Selective use of revolutionary phrases is a counter revolutionary tendency. Our revolutionary document the Freedom Charter, like the National Economic Plan, is not a dogma, but a guiding tool of our struggles. A response to Cde Irvin Jim.
The Secretary General of NUMSA Cde Ivin Jim correctly so in his problematic attempt to argue against the theoretical frame work of our National Development Plan, borrows the most profound and revolutionary phrase from the leader of the world communist movement Cde Vladimir Lenin, which reads as thus"
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. Champions of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes.
And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can-and, owing to their social position, must-constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organise those forces for the struggle."
I am confident that my our fellow comrade is borrowing this revolutionary phrase from our revered leader, Cde Vladimir Lenin, mindful of the true facts that selective application of revolutionary phrases is counter revolutionary, mindful that revolutionaries are always open for persuasion and by their character are never dogmatic or rigid in their thinking.
I am equally confident that my fellow comrade in arms is mindful of the most important fact that a revolution can only be led by the most advanced elements in society, leaders schooled in the correct theoretical foundations of the Marxist Leninist theory.
I am sure that my fellow comrade in arms is mindful of the fact that a revolution cannot be led by leaders who are either left wing or right wing opportunists. The holier than thou attitude and the tendency to masquerade ourselves to be more revolutionary than others is an act of counter revolution. Revolutionaries are the most humbled leaders of the people.
Dialectical and historical materialism teaches us that to be a revolutionary is not a permanent feature. The most fundamental reason why we should from time to time ascertain ourselves whether our world theoretical outlook is still consistent with the character and posture of our national democratic revolution.
What is even more important is wether the venomous revolutionary phrasing and vulgarisms you have decided to direct against your own national liberation movement is in consistent with the true traditions and culture of our revolutionary principle of democratic centralism.
Our national democratic revolution is confronted by two main counter revolutionary tendencies which are, left wing and right wing opportunism. Left wing or ultra left opportunism is a tendency that elevates tactical choices to principles and strategic objectives. It is opposed to compromises in principle and is vehemently rigid in changing tactics in the ebb and flow of our struggles.
The second tendency of right wing opportunism deals with strategic and principled issues as if they are tactical choices. In our own specific conditions we see this tendency deviating from its own historic mission and presenting itself as the authentic leader of our national democratic revolution. In essence the two tendencies will from time to time converge as they derive common theoretical perspectives.
The secretary general of NUMSA has publicly accused the collective leadership of our movement and some specific individual comrades such as Trevor Manuel of a treacherous crime of selling our revolution to the Democratic Alliance. The charge sheet is presented to our liberation movement after a historic period of over hundred years of an unbroken record of heroic of struggles against imperialism and colonialism of a special type. We are being accused of being a copy cat of the Democratic Alliance. In other words our liberation movement has sold our national democratic revolution to the highest bidder.
At the same pace the Democratic Alliance is accusing our national liberation movement of the challenges of poverty, disease and underdevelopment perpetuated by the centuries old legacy of imperialist oppression and exploitation. The DA has suddenly appeared in a new form of being the leader of the struggles of the people of our country. In this instance my dear comrade in arms has joined the same chorus with the DA to undermine the collective effort of our people to advance the objectives of our national Democratic revolution.
Lenin had always warned the working class movement against the monstrous tendencies of revolutionary phrasing. He said the following profound words as we repeat ourselves about revolutionary phrasing"
we must fight against the revolutionary phrase, we have to fight it, we absolutely must fight it, so that at some future time people will not say of us the bitter truth that a revolutionary phrase about revolutionary war ruined the revolution'.
He further said that ' such architects of counter revolution are their own profound masters in the attempt to misrepresent the preface and theory of our party.
questions must be raised sharply and things given their proper names, the danger being that otherwise irreparable harm may be done to the party and the revolution".
It is therefore correct on the contrary that people may have been the foolish victims of deception and self deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interest of some class or other behind all moral, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. Left wing opportunism will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realize that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of the ruling class.
Our revolutionary leader of the world working class movement Cde Vladimir Lenin had warned us of the dangers of the tendency to sing revolutionary slogans irrespective of their relevance to the concrete material conditions of a particular historical period. The most outstanding and fundamental feature that has distinguished our liberation movement from the rest, has been our consistent traditions on the application of Marxist Leninist theory as our revolutionary weapon of analysis.
He has always warned of the dangers that whoever who wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy, would inevitably arrive at the conclusions that are absurd and reactionary from both the political and economic perspectives. He would say that if any worker ask us at the appropriate moment why we should not go ahead and carry out our maximum programme, we should answer by pointing out how far from socialism the masses of the democratically elected people still are, how unorganized the proletariat still are and how undeveloped the class antagonism still are.
He would say that party cadres should organise hundreds of thousands of workers all over Russia, get the millions to symphasise with their programme, and that they should try to carry this task without confining to high sounding but hollow anarchist phrases and they would see at once the achievements of the party.
In his articulation of the conditions that made possible the victory of the Russian revolution he would say the following!!
First, by the class consciousness of the proletariat vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self sacrifice and heroism.
Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, merge in certain measure with the broadest masses of the working people, primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non proletariat masses of the working people.
Thirdly, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by the vanguard, the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience that they are correct.
He would further say that without these, conditions and discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the most advanced class, whose mission is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. He would say that without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall and we end up phrase mongering and clowning. On the other hand these conditions cannot emerge at once, they are created only by prolonged effort and had won experience.
He would say that it is not enough to have only the leadership of the proletariat, but the decisive phase of the revolution involves all social classes and must engage millions and tens of millions of people. All the classes hostile to us have became sufficiently entangled, are sufficiently at loggerheads with each other, have sufficiently weakened themselves in a struggle which is beyond its strength, and all the vacillating and unstable, intermediate elements have exposed themselves in the eyes of the people.
Lenin would emphasise that History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes. Two very important practical conclusions follow from this: first, that in order to accomplish its task the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception and secondly that the revolutionary class must be prepared for the most rapid and brusque replacement of one form by another.
In his theoretical works and concretely in his practical activity, he started from the principle that the forms of transition to socialism are dependent on the concrete balance of international and internal class forces, on the degree of organization of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the level of the economic structure and on the political traditions and forms of the organizations.
In 1908 the left Bolsheviks were expelled from the party for stubbornly refusing to understand the necessity of participating in the most reactionary parliament. Amongst them were the most splendid revolutionaries who were subsequently commendable members of the Communist party. They based their arguments based on the experiences of the 1905 boycott.
When the Tsar proclaimed the convocation of a consultative parliament in 1905, the Bolsheviks called for its boycott and which was supported by every teeth of all opposition parties that eventually led to the parliament swept by the revolution. The boycott proved correct at the time not because non participation in reactionary parliament is correct in general, but because the objective situation was accurately appraised. The conditions were such that they were leading to a rapid development of the mass strikes first into political strikes, then into a revolutionary strikes, and finally into an uprising.
Here the difference was that time the struggle was centered around a question as to wether the convocation of the first representative assembly should be left to the Tsar, or an attempt should be made to wrest the convocation from the old regime. When there was not, and could not be, any certainty that the objective situation was of a similar kind, and when there was no certainty of a similar trend and the same rate of development, the boycott was no longer correct.
The Bolsheviks boycott of the 1905 parliament enriched the revolutionary proletariat with the highly valuable political experience and showed that, when legal and illegal parliamentary and non parliamentary forms of struggles are combined, it is sometimes useful and even essential to reject parliamentary forms. It would however be highly erroneous to apply the same experience blindly,imitatively, and uncritically to other conditions and other situations.
The Bolshevik boycott of parliament in 1906 was a mistake although a minor and easily remediable one, the boycott of 1907, 1908 and the subsequent years was a most serious error and difficult to remedy, because, on the other hand, a very very rapid rise of the revolutionary tide and its conversion into an uprising was not expected, and, on the other hand, the entire historical situation attendant upon the renovation of the bourgeois monarchy called for legal and illegal activities being combined.
Today, when we look back at this fully completed historical period, whose connection with subsequent periods has now become quite clear, it becomes most obvious that in 1908-14 the Bolsheviks could not have preserved the core of the revolutionary party of the proletariat, had they not upheld, in a most strenuous struggle, the viewpoint that it was obligatory to combine legal and illegal forms of struggle, and that it was obligatory to participate even in a most reactionary parliament and in a number of other institutions hemmed in by reactionary laws.
Lenin would further say that to reject compromises not on principle, to reject the permissibility of compromises in general, no matter of what kind, is childishness, which it is difficult even to consider seriously. A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery.
He must direct all the force of criticism, the full intensity of merciless exposure and relentless war, against these concrete compromises, and not allow the past masters of "practical" socialism and the parliamentary Jesuits to dodge and wriggle out of responsibility by means of disquisitions on "compromises in general. It is in this way that the "leaders,, of the British trade unions, as well as of the Fabian society and the "Independent" Labour Party, dodge responsibility for the treachery they have perpetrated' for having made a compromise that is really tantamount to the worst kind of opportunism, treachery and betrayal.
There are different kinds of compromises. One must be able to analyse the situation and the concrete conditions of each compromise, or of each variety of compromise. One must learn to distinguish between a man who has given up his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to lessen the evil they can do and to facilitate their capture and execution, and a man who gives his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to share in the loot.
In politics this is by no means always as elementary as it is in this childishly simple example. However, anyone who is out to think up for the workers some kind of recipe that will provide them with cut-and-dried solutions for all contingencies, or promises that the policy of the revolutionary proletariat will never come up against difficult or complex situations, is simply a charlatan.
He would say that the left wing opportunists would not grasp this idea, for they do not know the ABC of the laws of development of commodity and capitalist production. They fail to see that even the complete success of a peasant insurrection, even the redistribution of the whole of the land in favour of the peasants and in accordance with their desires will not destroy capitalism at all, but will, on the contrary, give an impetus to its development and hasten the class disintegration of the peasantry itself.
Marxism teaches the proletarian not to keep aloof from the bourgeois revolution, not to be indifferent to it, not to allow the leadership of the revolution to be assumed by the bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, to take a most energetic part in it, to fight most resolutely for consistent proletar- ian democratism, for the revolution to be carried to its conclusion.
He would say that they could not get out of the bourgeois-democratic boundaries of the Russian revolution, but they could vastly extend these boundaries, and within these boundaries and they should fight for the interests of the proletariat, for its immediate needs and for conditions that will make it possible to prepare its forces for the future complete victory.
The democratic revolution is bourgeois in nature. The slogan of a general redistribution, or land and freedom that is the most widespread slogan of the peasant masses, downtrodden and ignorant, yet passionately yearning for light and happiness-is a bourgeois slogan. But we Marxists should know that there is not, nor can there be, any other path to real freedom for the proletariat and the peasantry, than the path of bourgeois freedom and bourgeois progress. We must not forget that there is not, nor can there be at the present time, any other means of bringing socialism nearer, than complete political liberty, than a democratic republic, than the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.
Whoever now refuses to recognise this slogan of revolutionary-demo- cratic dictatorship, the slogan of a revolutionary army, of a revolutionary government, and of revolutionary peasant committees, either hopelessly fails to understand the tasks of the revolution. Such a leader is unable to define the new and higher tasks evoked by the present situation, or is deceiving the people, betraying the revolution, and misusing the revolutionary slogan.
Consequently, full victory of this peasant movement will not abolish capitalism; but on the contrary, it will create a broader foundation for its development, and will hasten and intensify purely capitalist development. Full victory of the peasant uprising can only create a stronghold for a democratic bourgeois republic, within which a proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie will for the first time develop in its purest form.
It will therefore be in the best interest of our revolutionary alliance and our national democratic revolution that we proceed from the point of view of the correct analysis of the balance of forces. A proper analysis of both the objective and the subjective material conditions we find ourselves in, is a necessary precondition for our correct understanding of both the domestic and international balance of forces. This most relevant and necessary posture will assist us at all turn of events to navigate ourselves through these complex historical periods. The revolution cannot afford to leave its own people behind.
It will therefore be correct and relevant in our analysis of the present domestic and international balance of forces, to depart from the premise that we find ourselves having to advance the cause of our national democratic revolution, in a complex world material circumstances, dominated by a hostile and aggressive capitalists relations. The collapse of the Soviet block and the subsequent Communist states in the Eastern Europe was a major setback to the world working class movement. Therefore the tactical maneuvers we chose, must not threaten the unity and cohesion of our national democratic revolution.
Lenin proclaimed patriotism as" one of the deepest feelings firmly rooted in the hearts of people for hundreds and thousands of years from the moment their separate fatherlands began to exist. It has been one of the greatest, one can say, exceptional difficulties of our proletarian revolution that it had to pass through a period of sharpest conflict with patriotism during the time of the Brest-Litovsk peace.
It is a great, one may say, exceptionally favourable circumstance for the socialist revolution in the present situation that patriotism, "one of the feelings most deeply rooted in people", leans on and needs socialism in the struggle against imperialism for national interests. In this way patriotism and democracy have become mighty weapons of the workers' class in present times and, step by step, they bring masses of new allies to the workers' class".
One is still convince that to stand on the roof of the house and bark at your own liberation movement, like when a jackal barks at the moon for the whole night for no reason, is an act tantamount to a counter revolution. An act that seeks to reverse back the decisive gains of our national democratic revolution.
My response to you is not an attempt to rebuke your honest and revolutionary views about the adopted National Development Plan. In itself is it not a dogma, but the most comprehensive plan that seeks to guide in a more systematic way, our developmental agenda for years to come. Rigorous debates around what kind of a state do we want is an ongoing process, guided by concrete material conditions of the time.
Selective application of revolutionary phrases is a counter revolutionary tendency. Our revolutionary document the freedom charter, like the National Development Plan, is not a dogma, but a guiding tool of our struggles. Revolutionaries are the most hopeful about the future, the future of the suffering people of the world. We will march with our people on our forward uninterrupted march to socialism.
Justice Piitso is the former Ambassador to Cuba and the former provincial secretary writing this article on his personal capacity.
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