Brian Bunting, 1975: Moses Kotane, South African Revolutionary
Chapter 2 The National Question Part 2 of 4 The international Communist movement, in a better position to assess developments throughout the colonial world, and after the Russian revolution learning many valuable lessons from the practical experience of the Communist Party in solving the national question in its own territory, began to appreciate the anti-imperialist, revolutionary potential of the national struggle in the colonial countries. In his "Report on the Tactics of the Russian Communist Party" presented to the 3rd Congress of the Communist International on July 5, 1921, Lenin, contesting the conventional view of the Second International that the national movement was of secondary importance, wrote: "But this is not so. It has undergone great change since the beginning of the twentieth century. Millions and hundreds of millions, in fact the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe, are now coming forward as independent, active and revolutionary factors. It is perfectly clear that in the impending decisive battles in the world revolution, the movement of; the population of the globe, initially directed towards national liberation, will turn against capitalism and imperialism and will perhaps play a much more revolutionary part than we expect." Few white socialists saw this at the time. The great class struggles of the early decades of the 20th Century in South Africa had for the most part been waged by the white working class and their unions for recognition, for status, for higher wages and better conditions, against the ruthless rapacity of the mining and financial bosses backed by the force of government. The greatest struggle was still to come - the mine strike of 1922 - in which the white workers directly challenged the power of the Chamber of Mines and the State. Hundreds of white workers gave their lives in these struggles, and there can be no denying their revolutionary content. After all, it was precisely in the crucible of these intense class conflicts that the South African socialist movement as represented in the ISL and the CPSA was forged. By contrast, the latent power of the oppressed black peoples was yet to be manifested. True, tens of thousands of Africans had been involved in strike action from time to time. The last fierce battle of the Zulus against the white invaders had taken place at the beginning of the century. There were frequent clashes between black and white, and blacks and the police. But for a variety of reasons these struggles had not yet given birth to stable and powerful organisations capable of harnessing black power. The black national organisations were unable, like the white bodies, to use the vote to influence government policy. The African workers were unable to build strong unions because of the operation of the migratory labour policy and the pass laws which kept the black population perpetually on the move. Thus many sincere white socialists, while accepting the principle of equal rights for all - and this both the ISL and the CPSA were committed to, from the outset did not see work amongst the blacks as a realistic alternative to work among the whites. The white unions, the Labour Party - these were visible and concrete, and when (with the assistance of the Nationalist Party) they broke the Smuts Government in 1924, no government from that day onwards was ever able to ignore them. But the black national organisations, the ANC, the first African trade unions - these were seen either as bourgeois and reformist organisations lacking a mass base, eschewing the path of militant struggle and working instead by way of appeals, petitions and deputations; or as transient and ephemeral bodies without substance, whose officials as often as not ran off with all the funds. In his 1921 report to the Comintern on Communism in South Africa already referred to, Ivon Jones put it as follows: "Owing to the heavy social disabilities and political backwardness the natives are not able to supply any active militants to the Communist movement. The immediate needs of white trade unionism, in which a number of our members are actively engaged, tends to throw the more difficult task of native emancipation into the background. The white movement dominates our attention, because the native workers' movement moves only spasmodically, and is neglected. It requires a special department, with native linguists and newspapers. All of which require large funds, which are not available." A change in the attitude of the South African Communist Party was brought about as a result of two interrelated factors. One was the Party's own experience in South Africa, the steady increase of black membership and influence in its ranks, the deepening co-operation of the Party with black organisations of various kinds, the growth in militancy and maturity of the black organisations themselves reflecting the ever-increasing absorption of black labour in the modern sector of the economy. The second factor was the influence exerted on the South African Party by Comintern thinking and experience in relation to the national question and, in the late twenties and early thirties, the specific interchanges between the Comintern and the South African Communist Party on the way in which the national question should be tackled in South Africa. The national question featured prominently on the agenda of the Second Comintern congress which opened in Petrograd on July 17, 1920, and continued in Moscow from July 23 to August 7. The Congress adopted a number of theses on the national and colonial question drafted by Lenin but also incorporating supplementary theses comprising an amended version of theses submitted by the Indian delegate Roy. Lenin pointed out, in his report of the commission on the National and Colonial Question delivered on June 26, that "the vast majority of the world's population, over 1,000 million, perhaps even 1,250 million, if we take the total population of the world as 1750 million, in other words, about 70 per cent of the world's population, belong to the oppressed nations." The enormous revolutionary potential of these millions was acknowledged when the congress decided to substitute the term "national-revolutionary" for the term "bourgeois-democratic" which had previously been used to define the nature of the national movement. "The significance of this change", said Lenin, "is that we as Communists, should and will support bourgeois liberation movements in the colonies only when they are genuinely revolutionary, and when their exponents do not hinder our work of educating and organising in a revolutionary spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited". Another point stressed by Lenin in this same speech was that, thanks to the existence of Soviet power, it was no longer correct to assume that "the development of capitalist economy is inevitable in those backward countries which are now liberating themselves and in which progressive movements have been started since the war... With the assistance of the proletariat of the advanced countries, the backward nations can arrive to the Soviet form of organisation and through certain stages pass on to Communism, obviating the capitalist stage." Lenin's basic thesis as accepted by the congress stated the essential distinction between bourgeois and proletarian democracy in relation to the national movement: "An abstract or formal posing of the problem of equality in general and national equality in particular is in the very nature' of bourgeois democracy. Under the guise of the equality of the individual in general, bourgeois democracy proclaims the formal or legal equality of the property-owner and the proletarian, the exploiter and the exploited, thereby grossly deceiving the oppressed classes. On the plea that all men are absolutely equal, the bourgeoisie is transforming the idea of equality, which is itself a reflection of relations in commodity production, into a weapon in its struggle against the abolition of classes. The real meaning of the demand for equality consists in its being a demand for the abolition of classes." In other words, there can be no true national equality until class division is ended; only socialism can create the conditions in which national division and race discrimination can be abolished. Nevertheless, the forces working for the national democratic revolution and those working for socialism can, in certain circumstances, co-operate. Point 4 of the theses on the national question set out the perspectives of the movement as follows: "The policy of the Communist International on the National and Colonial questions must be chiefly to bring about a union of the proletarian and working masses of all nations and countries for a joint revolutionary struggle leading to the overthrow of capitalism, without which national equality and oppression cannot be abolished." The theses distinguished sharply between proletarian internationalism and petty-bourgeois nationalism. Point 10 of the theses declares: "Petty-bourgeois nationalism proclaims as internationalism the mere recognition of the equality of nations, and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a worldwide scale, and, second, that a nation which has achieved victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital." Point 11 places upon the Communist Parties of all countries the responsibility of assisting the bourgeois-democratic liberation movement in the more backward countries, and of establishing the closest possible alliance between the Communist parties of the metropolitan countries and the revolutionary peasant movements in the colonies and backward countries. And, with profound foresight, warns: "It is likewise necessary to wage determined war against the attempts of quasi-revolutionists to cloak the bourgeois-democratic liberation movement in the backward countries with a communist garb . . . The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if in its most embryonic form." The same section also foresaw the development of neo-colonialism, and urged the need constantly to explain and expose among the broadest working masses of all countries, and particularly of the backward countries, the deception systematically practised by the imperialist powers which, under the guise of politically independent states, set up states that are wholly dependent upon them economically, financially and militarily" To the original theses which had been drafted by Lenin were added a number of supplementary theses submitted by the Indian Communist Roy and accepted, after amendment, by the second congress of the Comintern. Roy's theses emerged from the experience of Indian Communists in the liberation movement. In one sense they enriched the thinking of the Comintern on the national question, but to some extent they also introduced an element of confusion. Roy's main argument was that the breaking up of the colonial empire, together with the proletarian revolution in the metropolitan country, would overthrow the capitalist system in Europe. Roy's point six, as accepted by the congress, stated: "Foreign domination has obstructed the free development of the social forces, therefore its overthrow is the first step towards a revolution in the colonies. So to help overthrow the foreign rule in the colonies is not to endorse the nationalist aspirations of the native bourgeoisie, but to open the way to the smothered proletariat there," Roy's point 7 (also as accepted by congress) added: 'There are to be found in the dependent countries two distinct movements, which every day grow farther apart from each other. One is the democratic nationalist movement, with a programme of political independence under the bourgeois order, and the other is the mass action of the poor and ignorant peasants and workers for their liberation from all sorts of exploitation. The former endeavour to control the latter, and often succeed to a certain extent, but the Communist International and the (communist) parties affected must struggle against such control and help to develop class consciousness in the working masses of the colonies. For the overthrow of foreign capitalism which is the first step towards revolution in the colonies, the co-operation of the bourgeois nationalist revolutionary elements is useful. But the foremost and necessary task is the formation of Communist Parties which will organise the peasants and workers and lead them to the revolution and to the establishment of Soviet Republics. Thus the masses of the backward countries may reach communism, not through capitalistic development; but led by the class conscious proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries." Roy's theses were based on the experience of the colonial countries which bulked largest in the thinking of the Comintern - India, China, Indonesia, Northern Africa and the Middle East, Latin America. In all these countries the national bourgeoisie had developed far further than in South Africa and most other African countries, and the nature and composition of the national liberation organisations was also different. Roy's thesis that the movement of the national bourgeoisie was every day growing further apart from that of the workers and peasants did not, for example, apply to South Africa, where the very development of a national bourgeoisie was frustrated by the laws of the dominant white racists; and as the apartheid laws were piled on top of one another, the incipient black bourgeoisie were more and more thrown back into the arms of the worker and peasant masses whose deprivation and disabilities they were forced to share. But the 2nd Congress theses left other issues unclear. Was the national revolution to be led by the organisations of the oppressed peoples themselves - both the bourgeois national democratic and the proletarian bodies - or by the proletarian organisations of the metropolitan countries, or by all acting in collaboration? And who was to provide the leadership? Which was the main force of the national revolution? Further, was it a one-stage or a two-stage revolution? At what stage did proletarian co-operation with the national bourgeoisie degenerate into capitulation or tailism? The theses on the national question remained basically unaltered until the sixth congress of the Comintern in 1928, when an additional "Thesis on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies" was adopted, based on the experience of the international communist movement in the intervening years. In South Africa, the Communist Party made slow progress after its formation in 1921. The early years were dominated by the 1922 strike and its aftermath, which kept the attention of the Party focussed on the problems of the white workers. Even this strike, however, revolved around the role and status of the black workers, and the Party found itself on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand it felt obliged, as it stated in a manifesto published in the International on February 3, 1922, to "offer its assistance to the Strike Committee"', although it stressed that it did this "without necessarily identifying itself with every slogan heard in this strike". On the other hand, the colour-bar content of the strike violated the Party's basic policy of equal rights for all, and the Buntingite wing of the Party especially felt it necessary to defend the black workers from actual or threatened attack and argued the right of the black workers to attain equal pay and status with the whites. The pages of the International reflected this ideological confusion. The strike found the Communist Party theoretically ill-equipped to sort out the tangled issues of principle; but it was at the same time a powerful educator which brought the Party face to face with the need to formulate a clearer line on the issues of race and class. During this period only one African of note, T.W. Thibedi - a veteran from the days of the International Socialist League - was to be found active in the ranks of the Communist Party. In his report back from the 4th Congress of the Comintern held in Moscow in 1922, Bunting indicated something of the stimulus it had given him, reinforcing his own ideas on the way the movement should develop in South Africa. "An all-negro liberation or anti-imperialist movement throughout the world", he wrote, "may well be more potent for the victory of our common cause than anything our mere handful of white workers as such in South Africa can accomplish, and it is time we realised it and it is also time we acted up to our professions regarding the organisation of the native workers; we always say it must be done, but we haven't done it. Our hesitation or passivity in this respect is partly a relic of our Second International origin. As a Communist Party we are not out merely to make new parry members or even 'conscientious objectors to the capitalist system', but to mobilise all available forces against capitalism and imperialism, all races of workers, all oppressed peoples". And he added significanfly in the light of later controversies: "The actual work of organising and propaganda on a wide scale among the Non-Europeans must be carried out chiefly by Non-European associations, unions and organisers: in particular they alone can reach the rural proletariat and peasantry whose support in every country is emphasised by the (Communist International) Congress as indispensable". The harder he and his supporters pressed for work to be carried out among the blacks; the more protests came from the "relics of the Second International" who still retained their membership of the Communist Party. Typical was a letter from the veteran trade unionist Harry Haynes read out at a meeting of the Central Executive of the Communist Party in Johannesburg on December 14, 1923, voicing his emphatic objection to the "native policy" of the party being forced down the throats of the white workers. Haynes proposed that the Communist Party should dissolve itself and its members join the South African Labour Party as individuals, as he himself proposed to do. Years later, at a meeting of the Party's Central Executive in Johannesburg on July 7, 1927, the Party's leading trade union figure W.H. Andrews reported that the attitude of the white workers had not advanced much. "The Amalgamated Engineering Union", he said, "the biggest union in the South African Trades Union Congress [of which Andrews was secretary] had seceded on the ground of the alleged hobnobbing of the SATUC with the native labour movement and 'communist influence'9 and the SATUC had to be very careful to avoid a general stampede. The white trade union movement in South Africa will not co-operate with the natives". (It is a melancholy reflection on the slowness of white attitudes to change that 30 years later, in 1966, the AEU seceded from the Trade Union Congress of South Africa (TUCSA) on roughly similar grounds.) At the 3rd congress of the Party in Johannesburg in December, 1924, all the delegates present were white, though three Africans described in the minutes as "visitors" representing the ICU addressed the conference - T. Mbeki, J.M.K. Sibella and Silwana. Mbeki and Silwana were members of the Young Communist League and later active members of the CP, but the reports to the 1924 congress stressed the difficulty the Party had experienced in attracting African members and establishing enduring contact with African organisations. Resolutions passed at the conference, however, brought about a pronounced change of direction in party policy away from the white workers and towards the blacks. The main resolution passed by the conference was not to apply to the Labour Party for affiliation, as it had done regularly in the past with a view to securing a united front of the working class. The resolution passed at the congress suggested that such a united front could not be built from the top, but must come from mass action at rank and file level. The Party, said the resolution, "stresses the prime importance of mass organisation of labour . . . It aims at forwarding the industrial organisation of ALL sections of the workers, especially those hitherto unorganised . . . the problems of the working class can only be solved by a United Front of all workers irrespective of colour" Introducing a report on "Native Affairs" at the congress on December 28, trade unionist W. Kalk said: "The Communist Party must recognise the necessity of supporting every form of native movement which tends to undermine or weaken capitalism and imperialism, and must fight for race equality of the natives on the economic and political field. The Communist Party must use every instrument which will induce the trade unions to admit native workers. Failing this, it must organise the natives into unions of their own, and apply United Front tactics Edward Roux, a leading light in the Young Communist League, presented a supplementary report most of which was devoted to a discussion of the ICU, which he described as the "most important factor for the Communist Party in the present situation". Roux added: "The Communist Party has a very definite function to perform in this connection. We have to fight nationalism just as relentlessly among the natives as among the whites. That means that, while preserving all the revolutionary spirit of the national movement, we must seek to guide the native workers into the labour movement i.e. into contact with the white workers politically and industrially". In his speech, Silwana commented that the task of the Communist Party was a difficult one. "The CP has got to prove to the masses that it is different . . . .The natives look upon the whites as one class and their enemies". The Communist Party, as was to be the case often enough in future, came under fire from the side of both the black and the white nationalists, though obviously not for the same reason. -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
