5-22-06, 10:38 am
On the eve of the COSATU general strike on Thursday 18 May 2006, one cannot help but be reminded of the very profound observations by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto in 1848:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle…The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations… It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation
“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation”.
One is tempted to add that the bourgeoisie and its capitalist system have also converted many erstwhile revolutionaries into its paid ideologues, priests and peddlers of capitalist policies.
South African society is a strange mixture, one of the more advanced capitalist economies in the developing world in the midst of some of the worst international poverty. It is an advanced capitalist economy that daily reproduces the conditions for this poverty to thrive.
This systemic contradiction is reflected over the last decade. We have had one of our longest sustained economic growth periods, yet the majority of our population remains marginalised and in poverty.
It is this reality of an advanced (but racialised) capitalist society that led the SACP in its 1962 programme to characterise South Africa as a ‘colonialism of a special type’. It was a characterisation that was subsequently embraced by our movement as a whole.
The 1962 programme noted that: “On one level, that of ‘White South Africa’, there are all the features of an advanced capitalist state in its final stage of imperialism. There are highly developed industrial monopolies, and the merging of industrial and finance capital… But on another level, that of ‘Non-White South Africa’, there are all the features of a colony. The indigenous population is subjected to extreme national oppression, poverty and exploitation, and a lack of all democratic rights…”
Of course, 12 years of democracy have brought about major changes. But have we decisively transformed the economic foundations of colonialism of a special type? In many ways this is the core question being posed, in action, by current working class struggles, including the strikes underway in various sectors of our economy, as well as the May 18 Cosatu action. Indeed, we may even ask whether our economic policies since 1996 might not have actually reinforced some of the key systemic economic features of ‘colonialism of a special type’.
The current international and domestic accumulation trajectory is in many instances reinforcing and reproducing some of the features of colonialism of a special type. Evidence of the persisting trends towards growth and development and simultaneous acute impoverishment and marginalisation are to be found in the declining share of GDP accruing to workers, and in the deep-seated persistence of racial inequalities, including an apartheid wage gap, and even of overt racism, especially in the workplace.
The SACP Central Committee Discussion Document released today notes this trend and a general silence about it as evidenced in the lack of “any serious appreciation of the manner in which (strengthened) capitalist accumulation within South Africa, rather than innocently providing the resources for sustained ‘delivery’, is actively reproducing the very crises of underdevelopment…”
Whilst a single COSATU general strike will not suddenly change the current accumulation trajectory, it can play a very important role in the struggle for a new economic path for our country. Firstly, it highlights the extent to which our economic policies of pursuing restoration of capitalist profitability as a basis for job creation and poverty eradication are inappropriate. The COSATU action highlights the urgency of a serious need to progressively transform the capitalist character of our economy. It is the only way forward towards the achievement of our development objectives.
Secondly, apart from highlighting the need for policy change, working class action is also an important contributor towards building the capacity of South Africa’s working class to lead a different economic trajectory. As we have said before, just as the working class was the main motive force in the struggle to defeat apartheid, it is the working class that should be at the head of the struggle to transform the current accumulation regime in our country.
As usual, our detractors will seek to ridicule and delegitimise this COSATU action. They will tell us that ‘strikes do not create’ jobs and that ‘a general strike is a political strike’. Indeed a general strike is a political strike, precisely because it seeks to point out that the task of transforming the current accumulation regime is of fundamental importance in consolidating and deepening our national democratic revolution. Without such transformation the very advance of the national democratic revolution is at stake.
Are we still living within exactly the same colonialism of a special type dispensation? Obviously not. Critically, the present capitalist accumulation path is now no longer underpinned and reproduced by a white minority state. But this is not to say that the main features of this accumulation path have changed. “De-racialising” the commanding heights of the capitalist economy on its own produces no systemic changes. The ownership and control of private capital in a capitalist society are not some neutral technical function. Ownership and control is premised on the intensifying labour exploitation and maximising profit. That is the iron law of capitalism. And, while the state is no longer a white minority state, there has been a concerted class attempt to ensure that the new political elite is thoroughly submerged within an emerging black capitalist stratum. This phenomenon is slowly but steadily creeping into the midst of our leading cadre, and none of our formations is necessarily immune.
The process is justified by the latest ideological fad that claims that the key problem in South Africa is that there is ‘too much distance’ between the ‘political class’ and the ‘economic class’. In other words the merging of the political elite with capital is presented as a key task of the national democratic revolution.
That is why the SACP is of the strong view that we must disrupt this emerging alliance between some of our leading political cadres and emerging capitalist interests in order to defend the values and the objectives of the national democratic revolution. The biggest threat to our national democratic revolution is that ‘money’ will triumph over the people’s will. Building working class power is essential in order to invert this phenomenon, by ensuring that the people’s will triumphs over ‘money’. It is the task of the working class to build its power to ensure that public service is separated from private capital accumulation.
It is within the above context and challenges that the COSATU action should be located, as part of broader working class struggles to ensure that we build a developmental state whose priority is to address the interests of the workers and the poor.
It is for these reasons that the SACP fully supports the COSATU action and calls upon all its leaders, cadres and members to join this action in their numbers.
The class struggle continues - with and for the workers and the poor, to safeguard the national democratic revolution!
Blade Nzimande SACP General Secretary
