3rd Instalment of 4 on the SACP's "Organisational Renewal" discussion document
'Towards an Organisational Review and Renewal Process': Commentary in number order: Clauses 11 to 20, of 35 D. Tweedie, 19 May 2015 11. This clause is about the communist party at branch level taking on direct community tasks. In practice, this amounts to undermining the mass democratic structures that are supposed to perform these tasks. By substituting the party for the mass democratic organisations of the people, the party would actually be proposing the substitution of the party's will for the people's will. This is exactly what the communist party must not do. Power to the people is the communist way, not power to the party. 12. "Develop mechanism and set basic standards and requirements for Party building" This clause represents the communist party as if it was a holy order of the church, with vertical command and task-setting, like the Jesuit order. In fact, the communist party is not a Society of Jesus, or a Society of Karl Marx, but it is a society of leaders. It should, and it does, recruit existing leaders, supporting them, and not bleeding them, burdening them or taxing them. The people who wrote this clause have no idea of all this. They think that the communist party can direct the work of working class leaders, but it cannot. This mistake is an indicator of serious amateurism. The communist party has no "handlers" for managing other party members. Those who imagine this to be the case are in a realm of delusion. Early in his or her party life the typical party member who is a leader, for example a shop steward, must learn that there is no-one in the party who can better say what he or she is to do. No-one has the time for that, and no-one has a better knowledge than the party member in question. Hence it becomes necessary to develop oneself as a cadre - meaning a communist who is able to make decisions without direction, because this is the normal, and practically-speaking the invariable situation. The idea of "tasking" is completely misplaced. In corresponds to an amateur, imaginary version of the life of a communist. No-one in the party can successfully order the young leader what to do. Likewise, at the level, say, of a general secretary of a union, the general secretary of the party cannot order that person what to do, not practically, in reality, nor in term the rules of the party (Rule 6.5 of the SACP Constitution, to be precise). What the party gives to cadres is fellowship and education, so as to reinforce their ability to act, as they must, as leaders not under the thumb of the party, but under the discipline of the people's democracy. 13. "Raising the bar of service to the people." This clause is another sermon, more appropriate to the Boy Scouts or the Girl Guides, or church and charity. This kind of thing drives communists away. 14. "Require values of being a good servant of the people." This is more of the same sermonising like clause 13, but to a more excited and ecstatic degree. It says "The articulation of the values is the most important one we need to deal with." These are words of religion, not communism. It is embarrassing to have this kind of material in a communist document. 15. "Task of newly recruited members." This clause is a lamentation about political education and induction. This is a good moment to remind comrades that the South African Road to Socialism (SARS), which the organisational renewal document refers to as if it is a gospel, set up a top-to-bottom scheme of political education that has never been put into practice, not even by the Central Committee itself. SARS is a dead letter in this regard, and perhaps it is a dead letter altogether. This kind of writing is only a claim of superiority on behalf of the writers, when there is no such superiority in fact. It is in this clause that the scandalous allegation is made that party members are "memorising this or that Communist literature" - something that is unknown to people who are actually engaged in political education. This is more evidence that the whole organisational renewal document is a thought-experiment, not written by serious or by experienced communists. 16. "The SACP and the Youth in general." This clause is a long quotation from the proceedings of the ANC's Kabwe Conference. 17. "The SACP and Young Communist League." This very long clause is actually redundant. All it says is that the existing understanding is what should constitute renewal; in other words: no renewal, just apply the status quo and call it renewal, or "streamlining". 18. "The alliance with the ANC and COSATU." Here, the alliance that is the condition for the NDR is described, not as a class alliance, popular front, or unity-in-action, but as an alliance of structures. It proceeds to say that "the point of departure must aIways be to build the SACP as a strong, Independent vanguard Party of the working class. This attribute is fundamental for the Party if it were to achieve its programme of building working class hegemony and providing communist leadership in all key sites of struggle and power including those alliances." This is a fully confused statement from which it is almost impossible to recreate the actual class realities or the proper relationship of party and class. The writer is struggling with priority of one over the other. The writer is not able to see that it is the democracy of the mass democratic organisations that enables them to realise themselves as collective, free-willing subjects, which must then exercise their will-power. It is impossible not to read this clause without becoming convinced that the writer imagines the SACP as the rider, and the other alliance partners as horses - which is not communist thinking. 19. This clause pines for the communist parties to have "genuine and organic alliances with a wider range of progressive social forces in their societies." This is a restatement of the old and disastrous Eurocommunist desire for alliance with "new social forces". It is a direct consequence of the inability to conceive of alliance as class alliance. The ANC is the proper locus for class alliance. It was fostered by the Party for that reason. The relation of the communist party with other formations is as a facilitator of democracy. It is democracy of all kinds that permits the people to have, and to express, and to act upon a common, people's will. The creation of this people's will, in this way, is the purpose of the NDR. It is not the communist party that holds the ring. The ANC is where in the first instance all the small democracies can join in a mass liberation movement. Not the Party. The Party is not for that purpose. People who imagine the Party as a command centre have not understood what revolution is. Those who understand the Party as an independent actor have also not understood revolution. The Party must never try to mimic other actors. It has its vanguard role, and that is all it has. It is enough. 20. "In other words, the fact that we are in alliance with COSATU must not mean that the SACP can only access organized workers through COSATU. The Party must have its own independent presence amongst workers, both organized and unorganized." This is completely and utterly wrong. The workers must be organised as workers, and not as communists. The communists are the communist party. There is an example of the consequence of this kind of confusion in the Greek Party, KKE, which is a sectarian party that likes to talk to itself. Hence it has created a general workers' organisation called PAME that organises workers outside of their unions, so as then to use them to interfere inside their unions. This is a terrible mistake. The SACP should not do this, do anything like this, or ever start to think like this. Next (and final) instalment: "Towards an Organisational Review and Renewal Process," commentary in number order: Clauses 21 to 35 -- -- 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]. 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