An Open Letter to cde Irvin Jim

Dear cde Irvin,

Over the years you and I have had several debates. We have often differed. However, I would like to believe we've always agreed on at least one thing. If we are to build a vibrant socialist left in South Africa, then comradely ideological engagements (even robust ones) are a vital part of that project. Of course, as we proceed, we must safeguard the internal democratic spaces and processes of our respective organisations. Any factional manipulation from the outside must not be tolerated. Public spats in which you or I reach in to support this or that personality within each other's formations would be out of order.

On the other hand, neither of us has ever subscribed to the bureaucratic notion that "we shouldn't air ANY of our differences in public". When those differences are about analysing our reality and debating broad strategy and tactics, then I think we agree that we should open up robust, comradely engagement. This letter is written in that spirit.   

It's a letter prompted by some things you said in an interview in last week's Mail & Guardian ("Vavi 'a victim of class conflict'", March 8). Certain positions you adopt in this interview relate to concerns I've wanted to raise for some time. You'll remember that in the course of last week's interview the journalist (Matumo Letsoalo) asked: "Why is Vavi being targeted?"

You responded: "It is not difficult to know why Vavi is being attacked. Cosatu has a duty to implement resolutions which are in the interest of workers. The contradiction is between two classes, the working class and the capitalists. The state supports the ruling class and Vavi represents the working class."

That seems perfectly cut-and-dry. In the one corner, wearing blue shorts, is the State supporting the ruling class (= the capitalists). In the other corner, wearing red shorts, is cde Vavi representing the working class. But this response provokes the journalist into an obvious follow-up: "But some of your leaders are deployed in the state". To which you reply: "The state is not monolithic. It can be engaged. There is nothing wrong with some of our leaders being there."

Suddenly things are not so simple. In the blue-short capitalist corner (perhaps holding a towel and a gum-guard?) are worker leaders. What are they doing there? Well, there is nothing wrong with them being there, you reassure us. But isn't there a logical (not to mention ideological) inconsistency between these responses?

I don't want to build a whole theoretical case based on a brief interview in the Mail & Guardian. So let's rather turn to a more substantial intervention to which your signature is attached (along with those of the other National Union of Metalworkers' of SA office-bearers).  I am referring to your 18-page NUMSA Central Committee press statement of September 2, 2012.

This extensive statement was issued in the traumatic weeks immediately following the Marikana tragedy. In seeking to analyse the tragedy, the statement betrays, I think, the very same confusion present in your Mail & Guardian interview.

The CC statement attributes the Marikana tragedy to the alleged fact that "the post-1994 South African state and government - a state and government whose strategic task and real reason for existence is the defence of the Minerals/Energy/Finance Complex - will do anything to defend the property rights and profits of this class, including slaughtering the working class."

The post-1994 South African state and government are reduced to a single essence. State and government are monolithic entities whose "strategic task" and "real reason" for existence can always be simplistically declared on the basis of the predominant economic mode of production.  In Marxism this approach has long been characterised as "vulgar economism", as "undialectical metaphysics".

The NUMSA statement, nevertheless, goes on to claim Marx and Lenin as authorities for its economism: "By this singular act [the Marikana tragedy], the police have violently reminded us once again what Marx and Lenin taught us about the state: that it is always an organ of class rule and class oppression and that bourgeois democracy is nothing but the best political shell behind which the bourgeoisie hides its dictatorship."  Take note of the cut-and-dry, undialectical, "nothing buts" that are at play in this sentence.

More seriously, note also how this particular piece of reductionist economism depends upon an extremely problematic distortion of what actually happened in the days before August 16 at Marikana last year. The statement condemns the "savage, cowardly actions and excessive force used by the police, which invariably ["inevitably"?] led to the deaths of 44 workers..." Yes, there are grave concerns that we all need to have concerning police violence not just in Marikana but countrywide, day-in and day-out.

But your Marikana death-toll knowingly obscures the fact that the first ten of those 44 deaths were not at the hands of the police. In fact, the death-toll included two policemen, two security guards protecting the National Union of Mineworkers' offices, and six NUM members - all killed by anti-NUM vigilantes seeking to violently displace your sister COSATU affiliate from the platinum mines around Rustenburg. In the months and years before there were many more deaths of NUM organisers at the hands of these vigilante forces. The NUMSA CC knows these facts very well. So this cannot have been an innocent slip.

It is hard not to draw the conclusion that behind this apparently militant anti-state, anti-police, anti-capitalist position lurks another unspoken anti. The CC statement shows a remarkable lack of solidarity with NUMSA's sister COSATU affiliate - NUM. Whatever NUM's weaknesses, and surely it has many challenges, NUMSA's extensive CC statement contains not one single expression of sympathy for or solidarity with its sister affiliate.

The pseudo-militant rhetoric at play here becomes all too apparent when the very same NUMSA CC statement goes on to tell us that the "CC holds the view that organs of class rule, particularly the police, should not be used recklessly and violently to intervene in industrial disputes involving workers and bosses."   What does this sentimental homily actually mean (leaving aside the presumption that what was at play in Marikana was a simple "industrial dispute between workers and bosses")? In effect, NUMSA is pleading for the supposed organs of "bourgeois class dictatorship" (who "will do anything to defend the property rights and profits of this class, including slaughtering the working class") not to be unduly reckless or violent as they go about their slaughtering work!

The confusion thickens when, later in the same statement, economic policy matters are discussed. The statement calls for "strengthening of the state sector in mining in particular..." But we have just been told that the post-1994 state and government's "strategic task and real reason for existence is the defence" of the capitalist "Minerals/Energy/Finance Complex"! If there is any logical consistency in all of this, then NUMSA must be calling for the mines to be taken over by a state that operates in the interests of mining capitalists! (Which I don't think is NUMSA's intention - but it was certainly the motivation behind the "nationalisation" rhetoric of certain ex-ANC Youth Leaguers).

The same confusion and underlying opportunism is evident in the final section of the NUMSA statement, which deals with the "political crisis facing Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality". NUMSA is absolutely right to express concern at the intra-ANC factionalism in the metro, much of it directed at the now outgoing executive mayor (and former NUMSA leader), cde Wayile. And it is absolutely right to assert that "if the ANC fails to deal with these challenges...we might soon find ourselves occupying the opposition benches in the Council Chambers."

We couldn't agree more...but hang on, if the current state and government are inherently condemned to be the organs of bourgeois dictatorship, then (if we are to bother with elections at all) shouldn't we be occupying the opposition benches as a matter of principle until socialism arrives, even if we have an electoral majority?      

Now of course, cde Jim, in your follow-up last week to the Mail & Guardian journalist you had second thoughts. You began to shift towards a more accurate and constructive position. You said: "The state is not monolithic. It can be engaged." But you can't have it both ways. You can't, on the one hand, with pseudo-Marxist militancy paint everything into monolithic camps (the state, the government, the police = bourgeois dictatorship; cde Vavi/COSATU = the working class). And, on the other hand, when the occasion suits pragmatically declare that, well, actually the state, for instance, isn't monolithic. This inevitably leads to an unbending fundamentalism in strategy, and a pragmatic opportunism in tactics.

Let's be clear. Saying that the state is not monolithic doesn't mean that anything goes, of course. The state is not a shapeless amoeba, nor a purely technocratic machine, floating in a classless vacuum. As Marxists we have a responsibility to always discern and act upon the main class trajectories, the diverse class tendencies and contradictions at play within the state, across its various sectors, spheres, departments and specific policy programmes.

We need to analyse how certain state configurations might be more favourable to one or another class. We need to figure out how popular mobilisation can alter the class balance of forces outside and within the state. Equally, our own formations and our policy programmes are not monolithic or inherently progressive. A trade union (particularly a vigilante union) is not guaranteed to be advancing the interests of the working class.

A call for nationalisation is not necessarily progressive. A demand to increase wages by, let's say, 15% is not necessarily more socialist than a lesser demand that nonetheless is inserted into an agenda that seeks not a better price for labour-power on the market, but aims to build working class power and hegemony in order to decommodify work itself. And, yes, a party that calls itself communist is not therefore by self-proclaimed definition necessarily a vanguard of the working class.

In pledging the SACP's respect for the struggle inside COSATU (free of outside interference, including by the Party) to re-build unity within the federation and between affiliates, I look forward to your response.

Yours comradely

Jeremy Cronin

Jeremy Cronin is first Deputy General Secretary of the SACP. This article first appeared in the Party's online journal, Umsebenzi Online.

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