ARS NOTORIA

Development, Part   7a Europe Underdeveloped Africa “Colonialism had only one hand - it was a one-armed bandit.” So as not to forget that the National Democratic Revolution, as well as the contested concept of “Development”, arose from the anti-colonial and then anti-neo-colonial struggles, it is worth reading some of the late  Walter Rodney’s  words. Linked below is Chapter 6 from Rodney’s 1973 book “ How Europe Underdeveloped Africa ”, written while Rodney was a lecturer at the  University  of  Dar -es- Salaam ,  Tanzania . The first paragraph corresponds nicely with Moore’s article (used yesterday), denying “that ‘after all there must be two sides to a thing'. The argument suggests that, on the one hand, there was exploitation and oppression, but, on the other hand, colonial governments did much for the benefit of Africans and they developed  Africa . It is our contention that this is completely false. Colonialism had only one hand - it was a one-armed bandit.” On a perso

Development, Part   7 Development is Class Struggle David Moore’s (download linked below) article, “The Brutal Side of Capitalist Development” appeared in the now-defunct Johannesburg newspaper “ThisDay” in 2004, as an “op-ed” feature. At the time, at the height of the Mbeki Presidency, the article was remarkable in the mainstream South African media for being frank about the class struggle. Most of such material one would read at that time, in the depths of the 1996 Class Project years, was of the one-eyed “Development Studies” variety. Moore  only has to say how dull and derivative all this other material had been, to win the case unarguably. The dispute between “neo-liberal GEARs and social-welfarist RDPs” is a sterile one, he says. Like a new broom,  Moore  swept away the “happy synergistic tales”, while reminding people of “capitalism’s brutal genesis” and also its saving grace, the “vibrantly emerging working classes.” The document is a nice, short read though packed with

Development, Part 6b Unions in a NEP-like country Today’s text on the “Role and Function of Trade Unions under the NEP” speaks unequivocally of “the duty of the trade unions to protect the interests of the working people” , in both private and public enterprises. (Please download the 8-page text via the link below). Lenin’s text is of particularly sharp interest at this time, when South Africa is in the middle of a mass strike of public service workers (state employees). Please read the eight pages, comrades. We have seen that Lenin was ill from the start of the NEP, and progressively more ill, finally bedridden and unable to speak for months until his death in January, 1924. If we read the documents we would also have noticed that the Civil War was also continuing until 1922. Later, the richer, capitalising peasants or “kulaks” became demonised, correctly or not, but the NEP came to an end around 1928. The NEP therefore had a short and constrained life and consequently limited

Development, Part 6a From NEP Russia will come Socialist Russia The downloadable linked item, a short speech to the Moscow Soviet in November 1922, gives more of the background and history of the NEP.  There is so much that is strong from Lenin, and it ranges so widely that it is difficult to keep in mind that after the October 1917 revolution he only had four years of good health (interrupted by the assassination attempt of August 1918). During 1922 and 1923 he was mostly ill and he died in January 1924. Therefore Lenin’s leadership of the policy that he more than any other is associated with, namely the New Economic Policy, or NEP, only went for about a year from its beginning, which was in March, 1921. The NEP was abandoned in favour of collectivisation and full central planning in 1928, under the leadership of J V Stalin. As can be seen in the last paragraph of the speech of Lenin’s to the Moscow Soviet, he intended “that NEP Russia will become socialist Russia.” This phra

Development, Part 6 New Economic Policy To read Lenin’s writings and speeches on the “New Economic Policy” (NEP) is to discover a process of comprehensive unpacking and assessment of factors and variables that are quite similar to those in play in South Africa at the present time. The NEP followed after the “War Communism” that had been in effect during the Civil War in Russia after the Great October Revolution of 1917. [Picture: Lenin in Red Square, Moscow, 25 May 1919]. It followed on from “the struggle”, as it were. The NEP was not a substitute for big-scale, planned industrial development. Early in today’s main document, “The Tax in Kind” (1921) (download linked below), Lenin emphasises: “Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organisation which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribu

A book and remote control thrown from a window on a nearby estate.

Development, Part 5b Entrepreneurship In the Umsebenzi Online of 30 June 2010 , SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande wrote that we must “Fight Tenderprenuers to defend entrepreneurship!!” The GS wrote: “Entrepreneurs, found in co-operatives, small and medium sized businesses, are all those who genuinely and honestly go about doing business, including tendering for government work.” The linked, downloadable item today is a short article of Professor Michael Morris’s, published in 1996 in the Business Day, which debunked a number of misconceptions about so-called “entrepreneurship”. Morris wrote, among other things, that: “The entrepreneurial individual recognises a trend, a possibility, an unmet demand. He or she comes up with a concept for capitalising on the trend or demand and does so while the window of opportunity is open.” This is the same point as Lenin is making. Lenin knew that the setting up of producer co-operatives without attention to their markets would be a disastrous waste