Please comment on this draft. It is meant as suitably brief notes to help comrades in compiling inputs on the anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. All suggestions for improvement will be received with gratitude. _____
What does “Red October” have to do with South Africa? The “October Revolution” in Russia - called “Red October” because it was a communist, working-class revolution - took place on 7 November 1917, equivalent to 25 October in the old-style Russian calendar then still in use. One writer (John Reed) called it “Ten Days that Shook the World”. It was a revolution that changed everything. No part of the world was unaffected by it. The effects are still felt in South Africa, to such an extent that it is not possible to fully understand South African reality without having knowledge of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, what preceded it, and what followed it. This year, 2014, is the Centenary of the start of the Great War, also called the First World War, and sometimes the inter-Imperialist War, in 1914. The Second International At the beginning of the year 1914, there existed an international working-class people’s organization known as “The Second International”. Great working-class parties existed in the Western European countries. They were supposed to be following Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ idea, in the Communist Manifesto, of “Workers of All Countries, Unite!” But in 1914, most of these parties betrayed their working-class internationalism, and “sided with their national bourgeoisies in waging a war that would see working people dying in their millions for a cause that was not their own”. These words are quoted from “The Red Flag in South Africa” - a history of our Communist Party - which correctly begins at this historical point. Not only did workers die in that war, in their millions, but the organisation of the workers assisted in producing the means of human slaughter: weapons, ammunition, ships, tanks, aeroplanes and all the rest, on a scale never before known. If the organised working class had not abandoned its working-class solidarity in 1914, there was not going to be any “World War” - or more correctly, inter-Imperialist war. There were three principal exceptions to this betrayal. One exception was the Russian Bolsheviks, led by Lenin. They steadfastly refused to support the war, and they survived to make their revolution. Another was the German Spartacist fraction, including Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. They were heroes. But their fate was to be suppressed by the Nazi fascists. The third was the group of comrades who split from the South African Labour Party (which supported the war) to form, in the following year of 1915, the International Socialist League. The ISL contained Sydney Percival Bunting, David Ivon Jones, and Bill Andrews, all later prominent in the CPSA. The ISL was the immediate forerunner of the Communist Party of South Africa. So the story of how our Communist Party was formed is linked right from the start with the same history that generated the October Revolution, and gave that revolution its internationalist orientation. It is one and the same history that gave birth to the struggle for universal voting rights for black as well as white people in South Africa - a struggle first championed by our Communist Party. It is the same history that laid down the strategy and tactics of National Democratic Revolution, and of unity-in-action, which are still followed by South Africans today. The April Theses In 1917, hardly a month after the February (bourgeois) Revolution of that year, Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, and delivered his famous “Theses” from the train. Thesis 10 was called “A new International”. Lenin said: “We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social‐chauvinists and against the ‘Centre’.” Under the stimulus of the war and the betrayal that had made the war possible, Lenin had been studying Imperialism. What followed was the roll-out of a plan to deal with Imperialism across the world. South Africa was quickly made part of that process. The October Revolution But first, the actual proletarian revolution had to take place in Russia, which happened in October. according to the Russian Orthodox calendar of the time. The date according to the calendar used in other countries was 7 November. This event was the pivot around which all else turns. The Comintern First Congress Less than two years later, in the northern summer of 1919, and in spite of counter-revolutionary warfare that was still continuing, the Bolsheviks convened the First Congress of the Third (Communist) International. Second Congress The Second Congress of the third International was convened one year later, in 1920, with many more delegates, and it had a major Commission called the Commission on the National and Colonial Question. Lenin was the rapporteur. His report-back from this commission is a classic. In it, he introduces the idea of the National Democratic Revolution as a set of strategy and tactics that could (and did) be used to liberate the world. Most of the world at that time was under the dominance of Impelrialism. This National Democratic Revolution of Lenin’s is the very same NDR that we South African Communists have practised and continue to practise. Third Congress The Third Congress convened in 1921. It admitted the Communist Party of South Africa, and the Communist Party of China, to membership, of course on the Comintern’s terms. Hence it is the case that our South African Communist Party was created as part of the same series of events that included as its most crucial single item, the Great October Soviet Socialist Revolution. And this is why we celebrate on the day of its anniversary. Sixth Congress But this is not the last of the reasons. There were altogether seven Congresses of the Comintern. At the sixth, in 1928, one of the main resolutions was on “The South African Question”. In it, the Comintern insisted that the CPSA take up the struggle for a native republic, or in other words, black majority rule. Thus the CPSA became the first Party in South Africa to demand the full universal franchise, which was finally achieved in the Democratic Breakthrough of 1994. Summary These few notes are put down to assist comrades who may be called upon to make inputs to events at any level, during the commemoration of the 97th Anniversary of the Great October Proletarian Revolution. 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