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Title: What’s “Left”? Author: Workers’ Solidarity Federation Date: 22 August 1996 Language: en Topics: the left, capitalism, anarcho-syndicalism Source: Retrieved on 28th October 2021 from http://struggle.ws/africa/wsfother/whats_left.html Notes: Talk by the Workers Solidarity Federation, Wits branch 22 August 1996.
Comrades, the starting point of this talk today is that we need an
alternative to capitalism. We need an alternative to capitalism.
Capitalism has repeatedly failed the majority of the world’s population.
According to recent reports:
countries home to 45% of the world’s people.
income. 30 years ago, the richest 20% only got 70% of the world’s
income,
Capitalism has failed the majority of our people too:
farming land in South Africa
This is what capitalism is all about- a profit system in which the rich
get richer, and the poor get poorer. And capitalism is also the major
cause of problems like racism. Capitalism in South Africa was and is
built on the super- exploitation of the African working-class. As if
this isn’t bad enough, the bosses’ greed is causing environmental
problems on such a scale that the Earth’s very ability to sustain life
is threatened.
We need an alternative to capitalism, now more than ever. We need a But
today we find a major crisis in the broad socialist movement. Since
World War One. there have been two dominant ideas on how we should fight
to get to socialism. Both of these have now collapsed.
The first model was social-democracy. A good example was the Labour
Party in England.
The basic idea of these guys was that you get to socialism by slowly
reforming the capitalist system. How do you do this? By voting for
social- democratic and Labour Parties in elections. By making small
reforms such as giving workers a small bit of income when they are
unemployed. By getting the trade unions to work with the bosses to
develop the economy.
Many of these policies were put in place after 1945- the end of World
War 2.
One thing is definite, and that is that social-democrat policies did
nothing to stop capitalism. Even if they brought about some welfare
benefits, they never ended inequality and poverty in society. They
weakened the trade unions by trying to get them to work with the bosses.
The unions were held back from a consistent struggle against the bosses,
and developed a undemocratic leadership of paid leaders and so-called
“experts”.
These social-democratic policies were only possible while capitalism was
going through an economic boom. Once the boom ended in the 1970s, the
bosses tried to keep up profits by lowering taxes and by pushing down
wages.
The governments led by social-democrats, such as the Labour Party in
England, led this attack. How can this be so? What the social-democrats
did not realise was that the State apparatus- parliament, the police,
the government bureaucracy- is not the friend of the workers and the
poor. It is the tool of the bosses. Real power does not lie in
parliament, but in the big companies, the army and the top officials.
Since this time, the social-democrats have been in retreat. They have
lost hope; today their politics does not even pretend to be socialist.
And many workers won’t vote for them because of all their broken
promises,
The second model of socialism was that of revolutionary Marxism. The
main example here is obviously the Communist Parties. There were also a
number of small Trostkyite groups, but these have never had the mass
base of the Communist Parties,
The basic idea here was that a militant “vanguard party”, a
revolutionary socialist party of “advanced militants”, should lead the
workers to forcefully seize State power. Socialism could then be
introduced by the State. How? By nationalising the economy. By
introducing central planning, By suppressing forces seen as
anti-revolutionary.
The model for this strategy was the Russian Revolution of 1917, where
the Communist Party of Lenin and Trotsky took State power and introduced
what they saw as socialism. This model of fighting for socialism was
also successful in other countries such as East Europe, China and Cuba.
But in the late 1980s, most of these regimes collapsed. There were two
main causes for this collapse.
The one reason was an economic crisis. The centrally planned economies
were badly co-ordinated, resulting in many shortages. While they were
good at developing heavy industry like steel, they proved unable to
develop high technology goods like computers. They proved unable to
provide basic consumer goods like sanitary towels for women.
The other reason was mass discontent. Millions of workers and students
mobilised to overthrow these governments. Why? The reason was partly
that people were sick of regular shortages and economic problems. People
were also fighting for democracy. They were tired of living under
governments that banned trade unions, used forced labour, suppressed
freedom of speech and political association, and conquered nearby
countries such as Afghanistan and Tibet.
The failure of the Communist parties was that they thought socialism
must come from above through a powerful State dominated by one party.
They thought the State must run the economy from above. In 1918, Lenin
advised to “study the State-capitalism of the Germans, to adopt it with
all possible strength, not to spare dictatorial methods to hasten its
adoption” (On Left Infantilism and the Petty Bourgeois Spirit, cited in
EH Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, p99). He sneered at calls for
a congress of workers to plan the economy (1921, 10^(th) Congress of the
Bolshevik Party) (cited in D. Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism: the
left-wing alternative , p232):
“A producers’ Congress! What precisely does that mean? It is difficult
to find words to describe this folly. I keep asking myself, can they be
joking? Can one really take these people seriously? While production is
always necessary, democracy is not. Democracy of production generates a
series of radically false ideas.”
Similarly, Trotsky denounced those who were critical of the Communist
Party’s practice of suppressing political opponents on the grounds that
they “placed the workers right to elect representatives above the party.
As if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if
that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the
workers democracy” (L.Trostky, Sochineya, Moscow 1925, p89, 236. Also
cited in Nove, Studies in Economics and Russia, 1990, 181 et seq).
As a result of the twin collapse of social-democracy and Communism, the
left is in a crisis. Many organisations have collapsed; those who
survive hold no clear vision of a future non-capitalist society.
In trying to chart a way forward, we need to take a hard look at past
experiences. We need to recognise that much of what passed for socialism
in the last 70 years was nothing of the sort. Rather than see capitalism
as triumphant, we need to see these versions of socialism as flawed.
There is an alternative to capitalism. It is represented by
Anarchist-Syndicalism, that is to say, by the mass-based tradition of
revolutionary anti-authoritarian socialism. As socialists, we need to
identify with the history and ideas of Anarchist-Syndicalism,
Anarchist-Syndicalism has always rejected the reformist ideas of the
social democrats and the dictatorial methods of the Communists. Rather
than see socialism as something handed out from on high by a small
minority using State power, Anarchist- Syndicalists argue that socialism
must come from the ground up.
Socialism can only be created by the mass organisations of the
working-class and the poor and these are the democratic civics and trade
unions, The trade unions must organise the workers to take-over and
democratically manage the land, mines, offices and factories.
Capitalism must go. So too must the State. The State is an undemocratic
structure which that concentrates power in the hands of a small elite,
The Stare defends the interests of an exploiting ruling class of bosses,
professional politicians, military leaders and State managers.
Socialism will never be created by the State. The State must be replaced
by workers democracy organised from the ground up through the trade
unions and democratic civics. The revolution must be defended by a
democratic workers army controlled by the unions and civics.
Anarchist-Syndicalism has historically had a huge influence on
working-class and peasants struggles. May Day itself began as a
commemoration of 5 Anarchist militants executed by the American
government in 1887 on false charges. The executions followed after the
Anarchist movement played a leading role in organising a general strike
of Black and White workers for the eight- hour day.
Today Anarchist-Syndicalism is again emerging as a powerful force on the
left. It is perhaps the only revolutionary movement which is growing in
the world today. In Nigeria, the Anarchist- Syndicalist organisation the
Awareness League is playing a central role in the struggle against the
military dictatorship,
The workers and the poor will continue to fight back against the bosses-
with or without the help of Anarchist-Syndicalists and other socialists.
But a final victory for the mass of the people over the bosses and
rulers requires that the workers and the poor
defeating the bosses and rulers
any kind. A vision of Stateless socialism (Anarchism)
In order to reach this situation, we need to build an
Anarchist-Syndicalist organisation that will have clear politics and a
democratic structure. An organisation that will
fighting units, This requires winning the rank-and-file over to
revolutionary ideas, and it requires a fight to remove the power of the
trade union bureaucracy (the conservative paid leadership)
building of a student union that can champion student struggles
If you agree with what we have said here, you should think of joining
us!