Irvin Jim and the empty tin of opportunist workerism: Response to Jim's "lecture" about Slovo

One would have expected that an SACP member who occupy a leading position in one of our organisations within the mass movement would use the opportunity given to him to clarify the working class audience about the Party programme ‘The South African Road to Socialism' and the Medium Term Vision that underpins its strategy of the need to build working class hegemony and power in all key sites of struggle. What did he do? The opposite.

In his "memorial lecture" on Joe Slovo, inseparably former SACP General Secretary and one of the outstanding leaders of the ANC, we have Irvin Jim renouncing the SACP and the ANC - all in the name of Slovo who he misappropriates and "revolutionary" communism as he crowns himself "a practising communist". In the process of following his "lecture", we find that the Jim not only completely distorts Slovo and tries to trim one of his classic pieces about the role of the working class in the National Democratic Revolution, but attempts to trim this work to suit his opportunism - an opportunist distortion of Slovo's heritage we expose in this response.

The allegation that Jim makes in his "lecture" is that our revolution has been sold out by the ANC and SACP, and that current challenges facing Cosatu have to do with that sell-out.

Jim felt "humbled" to give Joe Slovo Memorial Lecture. He should, because his "lecture" was about the legacy of one of the outstanding communists in the struggle for national liberation and socialism - Comrade Joe Slovo, inseparably one of the outstanding leaders of the SACP and the ANC (Jim's bogus surgery to separate Slovo from the SACP and ANC will thus not succeed).

Jim spoke in his "lecture" as one of the leaders of a major trade union in Cosatu and, we should perhaps add, as one of the Party members. But be that as it may, we are still not sure he was "lecturing" in these capacities, because right in the beginning as "I" he protests: ‘As I reflect on the history of our liberation movement, as led by the ANC and look at today's momentary challenges facing the working class, I want to make my own honest reflection... (my emphasis)'.  The latter is not an honest reflection, but rather an attempt to suppress particularly the SACP perspectives and the Party programme for transformation on the current situation facing the working class.

The choice of his topic centred on Slovo's pamphlet The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution.  So it was to be expected that a leader of such a calibre will draw on this classic and brilliant work of Slovo to connect to the present day questions facing the working class, especially the role of the trade union movement in which he is a leader and the Party. He would have proceeded to share with his working class audience, the importance of taking forward Cosatu congress resolutions and 2015 Plan as well as SACP programme, ‘The South African Road to Socialism' (SARS). He would have clarified the respective roles these formations within the Alliance led by ANC play as we take forward our struggle into a more radical second phase of our transition since 1994.

In short, our leader was expected to understand and apply a strictly objective appraisal of the class forces and their alignment and the political tasks and responsibilities facing us in the unfolding period.

This is befitting since we are talking about a comrade who should be understanding the theory and practice of our revolution 360o. It is expectation for any disciplined and principled leading cadre. But as it transpired, Jim's "lecture" has been utterly disappointing.

Ok, there is only one thing everyone can agree with Jim on, but not as an individual (we are returning to this). That is, political power must be buttressed by economic power, and both must be in the hands of the people, majority of whom is the working class. This is not Jim's discovery in Slovo. Rather, on the contrary, it is the essence of our national democratic revolution.

As one of our chief representatives Slovo was clearly articulating the content of our national democratic revolution as developed and elaborated by the organisations he belonged to, the SACP and the ANC. Similar to the right-wing tendencies that have made it part of their new agenda to appropriate our heroes and heroines from our movement and accuse it of betraying their contribution and legacy in our struggle, Jim stands to fail with his bogus surgery to separate and divorce Slovo from the SACP and the ANC. The fact is, the SACP and ANC are and remain Slovo's organisations through which he dedicated his life in a collective context of the struggles for the national democratic revolution and socialism.  

The recent Mangaung conference of the ANC, almost one year ago, actually put even stronger emphasis on the above perspective of our revolutionary alliance. The conference commits us to radically shape a second phase our transition along these lines of securing economic power in its interrelationship to political power. But Jim seems to say no, that is not what is happening in practice.

As a result he devotes two-thirds of his lecture talking about a betrayal of the revolution by the ANC and the SACP, a point which is so agreeable to the bourgeoisie, because throughout he obscures the present programmes of the SACP, the ANC and even Cosatu.

Distortions of Joe Slovo legacy, distorting our revolution

Jim should know that Slovo's pamphlet captures the very essence of the SACP strategic approach to the national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism. Throughout this "lecture" he keeps on referring to a Socialist Democratic Republic and less or at least nothing about the national democratic revolution. This on its own is not an omission from his part. It is based on a syndicalist, ultra-left notion guided by some anarchism that basically claim that our national democratic revolution is essentially about ‘bourgeois-democratic' revolution dominated by the nationalists (what he refers to as "our nationalists in the ANC").

And since his topic is Comrade Joe Slovo, a Communist Revolutionary working in the Terrain of National Oppression, Jim was obliged to quote or cite Slovo on the role of various classes and strata (‘within the people's camp') in the national democratic revolution.

But the way Jim, the "practicing communist", if his self-praising is to be believed (which is highly unlikely given the oppositionist character vis-à-vis revolutionary discipline), did is to utter distortions. This proves his point of renouncing the current roles of ‘both organisations' - the ANC and the SACP.

Listen to what Jim says:

"I have prefixed this input with Slovo's almost prophetic warning when, writing in 1988 about the role of the revolutionary working class during the phase of the National Democratic Revolution he said:"

"It is obvious that the black capitalist class favours capitalism and that it will do its best to influence the post-apartheid society in this direction.

It is obvious that the black middle and upper classes who take part in a broad liberation alliance will jostle for hegemony and attempt to represent their interests as the interests of all Africans.

It is obvious that (like their counterparts in every part of the world) the black middle and upper strata, who find themselves on the side of the people's struggle, are often inconsistent and vacillating. They are usually the enemy's softest targets for achieving a reformist, rather than a revolutionary, outcome." 

From this quoiting of Slovo, our "practising revolutionary communist" concluded: "We are now witness to this ugly reality'!  Later in his "lecture", the same quote is repeated with another baseless allegation of Slovo's prophesy becoming the truth: the black middle and upper strata are now dominating the post-1994 trajectory, first GEAR and now NDP, he argued.

But this quotation by Jim can only present a partial picture and failure to reflect what Slovo actually said on this matter. Were it not of the selective quoting perhaps, Jim would have identified in Slovo writings, a different conclusion Slovo arrived at. Here is what Jim left out in his selective quoting of Slovo:

"But it is equally obvious that if the working class and its vanguard and mass organisations were to get locked up with themselves, the greatest harm would be done to the cause of both national liberation and social emancipation. By rejecting class alliances and going it alone, the working class would in fact be surrendering the leadership of the national struggle to the upper and middle strata. This would become the shortest route towards a sell-out reformist solution and a purely capitalist post-apartheid South Africa under the hegemony of a bourgeois-dominated black national movement. Along this path, ‘class purity' will surely lead to class suicide and ‘socialist'- sounding slogans will actually hold back the achievement of socialism."

The above directly concludes, or is preceded by, the paragraphs that Jim selectively quotes. First of all, to leave out this proposition of Slovo which sums up the whole of his revolutionary teaching on the role and place of various classes within the ‘people's camp' in the revolution and arrive at misguided conclusions that the SACP and the ANC are sell-out organisations, is an insult and complete renunciation of theory and practice of our revolution.

Jim cannot but know that Comrade Slovo and the SACP have repeatedly spoke about the importance of working class leadership and hegemony in the struggle for national liberation and socialism. Jim cannot but know that the concept of working class hegemony and leadership is at the heart of the SACP Medium Term Vision and SARS, and indeed Cosatu's 2015 Plan.

Perhaps Jim should have made use of the opportunity given to him to present an objective assessment of progress in taking forward Cosatu's 2015 Plan which was adopted in the early 2000s. His failure to this, absolutely blinded him in paying attention to objective conditions in favour of being trapped in subjective and factional ideas which are wrong in the extreme.    

Instead Jim poses a vague or general question about ‘the theory of communism versus practice'. In the concrete South African context this question is best posed as ‘what is the theory of struggle for national liberation and socialism'. Using abstract generalities he then charges that we - participants in the revolution - have not implemented the Freedom Charter, and that as a 'way-forward' we must immediately implement the Freedom Charter.

But now, look at this, Jim recognises Slovo as "credited with having authored the ‘Sunset Clauses' which inevitably brokered the deadlock which had been preventing real movement forward in the negotiations for a democratic South Africa". On the contrary, Jim does not border to develop a theory between the "credited" role of Slovo in relation to the said "sunset clauses" on the one hand and the implementation of the Freedom Charter on the other.

Jim simplistically tries to divorce Slovo from the SACP and the ANC and accuses both organisations of betraying the Freedom Charter. Actually, Jim is so blind to see that his argument, followed without deviation, accuses Slovo, altogether with the SACP and the ANC, as a sell-out, because, instead of enforcing the implementation of the Freedom Charter, Slovo authored "sunset clauses". This is of course nonsense.

Slovo understood, as the SACP and the ANC continue to do, that the revolution does not take place in a vacuum. Slovo developed a clear grasp of the configuration and the balance of forces. Instead of a voluntary ideological disarmament that characterizes the content and essence of Jim's "lecture", Slovo, and indeed the SACP and the ANC, focused on securing what could be secured on an immediate basis, not as a detour or a cul-de-sac to the revolution, but as a new basis of advancing further with the revolution. Jim should read the ANC Strategy and Tactics in order to appreciate this point.

Just one point about our "revolutionary practicing communist". Jim seems to confuse that Freedom Charter as a socialist, if not, a communist document, in that he reduces the charter to his communism. To the extent he read Slovo's seminal paper that he selectively quotes, Jim would have learned, from Slovo, that:

"The Freedom Charter and our Party Programme do not, however, project socialism as the immediate consequence of a people's victory".     

In no particular way did Slovo confuse the Freedom Charter to a programme for our "revolutionary practising communist". Slovo clearly understood that the Freedom Charter, as he states, "has evolved to express the common immediate aspirations of all the classes of the oppressed people". As Slovo states, again in the same pamphlet that is victimised by Jim's selective quoting, the Freedom Charter "is not, in itself, a programme for socialism, even though (as we argue later) it can provide a basis for uninterrupted advance to a socialist future".

The ‘failure to implement Freedom Charter' in the last 19 years is the conclusion of a "revolutionary practicing communist". This is conclusion is informed by his one-sided interpretation of actual developments in the last 19 years. This one-sided interpretation of the South Africa reality blinded the comrade not to see the class contested nature of the transition - the many advances and achievements of our revolution, the efforts to change policies that did not work, at least in the last 15-years or so - and response of our class enemies to that struggle.

In other words our "revolutionary practising communist" fails to see the struggle to implement the Freedom Charter in action. Jim only sees resistance to that struggle, and, unfortunately, he is so blinded by both ideological and political factionalism which has possibly produced his organisational factionalism, to see that the greatest resistance comes from outside, from our class opponents. This one-sided interpretation left him seeing nothing but an ‘empty tin' in actual struggles of the last 19 years.

Perhaps by Freedom Charter, Comrade Jim refers to ‘immediate nationalisation of commanding heights'. But even here, we are yet to see how Jim's perspective is different from that of the Party, COSATU and the ‘red-berets'. But it should be clear attempt to pose himself as more revolutionary than the rest of us, may indeed motivated by subjective feelings and factionalist posture.

Jim, whose Marxist textist approach can be recognised in some of his writings, has again gotten it wrong.  How can he distort the theory of our revolution as well articulated by Slovo and other documents of the Party? There could be many explanations. But one thing is certain. Internet searched quotations rather than a full comprehension of the actually quoted materials does not assist. Perhaps there are ideological roots that are worth exploring, some which are apparent in Jim's "lecture".

One of these features that can immediately be seen is opportunism.

Opportunism in the working class movement

The deliberate distortions of Slovo's writings presents itself in the "lecture" an act of opportunism. First by selectively quoting Slovo to present a sense that the revolution has been betrayed, Jim chose to opportunistically transform Slovo into "revolutionary" communist, akin to ultra-leftism, who (if he was still with us) would  have supposedly entered  into a factional battle against the ANC and the SACP leadership.

The second point, we find  throughout the "lecture", Jim presents himself and the others, "we", as "revolutionary" communist - a point that tends to mean they are not just communist, but  "practising" "revolutionary" communists.  This "revolutionary" communism distinguishes itself from the SACP.  

Listen to this:

‘We find every day, that there is a very big difference between the theory of Communism and its practice in South Africa.... But we practicing revolutionary communists are not surprised at how things have turned out in South Africa since our 1994 democratic breakthrough'.

"We practising revolutionary communists" who, in order to bolster their claims, deliberately distort Slovo's writing and our revolution. In this group of "revolutionary" communists, we find a transformed Slovo who somehow would have today occupied the same factional trenches with Jim against a "sell-out bourgeois dominated ANC and the SACP".

As Charles Setsubi noted at the funeral of the late comrade Tshepo Wadikapeso (October 2013), this "revolutionary" communism is actually a masquerade to the transformation of trade union organisations into some form of a political party of the working class -historically known within the working class movement as syndicalism. This syndicalist political form - which is laughingly branded Marxist-Leninist by its advocates - has been one of the principal forms of workerism in South Africa.

About 27 years ago, it was Comrade Jeremy Cronin who, writing in Isizwe, journal of the UDF (although he could not pen his name for various reasons), exposed workerism as it expresses itself in South Africa. He advanced that workerism, involving among others an advocacy of confining the struggle to the workplace, generally acquires different forms in South Africa with syndicalism being one of these forms.

From a syndicalist perspective, it is through the workplace and (to be more precise) through trade union organisation that working class struggle for socialist South Africa can be pursued. This is what Jim advocates when he baselessly accuse the SACP and ANC for having sold out and when he asserts: "Cosatu now remains the only organisation capable of independently articulating the interests and demands of the poor and the working class". But is should also be noted that this form of syndicalism has, on its own, a variety of theories and sub-theories.

Historically, workerist-syndicalism has been a feature of the South Africa trade union movement tradition and indeed, in many movements around the world. But it was really in the 1980s that it came to acquire importance when it sought to disconnect the struggle of the workers at the workplace from the struggle at the community level. In other words it sought to question the struggle of the working class as being integral part of the struggle for national liberation. To ideologically secure this position, workerist-syndicalism advocated for the "independence" of trade union movement, a position that looks very innocent when taken at face value. But in theory and practice syndicalists counterpose this notion of "independence" to the liberation alliance - to the SACP and ANC.

In fact it should be noted that Slovo's pamphlet that Jim selectively quotes and distorts was actually the response of the Party to the important debates within the trade union movement at that time about the attitude of working class (and consequently of trade unions) to the struggle for national democratic revolution and the relation of this revolution to the struggle for socialism in the concrete conditions of the South African reality.

Although Jim's "lecture" is muddle-headed, we can find traces of workerist syndicalism masquerading as "revolutionary" communism, as if communism if not revolutionary.

Jim's lecture is incredibly ridiculous. Listen to this: 'After GEAR was adopted in 1996, the SACP welcomed it. It took time for COSATU to win over the SACP in the fight against GEAR...'

This inept statement far from the truth (and we have this before in the ultra-left circles without a shred of evidence). Note that "winning over the SACP" is an attempt to project that the Party had a different view of GEAR before Cosatu's. That is nonsense, and we shall return to it in another intervention.

The attempt of workerist-syndicalism was to see the SACP or Cosatu splitting from the alliance or rather adopt an oppositionist stance against the ANC, they failed on both grounds. This is being resuscitated, this time with some additional tendency that seeks to achieve a split from Cosatu.

As Lenin once observed, right-wing and left-wing opportunisms "complimented each other'.

We have shown how Jim's "lecture" revealed his failure to understand the ABC of our national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism as plainly demonstrated by his failure to understand Slovo. His apparent acceptance of NDR and Freedom Charter does not save him from errors. He has exposed himself of being an "empty tin" of a workerist type.

Tebogo Phadu is a SACP and ANC member. This article first appeared in Umsebenzi Online, the online newsletter of the SACP.

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