Numsa 2011 End of Year Message
29 December 2011.
Johannesburg
"Crisis of the (capitalist) System:
It becomes increasingly obvious for millions of working people that the crisis is a crisis of the system. It is not faults within the system but the system itself that is faulty, generating regular and periodic crises. It results from the sharpening of the main contradiction of capitalism between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation and not from any version of the management policy of the system or from any aberration based on the greed of some bankers or other capitalists or from the lack of effective regulatory mechanisms. It highlights the historical boundaries of capitalism and the need to strengthen the struggles for anti-monopoly anti-capitalist ruptures, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism."
(The 13th International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, Greece, 9 - 11 December, 2011).
As we say goodbye to 2011, and say hello to 2012, Metalworkers should find time to reflect, very deeply, on the world we live in, the Africa we belong to, the South Africa in which we carry out our working class struggles, and consider the challenges confronting our project for a Socialist South Africa, and a Socialist World.
Below we set down some of our perspectives, on the world and the challenges the working class will face in 2012 and beyond.
As we advance towards our 2012 Numsa National Congress, in the first quarter of 2012 we will be releasing Numsa Discussion Documents on some of the areas covered below, to assist metalworkers in the formulation of Resolutions in our Congress.
We offer this as our End of Year Message to Metalworkers.
1. The World today: global capitalism
1. Capitalism is a system fuelled and powered by the addiction to accumulate, of capital.
2. We live in a capitalist world. Never before in the history of humankind has one economic, political and social system so dominated the world.
3. Indeed, the world capitalist system is everyday forcing all peoples of the world to eat the same kinds of food through the global system of franchises, to wear similar clothes through the promotion of brands, to listen to the same kind of music via the global music industry and to watch the same kinds of movies, largely dominated by the American Hollywood film industry.
4. Thus we see the evolution, before our eyes, everyday, and the penetration of capitalism in all our facets of life.
5. A world legal and political system suited to the private accumulation of massive wealth - so called liberal democracy - is thus being thrust upon all nations of the world, even the most stubborn one such as China!
6. As the Communist Manifesto foretold more than 150 years ago, nothing is immune from the penetration of capitalism and its influences, not even the family. Indeed, all that is holly is truly profaned as everyone - doctors, teachers, priests, lawyers and so on are all turned into paid labourers in the capitalist system.
7. Everything and everyone seems to be up for sale, as capitalism constantly creates and chases for new markets everywhere, including in the most hidden and private relationships of the family!
8. In its greed to conquer the world and to accumulate wealth, the capitalist system is heating the Earth dangerously, polluting the air, rivers, lakes and seas, destroying natural vegetations and forests, vanishing animal species and generally threatening to destroy the world as we know it.
9. Capitalism is a system in which many people contribute their labour to produce something, and a few appropriate, take, that which is produced.
2. The Global Crisis of Capitalism
1. The 13th International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, Greece, 9 - 11 December, 2011, correctly, in our view at Numsa, says the following, about the ongoing and deepening global crisis of the capitalist system:
"It becomes increasingly obvious for millions of working people that the crisis is a crisis of the system. It is not faults within the system but the system itself that is faulty, generating regular and periodic crises. It results from the sharpening of the main contradiction of capitalism between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation and not from any version of the management policy of the system or from any aberration based on the greed of some bankers or other capitalists or from the lack of effective regulatory mechanisms. It highlights the historical boundaries of capitalism and the need to strengthen the struggles for anti-monopoly anti-capitalist ruptures, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism."
2. It is not faults within the capitalist system but the system itself that is faulty! Thus it generates regular and periodic crises.
3. The capitalist system is a crisis itself. This crisis stems from the sharpening of the main contradiction of capitalism between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation.
4. Thus the answer to the question of the causes of the crisis of capitalism cannot be found in any version of the management policy of the system or from any aberration based on the greed of some bankers or other capitalists or from the lack of effective regulatory mechanisms. The answer is there for all to see: it is in the private appropriation of that which is socially produced!
5. At Numsa we restate these self evident truths about the capitalist system because we know that the system itself produces a large global pool of its own economists, sociologists, politicians, culturalists and so on whose sole purpose in life is to conceal the most obvious fact, that the cause of the crises of the capitalist system is the system itself; it is faulty as it rests on the private accumulation of social production!
6. At Numsa we agree with the 13th International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties that the sharpening of the main contradiction of capitalism between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation.... highlights the historical boundaries of capitalism and the need to strengthen the struggles for anti-monopoly anti-capitalist ruptures, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
7. At Numsa we see no end to the crises of capitalism and the global misery this unleashes without the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism!
8. Numsa is happy to note that our South African Communist Party was ably represented, at this important meeting of world working class political formations.
9. As we move into 2012, Numsa is convinced that the United States and European governments will increasingly fail to rescue their governments, banks and industries from the vicious grip of the ongoing devastation of the crisis of global capitalism.
10. The US is a heavily indebted country running an impossible deficit. European governments are heavily indebted and many are actually bankrupt.
11. As China, Asia, Brazil and India begin to demonstrate real signs of slowing growth, the US and Europe will inevitably find themselves even more squeezed.
12. There is no easy escape route for the global capitalist system other than through intensification of wars to control markets, secure resources, and guarantee their trading relations.
13. Thus we see already the invasion of Libya, war drums beating over Syria and Iran, and the general resort to military methods.
14. It is impossible to escape the inevitable conclusion that the world has never been so close to a world war, as we are today!
3. The Global South and Africa: From Neo-liberalism to uncertainty!
1. Historically, an in the main, in the global division of labour of the world capitalist system having been consigned to the role of providers of cheap labour and natural resources, the global South which is still reeling from the massive neo-liberal onslaught on its economies and societies, will inevitably suffer the consequences of the global crisis of the capitalist system longer, with much more devastation of their societies.
2. Thus we see already the effects of the capitalist crisis in the Arab Spring Revolutions - Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen - and so on.
3. The global crisis is riding on the back of the massive neo-liberal destruction of rural agriculture, privatisations, removal of urban state food subsidies, destruction of local national economic production and the resultant massive unemployment and poverty crises especially among the youths, commercialisation of state economic assets and so in the Global South.
4. While parts of Latin America have revolted by promoting Left wing political formation, the picture is not good for the South, generally.
4. South Africa: 17 Years into the Democratic Transition and an untransformed white monopoly capitalism and its complex, multi-layered dangerous development crisis
1. The ongoing global crisis of capitalism simply threatens to blow out of proportion the already explosive triple crisis of massive unemployment, mass poverty and extreme inequalities in South Africa.
2. While massive social gains have been recorded in housing, water, sanitation, education, health, nutrition, electricity, security and so on of millions of South Africans, these have been on the back of an untransformed white dominated economy which has defined limits to progressive reforms.
3. Thus essentially, despite the positive gains, the basic structure of South African economy and society remains untransformed: Colonialism of Special Type in which black and African labour is at the bottom and white monopoly capital dominates and controls the bulk of the country's wealth and social life.
4. Twelve percent of South African society which is white controls the bulk of the economy and monopolises social resources.
5. Productive capacity is concentrated in white male hands.
6. Unemployment is largely black and African, and predominantly African youth and African female.
7. Shacks and townships continue to mark the apartheid racial geography of the country.
8. Extremely dangerous and inferior transport for black and African communities contrasts sharply with the supper modern vehicular and rail transport of the rich, who continue to be predominantly white.
9. Black children in general and African children in particular are condemned to terribly inferior education and health facilities, as unlike White children who attend schools and health facilities with similar qualities as in Europe.
10. Essentially, there is now a growing danger of revolts from youth unemployment. There is a growing restlessness, and an increasing awareness, without the sufficient and necessary political and historic education about the real class, racial and gender origins of the triple crisis of South Africa, that post 1994 capitalist South Africa is leaving behind, abandoning, its black and African youths!
11. The failure to destroy white monopoly of economic and social resources has defined the limits of local government for black and African communities. Service delivery riots and demonstrations are a common feature of community life.
12. As we move into 2012, the deepening global crisis of capitalism threatens to turn the already horrible situation of the majority of black and African working class communities into explosive pressure cookers!
5. Metalworkers and their response to the crisis of South African capitalism
1. From 2008 and intensifying in 2011, Numsa has fought against the global and South African capitalist system as the main cause of the misery which characterise the lives of working class.
2. We have held Jobs Summits.
3. We have fought against the Apartheid wage system which continues in this country long after 1994.
4. Numsa has fought retrenchments and forced fake "voluntary severance packages"
5. Numsa has engaged government on the need for a new revolutionary accumulation regime for South Africa.
6. Numsa has championed the demand to ban labour brokers.
7. Numsa has called for the substitution of inflation targeting with jobs targeting, by the Reserve Bank.
8. We have demanded for an industrial strategy to grow the South African economy on a jobs led path.
9. We have unapologetically called for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy and the basic wealth of the land, thus championing the implementation of the Freedom Charter.
10. In Cosatu, we have championed the call for socialism, and the unity of Cosatu Unions.
11. Numsa has hosted a global workshop on global warming of progressive Left formations, during the just ended COP17.
12. In 2012 and beyond we need to assess our weaknesses, strengths, failure and success in the struggles and craft new strategies and tactics to advance the interests of metal workers.
6. Strategic challenges confronting the global working class
There s no substitute to the revolutionary overthrowing of the global capitalist system, and its replacement by Socialism. The alternative is the destruction of life as we know it by the decaying global capitalist system.
Never before has working class internationalism, universalism, been more important than now. This is in fact made possible by the very expansion of capitalism all over the globe!
Rather than wasting valuable time trying to craft new capitalist policies that may restore the falling and failing rate of profits, thus reforming rather than destroying the capitalist system, the global working class must be engaged with visioning and militantly fighting for a new world, a world of the post capitalist era, Socialism.
7. The South African working class and the struggle for Socialism
As we move into 2012, there is no substitute to growing the power, theoretical capacity and revolutionary quality of the South Africa n Communist Party.
Every metalworker must ask themselves why they are not members of the South African Communist Party in 2012.
History teaches us that no class has succeeded to outsource to another class the protection and advancement of its class interests. The working class must hegemonies the ANC and its Alliance in 2012 and beyond.
The unity of Cosatu Unions must be treated as sacrosanct, in 2012. Principled, revolutionary working class unity must be promoted in Cosatu at all times.
8. Revolutionary tasks, into 2012
There is work to be done to win the fight for a new revolution growth path, new accumulation regime based on redistribution and jobs growth, in South Africa.
In South Africa, there is no guarantee for peace, progress and democracy without first dismantling the white dominated Minerals-Energy-Finance Complex and placing the South African economy on a jobs driven industrialisation strategy.
We must do what we can to defeat the re- emergency of the 1996 Class Project such as we have seen elements of it in the NPC and its NDP, in Treasury and in the Reserve Bank.
Forging greater African and global working class links around the struggle for a Socialists world must be a priority next year.
The defence of the NDR and the unity of the revolutionary Alliance will be crucial in the historic political events of 2012.
Goodbye 2011 and welcome 2012!
Statement issued by Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary, December 29 2011
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