Brown must lose

We can change the Labour Party...

Paul Myners with Gordon Brown, his neo-con chum

...easy as A, B, C

I am your typical left-wing (mainstream) voter, who was up until recently in a quandary, but the more I read woolly, apologetic, cowardly articles like Jonathan Freedland's and numerous others in the Guardian, the more I realize that it is every left-of-centre persons duty NOT to vote Labour in this election.

No, its not yet again about holding one's nose and voting tactically. We do this every time, and yet the same authoritarian, right-wing, neo-liberal administration stays in power, be they Tory or Labour.

The media don't like to acknowledge it, but we have two main parties who have the same political agenda. This will be the first and hopefully only time I will vote Liberal-democrat, because it is the only mainstream party to identify itself (ever so slightly) with the left of centre and it seems not be scared to either.

Since the Labour party abandoned its principles and accountability 15 or so years ago in its desperate search for power, its only natural for traditional, democratic socialists like me to look to the Liberals in order to try and break that strangle-hold that the right-wing free-market evangelist nutters have had on us for the past 30 years.

Sure, the Liberals are not the answer, and yes, the British government is based not on popular votes, but on the electoral college of Parliament, but you do three important things when you vote Liberal-Democrat.

.

A

If you vote Liberal Democrat then you show to the powers that be on May the 7th, that by looking at the sheer percentage of voters who went over from New Labour to the Lib-Dems, that the electorate rejects what Brown, Darling, Mandleson, and Ed Balls stand for.

B

This then precipitates the radical overhaul the Labour party needs in order to get back to its proper Keynesian roots, when everybody realizes that Clegg and Cameron can't and won't work together in a hung Parliament.

.

C

That way, when we have another election soon afterwards, the Labour party will have got rid of its corrupt, right-wing control freaks and will be represented by a proper, accountable, pro-union mainstream left- of - centre party.

I voted tactically in '97 and will not do so again. Tactical voting has not worked. If we want REAL change, it's not necessary the Liberal-Democrats, it's voting for a party that is closest to your beliefs. The greens, for example, or even RESPECT.

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The party that you once believed in, the Labour Party, will have to come to the mountain, that is the electorate.

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That way the party you once believed in, will have to come to the mountain that is the electorate. Over three-quarters of us (the electorate) - normal working people earning 15 - 50,000 pounds a year, have not had a party to represent us for the last 13 years.

We've had to accommodate our lives to the Blair and Brown governments, now its time that party (Labour) come looking for us again. If you want the same- old- saymo, do what Guardian writers like Jonathan Freedland say- hold your nose (or more suitably, have a lobotomy!) stick your head in the sand, and let one version or another of a right-wing government further degenerate the nation state in favour of the corporate state.

By Andy Hall

Come back Tony Benn, please come back.

God, don't you miss the Tony Benns?

Tony Benn, picture by...

Is morality in politics dead?


The discussion over immigration in the first leader’s debate made me want to be sick. It seemed to me that all three leaders had as good as accepted tabloid accusations and negativity over the subject, and it boiled down to simply an argument over who had the best way of reducing immigration. It was disgusting, it was racist, and it as good as lacked any form of morality. It begged the question, what about the immigrants? What about the people outside our borders (but still human, you should understand) who are just trying to – like all of us – make a life for themselves?

I’m not saying open the floodgates, I’m not suggesting a full on embrace of idealistic solutions, but perhaps a tentative question of whether Gordon Brown, leading the Labour Party (probably to defeat) has abandoned idealism altogether. It is interesting to consider that, despite common claims of Labour’s shift to the right, it is not an ideological shift, simply an abandonment of idealism and a pursuit of pragmatism.


This prompts the question, if Labour are viewed as rightwing, is rightwing ideology completely lacking idealism? No, but then, as many forget, Labour are not rightwing. They’ve introduced a whole stream of leftwing policies – the minimum wage and nationalisation of museums to name a few; no, Labour’s ‘mistakes’ for left-wingers have almost always been pragmatically minded (however immoral).

Take the Iraq war, no-one thinks Blair is really a cold blooded human being who sat grinning to himself as soldiers and Iraqis alike suffered and died at his hands, do they? Of course not, and I don’t believe that Blair thought what he was doing was moral or right for a second, but it was a tactical effort to align with the USA - the world superpower. Similarly, I don’t think that Gordon Brown wanted to talk about immigration with such negativity, but look at his audience. The whole debate was, for me, hugely alienating.

If the audience was really a microcosm of the population then I’m severely depressed. Not a single one seemed to harbour any interest outside their own immediate life, there was hardly any talk of values or aspirations; merely a set of dry and indistinguishable rhetoric about policy which seemed to have no philosophy behind it.

One of the best things I have ever learnt about Politics, and the thing I vow to always remember, was said by a family friend who was giving a lecture at UCL. An adamant lefty, someone asked him if he didn’t see that his propositions were all a bit too philosophical, not pragmatic or realistic enough. He looked at them, quite genuinely confused, and said ‘Well no, because Politics starts from Philosophy. Politics stems from ideas, and values, and what you think is right. And your political beliefs should never stray from that.’

It may seem obvious, but at the time it was so enlightening, so refreshing. The current political climate is all about compromise and pragmatism and realism; now these are hugely important aspects of a political career and should not be undermined by those who advocate ideological approaches to everything. Change is not made in a democratic country by radical reforms, because people are scared of change too big, it has to edge it’s way in, filter down through education and small reforms.

But god, don’t you miss the Tony Benn’s? Those politicians who fight and fight for what they believe in, and of course they are forced to compromise and accept defeat sometimes, but they never stop in the pursuit of their goal, they never stop letting people know what they are fighting for.

I think that Gordon Brown is a good man, I believe that he genuinely is trying to do good and wants to make the world a better place, call me what you will but I really do. But he is in a position where 40% of press is owned by Murdoch, where ideological politics has the stigma of failure attached to it, and he is wedged uncomfortably between moral values and a pragmatic approach, with no real balance or direction.

Lucy

Defiance!

CU, NDR Part 7b

Defiance Campaign

The document linked below, the third in this part of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) series, was written by the famous “Drum” reporter, Henry Nxumalo [pictured above].

In 1950, the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) was banned, dissolved itself, and gradually began to reconstitute itself as a clandestine party, the SACP. The Communist Party made no further public statements until 1959, when the first issue of the African Communist magazine was published.

But two other things happened: the remaining, legal components of the movement rallied round to protest against the banning and to support the formerly-CPSA comrades, such as Dadoo, Marks, Bopape and Kotane, as reported by Henry Nxumalo a few months later in the Drum magazine.

The movement was solid. The ANC did not wash off the communists. The NDR was already on firm foundations. The Defiance Against Unjust Laws campaign was led by Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela among others. Mandela was that campaign’s Volunteer-in-Chief.

Downloads:

Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign, Drum, Nxumalo (617 words)

Further reading:

Click here to download the text of The African Miners Strike of 1946, Naicker (3894 words)

Three Doctors Pact, 1947, Xuma, Naicker, Dadoo (380 words)

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."Charles DarwinHe says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.Extract from an interview with James Watson, co-discoverer of DNAWhy don't the modern proselytisers of Darwinism come clean and admit it. Nazism really did found it's theoretical justification in Darwin? How on Earth can they claim to be humanists if what they believe in is the survival of the "fittest".Madison Grant the US eugenicist was one of the major influences on Nazi ideology. He was a Darwinist too. Like Watson and Darwin himself (Dawkins slips and slides away from aligning himself with them) he was an outright racist and just like Darwin he fanned the flames of Genocide."A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit — in other words social failures — would solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types"Madison GrantDarwinism can be blamed directly for providing the basis of the ideology that justified the slaughter of millions of people during the second world war.Darwinism justified colonialism. Darwin himself was undeniably a racist and Darwin himself was a social Darwinist. The proselytisers of evolutionary theory as it spreads like a cancer into the social sciences, just as it did before.Darwinian theory should stay in its box and not pretend, with it's crude logics of self interest and adaptation, to account for all aspects of human behaviour, human imagination and thought.People like Dawkins cold blooded fundamentalists, the furthest thing from real humanists one could imagine, have let the monster of social Darwinism out of the box again. A monster that denies our very humanity. At least our humanity as we conceive it. And at this point a smarmy philosopher, Anthony Grayling, will point to Gilbert Ryle and say that when we think of ourselves in terms that do not come from the brain sciences then we commit category errors.Mores the pity! Pity itself a "category error" to these modern heirs to the eugenicists. Humanists my arse. The name Watson comes to mind. Remember the scandal he generated by saying that in Africa people had not developed, perhaps because they were an inferior species. In doing so he betrayed his contemptible ignorance of Africa and African history, but also, at the same time he expressed his scientific opinion. The balls in Dawkins court. Do you agree with Watson?Look at all the arguments that are surging up at the moment to look at humans as if they were animals. To assign to them the same value. To introduce euthanasia. To screen all "imperfect" embryos. To allow late abortions. To encourage sterilisation of those with genetic "defects". These are all the ideas of the new "humanists" the new Darwinians. And they are Nazi ideas: Every single one of them is a variant on an idea the Nazis put into practice. Peter Singer, the so called animal rights campaigner proposes animal rights at the expense of human rights. He is a well known Eugenicist.Here are a few more of Darwin's own statements from the Descent of Man:"The enquirer would next come to the important point, whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate, as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence; and consequently to beneficial variations, whether in body or mind, being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated. Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct?"

The game of justice

Manufactured enemies

Crimes against humanity that we are witness to in our day can roughly be divided into three categories. Crimes which are not qualified as such, not punished and not judicially processed. Crimes which, in contrary, are qualified as such, punished and processed in some form or another, but judicially is not quite the term that seems to fit the description. And, finally, crimes against humanity which are completely disregarded by everyone except those they are perpetrated against, given that they are not committed within the interest sphere of any one power.

The justification for the first type of crime usually lies in the second type. They are often of a much larger scale than the second and the rational for them, more precisely, excuse given, is self defense.

Take the example of 9/11. Approximately 3000 people were killed in a day in the most horrifying way imaginable while they were quietly getting on with business in their offices. This crime was qualified by the entire world (except the maniacs who committed it) as a crime against humanity. Punishment followed and its perpetrators are still being processed.

The punishment or response was the raising to the ground of two countries. The BBC reported several days ago that there are 700.000 widows in Iraq. In Afghanistan no one seems to be too concerned with the death toll.

The laying of the ground for crimes against humanity for political purposes is a very simple process, repeated over and over in history, and can be termed as the production of the enemy. Once a group or government successfully produces a credible enemy there is no end in sight to the crimes it can commit. One doesn't have to look far back in history to understand this simple process very clearly. One just has to remember Hitler's "love affair" with the Jews. But, one also has to bear in mind, that the production of the enemy is a very dangerous process in as much as it can backfire. It has a tendency to rally entire groups of nations against its perpetrators.

It would seem that crimes against humanity can only successfully be prevented by those in whose name they are being committed, namely for whose alleged benefit and safety they are being carried out.

One would assume that the production of the enemy is such a simple process that a three year old might understand it and see through it. However, its effectiveness and power seem to lie precisely in its simplicity.

N.P.

Join the Communist University

Domza at NUMSA 2009, photo by Patrick Bond

What is Marxism relevant to? Who is it relevant to? For what purpose is it relevant?

Dear readers of ARS NOTORIA,

How wonderful that there are young students of Marx out there in the readership!

What is Marxism relevant to? Who is it relevant to? For what purpose is it relevant?

Is there even such a thing as Marxism? Marx didn't think so, and nor did Cyril Smith, who is quite usefully erudite on this question (see the Cyril Smith archive on Marxists Internet Archive).

The question "Marxism is as relevant today as it ever was" implies an a priori intentionality and a deliberate subjectivity. If it is a question you are asking then that is encouraging.

Marxism would not be relevant if history had ended, The Subject had died, and post-modernism continued to waive the rules of philosophy.

The first kind of reading list I can offer is the (currently) eight "Generic Courses" of the Communist University, which are linked from the home page of the Communist University e-mail distribution Google Group at:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/communist-university/web/basics---index.

The CU has been going since 2003 and it has become more systematic as time has gone on. I am still refining these "Generic Courses", and also intend to complete two more. The last two will be one on "Capital" Volumes 2 & 3, and one on selected parts of Hegel.

___________________________

Marxism would not be relevant if history had ended, The Subject had died, and post-modernism continued to waive the rules of philosophy.
___________________________

Apart from the "basics", what you might consider looking at would be the one on Capital Volume 1, Lenin's State and Revolution, and the last set on Philosophy and Religion. It is in the realm of philosophy that you will have to find the answer to the question, in my opinion.

The way these "Generic Courses" are arranged is in three layers. There are my "Introductions" which for this purpose may be used as a quick outline or crib. They were originally my blogs, motivating form people to read and discuss the main texts, which are the next layer. The third layer is supplementary or additional texts.

The texts are short. Some come from books and many of the books come from the Marxists Internet Archive.

If you read the first of the first, which is about Paulo Freire and Tony Buzan, you will see that I don't recommend people reading stuff in literal order or alone. Reading should also be intentional and the way to learn is by discussion.
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The bottom line of Marxism is freedom. The general theory of freedom is humanism, and Marxism is the most developed humanism. It is the humanism of our times.
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There is a discussion forum for the Young Communist League of South Africa which is a good way to get a feeling of the relevance of Marxism to young black South Africans.

It's pretty vital to be able to handle lots of e-mail. I have mine set up to be sorted automatically into about 90 headings (using Gmail's "Labels"). This way I can prioritise my reading and read much more systematically, and also "mark as read" quite safely.

The bottom line of Marxism is freedom. The general theory of freedom is humanism, and Marxism is the most developed humanism. It is the humanism of our times.

If you visit the website and post me your email I can subscribe you to the Communist University e-mail list. And if you are younger I would like to subscribe you, with your permission, to the YCLSA discussion forum.

Then we can take it from there. Feel free to discuss.

Best,

VC

(I am the VC, a.k.a. Domza)

Three Doctors’ Pact

CU, NDR Part 7a

Three Doctors’ Pact

“This Joint Meeting declares its sincerest conviction that for the future progress, goodwill, good race relations, and for the building of a united, greater and free South Africa, full franchise rights must be extended to all sections of the South African people…”

This second document in the seventh part of the CU NDR series is a transcript of the “Three Doctors’ Pact” of March, 1947. It was a historic pact for democracy and national liberation, as the above quotation from it shows. There had been nothing like it before.

The three doctors were Dr A B Xuma, Dr Yusuf Dadoo, and Dr Monty Naicker, leaders of the ANC, the Transvaal Indian Congress, and the Natal Indian Congress respectively [Picture: Dr Xuma signing; Dr Dadoo is seen on the right side of the picture, Dr Monty Naicker on the other side].

This Pact was a precursor of the Women’s Charter of 1954 and of the Freedom Charter of 1955, including the latter’s volunteer campaign prior to the Congress of the People and its succeeding campaign of publication after the signing of the Freedom Charter.

The Pact declares “the urgency of cooperation between the non-European peoples and other democratic forces.” It demanded “Equal economic and industrial rights and opportunities and the recognition of African trade unions under the Industrial Conciliation Act.”

In other words, it goes beyond the immediate business of unity of African and Indian organizations, and quite explicitly leads the reader towards the grouping of democratic forces that was to be further developed into the Congress of the People eight years later, and into the product of that assembly: The Freedom Charter.

In all of these cases we can see that mass organisations of specific constituencies were able to combine as part of a process of national social development; and more precisely, towards a National Democratic Revolution.

This Doctors’ Pact made a direct reference to the gains of the anti-fascist war, during which South Africa had been allied with the Soviet Union among others, as follows: “every effort [must] be made to compel the Union Government to implement the United Nations' decisions and to treat the Non-European peoples in South Africa in conformity with the principles of the United Nations Charter.”

To this end the Pact determined that “a vigorous campaign be immediately launched.”

Reaction was closing in. The quasi-fascist and racist National Party was elected to a majority the all-white Parliament in 1948. The Communist Party of South Africa, later reborn as the clandestine South African Communist Party (SACP), finally legalised again in 1990, was banned in 1950. The consequence of this banning was the Defiance of Unjust Laws campaign when the ANC rallied to the defence of the Party, while the Trade Union Movement grew towards the foundation of SACTU in 1955, just in time to take part in the Congress of the People.

Many other diverse and historic events took place in the decade between the end of the anti-fascist world war in 1945 and the Congress of the People in 1955, but the general movement is clear: towards a National Democratic Revolution, based on the unity in action of the workers’ Party, the united national liberation movement, and the organised mass trade union movement.

Downloads:

Three Doctors Pact, 1947, Xuma, Naicker, Dadoo (380 words)

Further reading:

Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign, Drum, Nxumalo (617 words)

Click here to download the text of The African Miners Strike of 1946, Naicker (3894 words)

The projected US invasion of Iran in 2011 or 2012

Baghdad burning

What on Earth is the real reason why the US and Britain are prolonging their stay in Afghanistan? They won't make it more governable by staying longer. Moreover, the Afghan government that they are supposed to be shoring up is discredited and biting the hand that feeds it. It is behaving obstructively towards NATO. It is infiltrated completely by the drug cartels.

Nevetheless, Obama's plans for a troop withdrawal are on hold. Why? Is this strategy really a response to the situation in Afghanistan? Isn't sending more troops to Afghanistan, as many Afghanis believe, not really about Afghanistan at all, but about the US is gearing up for war with Iran?

Iran's nuclear weapons' programme challenges US hegemony in the Middle East. But the question here is: Would it really matter if the government in Iran were secular and democratic and had nuclear weapons? Would that make the US hold back? It would not.

Iran is boxed between two massive US military encampments, encampments in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The threat of a US invasion of Iran is a direct response to the challenge of a Middle Eastern nation that is daring to try to break US hegemony in the region. A clash of civilisations is not the issue, democracy is not the issue, freedom is not the issue.

Tony Blair, one of the the canaries in the coal mine still tweeting for US imperialism, used the high profile given to him by the Iraq inquiry on 29th and 30th of January not to rebut accusations about fostering the Bush presidency's unilateral war, but to justify that invasion and to promote a new war with Iran. The Middle East Peace envoy comes straight from hell.

The former British Prime Minister, now deeply embedded in the US foreign policy establishment, (along with myriads of other well paid intellectual prostitutes), said that a future Prime Minister would face the same choice he did: whether to confront Iran, a hostile Middle Eastern power with weapons of mass destruction, or not.

But let's think. What has changed since the days when Britain played the "great game" and easily controlled the destinies of so many nations? What has changed since those times - when Britain was the kingmaker and created countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan merely by cutting sharp lines with a ruler across a map.

Why should it be considered so unusual that the USA, a capitalist country with a vast economy and a GDP of 14.43 trillion (according to the CIA fact book) and the dominant superpower aspire to controlling the Middle East and its resources? That is simply what bourgeoisie imperialism does. Think of the giant vegetarian shark in Finding Nemo.

It doesn't matter if Bill Gates gives, or doesn't give some of his monopoly money back in the shape of vaccinations for African children. Gates' vaccinations don't offset imperialism. The rapaciousness of capitalism is not defeasable. Ask Standard Oil. Ask Rockerfeller. Ask Cuba.

What really is interesting, however, are the strengthening possibilities of effective opposition to what was once such a bread and butter imperial strategy - a pincer movement. Obama's fastidiousness, for example. There are forces that will try to prevent the US from invading Iran. And to paraphrase George Bush Jr. If these forces are not with the US, then perhaps they are against the US.

Opposition to US action against Iran might actually manage to stop the US from doing what it would naturally and easily have done before to defend its interests. Stop it from doing what it did in Iran in the 1950s, when the US replaced Mossadegh with the Shah?

It seems clear that rising nationalism in the whole region of the Middle East, and consequently the increasing possibility of the development of a more regional identity in the spirit of Ernst Gellner, threatens US interests.

In other words it is only by keeping the region in chaos and in an arrested state of development that the US will be able to maintain its strategic grip. The US is hardly a force for progress in the Middle East. To bet on the Shock doctrine is defeatist. It is a last resort.

Europe is another brake on the US simply because the Middle East actually is Europe's backyard. In fact the EU economy is $16.18 trillion according to the CIA fact book. $16.5 according to (ahem) Wikipedia. Not that this all means much. Europe is not quite joined up, yet. But the EU is the largest combined regional economy in the word, over-matching the USA and China. By rights the next century is not China's at all. It should be an integrated European century. Deja Vu.

And then there is the slowly democratising and increasingly vocal UN and its sister and daughter organisations. They are a brake on the US invasion of Iran. They won't be able to stop the US, the stench of opposition will be strong. The US will be in bad odour, so to speak.

In management they do one of those awful crappy management things called a "force field analysis". You work out what is stopping you from reaching your objectives. You identify the obstacles and then work out how to overcome them. You also work out who and what is in your favour and use that.

Clearly the 5th estate, the media barons and their journalistic minions will easily fall into line when it comes to finding pretexts for invading Iran. Watch the slow burn fuse of propaganda. Murdoch's empire, it goes without saying will support the invasion of Iran. But the truth is, so will all the rest. Even the so called "liberal" press in the US and the more craven parts of Europe like Britain. While the Guardian produces a supplement today telling us to:

"Calm down dears, crime is going down in Britain." ...

The paper also produces article after article to keep the anxiety about Iran bubbling away until eventually the injudiciously pragmatic Simon Jenkins, or some other such, someone with an incredibly accurate vision of everything within their own little horizon, will decide that the British government should plump for a "limited surgical intervention."

And then we will watch a re-run of the Iraq war. It's only after such an invasion, that the liberal press will get on its high horse again and recall the reservations of one or two of its columnists. The liberal press has its cake and eats it in the UK. It supports capitalism, but allows itself the luxury of havering a while before doing so.

Place your bets. The US will try to invade Iran. My guess is Early 2012. It's just what empires do - if you let them.

Phil Hall

Chilling 10

African Mineworkers' Strike 1946

CU, NDR Part 7, main

Congress, Pact and Defiance

The National Democratic Revolution is more than a theory. It has a history. In South Africa, the unity of the vanguard party, the mass democratic liberation movement, and workers’ industrial unions was created by the actions of countless individuals in the course of many historic events.

In terms of South African history we have already noted among others the formation of the ANC in 1912, the ICU in 1919, and the SACP in 1921. We have considered the Black Republic Thesis, Moses Kotane’s Cradock Letter, and the sectarian problems of the CPSA in the 1930s. The Party had already begun to solve some of these problems by the time South Africa became part of the war of 1939-1945.

Although we will mostly refer from now on to South African events in the second half of this 12-part series on the NDR, yet it is as well to keep in mind that the National Democratic revolutionary wave was a world-wide historic change. NDRs swept old-style colonialism almost completely off the face of the planet in the decades following the second world war.

Thanks partly to the Comintern and to Georgi Dimitrov, the World War that began in 1939 was to a great extent a conscious unity-in-action against the fascists. It is true that the Comintern was wound up on 15 May, 1943, but by that time the international anti-fascist alliance was in place.

The war came to an end in August, 1945, and the United Nations came into being on 24 October 1945, with a membership of 51 nations. Sixty-five years later, and as a direct consequence of multiple worldwide National Democratic Revolutions, UN membership is approaching 200 independent nations – nearly four times as many as there were in 1945.

A lot of organising had been done in the relatively more favourable conditions in South Africa during the anti-fascist war. Among the structures that came into existence were the Transvaal Council of Non-European Trade Unions, and the African Mine Workers’ Union, one of whose leaders was J B Marks [pictured above].

A lot was in place, yet action was required that would convert the preparations into permanent, historical and revolutionary facts. The historic action that fulfilled this role in the first place was the African Mineworkers’ Strike of September, 1946.

Writing in 1976, M P Naicker described how the African Mineworkers’ Strike changed everything, both within South Africa and also externally:

“The African miners’ strike was one of those historic events that, in a flash of illumination, educate a nation, reveal what has been hidden and destroy lies and illusions. The strike transformed African politics overnight.

“Dr. A. B. Xuma, President-General of the African National Congress, joined a delegation of the South African Indian Congress (SAIC) sent to the 1946 session of the United Nations General Assembly when the question of the treatment of Indians in South Africa was raised by the Government of India. He, together with the SAIC representatives - H. A. Naidoo and Sorabjee Rustomjee - and Senator H. M. Basner, a progressive white ‘Native Representative’ in the South African Senate, used the occasion to appraise Member States of the United Nations of the strike of the African miners and other aspects of the struggle for equality in South Africa.

“Dealing with this visit the ANC, at its annual conference from December 14 to 17, 1946, passed the following resolution:

"Congress congratulates the delegates of India, China and the Soviet Union and all other countries who championed the cause of democratic rights for the oppressed non-European majority in South Africa.”

“The brave miners of 1946 gave birth to the ANC Youth League's Programme of Action adopted in 1949; they were the forerunners of the freedom strikers of May 1, 1950, against the Suppression of Communism Act, and the tens of thousands who joined the 26 June nation-wide protest strike that followed the killing of sixteen people during the May Day strike. They gave the impetus for the 1952 Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws when thousands of African, Indian and Coloured people went to jail; they inspired the mood that led to the upsurge in 1960 and to the emergence of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) - the military wing of the African National Congress.”

In the set for the coming week we will proceed to the Doctors’ Pact and then to the Defiance Campaign that was mounted following the banning of the CPSA in 1950. In the week after that, we will go to the Freedom Charter campaign of the mid-1950s. In all of this we are seeing the NDR as a revolutionary class alliance that is democratic in both form and content.

Downloads:

Click here to download the text of The African Miners Strike of 1946, Naicker (3894 words)

Further (optional) reading:

Three Doctors Pact, 1947, Xuma, Naicker, Dadoo (380 words)

Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign, Drum, Nxumalo (617 words)

Cameron loses / has lost the debate on EU - European Union

What has the EU ever done for us?

David Cameron argues against greater European integration

David Cameron: They've bled us white, the bastards. And what have they ever given us in return?

Nick Clegg: Well, the single market, you know. That's a pretty good idea. There are no tariffs on UK products sold in Europe.

David Cameron: Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That's true.

Gordon Brown: And they've got rid of borders in Europe. We can work and live wherever we like in any European country. No problem.

Nick Clegg: Oh yes... movement within Europe, David, you remember what travel used to be like: "Take out your passport." "Why are you here?" and all that. Much better now.

David Cameron: All right, I'll grant you the single market and free travel are two things that Europe has done...

Nick Clegg: And what about the great European food. We'd still be eating boiled cabbage. Italian food, French, Spanish. Lovely grub. Where would Jaimie Oliver be?

David Cameron: (sharply) Well yes obviously the food... the food goes without saying. No one wants to go back to what we had before. But apart from the single market, free travel, and better food ... Actually, my black man in Plymouth shops at Lidl. Yes, that's true.

Gordon Brown: Joint action and cooperation on the environment, security, poverty, finance human rights. It's hard to get things done on our own you know. We're just a little island David. The Chinese and US could easily ignore us.

Nick Clegg: Don't forget Judicial cooperation and access to social security and health in other European countries...

David Cameron: Yes... all right, fair enough...

Nick Clegg: And the wine. Mmmm. I love French wine. But Rioja is very good too...and quite affordable.

Gordon Brown: Oh yes! That's true! How about the beer. Belgian beer.

Nick Clegg: Yeah. That's something we'd really miss if we left the EU, David.

Gordon Brown: More jobs! 3.5 million depend on the EU! That's nothing to sniff at.

Nick Clegg: Monetary stability.

Gordon Brown: Greater worker protection. Not up your street Dave, but hard to argue against. More attention paid to human social and sexual rights. (You've got a few dodgy mates in Europe Dave). Then there's European wide consumer protection, joint research projects. Scientific advance, the Hadron Collider, Airbus. Oh this list goes on.

David Cameron: You leave my mates in Latvia alone Gordon. O.K. I take your points, but apart from the single market, the freedom to live and work anywhere in Europe, good food and wine, joint action on the environment security, judicial matters, social security and health cover abroad, many more jobs, better consumer protection joint research projects and more attention being paid to human rights, you tell me: What has the European Union ever done for us?

Nick Clegg: Brought peace! Democratic stability. Don't forget we had two world wars start in Europe. Now we are all getting along much better - more or less.

David Cameron: (very angry, he's not having a good debate at all) What!? Oh... (scornfully) Peace, yes... rubbish!

.

.

[ With apologies to Monty Python and John Crace]

Communist University

Umsebenzi Online, Volume 9, No. 7, 21 April 2010

Red Alert

Strengthening the ideological capacity of the working class: An urgent political task

Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

"Capitalist influence must be rooted out in the fields of ideology and culture, and a new type of intellectual must be trained, devoted to the welfare of the people and to socialism - The Road to South African Freedom

The intensity of the class struggle both inside our movement and in broader South African society requires that the working class takes bold and decisive actions to take ideological work and the battle of ideas to higher levels, now and going into the future. The battle of ideas is a battle we dare not lose, as this is critical in driving a radical national democratic revolution as our direct route to socialism. This task must be carried out and work intensified both inside and outside the organized formations of the working class.

Apart from the above, there are a number of other reasons that necessitate that we pay particular attention to this matter. The bilateral we have had with the ANC, as well as our forthcoming bilateral with COSATU necessitate that issues relating to building the ideological capacity of the working class be placed even on a higher pedestal in our overall political agenda.

However there is a broader imperative that necessitates this. That the working class is the leading motive force of the national democratic revolution is not something that should only be words on the pieces of paper of our strategy and programme documents, but should be turned into a palpable reality. In other words the leading role of the working class has to be daily earned on the ground through both a combination of mass and ideological work.

We are currently in a period of a huge ideological offensive, especially directed at the youth, to push them towards the idolisation and the worshipping of wealth, obscene display of consumption, and generally the promotion of a 'get rich quick' mentality. This mentality is reaching out into almost every corner of society, including academic institutions and some religious organizations - areas that ordinarily have been thought of as repositories of the highest standards of morality. In fact partly our anti-corruption campaign is informed by these problematic developments.

All these developments run the danger of turning South Africa into one big tender! However it is not enough to wage a struggle against corruption outside of deepening ideological work both inside our organizations and in broader society, as corruption is often also a reflection of the growing influence of the corrupting ideology of capitalism.

Since 1990, especially since the launch of our Red October campaign, the SACP has continued as before that period doing a lot of work on political education, working together with many of the COSATU affiliates. This work has intensified over the last two years and we intend deepening it.

During this period the National Union of Mineworkers established the Elijah Barayi college, the SACP and COSATU established the Chris Hani Institute, COSATU was also instrumental in the setting up of Ditsela and Naledi. All of our organizations have their own publications.

One of the most recent initiatives has been that led by the SACP in establishing an internet based 'Communist University', which is also starting to meet through contact group discussions and also reaching out to other countries in the continent. We need to think boldly about offering systematic programmes that are accredited and can also give the working class other vital skills like reading, writing and ICT. In fact the Communist University has been the most advanced in the creative use of the internet as a critical platform for educational initiatives. The ANC itself already has advanced plans to establish a political school and a policy institute.

Despite this important work, there are two glaring weaknesses in all of our work on this front. Firstly, they operate in an unco-ordinated manner, when in fact they are important platforms for intensified and co-ordinated ideological work by the working class. Secondly, in all these initiatives we tend to talk to ourselves and those sections of the working class that are organized, whilst bourgeois media talks to both our constituency and the rest of society.

It is therefore important that we take our ideological work to new heights. We need to be innovative and bold by building on these foundations and reach out to broader society. Our international allies often comment that given the strength and power of the working class in South Africa, we should by right be having our own newspapers, radio stations, formally recognized training institutions and other structures that will institutionalize this power. These of course should not be substitutes to mass work, but complement it, though mass work in itself is also an important terrain for the battle of ideas.

The one matter we shall be tabling in our bilateral with COSATU is the need to consolidate working class media and educational initiatives and institutions, that may in the medium to long term can even offer properly accredited certificates, diplomas and degrees. Surely it cannot be that in our public institutions neo-liberal ideas are daily being institutionalized, whilst working class theory is marginalized. Whilst this must not be a substitute for our public institutions to offer working class oriented education as well, let us consolidate what we already control. We need to build these institutions such that they are not only attractive to organized workers only but also to the youth and adults in broader society.

Despite enormous opportunities since 1994 created by the opening of the airwaves, the working class has not adequately taken up the space of community radio stations for instance. These are very important platforms for class analysis of society and the local issues and challenges that face our people on a daily basis.

Since 1994, government has also opened up huge opportunities for training, yet there is no systematic education and training strategy for the working class, despite the many important initiatives we have undertaken. This space has largely been left to employers, focusing only on job related training without a broader strategy to train a different kind of worker - skilled, informed, critical and through which the ideas of the working class can be made a living force in society.

Indeed such vital initiatives and skills will also enable the working class to intensify the battle of ideas in the very platforms of mainstream media, through targeted and ongoing engagement with its mainly bourgeois ideas.

Indeed consolidation on this scale will require resources, but this should not stand on our way to beginning to build working class capacity on this front. For example resources already existing within the organized formations of the working class can be better utilized and co-ordinated to direct them towards these overarching tasks. This does not imply that the various platforms we have servicing particular needs (e.g. Training workers in negotiating skills in particular sectors, 'The Shopsteward', etc) must all be collapsed into one, although they need to be subject to our overall political and ideological objectives. But a strategic and programmatic synergy and pulling together of these existing resources can go a long way towards the attainment of our objectives to consolidate broader working class ideological work.

An immediate task that needs to be initiated by the organized formations of the working class is the establishment of a permanent 'Ideological Commission', that would lead all this work, including undertaking feasibility studies on the various components of such work. Such a commission, to be principally driven by the SACP and COSATU, could for instance be located in one of the already existing working class institutions (eg Elijah Barayi College or Chris Hani Institute).

Of course a systematic attempt at institutionalizing aspects of the working class initiatives, must not replace the thousands of political schools and socialist forums that we hold in various localities and workplaces. These continue to be important, but nevertheless they need to be guided by an overarching working class vision on the important question of the battle of ideas.

It might as well be that an urgent conference of our commissars, organizers, and policy experts and media officials is required to formally table and discuss these matters.

Let all the formations of the working class discuss and debate these matters guided by our medium term vision of making the second decade of our freedom as the decade of the workers and the poor.

All these initiatives are not a substitute to the vanguard role of our South African Communist Party, but ideas placed before all our organized working class formations as part of seeking precisely to play that role.

Asikhulume!

People's Democratic Dictatorship

People's Democratic Dictatorship

Ten years after the 1939 publication of Mao’s near-perfect example of the way to lay out the Political Economy of a country, given yesterday and linked again below, the same Mao stood in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on 1 October 1949, to declare the founding of the People’s Republic of China [photograph above].

Also in 1949 Mao wrote of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship in a document linked below. There he rehearsed some of the history, for example:

“Imperialist aggression shattered the fond dreams of the Chinese about learning from the West. It was very odd - why were the teachers always committing aggression against their pupil? The Chinese learned a good deal from the West, but they could not make it work and were never able to realize their ideals. Their repeated struggles, including such a country-wide movement as the Revolution of 1911, all ended in failure. Day by day, conditions in the country got worse, and life was made impossible.”

In 2010, sixty-one years after the revolution, China is still called a People’s Republic, and not a socialist republic. How is it constituted? The Chinese nation is constructed in terms of its political economy. Mao is very clear about this, for example in the following passage:

“Who are the people? At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism - the landlord class and bureaucrat-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomintang reactionaries and their accomplices - suppress them, allow them only to behave themselves and not to be unruly in word or deed. If they speak or act in an unruly way, they will be promptly stopped and punished. Democracy is practised within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship.”

In 2009, according to information from a Chinese delegation then touring South Africa, the number of people living in the rural areas of China was 800 million, but the number of people in Chinese cities is 500 million, an enormous increase on the three million “modern industrial workers” counted by Mao in 1939.

The South African NDR

As we become more aware of what is happening, it becomes apparent that the National Democratic Revolution should never be seen as a regrettable compromise, or as a temporary or an interim measure, or even as a stage, if a stage means a halt.

The National Democratic Revolution is a positive, revolutionary move forward. It is the only direct move forward that is possible in our circumstances, that can be accomplished in a conscious, peaceful, deliberate and rational way. This is because the NDR corresponds to the political economy of the country, and because development is class struggle.

The National Democratic Revolutions cannot properly be defined by a set of tick-boxes next to self-justifying stand-alone goods such as “non-racial”, “non-sexist” and “unified”, as much as those things may be desirable in the abstract.

The organic nature of the NDR and its consequent trajectory can only be properly and fully seen in the light of Political Economy. The NDR should always be defined, and from time to time redefined, in relation to a specific class alliance for unity-in-action.

Download:

People's Democratic Dictatorship, 1949, Mao Zedong (5164 words)

Other reading:

Reform or Revolution, Intro, C2, C7, C9, C10, Rosa Luxemburg (10250 words)

The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party, 1939, Mao Zedong (8011 words)