Today's communist party is not a class act *MARTIN JANSEN: THE LEFT* Aug 26 2011 11:27
[image: mg_logo.gif] In response to Rapule Tabane's "The strident tune of a one-man band<http://www.mg.co.za/article/2011-08-01-the-strident-tune-of-a-oneman-band>" (August 1), Yunus Carrim and Ben Martins correctly argue that it is simplistic to reduce the South African Communist Party (SACP) to its general secretary's apparent authoritarian behaviour and intolerance to having his "personal whim" questioned. Blade Nzimande represents the politics and character of his party. We need to look deeper to explain the majority of the SACP leadership's intolerance of dissenting views. Carrim and Martins sing the SACP's former glories instead of taking a serious look at the party today. The central question is: Can the SACP claim to be a vanguard party of the working class, a party that, as Nzimande said in this paper in July, "is a political party … interested in power to advance the interests of the workers and the poor". My view is that the SACP's political path contributes to the malaise of class struggle in South Africa. Its privileged historical position at the helm of the working class and its largest formation, Cosatu, together with its theory of national democratic revolution (NDR), is the political basis of working-class setbacks over the past 20 years. The SACP has not overcome the first hurdle in putting the class struggle back on the agenda -- the class character of the ANC government and the nature of the state in South Africa. This is evaded; the ANC and SACP enjoy a symbiotic relationship. Any serious review by a Marxist-Leninist organisation must pose the question of whose class interests the ANC and its government represent. An honest review would show that the ANC has historically represented the interests of the black petty bourgeoisie. It has used political power and leverage over the state and public resources to elevate a small section of this "class" to the ranks of the big capitalists. The monopolistic nature of the South African economy means that this could only happen by a conscious, rapid reallocation of capital from the white bourgeoisie to a few strategically located blacks. Thus white capital bought its political security. The interests of the new black bourgeoisie are tied up with those of white monopoly capital and the capitalist state. The SACP has promoted the notion that a patriotic black capitalist class ensures progressive investment in the national economy, driving job creation and pro-poor development. But why would this "patriotic" bourgeoisie invest its capital any differently from their unpatriotic white counterparts? Irrespective of skin colour, capitalists' first loyalty is to profit. Also, black capitalists must catch up in terms of accumulation so are less inclined to make "patriotic" investments, and less still to uplift the working class on whose back profits are predicated. Despite the ANC's electoral support from the black working class, it is essentially a capitalist party. Privatisation, cuts in social spending, HIV/Aids policy, commercialisation and user-pays public services are among many policies that go against the interests of the working class. The SACP leadership fails to recognise this so it continues to sell the false idea that the ANC-led state can be reformed to favour working-class interests. But the capitalist state under the ANC has not become more biased towards workers. In fact, SACP leaders in government have often been the most vociferous defenders of neoliberal policies. The latest example is deputy transport minister Jeremy Cronin defending the Gauteng toll-road system. As Lenin pointed out nearly a century ago, the bourgeois state transforms those who work within it, not the other way round. We need to "smash the bourgeois state", he said, and replace it with organs of working-class power. Ironically, the SACP's "Marxist-Leninist" leaders are now fighting a battle to their left to maintain their privileged positions in the ANC government. So Carrim, Martins, Nzimande, Cronin, Gwede Mantashe and the entire SACP membership need to ask more serious questions about their party. Average working-class living standards are worse now than under apartheid, with nearly 70% of black people living in poverty, nearly 50% unemployed, and South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. The SACP produces socialist rhetoric but does little to distinguish it from the bourgeois ANC. For all Nzimande's criticism of corruption and tenderpreneurship, what have he and the SACP done to challenge it? In fact, the SACP leadership supports Jacob Zuma for another presidential term, a man who epitomises the plundering of state resources. We can only conclude that the SACP is not "a political party … interested in power to advance the interests of the workers and the poor", but rather provides a radical facade for the ANC's neoliberal project. It too nurtures the middle-class material aspirations of many of its leaders and members, aspirations met by state and trade-union positions. Its position on the NDR ensures this. Those who take a more radical view or challenge the SACP leadership are marginalised, victimised and even expelled. So, Rapule, there is much more at stake than just bad-man Blade. *Martin Jansen is the director of Workers World Media Productions. He writes in his personal capacity.* -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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