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Title: The Political Party System Author: Warren McGregor Date: 2019 Language: en Topics: political parties, anti-state Source: https://zabalazabooks.net/2020/03/26/the-political-party-system-no-friend-of-the-working-class/ Notes: This pamphlet is an extract from the book Strategy: Debating Politics Within and at a Distance from the State – Eds. John Reynolds & Lucien van der Walt published by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa
The question of state government elections and running a workers or
socialist political party continues to be raised in the working-class
movement and the Left globally. As we may know, there was excitement
about the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party in Britain, about
the successes of left political parties in certain parts of Europe and
Latin America and, more recently, certain shifts to more centrist
positions in the United States amongst a section of the Democratic Party
calling themselves “Democratic Socialists.” In South Africa, many
workers and some activists seem cautiously optimistic about NUMSA’s
formation of the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party that participated
in the 2019 general elections, but did not manage to get a seat in
Parliament.
With this in mind, we need to look at issues of social transformation
within the framework of what we want to achieve and the relationship
between the means and ends of struggle in pursuit of these aims. The
historic and ultimate socialist end is a society characterised by
collective democratic control of the political and economic systems and
one without class divisions and oppression of any kind – in real terms,
a society without the state and capitalism in particular.
If this is so, is this revolutionary transformation possible by means of
state power and political parties that aim to capture this form of
power? The question is not only one of ideological orientation, but also
impacts on strategic and tactical considerations, associated with
adherence to a chosen ideology. Before we get into it, I want to stress
that we are participating in and waging a battle of ideas. This is not
just between an embattled working class – broadly understood as workers,
the unemployed and their families – and the opposing ruling class. It is
also a battle of competing tendencies, or ideologies within the working
class itself, e.g. nationalism, populism, various Marxist-Leninist
tendencies, anarchism/syndicalism, etc.
The question of elections and political parties has to be interrogated
within the dual contexts of this battle of ideas (inter and intra class)
and the relative weakness of union movements in relation to the forces
of the ruling class – the state and the corporation. Whereas
corporations and their capitalist philosophies have become ubiquitous
throughout the world, the influence of unions and the ideas of
collective organisation as combative and transformative forces are
relatively quite weak.
There may be large numbers of workers unionised, but this does not
necessarily translate into socioeconomic transformative action through
the unions. This general weakness is not only characteristic of unions –
many other working class social and Left movements are unable to
continue struggles against the oppressive nature of modern-day
capitalism beyond protests and petitions. As such, much action is
defensive in nature (e.g. for wage increases above inflation, for access
to affordable energy in poor townships, etc.), and rarely are there
attempts at changing the relations of ownership and expanding working
class control and power into the economy and society.
It is therefore understandable, in a conjuncture of generally weak
workers’ and Left formations, that the idea of a Workers Party is
appealing for many people and sections of the Left. However, the need to
capture state power is also a long-standing idea held and developed by
the statist Left ideologies guiding these people. The claim of the need
for such a party asserts a new locus for struggle, the voice for
socialist ideas and an entity that can bring together working and
popular class movements across a range of sectors. The claim rests on
the idea that unions can only ever be economic organisations that aim at
day-to-day improvements in the lives of members and workers.
There are three main versions of the party project:
Nationalism: the idea is that all classes of an oppressed nationality
should be united into a popular front, forming a party that can take
state power. The state will then carry out the supposed “will” of the
nation. In this model, the working class is just one part of a broad
church, and must compromise to keep bourgeois allies in the nation on
board. Nationalists sometimes use revolutionary methods, sometimes
reformist methods.
Social democracy: this is the idea that the working class can win the
existing state, using means like parliament, corporatism and expanded
state control of the economy to shift society towards socialism through
a series of reforms. A social democratic party is usually a mass party,
as it needs maximum numbers to win elections. Social democracy is always
reformist.
Marxism-Leninism, or communism: unlike the other two, the aim is always
revolutionary. There should a revolutionary seizure of state power and
the creation of a new revolutionary state, which will nationalise the
economy and run it under a central government plan. There will be a
violent suppression of the capitalist class. Here, the socio-political
realm is to be centrally engaged by a political party that best
represents the wishes of the working class as a whole. This they call
the vanguard party, uniting the working-class vanguard – the most
conscious and revolutionary layers of the class – giving it overall
direction through party leadership. The vanguard party, which leads the
revolution, is a minority party much of the time, as much of the working
class is not conscious and revolutionary. It may support nationalists
for strategic reasons, but the ultimate aim is a state along the lines
of the old USSR.
Clearly many people on the Left think the real goal is to achieve state
power to realise the promises of the future. In reality this means
building a political party and pouring a substantial amount of resources
– human and financial – into its development. Many also believe that a
Left party, however problematic, would be better than the existing
parties, particularly those of the radical right and populists promoting
race essentialism and xenophobia, who foment fear of and between
different social groupings. History is not too kind, however, to the
belief that political parties are vehicles of radical, progressive,
socialist transformation.
Parties
Within this framework, the idea of state power is wholly
under-scrutinised from a critical perspective. Few discussions, if any,
exist within working class organisational circles as to the nature and
impact of state power on political organisations and mass formations
linked to parties in power.
When we compare the thousands of speeches and documents and resolutions
on the nature of capitalism, we cannot help but notice that the state is
simply not seriously analysed. The problems in the state are seen as
largely lying with the policies of ruling parties; the state as a
structure of minority class rule is barely noted. Hardly any debates
take place regarding the state’s role as an institution of ruling class
power and whether or not the state, with its hierarchical structures of
centralised, individual control, can ever be accountable to a mass
working class base.
Also missing in the discussions about elections, parties and the labour
movement, is a serious evaluation of the track record of parties –
whether in power or in opposition. In this conceptual vacuum, many
continue to argue that the problem is existing parties have failed
because they have had bad leaders. This may account for the excitement
about Corbyn’s influence in the UK’s Labour Party, Cyril Ramaphosa
ascending the ANC throne in South Africa, or Bernie Sanders’ popularity
in the USA. For others, the problem is bad ideas, with the solution
being a better party manifesto.
However, little attention is paid to structural issues – of
organisation, decision-making and control. At the extreme, some of these
Left lines of thought propose a better Communist or Socialist Party
because of the failure of the historical incumbent. However, there is
little interrogation of what these failures were, why they occurred
(beyond bad leadership and alliances) and whether or not these failures
are inherent to the very idea and hierarchical structure of a
self-declared “vanguard” party.
When we focus attention on these and other such questions, perhaps we
can account for what happened to the ANC in South Africa, particularly
in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It suggests more than just
the impact of key personalities or even programmes. Once in power, the
ANC – hierarchically structured and founded on an unprincipled mishmash
of neoliberal capitalist principles trumpeting faith in free markets, on
the one hand, and Developmental State leanings, on the other – rapidly
developed into a party characterised by state looting, corruption and
social repression.
There are many similarities shared with liberation movements that came
to power elsewhere in the former colonial world, as well as with the old
Labour, workers’ and socialist parties in other parts. Once they got
into office and despite many promising early initiatives, the new ruling
party proved incapable of fostering substantive, transformative
socio-economic development.
There are also shared histories amongst trade union movements that chose
similar political pathways, particularly of alliance to political
parties who claimed to speak on behalf of the working class, or, as in
many cases in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the “oppressed nation.” In
the South African case, an official alliance between the ANC and COSATU
has, for various reasons, had a devastating impact on the union
movement. Amongst a host of other issues, it has caused the
fragmentation of the workers’ movement and its organisations, a decline
of union democracy, individual jockeying for union position to access
wealth and future political power via the ANC (leading to assassinations
in many cases), and the spread of corruption. Many of these issues stem
from the alliance, with union position seen as a ladder for personal
political and economic gain.
We need to look at the trajectory of rot, failure and perhaps even
betrayal here in South Africa to understand the similarities between
events in post-colonial Africa and elsewhere. This can be a basis for a
more informed discussion about ideas for the way forward for the working
class – away from mere rhetorical flourishes, sloganeering and rehashing
of old ideas that have failed our class again and again. The reality is
that a project of building political parties to capture state power to
free the popular classes – through elections or force – has been a
colossal failure in relation to its initial socialist aims.
Once elected, political parties are incorporated into the institutional
life of the state machine.
However, not only is the state always an institution of ruling class
power, run by and for exploitative economic and political elites; one of
its primary goals is to secure its power as an institution over society
and its politics. This self-sustaining approach is the very design and
function of the state. It exists primarily to secure its control over
the means of coercion and administration. It is this key form of control
that positions top state managers as key members of the ruling class
alongside owners of means of production (as an aside, all states also
control substantial productive economic means, such as land, property
and corporations like Eskom, Petrobras, the Emirates airline, etc.).
All states are structured as hierarchies of control and privilege –
structures that centralise more and more power in fewer and fewer
individuals as you go up the chain of command. This very structure is
contradictory and opposed, in form and content, to a democratic,
emancipatory working-class project. Once a party is involved in the
self-sustaining state machinery, its leaders are drawn into the
day-to-day necessities of the interests of competing parties and
politicians. The party and individual representative’s mandate must then
change from one that may have sought to serve broad social interests, to
a primary focus on remaining in political power.
Thus, the state, party and politician serve the primary purpose of
maintaining their social, economic and political positions of power,
control and privilege. The party and its servants are warped to serve
this elitist interest, and its leaders, now working and residing in the
halls, offices and residences of ruling class political power, become
the very problem they may have sought to rid society of. They now have
become part of the ruling class.
Power over daily life, the neighbourhood, policing, education (let’s
call it the means of administration and coercion) when rested in the
hands of the state and its institutions does not and cannot trickle down
to the masses; it merely shifts between sections of the ruling class.
Let us be clear: the state is a fundamentally undemocratic institution
that we have vested with social, political
and economic power. Although you may vote for certain representatives in
government, government is but ONE arm of the state machine. You do not
and cannot, by law, vote to elect leaders of the other arms of the
state: the judiciary, the police, the army and state-owned enterprises.
Not very democratic, it seems!
If the ANC under Nelson Mandela, the Bolsheviks under Lenin, and the
SACP under Joe Slovo could not break the pattern – and in many ways
reinforced the authoritarian power of the new state institutions they
came to control – it will in no way be different the next time one
chooses to vote, no matter the personalities and programmes involved.
The desire for state power, and to hold onto it, supersedes all others.
There is no basis at all for the faith that new or reformed Left or
national liberation political parties will somehow succeed in creating
the kind of order that serves the interests (individual and collective)
of the working class. This seems a faith based more on ideological
dogma, a selective reading of the past, an unscientific analysis, or
even just a belief in pursuing a “lesser evil” hoping life would be more
tolerable under different rulers. This hope is fair and not to be
sneered at, but is not aligned to a vision for a socialist future.
The very act of voting in government elections is, in and of itself, a
dereliction of one’s personal political obligation. The act places your
power of decision-making in the hands of representatives, and thus is
referred to as representative democracy. This is the power to make
decisions on your behalf and, usually, without you. Voting in government
elections is not done by citizens informed by any knowledge of the
outcome of their vote, but in the hope that those they elect would
actually meet their election promises.
This particular form of voting, therefore, reduces society to atomised
individual actors alone in the vast political world, reinforces the
misplaced idea that it is a meaningful political act, and further
undermines the transformative collective political action of the working
class and poor. Over time and after years of ruling class propaganda, we
place more faith in this handover of political power than the potential
capabilities of our organisations – the trade union and community-based
social movement, the realms of economic and political life where working
class people can exercise actual control.
An uncritical approach to discussing the state, parties, unions,
organisational structure and the role of voting, prevents the
development of an adequate ideological and strategic set of conclusions
about what has gone wrong in the past. It also may blind one to what has
and continues to achieve real victories. We need to focus less on the
overall ideological and strategic orientations of parties and the
tactical choices that follow.
As I have argued, parties and state power are incapable of creating
substantive socialist socioeconomic transformation. We should focus more
on the process that wins real change – working class struggle by itself,
for itself. Even to achieve reforms, we need mass-based struggle from
below – at the workplace and in communities. For deeper systemic change,
a revolutionary change, we need particular struggles from below –
workplace and community struggles for reform that aim at constantly
broadening working class organisational control over the immediate means
of production, coercion and administration, i.e. everyday life. Both
forms of struggle, for reforms and revolution, are indelibly linked.
These require building working class counter-power – organisations,
especially unions, fomenting a revolutionary front of the oppressed
classes.
These organisations must also be informed by a new worldview that is
socialist/anti-capitalist, anti-statist and non-hierarchical, in other
words, anarchist/syndicalist. As such, anarchism/syndicalism argues for
a political organisation specific to the goals of developing and
promoting anarchist ideology, strategy and tactics within the working
class and society broadly. The aim is to win the popular classes to its
ideas and methods of struggle, resistance and social reconstruction. It
is not an anti-organisational approach, but one that argues for an
organised, collective and directly-democratic response to the issues
posed by the battle of ideas. Anarchism and its trade union strategy,
syndicalism, do, however, vehemently oppose the participation of these
political organisations in the mechanisms of state rule, including state
government elections.
This we can call a counter-hegemonic view, or more precisely a
revolutionary counter-culture; the leadership of a revolutionary
mind-set won in the day-to-day battle of ideas inside this movement by
the political organisation promoting these ideas. This movement of
working-class organisations, therefore, is to be built on the twin
tracks of revolutionary counter-power and counter-culture, focused
outside and against the state, and is forged in struggle, considering
the following:
The anti-statist position is not one that ignores the state, but
realises it as an organ of ruling class power that we are unable to
reform in our favour.
The aim is a self-managed, egalitarian form of reconstruction – of our
organisations and world – and a future society based on these
principles.
This is a call for a prefigurative politics grounded and shaped in
working class realities – a politics that marries means of struggle to
the social, political and economic ends collectively agreed to.
This means revisiting anarchism and syndicalism, and the libertarian
left, and leaving the party-state project behind. It means drawing from
the deep well of working-class history, organisation, theory and
practice, moving from a politics of recycling failed statist projects to
one that develops confidence in our own initiatives, one that valorises
working class unity, ingenuity and independence. Unions can and should
play a key role in this process, including in building counter-power and
revolutionary counter-culture.