so the water supply is con­ Kwazulu, 134 children per 1 000 die As their system is based on cheap tinually reinfected. before the age of one, and in expendable labour, they pour The Kwazulu Secretary of Health Mawela 111 per 1 000, while for money into already sophisticated admits that boreholes would help, white children the figure is only 20. prestige hospitals. At Groote making people less dependent on In 1981, 4S

Letter from a student activist working class in its struggle against of the working class. Comrades. wage slavery is the only class that Only on (his basis can the condi­ The new wave of rising militancy can consistently fight for the libera­ tions be laid for independent of the dominated classes in South tion of the whole of society from organisation of the working class Africa since 1976 has deepened and class domination. that can lead the struggles of the op­ gathered momentum of its own. Working class militants must con­ pressed and exploited towards Increasingly here at the moment solidate the gains of the working smashing the capitalist state and the oppressed are organising class in order to counter the inces­ establishing workers* democracy, a themselves, whether it is in their sant onslaught of the ruling class to necessary pre-condition for the sports organisations, their churches, disorganise them and prevent the elimination of all forms of oppres­ schools, universities, factories and disarming and betrayal of the sion and exploitation. townships. Everywhere civic workers by elements not prepared to fight for the full implementing of its organisations, youth groups, Larry Jooste cultural groups, discussion groups, revolutionary demands. trade unions are emerging out of the Working class militants must im­ popular struggles as they attempt to mediately bcg|n to build, slowly but * * * * • organise themselves and lay the surely, an army of cadres within the necessary basis for their fight mass movement (where the working Readers In South Africa who have against the ruling class. class is engaged in struggle) that access to copying facilities, and who The task of working class would play an essential part in can do so without too great a risk, militants is to fight for the revolu­ organising the working class. It are urged lo reproduce this Journal tionary programme of the working must fight sectarianism in all its and circulate It. class in the mass movement. The guises to achieve the greatest unity 38

also directly exerted on Rawlings Ghana after the coup through the "4th of June" move­ ment, based among intellectuals, which sprang up in support of his The military coup in Ghana on 31 reforms in Libya were only made first coup on 4/6/79. December, latest of several since possible by an astronomical oil in­ In response, Rawlings has made 1966 and the second led by Flight come and its relatively small popula­ radical statements, praising the Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, marks a tion. Ethiopian and Cuban revolutions new stage in the convulsive decline The Ghanaian economy, depen­ and calling for committees of of Ghanaian capitalism. dent on cocoa for 70% of its export workers and soldiers. As in 1979, he The government of President earnings, is completely at the mercy is likely to eliminate the most cor­ Limann and the People's National of the world market. Poverty, cor­ rupt officials and impose a price Party, elected in 1979 under the ruption and inflation will continue freeze. banner of 'NkrumahisnV, had been as long as the parasitic capitalist This, however, does not attack utterly discredited. class—itself a pawn of the im­ the basic problem. To root out cor­ Under the PNP government, perialist multi-nationals—controls ruption and inflation completely, economic crisis went from bad to the economy. the commanding heights of the worse. Corruption and mismanage­ Thus, as a condition for more economy would have to be na­ ment flourished, and the problems loans to Ghana, the International tionalised and its day-to-day runn­ resulting from the world recession Monetary Fund is demanding social ing turned over to workers' and of capitalism were turned into spending cuts and a currency peasants' committees within the disaster for Ghana. framework of a democratically devaluation, which would further drawn up plan of production. Inflation soared to 102*% while drive up the price of imports. (Rawlings's committees, controlled the government postponed a rise in Rawlings believes that the from above, will serve only to workers' wages for a year. Yet it necessary reforms can be carried mobilise support for his regime.) quickly put up ministers' salaries. through without breaking with Last year the transport system vir­ capitalism. On 2 January he But all anti-capitalist policies will tually collapsed, halting cocoa ex­ declared: "The business community be fiercely opposed by the conser­ ports. Crops rotted in the fields has nothing to fear so long as it is vative, British-trained tops of the while in the capital, Accra, 4 out of honest and law-abiding." army. Fundamental social change 5 children were suffering malnutri­ But enormous mass pressures will combined with genuine democracy tion. build up to carry through sweeping would only be possible if the ex­ By the end of 1981 Ghana had policies that would threaten the isting army and officialdom were foreign debt arrears of some $500 capitalists' position. Left pressure is dissolved and armed power placed million. With the economic shambles inflicting intolerable con­ ditions on the masses, there was no basis for stability or political democracy. No credible alternative to the PNP existed. With the collapse of PNP support, Ghana was heading for a new period of right-wing government. Under these conditions Lt. Rawl­ ings stepped forward once again as the "redeemer", promising to sweep up corruption. Many workers and youth now look to him to clear up the mess left behind by the nrevious regime. What policies are being proposed by this new regime to solve Ghana's enormous problems? Rawlings is a great admirer of Colonel Ghaddafi's Libya and will get support from there. But the Workers demonstration in Accra, Ghana. 39 rintes

in the hands of the working people. into a new right-wing dictator­ working class, organised on a Rawlings, attempting to balance ship—or lose control over an in­ socialist programme, drawing between the classes—to cooperate creasingly volatile situation. behind them the mass of the with the capitalists while maintain­ It is possible that Rawlings, faced peasants and the youth. ing mass support—is incapable of with a tidal wave of mass struggle The capitalists internationally taking this course. In the last resort, and the further collapse of would take savage measures to the army is capitalism's only capitalism, may be forced to na­ isolate and strangle the Ghanaian weapon of resisting determined left tionalise key industries in order to revolution. The Ghanaian workers pressure or controlling the masses if stave off economic chaos. But and peasants need to link their they move independently into ac­ democratic control over a state- struggle to the movement of the tion. owned economy is vital to ensure working class in West Africa, in So long as Rawlings keeps to the production in the interests of the Africa and internationally. capitalist road, the misery suffered people. In turn they must be given our un­ by the people will continue and sup­ Ghana's crisis can only be resolv­ qualified support. A democratic port for the coup will eventually ebb ed by ending the rotten capitalist socialist Ghana would be a beacon away. The military regime, or any system and establishing workers* to the masses of the entire continent civilian regime to which it might democracy. This task can only be and a cornerstone of a future transfer power, would degenerate carried out by Ghana's militant Socialist Federation of Africa.

Britain - Labour's ranks oppose witch-hunt On 17 December The Star the right-wing split-off from yielded to right-wing pressure and reprinted a catalogue of lies, distor­ Labour, the Social-Democratic Par­ supported an "investigation" of tions, slanders and abuse from the ty, as a 'safety net' for disillusioned Militant. This is clearly intended by right-wing Daily Express in Lon­ Tory voters in the hope of preven­ the right as the prelude to a general don, directed against the Marxist ting a left-wing Labour victory at purge of the Marxists, of Tony left of the British Labour Party and the next election. The Economist, a Benn's supporters, and the left as a its weekly paper Militant. leading capitalist organ, has whole. This outburst, echoing an inten­ declared: "No government constitu­ are meeting with a rock wall of sive anti-Marxist witch-hunt in the tionally or politically dependent on rank-and-file resistance; the right British bosses' press, reflects the organised labour must again be wing have been forced to agree to a world-wide capitalist fear of the allowed to rule Britain" (26 'truce'. But the growing strength of working class as it moves into strug­ September 1981). the left is intolerable to them. New gle against the ravages of capitalist At the same time the right wing is attacks, and more defections by crisis. putting up a ferocious rearguard ac­ middle-class careerists to the SDP, As Marxism has always explain­ tion inside the Labour Party. are inevitable. ed, it is to their traditional organisa­ Militant's 'crime' has been to put It is because the right are unable tions—the trade unions and the forward clear socialist policies—for to win support for their pro- Labour Party^that the workers a 35-hour week without loss of pay; capitalist policies through turn as they move into action. The an end to the cuts; a massive pro­ democratic discussion and debate, reformist policies of Labour's right- gramme of useful public works; that they try to use bureaucratic wing leaders, proved bankrupt Labour to power on a socialist pro­ methods to stifle their opponents through 17 years of post-war gramme—which are gaining grow­ and impose their ideas. Labour governments, are now being ing support among Labour's rank But these attempts will fail. The massively rejected by the active and file. Seven Constituency right wing have nothing to offer the layers. Labour Parties so far have selected workers except the prospect of a The capitalists have always Militant supporters as their coalition with the SDP to continue regarded the right-wing Labour parliamentary candidates for the the policies of 'watered-down That- leaders as their 'Second Team', to next general election. cherism' which failed so miserably be put into government when the Almost daily the capitalist press in 1974-1979. Conservatives lose an election. Now pours out detailed instructions to The growing radicalisation of the they rage and panic because the the right wing, telling them to Labour and trade union rank and working class have begun to reclaim abolish all rank-and-file control file will strengthen the demand for the Labour Party as an instrument over Labour MPs and expel the bold socialist policies, which can lay of struggle. Marxists. the basis for a mass turn to the ideas The capitalists have encouraged Labour leader Michael Foot has of Marxism in the coming period. 40 POLAND : Military jackboot cannot resolve crisis

• I workers call for a return to The take-over by Ihe Polish generals in December, capitalism. Their demands pointed and Ihe clamp-down of martial law, has brutally unmistakably towards workers' crushed the workers' gains of the previous 18 months. democracy on the basis of the plan­ ned economy, as in the Soviet Union Spontaneous resistance was theid regime, have been paraded by before the bureaucratic counter­ defeated within a few weeks. An the media in SA and world-wide as revolution of the 1920s. unknown number of workers were 'victims of Communist persecu­ Tragically, the leadership of killed and many thousands im­ tion*. Naturally, this has helped the Solidarity failed to rise to the tasks prisoned. Polish regime to claim that the and the brilliant opportunities Solidarity, the independent trade workers' struggles had been inspired thrust on (hem by the struggle. union movement, was smashed. In by reactionaries trying to overturn the workplace the iron control of 'socialism' and restore capitalism. the managers has been reasserted. These allegations are a vile The capitalists internationally, slander on the Polish working class. while propping up savage police In fact, what the recent events have states in Asia, Africa and Latin shown most clearly is that the The mighty working-class up­ America, have shed rivers of regime in Poland, despite the gains surge of July-August 1980, in which crocodile tears over the events in of the planned economy, is not power began to pass from the Poland. This, they claim, shows the socialist. As Marxism has always ex­ regime to the workers' councils, repressive nature of 'socialism' plained, a socialist society can only rapidly gave rise to the ten million compared with 'Western arise on the foundations of workers* strong trade union movement, democracy*. democracy. Solidarity. In the absence of a Even the apartheid regime has workers' party, Solidarity took on been able to get in on the act. It has It is precisely the struggles in this the role of a mass political move­ managed to recruit a few hundred direction that Jaruzelski, in the in­ ment representing the hopes of all skilled Polish workers from among terests of the privileged bureaucratic the people for an end to the dic­ the desperate thousands packing the rulers, moved to crush. tatorship of the 'Communist* refugee camps in Austria. Contrary to the lies of the bureaucracy. These misguided individuals, who capitalists as well as the Polish For a whole period the regime no will be used to strengthen the apar­ regime, at no stage did the Polish longer had full control of the coun­ try. Terrified by the workers* power, it retreated for a time and the workers and farmers won major h reforms. Again and again, oppor­ tunities arose to topple the regime and transfer power to the workers. But Solidarity's leaders, instead of seizing these opportunities, retreated into a fatal policy of com­ promise with the bureaucracy. Guided by the Catholic hierarchy, which coexisted cosily with the regime, and by 'dissident' advisors overawed by the threat of Russian invasion, they left power in the bureaucrats' hands and sought to avoid a confrontation at all costs. For more than a year, the militan­ cy of the workers held the bureaucracy at bay. But even the mightiest movement, if it is con­ Workers stand u&utnsla^utnst military military sistently held back by its leaders and 41 prevented from reaching its goals, soldiers had become as demoralised The capitalists* true attitude was must sooner or later ebb. as the workers at Solidarity's failure spelled out by a banker: "If a few With the economy sliding deeper to provide an alternative. Effective people are shot (in Poland) in the into crisis, the workers' gains were power, including the power to shoot cause of getting the economy going soon eroded and living conditions mutineers, was left with the regime. again, then it would be a small price worsened. New struggles, diverted When the order came to move to pay" {Sunday Times, London, and emasculated by Solidarity's against the workers, they had no op­ 20/12/81). leaders, led nowhere except to new tion but to obey. But the return to traditional hardships. The bureaucracy's deep-rooted Stalinist repression, in the form of a Increasingly, Solidarity became fear of the workers is reflected in military junta which is unique for divided between the 'moderate' Jaruzelski's bogus promise to con­ Eastern Europe, reflects the leadership around Walesa and the tinue 'the process of socialist desperate weakness and not the militant rank and file becoming renewal'. It hopes to pacify the strength of Ihe regime. There can be more bitter and frustrated. Among workers and eventually revive a no return to the 1950s when the the inactive layers, demoralisation sham 'trade union', using the name bureaucracy presided over rapid produced a growing flight into exile. 'Solidarity', but run by the economic growth and was able to The fad that some backward bureaucracy, like the state- win some mass support. refugees have even been willing to controlled 'unions' which had col­ With aid from both East and flee lo South Africa is a measure of lapsed in 1980. West, the bureaucracy will most their desperation, of the cynicism Further 'purges' will be launched likely succeed in forcing up produc­ with 'socialism* created by the against some corrupt state officials, tion for a time and restoring the ap­ pearance of 'normality'. But this will only be at terrible cost to the working people in the form of vicious dictatorship and further at­ tacks on their living standards. Thus, while price rises of up to 400°^ are being imposed, wage rises to 'compensate' are in the region of— 15-40^o! The development of the political revolution against bureaucratic misrule in Eastern Europe has only been delayed, not halted, by the defeat of the Polish workers. The bureaucracy's harsh and blundering rule will reinforce mistrust and resentment, which will eventually flare up into new militancy. Fresh layers of young workers will come to the fore who will have Workers occupy Gdansk shipyard in opposition to military coup. learned the basic lesson of 1980-81: there can be no compromise with Stalinist regime, and the failure of who will be made scapegoats for the the bureaucracy. The credibility of Solidarity's leadership to show a crimes of the whole bureaucracy. Church and the 'dissidents', way forward to workers' democracy Not only the Soviet bureaucracy preaching conciliation with the and genuine socialism. but also the Western capitalists will regime, will be destroyed among the The bureaucracy, wruic cynically back up the regime with material active layers. encouraging Walesa's illusions in support. Reagan's crusade for sanc­ When the Polish working class lasting reform, was biding its lime tions against Poland is a crude, moves into action again, the only until it could safely unleash the reactionary attempt to squeeze way forward will lie through the counter-revolution. cheap political advantage out of the overthrow of the bureaucracy and At the height of the workers' up­ disasters suffered by the Polish peo­ the establishment of workers' surge, the bureaucracy did not dare ple. In fact, the capitalists have a democracy, accompanied by a class use the army against Solidarity. The vested interest in the restoration of appeal to the workers of Russia, conscript soldiers—workers and Stalinist 'stability' in Poland. Eastern Europe and the West. This farmers in uniform—would have Political revolution in Poland course would be the way to arouse turned massively against it. This would rally workers the world over the response necessary to paralyse would have meant the collapse of and powerfully escalate the class any invasion attempt by the Soviet the regime and the onset of the struggle in the West. More im­ bureaucracy. workers* political revolution in mediately, the capitalists have a It would give a mighty impulse to Poland *.

As usual, the bosses' press is full of talk about the "skills shortage". Two employment surveys show thai Police Colonel Chris Coetzee recently warned ihe SA has one of the highest staff turnover rates in the bosses to be on their guard against the "silent ter­ world because of "competition for scarce human skills rorist". and resources*'. What is this sinister new breed? Do their bombs and The same week, it was reported that Sigma Motor Co. rockets explode without a sound? at Rosslyn (Pretoria) fired 507 workers and laid off No! According to Coetzee, "the best weapon of the another 348. A Sigma spokesman explained that one silent terrorist is the spreading of rumours of better pay, major reason was their stepped-up (raining and develop­ more time off and better benefits. If you hear of these ment programmes and the introduction of new rumours in your organisation, you could have a engineering techniques. dangerous terrorist on your hands'*. Funny thing, capitalism. Employers, in their search Indeed, SA's underpaid and slave-driven for profits, introduce new machinery and techniques re­ workers—fighting for better pay, more time off quiring trained labour. Workers who do not get the etc.—are the biggest threat to the bosses and their necessary training are then thrown onto the streets to system. As Marx wrote, capitalism has produced its own share the misery of their 2-3 million jobless brothers and grave-digger, the working class. sisters. Should all these millions of workers decide to take And at the same time, the bosses carry on about over the running of production, with the necessary- "scarce human skills and resources"! organised force, no precautions in Ihe world by Ihe bosses could stop them. US Foreign Minister Haig has cried buckets of crocodile tears over the suppression of Solidarity by the Polish military regime. But, when asked by a journalist if he didn't think that his credibility was damaged by US The Russian bureaucracy prohibits workers from see­ aid to right-wing dictatorships in Turkey and Latin ing many Western films on the grounds that they are America, Haig's face contorted with righteous anger. "anti-Soviet" and "decadent". But this, it appears, "Your question itself reflects a double standard that does not stop them from enjoying these films boggles my mind", he screamed. Yet what are the facts? themselves. Since overthrowing the elected government in Two ex-employees of the state film corporation September 1980, the Turkish military have stamped on (Goskino) revealed that Goskino regularly supplies the labour movement with a jackboot of iron. The Western films for private shows to high state officials. generals have imprisoned over 30 000 political op­ These include super profit making blockbusters like Air­ ponents, tortured thousands and shot over 200 people port and Towering Inferno, James Bond and karate while 'resisting arrest'. films, and pornography. Amnesty International has a list of over 60 people Delegates at the 26th 'Communist' Party Congress in who 'died' in custody. February 1980 were apparently entertained with Natural In El Salvador, the US-backed regime's reign of ter­ Size, a film about a dentist who takes a life-sized rubber ror has claimed thousands of lives, with many being doll as his mistress. slaughtered in the most horrifying ways imaginable. Goskino had no reply to this. It will be left to the Rus­ The hypocrite Haig finds these crimes quite justifiable sian working class to supply the answer—smashing the because they were committed in defence of capitalism. dictatorship of the decadent bureaucracy and creating He and his class live not just by 'double standards', but workers' democracy, where art and culture will express on the blood and sweat of hundreds of millions of the the aspirations of the people as a whole. oppressed and exploited. 43 N.IRELAND: • I For Workers' '•^Jnity and Socialism!

For workers in Northern Ireland, poverty and ihe threat of But the particular form which the violence have become a way of life. disorder has taken in Northern Ireland has been due in the first This is by far ihe mosl poverty-stricken region of the United place to the lack of any class alter­ Kingdom. Almost half Ihe children are being brought up in native presented by the workers' families with incomes below the bread line. Housing is Ihe leaders, and, secondly, to the past worst in Western Europe, with l5tt/o of homes unfit for habita­ policies of Brilish imperialism in tion, and about 20% lacking basic amenities. The official Ireland. unemployment figure is 19%. The true figure is much higher. Ireland was Britain's oldest and closest colony. There, she perfected These conditions are shared more or less equally by Catholic the bloody methods of subjugation and Proieslant workers. The impression often given of a wide which were practiced on the peoples gap between the living standards of Protestant and Catholic of Africa, Asia and other con­ workers is false through and through. tinents. Among the weapons of con­ Of the 1,7 million people living in quest developed against the Irish this province IWO-thirds are Pro­ By Peter Hadden was the tactic of 'divide and rule'. testants. The vast majority arc The Proiestant population of workers who suffer the same (Northern Ireland Ireland originates from settlers en­ deprivation as Catholic workers. Labour and Trade couraged by the British centuries Different areas may have different ago to go to Ireland from places like Union Group) Scotland and to take lands con­ political slogans on the walls. The - overcrowding, the lack of amenities, ed in a class manner can the ap­ fiscated from some of the native and the poverty are the same. Catholics. This they did, especially parent mysteries of Northern in the north cast of the country. Bui On top of poverty, workers for Ireland be unravelled. these "planters", as they were more than a decade have had to en­ The real roots of the violence are known, soon became assimilated in- dure the effects of turmoil and sec­ found in the worsening poverty. It is 10 ihe local population and even­ tarian violence. Over 2 000 people in the working class areas that the tually joined in opposing British have been killed in this period. violence has occurred. Working rule. 25 000 (one person in 60) have been class people have been the ones to injured. Translated, for example, suffer while life in the middle class Al ihe end of the 18ih century, onto the scale of South Africa the areas has gone on virtually unaf­ for example, a rising took place equivalent figures would be almost fected. Those now in prison serving which united Protestant and 40 000 dead and almost half a long sentences arising from these Catholic against colonial exploita­ million injured. 'troubles' are almosi exclusively tion and was eventually put down in This conflict is presented by the working class. blood. capitalist media, both in Ireland and Recent riots in the most deprived Then and since, the British ruling internationally, as simply a feud inner city areas of Britain have class have resorted to the weapon of between the two communities, with shown that mass uncmploymeni religious or sectarian division to religious and cultural differences at goes hand in hand with petrol maintain their rule. its base. Such an explanation ex- bombs in areas other than Northern With the development of industry plains nothing. Only when examin- Ireland. a strong labour movement emerged 44 At present there are 110 000 unemployed in the north and about 130 000 in the south. Capitalist reunification would simply mean joining together the dole queues. It would mean the merger of two poverty-ridden states. As such it holds no attraction, particularly for the million northern Protestants. They fear that in an all-Ireland state ruled by the capitalist parlies, they would end up as a repressed minority, much as Catholics are discriminated against in the north. Such an outcome ihe Protestants would resist. Should the issue be forced, ihe result, almost certainly, would be a civil war situation. From the ashes of such a conflict there would emerge^ not a united Ireland, bui a smaller, wholly Pro­ Bad housing, few jobs, and sectarian violence are what capitalist rule holds fortestan t statelei in a part>of the pre­ N. Ireland youth, Catholic and Protestant. sent territory of Northern Ireland. The Catholic population of this area which brought together Catholic backs in public spending this sector would be expelled. A Palestine and Protestant workers. Among the is now also losing jobs. situation, with the nightmare of leaders of this movement were such An unemployment rate of refugee camps, perpetual guerilla figures as the revolutionary Marxist, 20-25% is just one ingredient which struggle, and a deeper division than James Connolly. will cut to shreds all efforts to ever between workers, would be the British imperialism responded to resolve the conflict on the basis of result. this danger by whipping up sec­ capitalism. Over the past ten years tarianism with a vengeance. They every attempt at a political settle­ Neither ihe southern Irish, nor went to the lengths, in 1920, of par­ ment, involving some liberalisation the British governments are capable titioning the country in order to of the regime or the sharing of of taking any concrete steps to divide and control the movement of political power between Catholics reunification. The Southern govern­ the working class. and Protestants, has been blown ment, representing the weak Irish apart by the seething discontent and capitalisi class, are not and have Partition, resulting in the creation violence. never been prepared to lead a strug­ of an artificial stale with an in-built gle against partition. They dread the Protestant majority in the north, The only consistent answer of the prospect of ruling over the explosive gave a powerful injection of sec­ ruling class has been that of repres­ north, with its inevitable destabilis­ tarian bitterness which has helped sion. Nothing better demonstrated ing effects on the rest of the coun­ fuel and shape the current troubles. this than the attitude of the Tory try. For generations, Catholics have suf­ government to the recent prison fered discrimination in employ­ hunger strike. Rather than give way Likewise ihe British ruling class, ment, housing, and civil rights. and gram basic concessions on faced with the reaction of the Pro­ On a capitalist basis, there are no prison conditions, the Tories prefer­ testants, would be forced to drop solutions to the problems of sec­ red to sit out (he deaths of ten such schemes. A small forewarning hunger strikers. has already been seen in the tarianism and economic depriva­ mobilisation of Protesiani., tion. paramilitary armies. The economy is set for further In Ireland partition is a burning decline. This area has suffered Incapable aspect of the national question worse than any other region of the which remains to be solved. As in British isles from the current world While the representatives of the semi- and under-developed recession. Its old, largely un­ capital would now prefer to see countries, the national question is competitive shipbuilding, engineer­ Ireland united—in order to continue insoluble except through the action ing and textile industries are in ter­ with their profitable domination of of the working class as part of the minal decline and there arc few both parts of the couniry—they are overall socialist transformation of sources of new invcsimeni to replace incapable of achieving this objec­ society. Even ihe simple task of br­ lost jobs. tive. Although the northern state inging peace and stability to nor­ The weakness of the manufactur­ was an artificial creation, it has now thern Ireland, let alone the unity of ing base of the economy is shown by existed for sixty years. Its Protestant the couniry, is inseparable from the the fact thai 75% of the workforce majority would not be prepared to devclopmcni of the working class arc employed in service industries, enter an all-Ireland stale unless lliey movemeni and the struggle for particularly public adminisiralion. could see thai lo do so would be in With Tory governmeni inspired cut­ iheir inicrcsis. socialism. , Those socialists who deny this in- - 45 stead apply the completely false fighting detachments who take upon theory of stages of the revolution. themselves this task. Invariably in­ Some argue (hat it is impossible to dividual terrorism is the road to fight for socialism until there is isolation and decline. 'peace* or until the national issue is Not only has the Provisionals' removed through reunification. In­ campaign paved the way to (crrible stead of independent class action repression, bu( (heir methods have they advocate 'all-class alliances' to proven incapable of resisting this win these more 'immediate' objec­ repression. The Tory government tives. was able to defeat the recent prison Such theories merely bind the strike by Republican prisoners workers' movement and lead it into precisely because of the isolation of- alliances with class enemies. There the Provisionals and other similar are no such stages to the struggle. groups. Rather the immediate (ask is the mobilisation of the working class, drawing behind Us independent ban­ ner all other oppressed sections of Futile society. In any capitalist country the A particular twist to this 'stages' methods of individual terrorism, as theory is given by the republican a substitute for mass action, are to (Catholic) para-military groups, be spurned. Based on the minority especially the Provisional Irish section of (he working class in nor­ Republican Army (IRA). Not only Demagogues like Protestant reactionaryther n Ireland it has been doubly do they argue that Ireland must be Ian Paisley offer no way forward. futile. It has totally alienated the united before workers can be mass of Protestant workers, driving brought together in struggle, they terror, arguing that (hey would many towards right wing clerics and also believe that their methods of in­ (hereby force wuhdrawal of the bigots such as Paisley. Deepening dividual (errorism will bring (his (roops and bring about a united the sectarian divide, it has made about. Ireland. more difficult the struggle for If the campaign of bombings and The result has been to push fur­ socialism. shootings practiced for more than ther into the background both these The solution lies in the hands of ten years by the Provisionals has objectives. Their campaign, far the working class movement. There served one purpose, this has been to from weakening the state, has pro­ can be no answer except through the demonstrate (he futility of such vided (he excuse for a vas( increase unity of Catholic and Protestant meihods. of repression. The youth who flock­ workers in struggle against their In the early 1970's the Provi­ ed with enthusiasm into their ranks have had their revolutionary common exploitation. sionals, chiefly in response to From the picture of unending British army repression, gained a energies squandered. Many are dead, imprisoned, or demoralised. religion-based conflict projected by mass base of support in Catholic the world's capitalist press, such a areas, particularly among the youth. Capitalism can only be over­ solution would seem impossible. They directed this support into an thrown bv a conscious movement of But the bosses' press does not tell intensive campaign of individual the working class, not by small the (ru(h abou( northern Ireland, any more (han it does elsewhere. The tru(h is (hat on many issues workers are already united. In nor­ thern Ireland there are 300 000 trade union members, both Catholic and Protestant. The number and percen­ tage of workers in (he unions actual­ ly increased in the 1970s, despite bo(h the economic recession and sectarian violence. Almost daily there are economic struggles—on wages, conduions, redundancies. Ca(holics and Pro- testants share common picket lines in (he disputes. Not one such strug­ gle has been defeated because of sec­ tarianism. The history of northern Ireland is in fact rich with occasions when the The militant energies of the ghetto youth must be channelled into a movement of working class united against the organise^ labour. bosses and the sta(e. During (he 46 1930s, such a joini movemeni on ihe Towards the end of the 1960s a tions. but eventually found a sec­ issue of unemploymeni led 10 united movement of workers and youth tarian expression. From (his missed demonstrations (some more than developed against the northern opporlunlly for the labour move­ 100 000 strong) and barricades state- Beginning on ihe issue of anti- ment stemmed Ihe turn by many erected jointly in Catholic and Pro­ Catholic discrimination this aroused young people to the methods of Ihe testant districts, shaking the very class anger and gained the sympathy Provisionals. , foundations of the state. of many Protestant workers. An op­ More recently there have been Why then, if the working class are portunity existed to unite workers, movements through the, trade potentially so strong, and if ihe> through struggle not only on the unions of opposition to the have such revolutionary traditions, question of discrimination, but also assassination- of workers by sec­ have the divisions not been over­ for decent houses, jobs, and belter tarian killer gangs, in 1976 (he come? wages for all. union leaders were forced by the The answer is that the many op­ Yet the leaders of the labour pressure of their ranks to organise portunities to consolidate class unity movement, which alone can unite protesi marches against these have been missed—mainly as a con­ workers, refused to intervene. They atrocities. Thousands of workers sequence of the mistakes or failures adopted a policy of silence. As a joined in. of the top leaders of the trade union result the energies of the youth were More recenily still there havt been and labour movement. not lapped by the class organisa- movements.of Catholic and Protes­ tant workers against ihe attacks on • living standards by the Tory govern­ In the trade union struggle and the fight for a Labour Party, the working class can ment in Britain. On April 2nd 1980 become united. the province was virtually paralysed by a half day general strike called by the unions against Tory policies. Yet on each occasion the momen­ tum of class struggle was not main­ tained. The union leaders called off the 1976 campaign against sec­ tarianism. No serious attempt has been made since April 2nd 1980 to build on the class anger demonstrated (hat day. On issues such as the prison hunger strike and (he wave of sec­ tarian killings now taking place, ihe union leaders have failed to act. Thus the hunger strike issue became dominated by sectarians. While (en prisoners died (he union leaders did not even issue a press statement on the question.

Class action •

Within the labour movement, however, the demand for class ac­ tion on all these questions is receiv­ ing ever greater support. The Labour and Trade Union Group are a body of socialists and trade unionists who have fought within the unions for a campaign to end sectarianism, oppose repression and unite the working class around .socialist policies. In particular the Group are fighting for political action 10 be taken by the unions. No mass political party of Labour exists in Northern Ireland. The trade unions maintain the fiction that their organisations can be 'mm-poliiical1. They argue dial parly politics would 47 be divisive. As a result they leave army means an appeal to the rank sister party when this is built in the workers as open prey to political and file soldiers, with demands for north. bigots and reactionaries. trade union rights for soldiers, the From such unity in action the Whal is needed is the building of election of officers, etc. Class action country could be reunited on the on­ the industrial unity of the working by the labour movement, as oppos­ ly basis possible—a socialist basis. class into a political unity, through ed to the methods of the Provi­ It would be impossible to con­ the creation of a political party of sionals, is the only means of forcing struct a socialist society in Ireland in Labour based on the trade unions. the withdrawal of the troops. isolation from the movements tak­ The Labour and Trade Union Alongside such action must be ing place in Britain. Workers have Group are fighting for a conference placed a campaign around demands Ihe same enemies whether they hap­ of the labour movement to establish for a minimum wage tied to the cost pen to live in England, Scotland. such a party and to work out a of living, a 35 hour week, an end to Wales or Ireland. Against common socialist programme on which it unemployment, and the nationalisa­ exploiters there must be a unified could fight. Around such a pro­ tion of the top monopolies, the resistance and a common struggle gramme workers could be united in banks and insurance companies for a socialist federation of the action to end sectarianism, to resist under democratic workers* manage­ British Isles. repression and overthrow ment, as the only answer to the col­ The alternative must be set out capitalism. lapse of living standards. starkly as well. If the labour move­ Specifically this means the ment fails, over the next few years, mobilisation of the trade unions to to challenge the thugs and bigots, defend workers against attack by workers will again be left to the mer­ sectarian assassins. The working Common struggle cies of these people. The bloodshed class can only rely on its own of the 1970s would be as nothing strength, not that of the slate, to Were the labour movement in compared to what would follow. protect itself. Ireland, north and south, to be arm­ But the working class have the Throughout the troubles the army ed with such demands it could join power ten t imes over to prevent such has been responsible for repression together in struggle,. despite the an outcome. What is required, and and has failed to stop the killings. border imposed by capitalism. what the forces of Marxism in Nor­ The labour movement should cam­ Already the structures to allow thern Ireland are fighting for, is to paign for the withdrawal of the for such a struggle exist. The trade ensure that the working class is arm­ troops and their replacemem by a union movement is united across the ed with a programme and a leader­ trade union defence force. border. In the future the southern ship with the will to smash sec­ Fighting for the withdrawal of the Labour Party could be linked to its tarianism.

I NO ABA YA BASEBENZ1 ("Workers' Fortress") is being published because of the need for a conscious socialist voice in the movement of the workers and youth. Immense tasks face us, both in the trade unions and in the ANC. Today it is vital to link together those in the movement who, on the basis of experience and events, can explain to their fellow-stragglers the need for socialist policies. INQABA will help to assemble the facts and present the arguments in support of this task. The bosses control the press, the radio and the television. Dally they use it to defend their class interests against the masses, making propaganda and suppressing the truth. Our class needs its own papers In which all the problems of our life are honestly discussed—industrial disputes, migrant labour and the pass laws, unemployment, education, housing and transport, police terrorism, the manoeuvres of the regime. We need our own publications where we can argue for the programme, strategy and tactics needed to overthrow the enemy. Make INQABA your own journal. Discuss It with your comrades. Use it to express your own experiences, agreements and disagreements. Use It to expose the things the bosses and the regime keep quiet about. Write about the daily struggles of life in the townships and workplaces. Write about national and International Issues. Send articles, letters, photographs, cartoons, reviews—whatever you want to bring to the attention of your comrades in the straggle all over the country. Those who have no safer way of contacting INQABA or of passing material on to us, can use the following postal address: BM Box 1719, London WC1N 3XX. CONTENTS

Editorial 2 ANC 6 Detentions 11 Guerilla struggle 13 Workers organise! 19 Zambia 21 Western Europe 24 Pensions 30 Ciskei 33 SA economy 34 Cholera 36 International 38 Poland 40 Northern Ireland 43

For security reasons, fictitious names have been used by writers of articles in this issue of INQABA YA BASEBENZI. In every case, however, care has been taken not to give a misleading impression of the background and experience of the comrade concerned. Details about writers are provided only when security considerations make this possible.

Primed by Cambridge Hcaih Pros* Ud(TU) Mcnimure Work*. I Menimoie Terrace, London E8 3PN JANUARY 1982 IMPIMLIIMIII^ KJ®

• Contents

INTRODUCTION Page 2

THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED By L.Trotsky Chapter III: Socialism and the Page 4 State Chapter V: The Soviet Iher- Page 9 midor

EXPLANATORY NOTES Page 16

'

. A year ago, in the first issue of economic framework of workers' Both Lenin and Trotsky became INQABA, we pointed out that the states. How is it that the rulers of aware of these dangers. In fact Stalinist regime in Poland could not these slates have come to be enemies Lenin's last political struggle, while co-exist with genuine workers' of workers' democracy? What is the on his sick-bed, was launched organisation. The rise of Solidarity, way forward to the re-establishment together with Trotsky against the in which 10 million workers were of workers' democracy and to the bureaucratic deformation which organised, threatened the continued real construction of socialism? was affecting the state and the existence of the bureaucratic dic­ These arc vital questions for all Bolshevik Party. tatorship. If the working class did those involved in the struggle which Following the Marxist method, not take power, abolish the is unfolding in our country for na­ Lenin looked for an explanation of bureaucracy, and establish its own tional liberation, democracy, and this not in terms of patterns of in­ democratic rule, counter-revolution socialism. By its position on the dividual behaviour, mistakes, ex­ would inevitably follow. Polish events, the SACP leadership cesses, etc, but as a social Now the military repression of gives notice that "socialism", so far phenomenon with definite causes. Solidarity, the mass detention of as it is concerned, includes the forci­ He explained the rise of bureaucracy worker activists, the shootings and ble suppression of the movement of as a parasitic growth on the beatings, provide the tragic confir­ the working class. organism of the workers' state, aris­ mation of this analysis. They refute ing out of Ihc isolation of the Rus­ in the starkest way the false idea sian revolution and the exhaustion that the Polish regime, or any other of the working class in a backward, totalitarian bureaucracy, is socialist. largely illiterate, peasant country. Without democratic workers' Russian Revolution Ii is this method, and this ex- rule, there can be no socialism. planation, which Trotsky develops The vicious anti-working-class systematically in The Revolution measures taken in Poland have the To assist in the discussion of these Betrayed- For reasons of space, it is whole-hearted support of the rulers questions in the ranks of the trade possible to publish only two of the Soviet Union and are in fact unions and the ANC, among the chapters of ihis work here, though welcomed by every other Stalinist workers and the youth, INQABA comrades who have access to it will regime. Yet all these regimes call republishes here two chapters from find the whole text full of vital The Revolution Betrayed, by Leon themselves "socialist" and are hail­ lessons. ed as such by 'Communis!* Parlies Trotsky, first published in 1936. The Revolution Betrayed is, on around the world. In the historic Russian Revolution the one hand, an uncompromising This is the standpoint also of in 1917, the working class took state defence of nationalised produclion those who have criticised so-called power for the first time in history and economic planning, the gains of "errors" and "shortcomings" of and established its own democratic the October Revolution, against the the Polish "communist" leadership rule. The 1917 Revolution was a criticism of capitalists and their )f the past. first giant step in the world socialist apologists. On the other hand, it is Well before Jaruzelski's declara- revolution. an uncompromising defence of the ion of martial law, the South In 1917 Leon Trotsky stood interests of the working class, and African Communist Party publish­ shoulder to shoulder with Lenin in the method of Marxism, againsi the ed such commentaries on Poland, the leadership of the Bolshevik Par­ falsifications of the bureaucracy which endorsed in advance any ty, the instrument through which that had come to power in the Soviet measures by the Polish, or indeed the working class organised its cap­ Union. the Russian, bureaucracy to "save ture of slate power. Trotsky socialism"—i.e. crush the move­ organised and headed the Red Ar­ ment of the Polish working class! my, which held off and defeated the How should workers in South counter-revolutionary invasion of Africa regard the regimes which ex­ the infant workers' stale by twenty- Deformation ist in Poland, Russia, and similar one imperialist armies. states? What lessons can our move­ Through the establishment of ment draw from the temporary workers' rule, the 1917 Revolution For by 1936, as I rotsky explains, defeat now being suffered by our provided the basis for the abolition Ihe question was no longer that of a Polish brothers and sisters? of capitalism, the nationalisation of danger of deformation. In fact, a In Poland and Russia, as industry, and economic planning. political counter-revolution had throughout the Stalinist world, the At the same lime the conditions in already occurred. While this left in­ power of the capitalist bosses has which the Soviet workers' state tact the economic framework been destroyed. Their economies are came to exist produced, from the established after 1917, it meant the based on nationalised production first years, tendencies towards the usurpation of power in the state by a and economic planning—the bureaucratisalion of the regime. bureaucratic caste, which had 3 decisively crushed all organs of puppets out of Eastern through the working class taking workers' democracy, and con­ Europe—forcing into flight the control of the commanding heights solidated its own position of capitalists who had overwhelmingly collaborated with the Nazis. of world production. privilege. Today the world capitalist In this process the Bolshevik Left Conditions were ripe in E.Europe economy, with which the nationalis­ Opposition, which fought within the (and Western Europe too ) for the ed economies of the deformed degenerating Communist Party for working class to take state power. workers' states are interlinked, is an the maintenance of workers' But this, encouraging the Russian economy in crisis. Inflation and democratic rule, for an economic workers to re-establish workers* unemployment are exported to programme in the interests of the democracy, would have been a mor­ Eastern Europe and Russia; through workers and poor peasants, and for tal threat to the rulers in the bank loans the Western economy internationalism, was smashed by Kremlin. Stalin, at conferences with becomes dependent on that of the the bureaucracy. Tens of thousands the Western imperialist leaders, East. of worker activists were imprisoned reached secret agreements which In the West the burden of the and murdered. Trotsky himself was gave him a free hand in the East in capitalist crisis is loaded onto the jailed, forcibly deported from the exchange for renouncing any at­ back of the working class which, Soviet Union, and, four years after tempt to dislodge capitalism in the stronger than ever before, moves in­ publication of The Revolution West. creasingly into struggle to defend its Betrayed, murdered by Stalin's gains. Meanwhile in Eastern Europe secret police. In Eastern Europe, the capitalist collapse meant that production the explosive rise of Solidarity Yet, as Trotsky himself explain­ could be revived only on the basis of showed the response of the workers ed, even under bureaucratic rule the state ownership and planning. But, to the impasse of the Polish framework of nationalised produc­ through the guns of the Red Army, economy. In Yugoslavia, Rumania, tion and planning in Russia has the Moscow bureaucracy held back and even in the Soviet Union itself, shown its superiority to the anarchy the advance of the working class there is a growing restlessness of the capitalist profit system. and ensured the installation of among the working class. Growth rates of 20-30Vo in the bureaucratic regimes, modelled in 1930s, and 8-10% in the 1950s, their own image and exercising meant that the backward economy totalitarian control over the of 1917 developed into the second workers. World Revolution most powerful industrial economy As in Russia, the abolition of on earth. capitalism in E.Europe brought This has brought huge advances rapid economic growth and rising In the 1980s are re-emerging all in the living standards of the Rus­ living standards for the masses. the conditions for the overthrow of sian working people, and the ab­ Yet, as anticipated by Trotsky in capitalism by the Western workers, sorption into the working class of The Revolution Betrayed, the and at the same time for the over­ the peasantry who formed nine- development of production within throw of the bureaucracy by the tenths of the population in 1917. nationally-bounded economies workers in the East. Together with (even those with as vast an internal the social revolution unfolding in market as Russia) comes up against the former colonial world, these its limits. form the components of an un­ folding world revolution. The un­ E.Europe Through the 1960s and 70s folding SA revolution is a part of growth rates in Russia and Eastern this process. * Europe have tended to slow: the After World War 11, capitalism mismanagement, waste and corrup­ By absorbing the lessons of was abolished throughout Eastern tion inherent in the bureaucratic Poland and the analysis offered in Europe. But the conditions in which organisation of production are turn­ The Revolution Betrayed (he ac­ this occurred resulted not in ing the regimes into an absolute fet­ tivists of our movement will be bet­ workers' democracy (as in the ter on the development of the forces ter equipped to draw together the Soviet Union between 1917 and of production. explosive ferment of the SA mass 1923), but the establishment of In an attempt to overcome (he struggle into a united and unstop­ bureaucratic workers' states modell­ limits of national isolation, the pable force led by the workers for ed on the Stalinist dictatorship of bureaucracies have turned to the the establishment of workers' rule in 1945. capitalist world market for supplies the interests of all the oppressed. World War 11 in Europe unfolded of modern machinery and techni­ Linked with the struggle for social as a struggle to the death between que. Thus is hammered home the revolution in the West and political Nazi Germany and Russia. Fighting lesson—stressed by all the great revolution in the East, this would to defend (he remaining gains of teachers of Marxism—that the mark a huge step forward in the 1917 against Hitler's invasion, the world economy becomes necessarily world socialist revolution whose Russian working class, organised in integrated into a single whole by the first breakthrough was in Russia in the Red Army, was the decisive development of the productive 1917. force in the defeat of German forces under capitalism; and that Fascism. The Red Army swept the the socialist revolution can be com­ Nazi occupation forces and their pleted only on a world scale. consideration of forms of property regardless of the achieved productivity of labor. By the lowest stage of Socialism and the State communism Marx meant, at any rate, a society which from the very beginning stands higher in its economic de­ velopment than the most advanced capitalism. Theoreti­ cally such a conception is flawless, for taken on a world scale communism, even in its first incipient stage, means a higher level of development than that of bourgeois 1. THE TRANSITIONAL REGIME. Is it true, u the official society. Moreover, Marx expected that the Frenchman authorities inert, that socialism it already realised in the would begin the social revolution, the German continue it, Soviet Union? And if not, have the achieved successes at the Englishman finish it; and as to the Russian, Marx least made sure of its realization within the national left him far in the rear. But this conceptual order was boundaries, regardless of the course of events in the rest of upset by the facts. Whoever tries now mechanically to the world ? The preceding critical appraisal of the chief apply the universal historic conception of Marx to the indices of the Soviet economy ought to give us the point of particular case of the Soviet Union at the given stage of departure for a correct answer to this question, but we its development, will be entangled at once in hopeless shall require also certain preliminary theoretical points contradictions. of reference. Russia was not the strongest, but the weakest link in Marxism sets out from the development of technique the chain of capitalism. The present Soviet Union does as the fundamental spring of progress, and constructs the not stand above the world level of economy, but is only try­ communist program upon the dynamic of the productive ing to catch up to the capitalist countries. If Marx called forces. If you conceive that some cosmic catastrophe is go­ that society which was to be formed upon the basis of a ing to destroy our planet in the fairly near future, then socialisation of the productive forces of the most advanced you must, of course, reject the communiit perspective capitalism of its epoch* the lowest stage of communism, along with much else. Except for this as yet problematic then this designation obviously does not apply to the danger, however, there is not the slightest scientific Soviet Union, which is still today considerably poorer ground for setting any limit in advance to our technical in technique, culture and the good things of life than the productive and cultural possibilities. Marxism is satu­ capitalist countries. It would be truer, therefore, to name rated with the optimism of progress, and that alone, by the present Soviet regime in all its contradictorincss, not a the way, makes it irreconcilably opposed to religion. socialist regime, but a preparatory regime transitional The material premise of communism should be so high from capitalism to socialism. a development of the economic powers of man that pro­ There is not an ounce of pedantry in this concern for ductive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will not re­ terminological accuracy. The strength and stability of quire any goad, and the distribution of life's goods, exist­ regimes are determined in the long run by the relative pro­ ing in continual abundance, will not demand—as it does ductivity of their labor. A socialist economy possessing a not now in any well-off family or "decent" boardinghouse technique superior to that of capitalism would really be —any control except that of education, habit and social guaranteed in its socialist development for sure—so to opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty speak, automatically—a thing which unfortunately it is dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective still quite impossible to say about the Soviet economy. "utopian." A majority of the vulgar defenders of the Soviet Union Capitalism prepared the conditions and forces for a as it is are inclined to reason approximately thus: Even social revolution: technique, science and the proletariat. though you concede that the present Soviet regime is not The communist structure cannot, however, immediately re­ yet socialistic, a further development of the productive place the bourgeois society. The material and cultural in­ forces on the present foundations must sooner or later heritance from the past is wholly inadequate for that. In lead to the complete triumph of socialism. Hence only the its first steps the workers* state cannot yet permit every­ factor of time is uncertain. And is it worth white making one to work "according to his abilities"—that is, as much a fuss about that? However triumphant such an argument as he can and wishes to—nor can it reward everyone "ac­ seems at first glance, it is in fact extremely superficial. cording to his needs," regardless of the work he does. In Time is by no means a secondary factor when historic order to increase the productive forces, it is necessary to processes are in question. It is far more dangerous to resort to the customary norms of wage payment—that is, confuse the present and the future tenses in politics than to the distribution of life's goods in proportion to the in grammar* Evolution is far from consisting, as vulgar quantity and quality of individual labor. evolutionists of the Webb type imagine, in a steady ac­ Marx named this first stage of the new society "the cumulation and continual "improvement" of that which lowest stage of communism," in distinction' from the exists. It has its transitions of quantity into quality, its highest, where together with the last phantoms of want crises, leaps and backward lapses. It is exactly because material inequality will disappear. In this sense socialism the Soviet Union is as yet far from having attained the and communism are frequently contrasted as the lower and first stage of socialism, as a balanced system of production higher stages of the new society. "We have not yet, of and distribution, that its development does not proceed course, complete communism," roads the present official harmoniously* but in contradictions. Economic contradic­ Soviet doctrine, "but we have already achieved socialism tions produce social antagonisms, which in turn develop —that is, the lowest stage of communism," In proof of their own logic, not awaiting the further growth of the this, they adduce the dominance of the state trusts in in­ productive forces, Wc have just seen how true this was in dustry, the collective farms in agriculture, the state and tl*c case of-the kulak who did not wish to "grow" cvolu- co-operative enterprises in commerce. At first glance this tionarily into socialism, and who, to the surprise of the jives a complete correspondence with the a priori—and bureaucracy and its ideologues, demanded a new and sup­ therefore hypothetical—scheme of Marx. But it is exactly plementary revolution. Will the bureaucracy itself, in for the Marxist that this question is not exhausted by a whose hands the power and wealth are concentrated, wish to grow peacefully into socialism? As to this doubts are the Samurai! It is not the tasks of defense .which create certainly permissible. In any case, it would be imprudent a military and state bureaucracy, but the class structure to take the word of the bureaucracy for itl It is impos­ of society carried over into the organization of defense. sible at present to answer finally and irrevocably the ques­ The army is only a copy of the social relations. The tion in what direction the economic contradictions and struggle against foreign danger necessitates, of course, in social antagonisms of Soviet society will develop in the the workers* state as in others, a specialised military tech­ course of the next three, five or ten years. The outcome nical organization, but in no case a privileged officer caste. depends upon a struggle of living social forces—not on a The party program demands a replacement of the stand­ national scale, either, but on an international scale. At ing army by an armed people. every new stage, therefore, a concrete analysis is necessary The regime of proletarian dictatorship from its very of actual relations and tendencies in their connection and beginning thus ceases to be a "state" in the old sense of continual interaction. We shall now see the importance of the word—a special apparatus, that is, for holding in sub­ such an analysis in the case of the state. jection the majority of the people. The material power, together with the weapons, goes over directly and immedi­ ately into the hands of workers* organizations such as the 1 PROGRAM AND REALITY. Lenin, following Marx and Soviets. The state as a bureaucratic apparatus begins to Engels, saw the first distinguishing feature of the prole­ die away the first day of the proletarian dictatorship. Such tarian revolution in the fact that, having expropriated is the voice of the party program—not voided to this the exploiters, it would abolish the necessity of a bureau­ day. Strange: it sounds like a spectral voice from the cratic apparatus raised above society—and above nil, a mausoleum. police and standing army. "The proletariat needs a state However you may interpret the nature of the present —this all the opportunists can tell you," wrote Lenin in Soviet state, one thing is indubitable: at the end of its 1917, two months before the seizure of power, "but they, second decade of existence, it has not only not died away, the opportunists, forget to add that the proletariat needs but not begun to "die away." Worse than that, it has only a dying state—that is, a state constructed in such a grown into a hitherto unheard of apparatus of compul­ way that it immediately begins to die away and cannot sion. The bureaucracy not only has not disappeared, yield­ help dying away/' (State and Revolution.) This criticism ing its place to the masses, but has turned into an uncon­ was directed at the time against reformist socialists of the trolled force dominating the masses. The army not only type of the Russian Mensheviks, British Fabians, etc. It has not been replaced by an armed people, but has given now attacks with redoubled force the Soviet idolators with birth to a privileged officers* caste, crowned with mar­ their cult of a bureaucratic state which has not the slightest shals, while the people, "the armed bearers of the dictator­ intention of "dying away.** ship," are now forbidden in the Soviet Union to carry The social demand for a bureaucracy arises in all those even noncxplosive weapons* With the utmost stretch of situations where sharp antagonisms require to be "soft­ fancy it would be difficult to imagine a contrast more strik­ ened", "adjusted", "regulated" (always in the interest* ing than that which exists between the schema of the of the privileged, the possessors, and always to the ad­ workers* state according to Marx, Engels and Lenin, and vantage of the bureaucracy itself). Throughout all bour­ the actual state now headed by Stalin. While continuing geois revolutions, therefore, no matter how democratic, to publish the works of Lenin (to be sure, with excerpta there has occurred a reinforcement and perfecting of the and distortions by the censor), the present leaders of the bureaucratic apparatus. "Officialdom and the standing Soviet Union and their ideological representatives do not army—" writes Lenin, "that is a *parasite' on the body even raise the question of the causes of such a crying of bourgeois society, a parasite created by the inner con­ divergence between program and reality. We will try to tradictions which tear this society, yet nothing but a para­ do this for them. site stopping up the living pores.** Beginning with 1917—that is, from the moment when the conquest of power confronted the party as a practical 3. THE DUAL CHARACTER OF THE WORKERS' STATE- The problem—Lenin was continually occupied with the proletarian dictatorship is a bridge between the bourgeois thought of liquidating this "parasite." After the over* and the socialist society. In its very essence, therefore, it throw of the exploiting classes—he repeats and explains bears a temporary character. An incidental but very essen­ in every chapter of State and Revolution—the proletariat tial task of the state which realizes the dictatorship con­ will shatter the old bureaucratic machine and create its sists in preparing for its own dissolution. The degree of own apparatus out of employees and workers. And it will realization of this "incidental" task is, to some extent, a take measures against their turning into bureaucrats— measure of iU success in the fulfillment of its fundamental "measures analysed in detail by Marx and Engels: (1) mission: the construction of a society without classes and not only election but recall at any time; (*) payment no without material contradictions. Bureaucracy and social higher than the wages of a worker; (3) immediate tran­ harmony are inversely proportional to each other* sition to a regime in which all will fulfill the functions of In his famous polemic against Duhring, Engels wrote: control and supervision so that all may for a time become "When, together with class domination and the struggle •bureaucrats*, and therefore nobody can become a bureau­ for individual existence created by the present anarchy crat." You must not think that Lenin was talking about in production, those conflicts and excesses which result the problems of a decade. No, this was the first step with from this struggle disappear, from that time on there which "we should and must begin upon achieving a prole­ will be nothing to suppress, and there will be no need for a tarian revolution,** special instrument of suppression, the state." The This same bold view of the state in a proletarian dic­ phtlistine considers the gendarme an eternal institution. tatorship found finished expression a year and a half In reality the gendarme will bridle mankind only until man after the conquest of power in the program of the Bol­ shall thoroughly bridle nature. In order that the state shall shevik party, including its section on the army. A strong disappear, "class domination and the struggle for in­ state, but without mandarins; armed power, but without dividual existence" must disappear. Engels joins these two conditions together, for in the perspective of changing see. 1/ for the defense of socialized property against social regimes a few decades amount to nothing. But the bourgeois counterrevolution a "state of armed workers* thing looks different to those generations who bear the was fully adequate, it was a very different matter to regu­ weight of a revolution. It is true that capitalist anarchy late inequalities in the sphere of consumption. Those de­ creates the struggle of each against all, but the trouble is prived of property are not inclined to create and defend that a socialization of the means of production does not it. The majority cannot concern itself with the privilege* yet automatically remove the "struggle for individual of the minority. For the defense of "bourgeois law" the existence." That is the nub of the question! workers* state was compelled to create a "bourgeois** type A socialist state even in America, on the basis of the of instrument—that is, the same old gendarme, although most advanced capitalism, could not immediately provide in a new uniform. everyone with as much as he needs, and would therefore be We have thus taken the first step toward understanding compelled to spur everyone to produce as much as possible. the fundamental contradiction between Bolshevik pro­ The duty of stimulator in these circumstances naturally gram and Soviet reality. If the state does not die away, falls to the state, which in its turn cannot but resort, but grows more and more despotic, if the plenipotentiaries with various changes and mitigations, to the method of of the working class become bureaucratized, and the labor payment worked out by capitalism. It was in this brueaucracy rises above the new society, this is not for sense that Marx wrote in 1875: "Bourgeois law ... ii some secondary reasons like the psychological relics of the inevitable in the first phase of the communist society* in past, etc., but is a result of the iron necessity to give that form in which it issues after long labor pains from birth to and support a privileged minority so long as it capitalist society. Law can never be higher than the is impossible to guarantee genuine equality. economic structure and the cultural development of society The tendencies of bureaucratism, which strangles the conditioned by that structure" workers* movement in capitalist countries, would every­ In explaining these remarkable lines, Lenin adds: where show themselves even after a proletarian revolution. "Bourgeois law in relation to the distribution of the But it is perfectly obvious that the poorer the. society objects of consumption assumes, of course, inevitably a which issues from a revolution, the sterner and more naked bourgeois state, for law is nothing without an apparatus would be the expression of this "law**, the more crude capable of compelling observance of its norms. It follows would be the forma assumed by bureaucratism, and the (we are still quoting Lenin) that under Communism more dangerous would it become for socialist development. not only will bourgeois law survive for a certain time* but The Soviet state is prevented not only from dying away, also even a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie!** This but even from freeing itself of the bureaucratic parasite, highly significant conclusion, completely ignored by the not by the "relics** of former ruling classes, as declares the present official theoreticians, has a decisive significance for naked police doctrine of Stalin, for these relics are power­ the understanding of the nature of the Soviet state—or less in themselves. It is prevented by immeasurably more accurately, for a first approach to such understand­ mightier factors, such as material want, cultural back­ 1 ing. Insofar as the state which assumes the task of socialist wardness and the resulting dominance of "bourgeois law* transformation is compelled to defend inequality—that is, in what most immediately and sharply touches every the material privileges of a minority—by methods of com­ human being, the business of insuring his personal pulsion, insofar does it also remain a "bourgeois" state, existence. even though without a bourgeoisie. These words contain neither praise nor blame; they merely name things with their real names. 4. "GENERALIZED WANT AND THE GENDARME. Two The bourgeois norms of distribution, by hastening the years before the Communist Manifesto, young Marx growth of material power, ought to serve socialist aims wrote: "A development of the productive forces is the —but only in the last analysis. The state assumes directly absolutely necessary practical premise [of Communism], and from the very beginning a dual character: socialistic, because without it vant is generalized, and with want the insofar as it defends social property in the means of pro­ struggle for necessities begins again, and that means that 1 duction; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life's all the old crap must revive. * This thought Marx never goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value directly developed, and for no accidental reason: he never and all the consequences ensuing therefrom. Such a con­ foresaw a proletarian revolution in a backward country. tradictory characterization may horrify the dogmatists Lenin also never dwelt upon it, and this too was not acci- and scholastics; we can only offer them our condolences. dental. He did not foresee so prolonged an isolation of the Soviet state. Nevertheless, the citation, merely an abstract The final physiognomy of the workers' state ought to construction with Marx, an inference from the opposite, be determined by the changing relations between its provides an indispensable theoretical key to the wholly con­ bourgeois and socialist tendencies. The triumph of the lat­ crete difficulties and sicknesses of the Soviet regime. On the ter ought ipso facto to signify the final liquidation of the historic basis of destitution, aggravated by the destruc­ gendarme—that is, the dissolving of the state in a self- tions of the imperialist arid civil wars, the "struggle for governing society. From this alone it is sufficiently clear individual existence** not only did not disappear the day how immeasurably significant is the problem of Soviet after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and not only did bureaucratism, both in itself and as a symptom! not abate in the succeeding years, but, on the contrary, It is because Lenin, in accord with his whole intellectual assumed at times an unheard-of ferocity. Need we recall temper, gave an extremely sharpened expression to the that certain region* of the country have twice gone to the conception of Marx, that he revealed the source of the point of cannibalism? future difficulties, his own among them, although he did not himself succeed in carrying his analysis through to The distance separating tzarist Russia from the West the end. "A bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie" proved can really be appreciated only now. In the most favorable inconsistent with genuine Soviet democracy. The dual conditions—that is in the absence of inner disturbances function of the state could not but afreet its structure. Ex­ and external catastrophes—it would require several more perience revealed what theory was unable clearly to fore­ five-year periods before the Soviet Union could fully as- similate those economic and educative achievements upon The post-war revolutionary crisis did not lead to the which the first-born nations of capitalist civilization have victory of socialism in Europe. The social democrats expended centuries. The application of socialist methods rescued the bourgeoisie. That period, which to Lenin and for the solution of pre-socialist problems—that is the very his colleagues looked like a short "breathing spell", has essence of the present economic and cultural work in the stretched out to a whole historical epoch. The contradic­ Soviet Union. tory social structure of the Soviet Union, and the ultra- The Soviet Union* to be sure, even now excels in pro­ bureaucratic character of its state, are the direct conse­ ductive forces the most advanced countries of the epoch of quences of this unique and "unforeseen" historical pause, Marx. But in the first place, in the historic rivalry of which has at the same time led in the capitalist countries two regimes, it is not so much a question of absolute as of to fascism or the pre* fascist reaction. relative levels; the Soviet economy opposes the capitalism While the first attempt to create a state cleansed of of Hitler, Baldwin and Roosevelt, not Bismarck, Pal- bureaucratism fell foul, in the first place, of the unfa- merston or Abraham Lincoln. And in the second place, the niiliarity of the masses with self-government, the lack of very scope of human demands changes fundamentally with qualified workers devoted to socialism, etc., it very soon the growth of world technique. The contemporaries of after these immediate difficulties encountered others more Man knew nothing of automobiles, radios, moving pic­ profound. That reduction of the state to functions of tures, aeroplanes. A socialist society, however, is unthink­ "accounting and control", with a continual narrowing of able without the free enjoyment of these goods. the function of compulsion, demanded by the party pro­ "The lowest stage; of Communism,** to employ the term gram, assumed at least a relative condition of general con­ of Marx, begins at that level to which the most advanced tentment. Just this necessary condition was lacking. No capitalism has drawn near The real program of the com­ help came from the West. The power of the democratic ing Soviet five-year plan, however, is to "catch up with Soviets proved cramping, even unendurable, when the tnvk Europe and America*** The construction of a network of of the day was to accommodate those privileged groups autoroads and asphalt highways in the measure! 8s spaces whose existence was necessary for defense, for industry, of the Soviet Union will require much more time and for technique and science. In this decidedly not "social­ material than to transplant automobile factories from istic" operation, taking from ten and giving to one, there America, or even to acquire their technique. How many crystallized out and developed a powerful caste of spe­ years are needed in order to make it possible for every cialists in distribution. Soviet citizen to use an automobile in any direction he How and why is it, however, that the enormous economic chooses, refilling his gas tank without difficulty en route? successes of the recent period have I* d not to a mitigation, In barbarian society the rider and the pedestrian consti­ but on the contrary to a sharpening, of inequalities, and tuted two classes. The automobile differentiates society no at the same time to a further growth of bureaucratism, less than the saddle horse. So long as even a modest "Ford" such that from being a "distortion", it has now become a remains the privilege of a minority, there survive all the system of administration? Before attempting to onswer relations and customs proper to a bourgeois society. And this question, let us hear how the authoritative leaders of together with them there remains the guardian of in­ the Soviet bureaucracy look upon their own regime, equality, the state. Basing himself wholly upon the Marxian theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin did not succeed, 5. THE "COMPLETE TRIUMPH OF SOCIALISM" AND THE as we have said, either in his chief work dedicated to this "REINFORCEMENT OF THE DICTATORSHIP/' There have question (State and Revolution), or in the program of the been several announcements during recent years of the party, in drawing all the necessary conclusions as to the "complete triumph" of socialism in the Soviet Union— character of the state from the economic backwardness and taking especially categorical forms in connection with the isolatedness of the country. Explaining the revival of "liquidation of the Itulaks as a class." On January 30, bureaucratism by the unfamiliarity of the masses with 1031, Pravda* interpreting a speech of Stalin, said i "Dur­ administration and by the special difficulties resulting ing the second five-year period, the last relics of capitalist from the war, the program prescribes merely political elements in our economy will be liquidated." (Italics measures for the overcoming of "bureaucraticdistortions": ours.) From the point of view of this perspective, the election and recall At any time of all plenipotentiaries, state ought conclusively to die away during the same abolition of material privileges, active control by the period, for where the "last relics" of capitalism are liqui­ masses, etc. It was assumed that along this road the bureau­ dated the state has nothing to do. "The Soviet power," crat, from being a boss, would turn into a simple and says the program of the Bolshevik party on this subject, moreover temporary technical agent, and the state would "openly recognizes the inevitability of the class character gradually and imperceptibly disappear from the scene. of every state, so long as the division of society into classes, and therewith all state power, has not completely disap­ This obvious underestimation of impending difficulties peared.1* However, when certain incautious Moscow is explained by the fact that the program was based theoreticians attempted, from this liquidation of the "last wholly upon an international perspective. "The October relics" of capitalism taken on faith, to infer the dying revolution in Russia has realized the dictatorship of the away of the state, the bureaucracy immediately declared proletariat. . . , Th* era of world proletarian communist such theories "counterrevolutionary." revolution has begun*" These were the introductory lines of the program. Their authors not only did not set them­ Where lies the theoretical mistake of the bureaucracy selves the aim of constructing "socialism in a single coun­ —-in the basic premise or the conclusion? In the one and try"—this idea had not entered anybody's head then, and the other. To the first announcements of "complete tri­ least of all Stalin's—but they also did not touch the ques* umph", the Left Opposition answered: You must not tion as to what character the Soviet state would assume, if limit yourself to the socio-juridical form of relations which compelled for as long as two decades to solve in isolation are unripe, contradictory, in agriculture still very un­ those economic and cultural problems which advanced stable, abstracting from the fundamental criterion: level capitalism hod solved so long ago. of the productive forces. Juridical forms themselves have &n essentially different social content in dependence upon that is, governmental repression—testifies not to the the height of the technical level. "Law can never be higher triumph of a classless harmony, but to the growth of new than the economic structure and the cultural level con­ social antagonisms. What lies at the bottom of all this? ditioned by it/* (Marx) Soviet forms of propertj' on & Lack of the means of subsistence resulting from the low basis of the most modern achievements of American productivity of labor. technique transplanted into all branches of economic life Lenin once characterized socialism as "the Soviet power —that would indeed be the first stage of socialism! Soviet plus electrification." That epigram, whose one-sidedncss forms with a low productivity of labor mean only a tran­ was due to the propaganda aims of the moment, assumed sitional regime whose destiny history has not yet finally at least as a minimum starting point the capitalist level weighed. of electrification. At present in the Soviet Union there "Is it not monstrous?"—we wrote in March 1932. "The is one third as much electrical energy per head of the country can not get out of a famine of goods. There is a population as in the advanced countries. If you take into stoppage of supplies at every step. Children lack milk. But consideration that the Soviets have given place in the the official oracles announce: 'The country has entered meantime to a political machine that is independent of into the period of socialism!' Would it be possible more the masses^ the Communist International has nothing left viciously to compromise the name of socialism?" Karl but to declare that socialism is bureaucratic power plus R*dek, now a prominent publicist of the ruling Soviet one third of the capitalist electrification. Such a definition circles, parried these remarks in the German liberal paper, would be photographically accurate, but for socialism it Berliner Tageblatt, in-a special issue devoted to the Soviet is not quite enough! In a speech to the Stakhanovists in Union (May 1932), in the following words which deserve November 1935, Stalin, obedient to the empirical aims to be immortal: "Milk is a product of cows and not of of the conference, unexpectedly announced: "Why can socialism, and you would have actually to confuse socialism and should and necessarily will socialism conquer the capi­ with the image of a country where rivers flow milk, in talist system of economy? Because it can give ... a order not to understand that a country can rise for a time higher productivity of labor." Incidentally rejecting the to a higher level of development without any considerable resolution of the Communist International adopted three rise in the material situation of the popular masses." These months before upon the same question, and also his own lines were written when a horrible famine was raging in the oft-repeated announcements, Stalin here speaks of the country. "triumph'* of socialism in the future tense. Socialism will conquer the capitalist system, he says, when it surpasses Socialism is a structure of planned production to the it in the productivity of labor. Not only the tenses of the end of the best satisfaction of human needs; otherwise it verbs but the social criteria change, as we.see, from moment does not deserve the name of socialism. If cows are social­ to moment. It is certainly not easy for the Soviet citizen to ized, but there are too few of them, or they have too keep up with the "general line." meager udders, then conflicts arise out of the inadequate supply of milk—conflicts between city and country, be­ Finally, on March 1, 1936, in a conversation with Roy tween collectives and individual peasants, between dif­ Howard, Stalin ofTered a new definition of the Soviet ferent strata of the proletariat, between the whole toiling regime: "That social organization which we have created mass and the bureaucracy. It was in fact the socialization may be called a Soviet socialist organization, still not of the cows which led to their mass extermination by the wholly completed, but at root a socialist organization of peasants. Social conflicts created by want can in their turn society." In this purposely vague definition there are lead to a resurrection of "all the old crap." Such was, in almost as many contradictions as there are words. The essence, our answer. social organization is called "Soviet socialist", but the The 7th Congress of the Communist International, in a Soviets are a form of state, and socialism is a social regime. resolution of August 20, 1935, solemnly affirmed that in These designations are not only not identical but, from the sum total of the successes of the nationalized indus­ the point of view of our interest, antagonistic. Insofar as tries, the achievement of collectivization, the crowding out the social organization has become socialistic, the soviet* of capitalist elements and the liquidation of the kulaks as ought to drop away like the scaffolding after a building a class, "the final and irrevocable triumph of socialism is finished, Stalin introduces a correction: Socialism is and the all-sided reinforcement of the state of the prole­ "still not wholly completed." What does "not wholly" tarian dictatorship, is achieved in the Soviet Union." With mean? By 5 per cent, or by 75 per cent? This they do all its categorical tone, this testimony of the Communist not tell us, just as they do not tell us what they mean by an International is wholly self-contradictory. If socialism organization of society that is "socialistic at root." Do has "finally and irrevocably" triumphed, not as a principle they mean forms of property or technique? The very mis­ but as a living social regime, then a renewed "reinforce­ tiness of the definition, however, implies a retreat from the ment" of the dictatorship is obvious nonsense. And on the immeasurably more categorical formula of 1931-35. A contrary, if the reinforcement of the dictatorship is evoked further step along the same road would be to acknowledge by the real demands of the regime, that means that the that the "root" of every social organization is the produc­ triumph of socialism is still remote. Not only a Marxist, tive forces, and that the Soviet root is just what is not but any realistic political thinker, ought to understand mighty enough for the socialist trunk and for its leafage: that the very necessity of "reinforcing" the dictatorship— human welfare.

v V The Soviet ThermMor It is sufficiently well known that every revolution up to this time has b^en followed by a reaction, or even a counter* revolution. This, to be sure, has never thrown the nation all the way back to its starting point, but it 1ms always taken from the people the lion's share of their conquests. The victims of the first reactionary wave have been, as a K WHY STALIN TRIUMPHED, The historian of the So­ general rule, those pioneers, initiators, and instigators viet I iimn cannot tail to conclude that the ]>oIicy of the who stood at the head of the masses in the period of the ruling bureaucracy upon great questions has been a series revolutionary offensive. In their stead people of the second of contradictory zigzags. The attempt to explain or line, in league with the former enemies of the revolution, justify them by "changing circumstances1* obviously won't have been advanced to the front- Beneath this dramatic- hold water. To guide means at least in some degree to duel of "coryphees" on the open political scene, shifts exercise foresight. The Stalin faction have not in the slight* have taken place in the relations between classes, and, no est degree foreseen the inevitable results of the develop- less important, profound changes in the psychology of inent; they have been caught napping every time. They the recently revolutionary mosses. have reacted with mere administrative reflexes. The theory Answering the bewildered questions of many comrades of each successive turn has been created alter the fact, as to what has become of the activity of the Bolshevik and with small regard for what they were teaching yester­ party and the working class—where is its revolutionary day. On the basis of the same irrefutable facts and docu­ initiative, its spirit of self-sacrifice and plciwian pride— ments, the historian will be compelled to conclude that why, in place of all this, has appeared so much vileness, the so-called "Left Opposition" offered an immeasurably cowardice, pusillanimity and careerism—Rakovsky re­ more correct analysis of the processes taking place in the ferred to the life story of the French revolution of the country, and far more truly foresaw their further develop­ eighteenth century, and offered the example of Babeuf, ment who on emerging from the Abbaye prison likewise won­ This assertion is contradicted at first glance by the dered what had become of the heroic people of the Punsian simple fact that the faction which could not see ahead was suburbs. A revolution is a mighty devourer of human steadily victorious, while the more penetrating group energy, both individual and collective. The nerves give suffered defeat after defeat. That kind of objection, which way. Consciousness is shaken and characters are worn out. comes automatically to mind, is convincing, however, only Kvents unfold too swiftly for the How of fresh forces to for those who think rationalistically* and see in politics replace the Ions. Hunger, unemployment, the death of the a logical argument or a chess match. A [political struggle revolutionary cadres, the removal of the masses from is in its essence a struggle of interests and forces, not of administration, all this led to such a physical and moral arguments. The quality of the leadership is, of course, far impoverishment of the Parisian suburbs that they required from a matter of indifference for the outcome of the con- three decades before they were ready for a new insurrec­ flict, but it is not the only factor, and in the last analysis tion. is not decisive. Each of the struggling camps moreover The axiomlikc assertions of the Soviet literature, to demands leaders in its own image. the effect that the laws of bourgeois revolutions are "in­ The February revolution raised Kerensky and Tsere- applicable" to a proletarian revolution, have no scientific telli to power, not because they were "cleverer" or "more content whatever. The proletarian character of the astute" than the ruling tzarist clique, but because they October revolution was determined by the world situation represented, at least temporarily, the revolutionary masses and by a speciul correlation of internal forces. But the of the people in their revolt against the old regime. Ker­ classes themselves were formed in the barbarous circum­ ensky was able to drive Lenin underground and imprison stances of tzar ism and backward capitalism, and were other Bolshevik leaders> not because he excelled them in anything but made to order for the demands of a socialist personal qualifications, but because the majority of the revolution. The exact Opposite is true. It is for the very workers and soldiers in *hosc days were still following the reason that a proletariat still backward in many respects patriotic petty bourgeoisie. The personal "superiority" achieved in the space of a few months the unprecedented of Kerensky, if it is suitable to employ such a word in this leap from a semifcudal monarchy to a socialist dictator­ connection, consisted in (he fact that he did not see farther ship, that th« reaction in its ranks was inevitable. This than the overwhelming majority. The Bolsheviks in their reaction has develo|>ed in a series of consecutive waves. turn conquered the petty bourgeois democrats, not through Kxtcrnal condition* and events have vied with each other the personal superiority of their leaders, but through a in nourishing it. Intervention followed intervention. Tin* new correlation of social forces, The proletariat had suc­ revolution got no direct help from the west. Instead of ceeded at last in leading the discontented peasantry the expected prosperity of the country an ominous desti­ against the bourgeoisie. tution reigned for long. Moreover, the outstanding repre­ The consecutive stage* of the great French Revolution, sentatives of the working class cither din I ill the civil war, during its rise and fall alike, demonstrate no less convinc­ or rose a few steps higher and broke away from the masses. ingly that the strength of the "leaders" and "heroes" that And thus after an unexampled tension of forces, hopes replaced each other consisted primarily in their corre­ and illusions, there came a long period of weariness, de­ spondence to the character of those classes and strata cline and sheer disappointment in the result*of the revolu­ which supported them* Only this correspondence, and not tion. The ebb of the "plebeian pride" made room for a any irrelevant superiorities whatever, permitted each of Hood of pusillanimity and careerism. The new command­ them to place the impress of his personality upon a certain ing caste rose to its place upon this wave. historic period. In the successive supremacy of Mirabeau, The demobilization of the Bed Army of five million Brissot, Robespierre, Barras and Bonaparte, there is an played no small rale in the formation of the bureaucracy. obedience to objective law incomparably more effective The victorious commanders assumed leading postri in the than the special traits of the historic protagonists them­ local Soviets, in economy, in education, and they persist­ selves. ently introduced everywhere that regime which had en- turcd success in the civil war. Thui on all sides the masses masses lacked faith that the situation could be seriously were pushed away gradually from actual participation changed by a new struggle. Meantime the bureaucracy in the leadership of the country. asserted: MFor the sake of an international revolution, the The reaction within the proletariat caused an extraor­ Opposition proposes to drag us into a revolutionary war. dinary flush of hope and confidence in the petty bourgeois Knough of shake-ups! We have earned the right to rest. strata of town and country, aroused as they were to new We will build the socialist society at home. Rely upon us, life by the NEP, and growing bolder and bolder. The your leaders!" This gospel of repose firmly consolidated young bureaucracy, which had arisen at first as an agent the apparatchiki and the military and state officials and in­ of the proletariat, began now to feel itself a court of dubitably found an echo among the weary workers, and arbitration between the classes. IU independence increased still more the peasant masses- Can it be, they asked them­ from month to month. selves, tliat the Opposition is actually ready to sacKficc The international situation was pushing with mighty the interests of tlw Soviet Union for the idea of **per- forces in the same direction. Th* Soviet bureaucracy be­ manent revolution'1? In reality, the struggle had been came more self-confident* the heavier the blows dealt to about the life interests of the Soviet state. The false the world working class. Between these two facts there policy of the International in Germany resulted ten years was not only a chronological, but a causal connection, and later in the victory of Hitler—that is, in a threatening one which worked in two directions. The leaders of the war danger from the West. And the no less false policy bureaucracy promoted the proletarian defeats; the de­ in China reinforced Japanese imperialism and brought feats promoted the rise of the bureaucracy. The crushing very much nearer the danger in the East. Hut periods of of the Bulgarian insurrection and the inglorious retreat reaction arc characterized above all by a lack of coura­ of the German workers' party in 1923* the collapse of the geous thinking. Esthonian attempt at insurrection in 1924, the treacher­ The Opposition was isolated. The bureaucracy struek ous liquidation of the General Strike in England and the while the iron was hot, exploiting the bewilderment and unworthy conduct of the Polish workers* party at the in* passivity of the workers, setting their more backward stallation of Pilsudski in 1926, the terrible massacre of strata against the advanced, and relying more and more the Chinese revolution in 1927, and, finally, the still more boldly upon the kulak and the petty bourgeois ally in ominous recent defeats in Germany and Austria—these general. In the course of a few years, the bureaucracy are the historic catastrophes which killed the faith of the thus shattered the revolutionary vanguard of the prole­ Soviet masses in world revolution, and permitted the tariat. bureaucracy to rise higher and higher as the sole light of It would be naive to imagine that Stalin, previously salvation. unknown to the masses, suddenly issued from the wing* As to the causes of the defeat of the world proletariat full armed with a complete strategical plan. No indeed. during the last thirteen years, the author must refer to Before he felt out his own course, the bureaucracy felt his other works *hore be has tried to expOM the ruinous out Stalin himself. He brought it all the necessary guar­ part played by the leadership in the Kremlin, isolated antees: the prestige of an old Bolshevik, a strong char­ from the masses and profoundly conservative as it is IU acter, narrow vision, and close bonds with the political the revolutionary movement of nil countries, Hire we arc machine as the sole source of his influence. The success concerned primarily with the irrefutable and instructive which fell upon him was a surprise at first to Stalin him­ fact that the continual defeats of the revolution in Kuropc self. It was the friendly welcome of the new ruling group, and Asia, while weakening the international jKisition of the trying to free itself from the old principles and from the Soviet Union, have vastly strengthened the Soviet bureau­ control of the masses, and having need of a reliable cracy. Two dates arc especially significant in this historic arbiter in its inner affairs. A secondary figure before the series. In the second half of 192tf, the attention of tlir masses and in the events of the revolution, Stalin revealed Soviet workers was passionately fixed upon Germany, himself as the indubitable leader of the Thcrmidorian where the proletariat, it seemed, I.ml stretched out its hand bureaucracy, as first in its midst to power. The panicky retreat of the German Communist The new ruling caste soon revealed its own ideas, feelings Party was the heaviest possible disappointment to the and, more important, its interests. The overwhelming working masses of the Soviet Union. The Soviet bureau* majority of the older generation of the present bureau­ cracy straightway opened a campaign against the theory cracy had stood on the other side of the barricades of "permanent revolution/* and dealt the Left Opjiosition during the October revolution. (Take, for example^ tl>e it* first cruel blow. During the year* 1926 and 1!)27 the Soviet ambassadors only: Troyanovsky, Maisky, Potcin- population of the Soviet Union ex|>cricncrd a new tide kin, Suritz, Khinchuk, etc.) Or at best they had stood of liope- All eyes were now directed to the Kast where the aside from the struggle. Those of the present bureaucrat-* drama of the Chinese revolution won unfolding. The Left who were in the Bolshevik camp in the October days played Opposition had recovered from the previous blows and was in the majority of cases no considerable role. As for the recruiting a phalanx of new adherents. At the end of young bureaucrats, they have been chosen and educated 19S7 the Chinese revolution was massacred by the hang­ by the elders, frequently from among their own offspring. man, Chiang-kai-fihck, into whose hands the Communist These people could not have achieved the October revolu­ International Imd literally betrayed the Chinese workers tion, but they were perfectly suited to exploit it. and peasants. A cold wave of disappointment swept over Personal incidents in the interval between these two the masses of the Soviet Union. After an unbridled baiting historic chapters were not, of course, without influence. in the press and at meetings, the bureaucracy finally, in Thus the sickness and death of Lenin undoubtedly 1 !WH, ventured upnn'mass arrests among the I*eft Opjiosi- hastened the denouement. Had Lenin lived longer, the linn. pressure of the bureaucratic power would have developed, To be sure, tens of thousands of revolutionary fighters at least during the first years, more slowly. But as early gathered around the banner of the Bolshevik-Leninist*. as 1926 Krupskaya said, in a circle of Left Opposition­ The advanced workers were indubitably sympathetic to ists; "If Ilych were alive, he would probably already be the Opj>osition, but that sympathy remained passive. The in prison-*' The fenrs and alarming prophecies of Lenin 1 i himself were then still fresh in her memory, and she cher­ had been narrowed in proportion as difficulties increased. ished no illusions as to his personal omnipotence against In the beginning, the party had wished and hoped to opposing historic wind* and currents. preserve freedom of political struggle within the frame­ The hureaucracy conquered something more than the work of the Soviets. The civil war introduced stern amend­ Left Opposition. It conquered the Bolshevik party. It de­ ments into this calculation. The opposition parties were feated the program of Lenin, who had seen the chief forbidden one after the other. This measure, obviously danger in the conversion of the organs of the state "from in conflict with the spirit of Soviet democracy, the leaders servants of society to lords over society." It defeated all of Bolshevism regarded not as a principle* but as an these enemies, the Opposition, the party and Lenin, not episodic act of self-defense. with ideas and arguments, but with its own social weight. The swift growth of the ruling party, with the novelty The leaden rump of the bureaucracy outweighed the head and immensity of its tasks, inevitably gave rise to inner of the revolution. That is the secret of the Soviet's disagreement*. The underground oppositional currents Thermidor. in the county exerted a pressure through various chan­ nels upon the sole legal political organization, increasing the acutencsg of the factional struggle. At the moment 2* THE DEGENERATION OF THE IOLSHEVIK PARTY. The of completion of the civil war, this struggle took such Bolshevik party prepared and insured the October vic­ sharp forms as to threaten to unsettle the state power. In tory. It also created the Soviet state, supplying it with a March 1921, in the days of the Kronstadt revolt, which sturdy skeleton. The degeneration of the party became attracted into its ranks no small number of Bolsheviks, both cause and consequence of the bureaucratization of the tenth congress of the party thought it necessary to the state. It is necessary to show at least briefly how this resort to a prohibition of factions—that is, to transfer happened. the political regime prevailing in the state to the inner The inner regime of the Bolshevik party was character­ life of the ruling party. This forbidding of factions was ized by the method of democratic centralism* The com­ again regarded as an exceptional measure to be abandoned bination of these two concepts, democracy and centralism, at the first serious improvement in the situation. At the is not in the least contradictory. The party took watchful same time, the Central Committee was extremely cautious care not only that its boundaries should always be strictly in applying the new law, concerning itself most of all lest defined, but aUo that till those who entered these bound it lead to a stranglingpf the inner life of the party. aries should enjoy the actual right to define the direction However, what was in its original design merely a of the party policy* Freedom of criticism and intellectual necessary concession to a difficult situation, proved per­ struggle was an irrevocable content of the party de­ fectly suited to the taste of the bureaucracy, which had mocracy. The present doctrine that Bolshevism does not then begun to approach the inner life of the party ex­ tolerate factions is a myth of the epoch of decline. In clusively from the viewpoint of convenience in administra­ reality the history of Bolshevism is a history of the struggle tion. Already in 1922, during a brief improvement in his of factions. And, indeed, how could a genuinely revolu­ health, Lenin, horrified at the threatening growth of tionary organization, setting itself the task of overthrow* bureaucratism, was preparing a struggle against the fac­ ing the world and uniting under its banner the most tion of Stalin, which had made itself the axis of the party audacious iconoclasts, fighters and insurgents, live and machine as & first step toward capturing the machinery develop without intellectual conflicts, without groupings of state. A second stroke and then death prevented him and temporary factional formations? The farsightedness from measuring forces with this internal reaction. of the Bolshevik leadership often made it possible to soften The entire effort of Stalin, with whom at that time conflicts and shorten the duration of factional struggle, Zinoviev and Kamencv were working hand in hand, was but no more than that. The Central Committee relied upon thenceforth directed to freeing the party machine from this seething democratic support. From this it derived the control of the rank-and-file members of the party. the audacity to make decisions and give orders. The In this struggle for "stability*' of the Central Committee, obvious correctness of the leadership at all critical stages Stalin proved the most consistent and reliable among his gave it that high authority winch is the priceless moral colleagues. He had no need to tear himself away from capital of centralism. international problems; he had never been concerned with The regime of the Bolshevik party, especially before it them.' The petty bourgeois outlook of the new ruling came to power, stood thus in complete contradiction to stratum was his own outlook. He profoundly believed that the regime of the present sections of the Communist the task of creating socialism was national and admin­ International, with their "leaders'* appointed from above, istrative in its nature. He-looked upon the Communist making complete changes of policy at a word of command, International as a necessary evil which should be used with their uncontrolled apparatus, haughty in its attitude so far as possible for the purposes of foreign policy. to the rank and file, servile in its attitude to the Kremlin* His own party kept a value in his eyes merely as a sub­ But in the first years after the conquest of power also, missive support for the machine. even when the administrative rust was already visible on Together with the theory of socialism in one country, the party, every Bolshevik, not excluding Stalin, would there was put into circulation by the bureaucracy a theory have denounced as a malicious slanderer anyone who that in Bolshevism the Central Committee is everything should have shown him on a screen the image of the party and the party nothing. This second theory was in any ten or fifteen years later. case realized with more success than the first. Availing The very center of Lenin's attention and that of his itself of the death of Lenin, the ruling group announced colleagues was occupied by a continual concern to pro­ a "Leninist levy.*' The gates of the party, always care­ tect the Bolshevik ranks from the vices of those in power. fully guarded, were now thrown wide open. Workers, However, the extraordinary closeness and at times actual clerks, petty officials, flocked through in crowds. The merging of the party with the state apparatus had al­ political aim of this maneuver was to dissolve tlte revolu* ready in those first years done indubitable harm to the tionary vanguard in raw human material, without experi­ freedom and elasticity of the party regime. Democracy ence, without independence, and yet with the old habit of • submitting to the authorities. The scheme was successful. demoralizing methods, which convert thinking communists Uy freeing the bureaucracy from the control of the prole­ into machines, destroying will, character and human tarian vanguard, tht "Leninist levy" dealt a death blow dignity," wrott Hakovsky in 1928, "the ruling circles to the party of Lenin. The machine had won the neces­ have succeeded in converting themselves into an unre­ sary independence. Democratic centralism gave place to movable and inviolate oligarchy, which replaces the cla^s bureaucratic centralism. In the party apparatus itself and the party.*1 Since those indignant lines were written, there now took place a radical reshuffling of personnel the degeneration of the regime has gone immeasurably from top to bottom. The chief merit of a Bolshevik was farther. The G.P.U. has become the decisive factor in the declared to be obedience. Under the guise of a struggle inner life of the party. If Molotov in March 1936 was with the Opposition, there occurred a sweeping replace­ able to boast to a French journalist that the ruling party ment of revolutionist* with chitwvnik*. The history of the no longer contains any factional struggle, it is only be­ tiolshevik party became a history of its rapid degenera­ cause disagreements are now settled by the automatic tion. intervention of the political police. The old Bolshevik The political meaning of the developing struggle was party is dead, and no force will resurrect it darkened for many by the circumstance that the leader* Parallel with the political degeneration of the party, of all three groupings. Left, Center and Right, belonged there occurred a moral decay of the uncontrolled ap­ to one and the same stafT in the Kremlin, the Politburo. paratus. The word "sovbour"—soviet bourgeois—as ap­ To superficial minds it seemed to be a mere matter of per­ plied to a privileged dignitary appeared very early in sonal rivalry, a struggle for the "heritage" of Lenin. But the workers* vocabulary. With the transfer to the NEP in the conditions of iron dictatorship social antagonisms bourgeois tendencies received a more copious field of could not show themselves at first except through the in­ action. At the 1 Uh Congress of the party, in March 1922, stitutions of the ruling party. Many Thermidorians Ixnin gave warning of the danger of a degeneration of emerged in their day from the circle of the Jacobins. the ruling stratum. It has occurred more than once in Bonaparte himself belonged to that circle in his early history, he said, that the conqueror took over the culture years, and subsequently it was from among former Jaco­ of the conquered, when the latter stood on a higher level. bins that the First Consul and Emperor of France selected The culture of the Russian bourgeoisie and the old his most faithful servants. Times change and the Jacobin** bureaucracy was, to be sure, miserable, but alas the new with them, not excluding the Jacobins of the twentieth ruling stratum must often take off its hat to that culture. century. "Four thousand seven hundred responsible communists** Of (he Politburo of Lenin's epoch there now remain** in Moscow administer the state machine. "Who is leading only Stalin, Two of its member*, Zinoviev and Kamenev, whom? I doubt very much whether you can say that the collaborators of Lenin throughout many years as communists are in the lead . . ." In subsequent con­ Emigres, are cnduririg ten-year prison terms for a crime gresses, Lenin could not speak. But all his thoughts in the which they did not commit. Three other members* Rykov, lost months of his active life were of warning and arming Bukharin and Tomsky, are completely removed from the the workers against the oppression, caprice and decay of leadership, but as a reward for submission occupy sec­ the bureaucracy. He, however, saw only the first symp­ ondary posts. And, finally, the author of these lines is in toms of the di&case. exile. The widow of Lenin, Krupskaya, is aUo under the ban, having proved unable with all her efforts to adjust Christian Rakovsky, former president of the Soviet of herself completely to the Thcrmidor, People's Commissars of the Ukraine, and later Soviet Ambassador in London and Paris, sent to his friends jn The members of the present Politburo occupied sec* 1928, when already in exile, a brief inquiry into the ondary posts throughout the history of the Bolshevik Soviet bureaucracy, which we have quoted above several party. If anybody, in the first years of the revolution had times, for it still remains the best that has been written predicted their future elevation, they would have been the on this subject. **In the mind of Lenin, and in all our first in surprise, and there would have been no false minds," says Rakovsky, "the task of the party leadership modesty in their surprise. For this very reason* the rule was to protect both the party and the working class from is more stern at present that the Politburo is always right, the corrupting action of privilege, place and patronage and in any case that no man can be right against the on the part of those in power, from rapproclicmcnt with Politburo. But, moreover, the Politburo cannot be right the relics of the old nobility and burgherdom, from the against Stalin, who is unable to make mistakes and conse­ corrupting influence of the NEP, from the temptation of quently cannot be right against himself. bourgeois morals and ideologies. , . . We must say Demands for party democracy were through all this frankly, definitely and loudly that the party apparatus time the slogans of all the opjwsitional groups, as in­ has not fulfilled this task, that it has revealed n complete sistent as they were hopeless. The above-mentioned plat­ incapacity for its double role of protector and educator. form of the I~cft Opposition demanded in 1927 that a It has failed. It is bankrupt." special law be written into the Criminal Code "punishing It is true that Rakovsky himself, broken by the bureau­ as a serious state crime every direct or indirect persecu­ cratic repressions, subsequently repudiated his own crit­ tion of a worker for criticism/* Instead of this, there was ical judgment*, liut the seventy-year-old Galileo too. introduced into the Criminal Code an article against the caught in the vise of the Holy Inquisition, found himself Left Opposition itself. compelled to repudiate the system'of Copernicus—which Of party democracy there remained only recollections did not prevent the earth from continuing to revolve in *hfi memory of the older generation. And together with around the nut. We do not believe in the recantation of it hod di •rtppenrcd the democracy of the Soviets, the trade the sixty-year-old Rakovsky, for he himself has more than Un. **:s the CO oj>cratives, the cultural arid athletic organ- onto Wide a withering analysis of such recantations. As i/:il»i*.H. Above each and every one of them there reigns to his political criticisms, they have found in the facts un »<. wilted hierarchy of party secretaries. The regime of the objective development a far more reliable support had bit-nutc "totalitarian" in character several years bo- than in the subjective stout-heartc^dness of their author. fore MIH word arrived from Germany. "By means of The conquest of power chungcs not only the relations people", astonishing in their lordly ungraciousness, un­ of the prulctm :.[' to other classes, hut also its own inner mistakably testify that, in spite of the October revolu­ structure. The wielding of power hecomes the specialty tion, the nationalization of the means of production, col­ of a definite social group, which is the more impatient to lectivization, and "the liquidation of the kulaks as a solve its own "social problem", the higher its opinion of class," the relations among men, and that at the very its own mission. "In a proletarian state, where capitalist heights of the Soviet pyramid, have not only not yet risen accumulation is forbidden to the members of the ruling to socialism, but in many respects are still lagging behind party, the differentiation is at first functional, but after* a cultured capitalism. In recent years enormous backward ward becomes social. I Uo not say it becomes a class dif­ steps have been taken in this very important sphere. And ferentiation, but a social one . . ." Rakovsky further the source of this revival of genuine Russian barbarism explains: "The social situation of the communist who has is indubitably the Soviet Thermidor, which has given at his disposition an automobile, a good apartment, regu­ complete independence and freedom from control to a lar vacations, and receives the party maximum of salary, bureaucracy possessing little culture, and has given to differs from the situation of the communist who works the masses the well-known gospel of obedience and silence. in the coal mines, where he receives from fifty to sixty We are far from intending to contrast the abstraction ruble* n month.1* Counting over the causes of tlic degenera­ of dictatorship with the abstraction of democracy, and tion of the Jacobins when in power—the chase after weigh their merits on the scales of pure reason. Every­ wealth, participation in government contracts, supplies, thing is relative in this world, where change alone endures. etc., Rakovsky cites a curious remark of Babcuf to the The dictatorship of the Bolshevik party proved one of effect that the degeneration of the new ruling stratum was the most powerful instruments of progress in history. But helped along not a little by the former young ladies of here too, in the words of the poet, "Reason becomes un­ the aristocracy toward uhom the Jacobins were very reason, kindness a pest.** The prohibition of oppositional friendly- "What arc you doing, small-hearted plebeian?" parties brought after it the prohibition of factions. The cries liabcuf. "Today they are embracing you and to­ prohibition of factions ended in a prohibition to think morrow they will strangle you.*1 A census of the wives of otherwise than the infallible leaders. The police-manu­ the ruling stratum in the Soviet Union would show a factured monolithism of the party resulted in a bureau­ similar picture, The well-known Soviet journalist, Sos- cratic impunity which has become the source of all kinds novsky, pointed out the special role played by the "auto­ of wantonness and corruption. mobile-harem factor" in forming the morals of the Soviet bureaucracy. It is true that Sosnovsky, too, following 3. THE SOCIAL ROOTS OF THERMIDOR, We have defined Rakovsky, recanted and was returned from Siberia. But the Soviet Thermidor as a triumph of the bureaucracy that did not improve the morals of the bureaucracy* On over the masses. We have tried to disclose the historic the contrary, that very recantation is proof of a pro­ conditions of this triumph. The revolutionary vanguard gressing demoralization. of the proletariat was in part devoured by the administra­ The old articles of Sosnovsky, passed about in tive apparatus and gradually demoralized, in part annihi­ manuscript from hand to hand, were sprinkled with un­ lated in the civil war, and in part thrown out and crushed. forgettable episodes from the life of the new ruling The tired and disappointed masses were indifferent to stratum, plainly showing to what'vast degree the con­ what was happening on the summits. These conditions, querors have assimilated the morals of the conquered. Not however, important as they may have been in themselves, to return, however, to past years—for Sosnovsky finally arc inadequate to explain why the bureaucracy succeeded exchanged his whip for a lyre in 1934—we will confine in raising itself above society and getting its fate firmly ourselves to wholly fresh examples from the Soviet press. into its own hands- Its own will to this would in any case And we will not select the abuses and so-called "excesses", be inadequate; the arising of a new ruling stratum must either, but everyday phenomena legalized by official social have deep social causes. opinion. The victory of the Thermidorians over the Jacobins in The director of a Moscow factory, a prominent com­ the eighteenth century was also aided by the weariness of munist, boasts in Prax?da of the cultural growth of the the masses and the demoralization of the leading cadres, enterprise directed by him. "A mechanic telephones: but beneath these essentially incidental phenomena a deep •What is your order, sir, check the furnace immediately organic process was taking place. The Jacobins rested or wait?' I answer: 'Wait.* " The mechanic addresses the upon the lower petty bourgeoisie lifted by the great wave. director with extreme respect, using the second person The revolution of the eighteenth century, however, corre­ plural, while the director answers him in the second person sponding to the course of development of the productive singular. And this disgraceful dialogue, impossible in any forces, could not but bring the great bourgeoisie to politi­ cultured capitalist country, is related by the director him­ cal ascendancy in the long run. The Thermidor was only self on the pages of Pravda as something entirely normal! one of the stages in this inevitable process. What similar The editor does not object because he does not notice it. social necessity found expression in the Soviet Thermidor? The readers do not object because they are accustomed Wc have tried already in one of the preceding chapters to to it- We also arc not surprised, for at solemn sessions make a preliminary answer to the question why the gen­ in the Kremlin, the "leaders" and People's Commissars darme triumphed. We must now prolong our analysis of address in the second person singular directors of fac­ the conditions of the transition from capitalism to social­ tories subordinate to them, presidents of collective farms, ism, and the role of the state in this process. Let us again shop foremen and workiftg women, especially invited to compare theoretic prophecy with reality. "It is still neces­ receive decorations. How can they fail to remember that sary to suppress the bourgeoisie and its resistance," wrote one of the most popular revolutionary slogans in txarist Lenin in 1917, speaking of the period which should begin Russia was the demand for the abolition of the use of the immediately after the conquest of power, "but the organ second person singular by bosses in addressing their of suppression here is now the majority of the popular subordinates! tion, and not the minority as has heretofore always been the case, * . . In that sense the stale is beginning to dU These Kremlin dialogues of the authorities with "the am,"I f In what docs this dying away express itself? fate of the party. Here the problem may be formulated Primarily in the fact that **in place of special institutions approximately thus: Why, from 1917 to 1921, when the of a privileged minority (privileged officials, commanders old ruling classes were still fighting with weapons in theii of a standing army), the majority itself can directly hands, when they were actively supported by the im­ carry out*' the functions of suppression. Lenin follows this, perialists of the whole world, when the kulaks in arm* with a statement axiomatic and unanswerable: uThc more were sabotaging the army and food supplies of the coun­ universal becomes the very fulfillment of the functions of try,—why was it possible to dispute openly and fear­ the state power, the less need is there of this power." The lessly in the party about the most critical questions of annulment of private property in the means of production policy? Why now, after the cessation of intervention, after removes the principal task of tlie historic state-—defense the shattering of the exploiting classes, after the in­ of the proprietary privileges of the minority against the dubitable successes of industrialization, after the collec­ overwhelming majority. tivization of the overwhelming majority of the peasants* The dying away of the state begins, then, according to is it impossible to permit the slightest word of criticism Lenin, on the very day after the expropriation of the of the unremovable leaders? Why is it that any Bolshevik expropriators—that is, before the new regime has had who should demand a calling of the congress of the party time to take up its economic and cultural problems* Every in accordance with its constitution would be immediately success in the solution of these problems means a further expelled, any citizen who expressed out loud a doubt of the step in the liquidation of the state, its dissolution in the infallibility of Stalin would be tried and convicted almost socialist society* The degree of this dissolution is the best as though a participant in a terrorist plot? Whence this index of the depth and efficacy of the socialist structure. terrible, monstrous and unbearable intensity of repres­ We may lay down approximately this sociological theorem: sion and of the police apparatus? The strength of the compulsion exercised by the masses Theory is not a note which you can present at any in a workers* state is directly proportional to the strength moment to reality for payment* If a theory proves mis­ of the exploitive tendencies, or the danger of a restoration taken we must revise it or fill out its grips* We must of capitalism, and inversely proportional to the strength find out those real social forces which have given rise to of the social solidarity and the general loyalty to the new the contrast between Soviet reality and the traditional regime. Thus the bureaucracy—that is, the "privileged Marxian conception* In any case we must not wander officials and commanders of a standing army**— repre­ in the dark, relating ritual phrases, useful for the sents a special kind of compulsion which the masses cannot prestige of the leaders, but which nevertheless slap the or do not wish to exercise, and which, one way or another, living reality in the face* We shall now see a convincing is directed against the masses themselves* example of this. If the democratic Soviets had preserved to this day In a speech at a session of the Central Executive Com­ their original strength and independence, and yet were mittee in January 1936, Molotov, the president of the compelled to resort to repressions and compulsions on the Council of People's Commissars, declared: "The national scale of the first years, this circumstance might of itself economy of the country has become socialistic (applause). give rise to serious anxiety* How much greater must l>c In that sense [?J we have solved the problem of the the alarm in view of the fact that the mass Soviets have liquidation of classes (applause)," However, there still entirely disappeared from the scene, having turned over remain from the past "elements in their nature hostile to the function of compulsion to Stalin, Yagoda and com­ us," fragments of the former ruling classes. Moreover, pany* And what forms of compulsion! First of all we among the collectivized farmers, state employees and some­ must ask ourselves: What social cause stands behind this times aJso the workers, "petty speculators" are discov­ stubborn virility of the state and especially behind its ered, "grafters in relation to the collective and state policification? The importance of this question in obvious* wealth, anti-Soviet gossips, etc*" And hence results the In dependence upon the answer, we must either radically necessity of a further reinforcement of the dictatorship* revise our traditional views of the socialist society in gen- In opposition to Engels, the workers' state must not "fall cral, or as radically reject the official estimates of the asleep", but on the contrary become more and more vigi- Soviet Union. lant. Let us now take from the latest number of a Moscow The picture drawn by the head of the Soviet govern­ newspaper a stereotyped characterization of the present ment would be reassuring in the highest degree, were it Soviet regime, one of those which are repeated through­ not murderously self-contradictory. Socialism completely out the country from day to day and which school children reigns in the country: "In that sense" classes are learn by heart; "In the Soviet Union the parasitical classes abolished/ (If they are abolished in that sense, then they of capitalists, landlords and kulaks are completely liqui­ are in every other.) To be sure, the social harmony is dated, and thus is forever ended the exploitation of man broken here and there by fragments and remnants of the by man* The whole national economy has become socialistic, past, but it is impossible to think that scattered dreamers and the growing Stakhanov movement is preparing thr of a restoration of capitalism, deprived of power and prop­ conditions for a transition from socialism to communism** erty, together with "petty speculators" (not even specula­ (Pravda, April 4, 19360 The world press of the Com­ tors!) and "gossips" are capable of overthrowing the munist International, it goes without saying, has no othei classless society* Everything is getting along, it seems, the thing to say on this subject But if exploitation is "endec very best you can imagine. But what is the use then of forever", if the country is really now on the road frorr the iron dictatorship of the bureaucracy? socialism, that is, the lowest stage of communism, to it* Those reactionary dreamers, we must believe, will higher stage, then there remains nothing for society to dc gradually die out* The "petty speculators" and "gossips" but to throw off at last the straitjacket of the state. In might be disposed of with a laugh by the super-democratic place of this—it is hard even to grasp this contrast with Soviets. "We are not Utopians," responded Lenin in the mind!—the Soviet state has acquired a totalitarian- 1917 to the bourgeois and reformist theoreticians of the bureaucratic character. bureaucratic state, and "by no means deny the possibility The same fatal contradiction finds illustration in th< and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual person*, and likewise the necessity for suppressing such the sphere of application of "bourgeois law", and there­ excesses. But ... for this there is no need of a special by undermine the standing ground of its defenders, the machine, a special apparatus of repression. This will be bureaucracy. In reality the opposite thing has happened; done by the armed people themselves, with the same the growth of the productive forces has been so far ac­ simplicity and case with which any crowd of civilized companied by an extreme development of all forms of in­ people even in contemporary society separate a couple of equality, privilege and advantage, and therewith of fighters or stop an act of violence against a woman." bureaucratism* That too is not accidental. Those words sound as though the author had especially In its first period, the Soviet regime was undoubtedly foreseen the remarks of one of his successors at the head of far more equalitarian and less bureaucratic than now. But the government. Lenin is taught in the public schools of that was an equality of general poverty. The resources of the Soviet Union, but apparently not m the Council of the country were so scant that there was no opportunity to People's Commissar*. Otherwise it would be impossible to separate out from the masses of the population any broad explain Molotov's daring to resort without reflection to privileged strata. At the same time the "equalizing" char­ the very construction against which Lenin directed his acter of wages, destroying personal interestedncss, be­ well-sharpened weapons. The flagrant contradiction be­ came a brftke upon the development of the productive tween the founder and his epigones is before us! Whereas forces. Soviet economy had to lift itself from its poverty Lenin judged that even the liquidation of the exploiting to a somewhat higher level before fat deposits of privi­ classes might be accomplished without a bureaucratic lege became possible. The present state of production is apparatus, Molotov, in explaining why after the liquida­ still far from guaranteeing all necessities to everybody. tion of classes the bureaucratic machine has strangled the But it is already adequate to give significant privileges to independence of the people, finds no better pretext than a a minority, and convert inequality into a whip for the reference to the "remnants" of the liquidated classes. spurring on of the majority. That is the first reason why To live on these "remnants" becomes, however, rather the growth of production has so far strengthened not the difficult since, according to the confession of authorita­ socialist, but the bourgeois features of the.state. tive representatives of the bureaucracy itself, yesterday's But that is not the sole reason. Alongside the economic class enemies are being successfully assimilated by the factor dictating capitalistic methods of payment at the Soviet society. Thus Postyshev, one of the secretaries of present stage, there operates a parallel political factor the Central Committee of the party, said in April 1936, in the person of the bureaucracy itself. In its very essence at a congress of the League of Communist Youth: "Many it is the planter and protector of inequality. It arose in of the sabotagers . . . hate sincerely repented and the beginning as the bourgeois organ of a workers* state. joined the ranks of the Soviet people." In view of tlie In establishing and defending the advantages of a successful carrying out of collectivization, "the children minority, it of course draws off the cream for its own use. of kulaks are not to be held responsible for their parents." Nobody who has wealth to distribute ever omits himself. 4t And yet more: The kulak himself now hardly believes in Thus out of a social necessity there has developed an organ the possibility of a return to his former position of ex­ which has far outgrown its socially necessary function, ploiter in the village." Not without reason did the govern­ and become an independent factor and therewith the source ment annul the limitations connected with social origin! of great danger for the whole social organism. But if Pwtyshev's assertion, wholly agreed to by Molotov, makes any sense it is only this: Not only has the bureau­ The social meaning of the Soviet Thcrmidor now be­ cracy become a monstrous anachronism, but state com­ gins to take form before us. The poverty and cultural pulsion in general has nothing whatever to do in the land backwardness of the masses has again become incarnate in of the Soviets. However, neither Molotov nor Postyshev the malignant figure of the ruler with a great club in his agrees with that immutable inference. They prefer to hold hand. The deposed and abused bureaucracy, from being a the power even at the price of self-contradiction. servant of society, has again become its lord. On this road it has attained such a degree of social and moral alienation In reality, too, they cannot reject the power. Or, to from the popular masses, that it cannot now permit any translate this into objective language: The present Soviet control over either its activities or its income. society cannot get along without a state, nor even—within The bureaucracy's seemingly mystic fear of "petty limits—without a bureaucracy. But the cause of this is speculators, grafters, arid gossips" thus finds a wholly by no means the pitiful remnants of the past, but the natural explanation. Not yet able to satisfy the elementary mighty forces and tendencies of the present. The justifica­ needs of the population, the Soviet economy creates and tion for the existence of a Soviet state; as an apparatus of resurrects at every step tendencies to graft and specula­ compulsion lies in the fact that the present transitional tion. On the other side, the privileges of the new aristocracy structure is still full of social contradictions, which in the awaken in the masses of the population a tendency to listen sphere of consumption—most close and sensitively felt by to anti-Soviet "gossips"—that is, to anyone who, albeit in all—are extremely tense, and forever threaten to break a whisker, criticizes the greedy and capricious bosses. It over into the sphere of production. The triumph of is a question, therefore, not of specters of the past, not of socialism cannot be called either final or irrevocable. the remnants of what no longer exists, not, in short, of the The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society snows of yesteryear, but of new, mighty and continually in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of reborn tendencies to personal accumulation. The first still each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, very meager wave of prosperity in the country, just be­ the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When cause of its meagerness, has not weakened, but strength­ there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to ened, these centrifugal tendencies. On the other hand, there stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary has developed simultaneously a desire of the unprivileged to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting to slap the grasping hands of the new gentry. The social point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. It "knows*' struggle again grows sharp. Such are the sources of the who is to get something and who has to wait. power of the bureaucracy. But from those same sources A raising of the material and cultural level ought, at comes also a threat to its power. first glance, to lessen the necessity of privileges, narrow - Explanatory Notes 1933-4—In 1933 Hitler became German Chancellor and the Nazis consolidated Page 4 Page 8 their power. In 1934 Dolfuss led a Fascist coup in Austria, consolidated by Sidney and Beatrice Webb—Leading Siakhanovisi—To increase productivity, Nazi invasion in 1936. The leaders of the members of the middle-class Fabian the Stalinist bureaucracy not only workers* parties bore a huge respon­ Society, established round the turn of massively increased wage differentials, sibility for allowing these defeats. In the century as a 'think-tank' for refor­ but singled out especially 'productive' 1933 the German Social Democrats and mism in the labour movement. Open workers for publicity, medals, etc. These Communists polled 12 million votes bet­ supporters of imperialism, the Webbs were the "Stakhanovists", named after ween them, but were not mobilised in also became ardeni admirers of Stalinist one such coalface worker, Stakhanov. armed resistance to Hitler. The Com­ Russia in the 1930s. This policy divided the workers, and ig­ munist leaders, rather than organising nored the collective nature of large-scale united action with rank and file Social Page 5 production. Democratic workers, denounced them as Samurai—Japanese feudal warriors, "social fascists**. These mistaken m Kari Radek—"Written before the arrest policies, leading to the most serious paid in land, money or kind by a feudal of Karl Radek in August 1936 on charges defeats ever suffered by the workers* lord. of a terroristic conspiracy against the movement, were a decisive indication of Gendarme—policeman (French). Soviet Union." (Note in original text). the degeneration of the Third Interna­ Page 9 tional. Page 7 ' Thermidor—The French bourgeois Stanley Baldwin—British Tory Prime Revolution of 1789 brought eventually apparatchlki—bureaucrats. Minister (1923, 1924*9, 1935-7) who to power Robespierre's government of crushed the General Strike of 1926; Jacobins, radical petty bourgeois Page 11 F.D.Roosevelt-US President, 1933-45, democrats, supported by the urban Kronstadl revolt—In March 1921' of Ihe capitalist Democratic Party, forc­ masses. Among other measures, this Kronstadt naval base sailors revolted government abolished the old calendar against the Soviet government, because ed by the pressure of the labour move- in favour of one with different months. ment to introduce the reforms of the of the huge privations suffered during This government was overthrown, in the 1917-20 as a result of the defence of the "New Deal". new month of Thermidor, by a political 1917 Revolution against imperialist inva­ counter-revolution led by Barras, which sion. The revolt created a danger of Bismarck, Palmerston, Abraham Lin­ nevertheless preserved the capitalist pro* renewed imperialist intervention to pro coln—Nineteenth century capitalist perty relations established by the revolu­ voke counter-revolution. The Kronstadt politicians in, respectively, Germany, tion, Trotsky used these events to ex­ sailors who had been in the forefront of Britain and the US. plain the political counter-revolution in the revolution in 1917 had largely died in 11 the Soviet Union which preserved the the 1917-20 war and been replaced by Liquidation of the kulaks as a economic framework of the workers* class"—For the overwhelmingly peasant peasants etc; the leadership of the 1921 state, revolt fell into the hands of anarchists population of the Soviet Union, Lenin (though some Bolsheviks sympathised). and Trotsky advocated a programme of It was crushed, though in its wake gradual collectivisation of agriculture, Kerensky, Tseretelll—Reformist leaders of the Provisional Government brought economic policy was relaxed in the form by (he example of voluntary model col* into being by the February Revolution of the NEP. * lectives established on the basis of in­ which overthrew the Russian Tsar in dustrial development and provision of 1917. Remaining on a capitalist basis, tractors. From 1920-1 the Bolsheviks this government was impotent: it was Page 12 adopted the New Economic Policy (page overthrown by the workers led by the Chinovniks—"Professional government 10),giving concessions to private Bolsheviks in October. peasants, because of extreme food shor­ functionaries" (Note in original text). tages: this, Lenin conceded, was a "tem­ Mirabeau, Brissot, Robespierre, Bar­ Rykov, Bukharin, and Tom- porary retreat". The emerging Soviet ras— Leading figures in successive sky—"Zinoviev and Kamenev were ex­ bureaucracy perverted the NEP, against governments of the French revolution, ecuted in August 1936 for alleged com­ the warnings of ihe Left Opposition, 1789-95. plicity in a 'terroristic plot* against and encouraged the kulaks to "enrich Bonaparte—Napoleon I, who came to Stalin; Tomsky committed suicide or themselves". Then, panicking at the power in 1799 as the culmination of the was shot in connection with the same danger of creating a social base for the political counter-revolution which case; Rykov was removed from his post restoration of capitalism, Stalin and his followed the French revolution. in connection with the plot; Bukharin, henchmen switched overnight to an although suspected, is still at liberty.'* adventurist policy of enforced collec­ Babeuf—A revolutionary, and Utopian (Note in original text). In fact Bukharin tivisation of agriculture ("liquidation of communist, in the period of the French also was tried and executed in 1938. the kulaks")—on the basis of the ex­ bourgeois revolution. isting primitive plough. The peasants CPU— Fbi secret police oi the resisted, destroying livestock and crops: Page 10 bureaucracy, headed for a while by in the ensuing famine 10 million died. German and Austrian defeats of H.Yagoda.. Yagoda did not escape the purges which were the price of This is a supplement to INQABA YA bureaucratic consolidation: he was ex­ BASEBENZI, quarterly journal of the Marxist ecuted in 1938. Workers' Tendency of the African National BM Box 1719 Page 15 - Congress. Postal subscriptions for readers London epigones—disciples who distort the outside South Africa can be ordered from: WC1IM 3XX teachings of their master.