Unless we learn to apply all the methods of struggle, we may suffer grave and sometimes even decisive defeat - Vladimir Lenin, ‘Left wing communism: an infantile disorder'

Last week we responded to the controversial statements uttered by the General Secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (NUMSA) Cde Irvin Jim, during the memorial "lecture" dedicated to the memories and times of our most outstanding revolutionary leader of the South African working class and the late General Secretary of our party, Cde Joe Slovo, at Queenstown local of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) in the Eastern Cape.

During the memorial lecture, either consciously or unconsciously, Cde Irvin Jim made the following most factional and divisive theoretical distortions about the historic role of our party in our national democratic revolution:

"COSATU raised the alarm over the mass migration into parliament, provincial legislatures and councils of leaders of the SACP in general and more specifically of the General Secretary of the SACP into government. We knew then, as it has been confirmed now, that this migration was going to weaken the SACP, destroy its independence from the government, and render it quite irrelevant to the struggles of the working class.

We have since seen how the SACP is now unable to take proper Marxist and communist positions on the goings on in government, and over the clearly right wing neoliberal NDP.

Rather than making the Alliance the Strategic Political Centre of the Liberation Movement, we are all being invited to join the leadership ranks of the ANC if we must influence the ANC to govern in the interests of the working class"

In his work ‘Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder' Lenin elaborates on the ideas of Marx and Engels around the important question of the strategy and tactics of a proletarian party. 

Based on the historic experience of Bolshevism in Russia and on the struggle of revolutionary workers in other countries, he developed a comprehensive theory of strategy and tactics and contributed to the science of conducting the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

Lenin warned of a phenomenon of left wing Communism attempting to plunge revolutionary parties along the path of sectarianism and adventurism. He warned of left wing communists rejecting the participation of communists in the work of trade unions controlled by social democrats, demanding the boycott of bourgeois parliaments, and advancing the slogan of no compromise.

In this work he is elaborating in detail the strategic approach taken by the Bolsheviks to participate in the conservative Duma, parliament. He indicates that experience has shown that the participation was not only useful, but indispensable to the party of the revolutionary proletariat in that particular conjuncture.

He brought to the fore the most strategic question that the tactics of the party should be based on a strictly objective consideration of the balance of class forces and a scientific analysis of the concrete material conditions. Lenin emphasizes that Communist parties should learn to win victories without being reckless. He points out that ideological conquest of the vanguard of the proletariat is in itself not the only qualitative step for the victory of the revolution:

"Victory cannot be won with a vanguard alone. To throw only the vanguard into the decisive battle, before the entire class, before the broad masses have taken up a position either of direct support for the vanguard, or at least of sympathetic neutrality toward it while having precluded support for the enemy, would be not merely foolish but criminal"

He further says that:

"To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of a tack, or any utilization of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one's enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating, or conditional allies) is ridiculous in the extreme"

Lenin warned of left wing communists disrupting communist parties and preventing them from being closer to the masses of our people. In his criticism he emphasizes that the rejection of party discipline is tantamount to completely disarming the proletariat in the interest of the bourgeoisie.

Lenin is advising Communists to find, without sacrificing their principles, a form of compromise that would not hamper them in carrying on an ideological and political struggle but that would allow them to maintain their revolutionary tactics and organization.

Today we repeat ourselves again that an infantile disorder, reckless adventurism is a most dangerous tendency in the course of any revolutionary processes. To combat this tendency we need to reaffirm that the leading role of our party in the whole of the revolutionary processes for radical socio economic transformation of our society, is a historic necessity.

Our most important task is to ensure that we demystify the hypothesis that individuals are the makers of history. The theory of our national democratic revolution teaches us that it is not the individuals but the masses of our people who are the makers of history. 

There is no individual whose footprints are bigger than that of the revolution itself. The personality cult syndrome has over the years of the struggle undermined the foundations of genuine revolutions led by the masses of our people.

There is no one from our own ranks who is bigger than our revolutionary Alliance led by our national liberation movement, the ANC. It is only those who are on the side of the enemy of our revolution, who may think that without their individual role, our revolution will be incomplete.

Such individuals may even dream that without their leadership role, the people of our country will not vote for the ANC in the forthcoming national general elections. What they do not understand is that there is no magnetic power which can withhold the forward march of the revolutionary struggles of our people into the future.

Reading through the political input presented by Cde Irvin Jim at the memorial lecture again, one discovers the gravity of the theoretical distortions in each and every sentence he uttered. What is clear is that in the vocabulary of our Marxist-Leninist theory, there are no theoretical concepts such as revolutionary communists or the so called practising communists. 

You do not have to announce yourself to be a revolutionary communist, you do not have to announce yourself to be a practising communist, nor to wear the red colours of our party to qualify. You do not have to shout the repeated slogans about the establishment of a socialist republic irrespective of the concrete material conditions.

For Lenin, the starting point of any social revolution rests on the fundamentals of a revolutionary theory and a revolutionary working class party. 

In his definition of the significance of a revolutionary theory and organization, he would always say:

"in its struggle for power, the proletariat has no any other weapon but the organization, the proletariat can, and inevitably will become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principle of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organization.

The only guarantee that the revolutionary organization of the working class will not lose sight of the strategic objective of socialism or lose its identity as an independent party, is its adherence to and reliance upon Marxism. The vanguard role can only be fulfilled by a party guided by the most advanced theory"

He would further express the following profound theoretical formulation on the inseparability of national liberation struggle and the struggle for the world socialist revolution:

"Whereas formerly, before the beginning of the epoch of world revolution the movement for national liberation was part of the general democratic movement, now, after the victory of the Soviet revolution in Russia and the beginning of the epoch of the world revolution, the movement for national liberation is part of the world proletariat revolution.

Whoever wants to reach socialism by any path than that of political democracy, will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in economic and political sense.

Between the democratic and socialist stages of the revolution in the new epoch, there is no barrier and time interval that revolutionaries should take into account"

Contrary to the concerted attempts by some of the individual leaders from within our ranks to distort the character and theory of our national democratic revolution, our revolutionary Alliance is still consistent to the traditions of the Communist International. 

I am equally not surprised by the insinuations from the suspended General Secretary of Cosatu Cde Zwelinzima Vavi (published by the Business Day, BDLlive, 29 October 2013) during his special interview with the Financial Times that our revolutionary Alliance has since 1996 functioned as a vote catching machine. 

I am convinced that both Cde Zwelinzima Vavi and Irvin Jim do not comprehend the main, fundamental task of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party of the working class in a national democratic revolution. We cannot confine the meaning of class struggle to the immediate struggles to socialism.

What they do not understand is the indispensable role of the vanguard party of the working class in the present phase of our revolutionary struggles within the South African context. It is not correct to think that the relationship between our party and other classes and strata in society should be defined first and foremost on the basis and conditions, of accepting socialism as the only future to humanity.

Our conceptualisation of the present phase of our transition requires the correct scientific understanding of the relationship between national oppression and exploitation. Our failure to understand the class content of the national struggle and the national content of the class struggle can be an impediment to both our national democratic revolution and our struggle into our socialist future.

During his address to the second All Russian Congress of the Communist organization of the people of the East, Lenin said:

"the struggle against capital in advanced industrial countries would combine with the struggle of the oppressed nations. The task of a Communist is to carry the message of liberation to every country in a language the people understand"

The theoretical debate about the role of the vanguard party and the struggle for national liberation is as old as during the presidium of the Second International on colonial policies. During the presidium of the Second Congress of the Third International held in 1920, Vladimir Lenin, reporting on behalf of the members of the special commission on national and colonial question, presented the following thesis:

"We come to the conclusion that the bourgeoisie democratic parties of the oppressed nationalities are of various kinds. Some of them have adopted reformist tactics and adapt themselves to the political regime existing in their countries and harmonize their activities with the interest of the regimes of the ruling countries. Of course we shall not give support to such parties, Communist should support the national revolutionary movements, but only when they are really revolutionary"

After intense debates during the Commission, the concept national revolutionary was substituted for bourgeois democratic. The essence was that Communists should support liberation movements in the colonies only when they are genuinely revolutionary and when their exponents do not hinder the work of educating and organising in a revolutionary spirit of the peasantry and the masses of the exploited. 

A decision was further taken that if conducive conditions do not exist, the communist in those countries must fight the reformist bourgeoisie, to whom the heroes of the Second International belong.

During the Sixth Congress of the Third Comintern held in 1928, the Communist party of South Africa was persuaded to adopt the slogan for the creation of an independent native South African Republic with equal rights for all races. 

The Comintern characterized South Africa as a British dominion of a colonial type. The analysis was derived from the realities that the development of the relations of capitalist production had led to British imperialism carrying the economic exploitation of our country with the participation of the white bourgeoisie of South Africa.

A special resolution of Comintern on the approach of our party to the African National Congress was as follows:

"The party should pay particular attention to the embryonic national organizations such as the African National Congress. The party, whilst retaining its full independence, should participate in these organizations, should seek to broaden and extent their activity. 

Our aim should be to transform the African National Congress into a fighting revolutionary organization against white bourgeoisie and the British imperialism. The development of a national revolutionary movement of the toilers of South Africa against the white bourgeoisie and British imperialism constitute one of the major tasks of the communist party of South Africa" 

In his address to the Congress of the League Against Imperialism held in Brussels in 1927, the President of the ANC Cde Josiah Gumede had to say:

"I am happy to say that there are communists in South Africa. It is my experience that the communist party is the only party that stands behind us and from which we can expect something"

Arriving from Moscow in 1928 President Josiah Gumede had to express the following profound words:

"I have seen the new world to come, where it has already began, I have seen the new Jerusalem"

In his political address to the 1930 congress of the ANC, President Gumede had to say the following:

"Soviet Russia was the only real friend of all the subjected races and urged the congress to demand a South African native Republic with equal rights for all and free from foreign and local domination"

President Gumede was voted out of the leadership position for his revolutionary understanding of the important role of the party in the struggles for the liberation of our country against imperialism and colonialism of a special type.

This rich history of the character and theory of our national democratic revolution rebukes the unsubstantiated historical facts that the SACP today is no more the party of our late General Secretary, Cde Joe Slovo. Our party is still playing its vanguard role as the leading political force of the South African working class. 

Our revolutionary Alliance has a task to realise the objectives of our national democratic revolution, whose main content is the national liberation of the African people in particular and the black people in general. Our Alliance is in the forefront of the struggle of our people for radical socio-economic transformation of our society.

The tendency by the suspended General Secretary of Cosatu, Cde Zwelinzima Vavi, to blame our revolutionary movement for the challenges which are not of our own making is counter-revolutionary. We cannot blame the ANC led government for the deepening world economic crisis. We cannot blame the ANC led government for the declining economic production, slowing growth rates, rising prices and living standards, mass unemployment and poverty which has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Therefore our revolutionary Alliance cannot be reduced to a pen and a paper as Cde Zwelinzima Vavi seeks to suggest in his special interview with the Financial Times. Our Alliance was founded out of the common struggles led by the people of our country. Our Alliance is a living organism of our people.

Lenin says that the indispensable conditions of the victory of a democratic revolution is the establishment of a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

The dictatorship of the proletariat in its class essence is determined by the fact that it represents the political domination of the working people in a society in whose economic basis has not yet been overcome.

Phatse Justice Piitso is the former Ambassador to the Republic of Cuba and the former Provincial Secretary of the SACP and writes this article on his personal capacity.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter