POLITICS

Mangaung an opportunity

Justice Piitso says revolutionaries must defend the collective leadership, led by Jacob Zuma

Mangaung presents an opportunity to all revolutionaries to swell the ranks and defend our national liberation movement against the wishes of our adversaries.

Karl Marx would always say ' the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, the class which is the ruling material force is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. Tthe class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant relationships grasped as ideas'.

This profound exposition by our world renowned philosopher and the founder of our world communist movement is constantly becoming more relevant at all material times than ever before. The exposition continues to correspond with the conjectural realities of our analysis of the world class balance of forces that correctly so positions the struggles of the working class to be at the matrix of a complex volatile world environment. 

It is therefore as a consequences of this dominant material relationship by the world accumulation regime, that the working class finds itself having to take forward the struggles for the construction of a new world social order, under difficult conditions juxtaposed by the hostile world class contradictions. Our analysis therefore of the unfolding world events should precipitate from a terrain that interrogate the massive influence these dominant ideas of the imperialist forces have on our contemporary post war transitional period.

The immediate task of our struggles within these hostile post war material conditions is to confront the aggressive posture the military industrial complex has assumed within the world body politics. It is from this context that we comprehend the poisonous theatre posed by the fragile world milieu and the impact it has on the outlook of the progressive struggles waged by the people of the world, including our own national democratic revolution.

It therefore becomes the urgent task of all revolutionaries within our national liberation movement and more particularly, without fear of any contradictions, members of our communist party, to play a more central role in influencing the positions our country resort to from time to time at the multilateral level. We have the revolutionary task of ensuring that our democratic government always act in consistence with the common principles of working solidarity and internationalism, in her endeavor to create better living conditions for the poor people of the world.

The world and its entire people are faced by the inevitable outcomes of the hostile contradictions imposed by the unipolar world. The collapse of the soviet block and communist states in the Eastern Europe have changed the world class balance of forces to be in favour of the international monopoly capital. The unipolar world has afforded imperialism with the monopoly of dominance of all important pockets of power necessary to bring effective transformation of our world for the better. 

The bulk of the world institutions at the level of governance such as the Security Council, The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization and many more are unable the resolve the crisis of the capitalist relations ravaging the future of humanity apart.The deep phenomenal financial crisis that has thrown the economies of the world into turmoil, the unprecedented challenges of climate change and escalating levels of class inequalities and underdevelopment, poverty, disease and unemployment are the features that define the characteristics of the present world accumulation regime.

These unimaginable panorama of events, if not understood from a correct perspective have an enormous propensity to plunge the future of humanity and at the same time prohibit the capacity of the progressive movement to explore common grounds in resolving the daunting challenges facing us. Revolutionaries and all genuine members of our party therefore have the task to empower the rest of humanity with the necessary tools of analysis to enable it grabble with the unfolding complex world realities. Without revolutionary theory the working class will be unable to unleash its struggles to change the concrete material world for the noble cause of its own freedom.

The class contradictions between the working class and the authoritative regimes particularly within the Arab world confirms the hostile complexities presented by the neo liberal world. The world superpowers are blowing a trumpet in support of what they refer as the victory of the people of the Arab world against the tyrant regime that for so many decades violated their fundamental human rights and became their main impediment against their struggles for freedom and democracy.

However the archives of the history of the working class confirm the indisputable truth that over the years imperialism and colonialism have been manipulating these authoritative regimes for their selfish interests at the expense of the gross violation of the dignity and human rights of their oppressed people. Under the auspices of the US led imperialism and transnational capital, these regimes flourish as buffer zones to circumvent the expanding communist influence in the world. 

Therefore the cardinal feature and characteristic of all these authoritative regimes has been to advance the interest of imperialism at the expense of its own people through out the world. It becomes ridiculous for the superpowers therefore, to assume a posture that they are the liberators of the people of the Arab world. The pertinent question we have to ask is to find out as to where were these superpowers during the prolonged periods of insurmountable hardships suffered by the people of the Arab world over the years.

The underpinning reality is that it was not imperialism but the self conscience of the people that propelled them to forge the struggles forward for their self emancipation. As we stated above the ruling class is dispensing its influence through its massive propaganda machinery to determine the outlook and the direction of the world affairs. It is from this context that we understand that it is not our consciousness that determines our being but our being that determines our consciousness. It is in the character of the working class to be able to separate the truth from falsehood.

Marx would define such turning points in history as moments in which' 'morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development, but men developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, doing with their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking'. As a precondition for the advancement of our revolutionary struggles for the noble cause of humanity, we are duty bound to underpin our analysis of the unfolding world socio economic and political circumstances from this point of view.

It will therefore be in the best interest of our national democratic revolution and also a practice in consistence with the true values, culture and traditions of our glorious movement to appreciate the unfolding world events and the extent to which they impact on the posture of our own struggles to construct a national democratic society. In this instance members of our party should without any apology be able to locate the role of the enemy in the mist of the unfolding struggles for the consolidation of our national democratic revolution led by our national liberation movement.

It has become more evident that counter revolutionary insurgents from both within and outside the ranks of our national liberation movement, and in collaboration with international monopoly capital are determined to erode the tremendous achievements we have gained in the past hundred years of rich history of our struggles led by our national liberation movement. Their primary focus in the past few years since polokwane conference has been to undermine the collective leadership of our movement from within. 

This is part of the bigger picture by imperialism and neo colonialism in the world to undermine the unity and cohesion of progressive movements and their people. In our country the immediate thread of this counter revolution has been the unity and cohesion of the revolutionary alliance led by our movement and our people. The antagonistic class forces within our ranks want to donate the soul of the ANC to the international monopoly capital.

It will therefore be in the best interest of the future of our movement and our people that all revolutionaries occupy the forefront trenches by defending the collective leadership of our movement, led by Cde Jacob Zuma. Our support to current leadership of our movement is based on our fundamental principles of democratic centralism and organizational unity. 

We are making a clarion call to all members of our party and the membership of our movement in general to lead by example as we commence with the process for the nomination of candidates to serve in the national executive committee of the ANC. The forthcoming historic conference to be held in Mangaung at the end of this year, presents a noble opportunity to all revolutionaries to swell the ranks of our national liberation movement against the wishes of our adversaries.

Phatse Justice Piitso is the former Ambassador to Cuba and provincial secretary of the SACP in Limpopo writing this article in his personal capacity. 

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