Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of The International Working Class-From Our Forebears The Diggers Of The English Revolution-“The World Turned Upside Down”

A YouTube film clip of Billy Bragg (Known In This Space As Narrator Of Woody Guthrie And His Guitar: This Machine Kills Fascists )performing The World Turned Upside Down.

****

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!

********

Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!

********

A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around.Organize the unorganized-Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran!Hands Off Syria! U.S. Hands Off The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Quality Free Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

*********

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

**********

Markin comment:

In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

THE FOLLOWING IS A SONG BASED ON THE DIGGER EXPERIENCE IN 1650

If John Milton was the literary muse of the English Revolution then the Diggers and their leader, Gerrard Winstanley, were the political muses.

The World Turned Upside Down

We will not worship the God they serve, a God of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve.

In 1649 to St. George's Hill

A ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people's

will

They defied the landlords, they defied the laws

They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs.

We come in peace, they said, to dig and sow

We come to work the lands in common and make the waste

ground grow

This earth divided we will make whole

So it may be a common treasury for all "**

The sin of property we do disdain

No man has any right to buy or sell the earth for private gain

By theft and murder they took the land

Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command

They make the laws to chain us well

The clergy dazzle us with heaven, or they damn us into hell

We will not worship the God they serve,

a God of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve

We work and eat together, we need no swords

We will not bow to masters, nor pay rent to the lords

Still we are free, though we are poor

Ye Diggers all, stand up for glory, stand up now!

From the men of property the orders came

They sent the hired men and troopers to wipe out the Diggers'

claim

Tear down their cottages, destroy their corn

They were dispersed - only the vision lingers on

Ye poor take courage, ye rich take care

This earth was made a common treasury for everyone to share

All things in common, all people one

They came in peace - the order came to cut them down

WORDS AND MUSIC BY LEON ROSSELSON, 1981

 

The Promise of a Socialist Society

(Quote of the Week)

 

Workers Vanguard No. 1025	31 May 2013

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Promise of a Socialist Society

(Quote of the Week)

In the selection below, Friedrich Engels makes plain how proletarian revolution opens the road to an emancipated future in which the productive powers of humanity are unleashed for the benefit of all mankind.

Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself....

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears.... Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.

—Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878)

The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee Website-

James P.Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.

Markin comment:

I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. And an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers, articulate death row prisoners, anti-fascist street fighters to black liberation fighters who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters who took Che’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.

 

Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart* (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthersin their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven,  as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone.    

 

 

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around.Organize the unorganized-Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran!Hands Off Syria! U.S. Hands Off The World!
 

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Quality Free Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

*********
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

*********

Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics

 

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Preacher man, don't tell me,

Heaven is under the earth.

I know you don't know

What life is really worth.

It's not all that glitters is gold;

'Alf the story has never been told:

So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Most people think,

Great god will come from the skies,

Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.

But if you know what life is worth,

You will look for yours on earth:

And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!

Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )

Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )

Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )

Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )

Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )

Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -

Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.

We know when we understand:

Almighty god is a living man.

You can fool some people sometimes,

But you can't fool all the people all the time.

So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),

We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

So you better:

Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )

Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )

Get up, stand up!

Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )

Get up, stand up! (... )

Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )

Get up, stand up! (... )

Stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up!

Don't give up the fight! /fadeout/

******

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around.Organize the unorganized-Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran!Hands Off Syria! U.S. Hands Off The World!
 

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Quality Free Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

*********
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

*********

Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics

 

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Preacher man, don't tell me,

Heaven is under the earth.

I know you don't know

What life is really worth.

It's not all that glitters is gold;

'Alf the story has never been told:

So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Most people think,

Great god will come from the skies,

Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.

But if you know what life is worth,

You will look for yours on earth:

And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!

Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )

Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )

Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )

Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )

Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )

Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -

Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.

We know when we understand:

Almighty god is a living man.

You can fool some people sometimes,

But you can't fool all the people all the time.

So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),

We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

So you better:

Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )

Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )

Get up, stand up!

Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )

Get up, stand up! (... )

Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )

Get up, stand up! (... )

Stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up!

Don't give up the fight! /fadeout/

******

The Latest From The United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) Website- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops, Mercenaries, Contractors, Etc. From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! -Hands Off Syria!

Click below to link to the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) website for more information about various anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist actions around the country.

https://unacpeace.org/

Markin comment

Every once in a while it is necessary, if for no other reason than to proclaim from the public square that we are alive, and fighting, to show “the colors,” our anti-war colors. While, as I have mentioned many times in this space, endless marches are not going to end any war the street opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as protests against other imperialist adventures has been under the radar of late. It is time for anti-warriors to get back where we belong in the struggle against Obama’s wars. The UNAC appears to be the umbrella clearing house these days for many anti-war, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist actions. Not all the demands of this coalition are ones that I would raise but the key one is enough to take to the streets. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops, Mercenaries, Contractors, Etc. From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran And Syria!

BostonUNAC.org | 781-285-8622 | BostonUNAC(S)gmail.com

 

*****************

 

The Latest From The Rag Blog

Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/

 

Markin comment:

 

I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least ones that would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.

Additional Markin comment:

 

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

Markin comment:

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!

*******

 

From The Archives Of The American And International Left -

Mandela’s Legacy—Heroically Leading ANC to Power but, Tragically, Also Into a Dead End

 

Markin comment:

This archival issue of the Spartacist journal may be of some historical interest for old "new leftists,” perhaps, as well as for younger militants interested in various political, cultural and social questions that intersect and directly affect the ebb and flow of the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social and political questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Spartacist and other periodicals from other leftist organizations, past and present, periodically throughout the year.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

*********

Mandela’s Legacy—Heroically Leading ANC to Power but, Tragically, Also Into a Dead End   Printer-Friendly E-Mail This Dec 7, 2013 By Thamsanqa Dumezweni, DSM (CWI South Africa) and Weizmann Hamilton   The Democratic Socialist Movement offers condolences to the Mandela family and all those in South Africa and internationally who are mourning the passing of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. Mandela is a symbol of the struggles and sacrifices of millions over decades to end apartheid and win democracy. The hopes and aspirations of that heroic struggle – with the mighty black working class playing the decisive role – were invested in Mandela. We recognise him for his role in the defeat of one of the most odious systems of oppression and exploitation in history. Mandela’s death on Thursday 5th December 2013 brings to an end a period of pre-mourning that commenced six months ago when he was admitted to hospital with a recurrent lung infection. His lung condition had its origin in the tuberculosis he contracted during hard labour in lime quarries on Robben Island where he served the first part of his 27 years in prison for fighting apartheid. For many his death will be seen as a welcome relief from the suffering he endured as he lay completely incapacitated in his Houghton home in Johannesburg, not least because it was widely believed that the ANC leadership was cynically keeping him alive with the intention of pulling the plug to derive the maximum benefit from his death in the 2014 elections. Integrity and commitment Mandela is rightly revered worldwide as a statesman ranking along great figures of history like Mohatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. He is recognised for his role in the defeat of one of the most reviled regimes on the planet and one the most odious systems of oppression and exploitation in history. He has acquired the status of universal hero not least be­cause of his demonstration in practice of his commitment to self-sacrifice for a noble cause – the national liberation of the black majority. This is captured by his declaration, during the Treason Trial, that non-racialism was a principle that he was prepared, ‘if needs be’, to die for. His willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for the cause is borne out by the fact that he personally undertook the task of establishing the ANC’s armed wing, Umk­honto weSizwe (MK), secret­ly paying visits to countries like Algeria to seek support for the armed struggle lead­ing him to be installed as MK’s first commander-in-chief. His steadfast refusal to accept any kind of com­promise from the apartheid regime in exchange for his freedom, choosing instead to endure twenty-seven years of incarceration, reinforced his stature as a man of prin­ciple and integrity committed to the service of his people in sharp contrast to today’s unprincipled, corrupt politi­cal elite that is seen by many as trampling on the legacy he entrusted to them. The current ANC leadership falsely portrays the defeat of apartheid as the more or less inevitable culmination of the continent’s oldest liberation movement’s hundred-year long march to victory. There can be little doubt, however, that, in terms of commitment, political and ideological out­look, strategy and tactics the ANC that endeared itself to the masses is the one of Mandela, of the second half of its cente­nary rather than it’s first. Mandela transforms ANC As part of a new generation of young leaders in the 1940s, inspired by the colonial revo­lution that shook imperialism at the end of the second world war, Mandela and his com­rades, principally, Walter Si­sulu and Oliver Tambo, shook up an ANC leadership whose character until then was deter­mined by the road along which they had sought salvation for the oppressed – begging the Queen of England to release the black oppressed from bondage while pledging, as subjects, their undying loyalty to her and the British empire. From an organisation whose methods consisted of pleas and petitions, Mandela and his comrades, having taken con­trol of the ANC Youth League and adopting the 1949 Pro­gramme of Action, converted the ANC for the first time into an organisation committed to achieving its objectives by mass action – defiance cam­paigns, bus boycotts, anti-pass law protests and stay-aways. From this followed the adop­tion of the Freedom Charter, whose radical demands re­flected the extent to which the working class masses had come to influence the outlook of the ANC, in contrast to the pre-Mandela leadership’s hostile distance correspond­ing to their class separation. From that point onwards up to liberation in 1994, it was possible for the antagonistic class aspirations of the work­ing masses and those of the middle class – the aspirant black capitalist class – held in common subjugation by the white minority regime, to co-exist in the same organisation under the same programme in mutual commitment to over­throw white minority rule. It would not matter… until it mattered. Until, that is, the time came to implement the Freedom Charter. The next elections will be tak­ing place twenty years since the end of apartheid. The historic 1994 elections symbolised the triumph of the national libera­tion struggle – the lifting of the yoke of racial oppression and the opening of the doors to a society in which black people, now a head taller, could stand side-by-side with their white counterparts as equals. As­sured by the promises of a bet­ter life for all and the strength of their numbers, the black majority embraced the gen­erosity Mandela championed towards the white minority. Mandela’s leadership, it was believed, had averted a racial civil war thought unavoidable. With a leadership that demon­strated an apparently single-minded determination to lead its people to freedom, there was no reason to doubt the promise of a better life for all to come. Through Mandela’s leadership, a new democratic dispensation based on what has been described as the most progressive constitution in the world had been ushered in. On its foundations there would arise a new, ‘rainbow nation’, from which racial oppression and its companions – pov­erty, illiteracy, disease, home­lessness – would be banished ‘never again’, in Mandela’s words, to return. In this new SA there would be equality of opportunity for all in a nation ‘united in its diversity’. Reality looks different As SA completes the second decade of democracy, real­ity looks rather different from the promise that came out of the negotiated political settle­ment worked out in the early 1990s. Although the racist FW De Klerk government duly va­cated the seat of political pow­er for the ANC, and the ANC has been regularly returned with large majorities, for the overwhelming majority little has changed. A striking feature of the eu­logising of Mandela, is the conflict­ing class interests converging around what appears to be a common public manifestation of a nation united in its pre-mourning. The ‘nation’ that Mandela has bequeathed is as unrecon­structed today as it was before the end of apartheid, disaggre­gated into its two main social forces – the working class on the one side and the capitalist class on the other. SA is re­puted to be the most unequal society on Earth. As many as 8 million are unemployed, 12 million go to bed hungry, mil­lions are excluded from decent education, health and housing. The ruling ANC elite is ex­hibiting the same character­istics as the one which it re­placed – corrupt, inept and with an insatiable appetite for self-enrichment and power. Even worse, whilst condemn­ing apartheid order policies as a crime against humanity, the representatives of the new elite are displaying a growing infatuation with similar meth­ods of rule as their predeces­sors, taking shelter behind re­pressive legislation such as the Secrecy Act, the National Key Points Act and the Traditional Courts Bill to secure their grip on power, and to keep the na­tion in the same sort of dark secrecy and repression as the apartheid regime. Instead of the fulfilment of the dreams of equality and pros­perity the masses had been led to believe lay in store for them under democracy, its benefits have accrued to only a tiny minority. Far from the promised ‘Rainbow Nation’ of equals, SA today resembles, as ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe has himself admit­ted, ‘an Irish Coffee’ – black at the bottom, on top a thin layer of white cream sprinkled with chocolate. A common theme running through the overwhelming ma­jority of evaluations of Man­dela’s life is that the conduct of his successors in the ANC leadership and his squabbling family represent not just a de­parture from everything that Mandela stood for, but con­stitute the desecration of his legacy. Does this assessment stand the test of close scrutiny? Capitalist commentators would have us believe that SA would have been if not the country of our dreams then at least a better place had Man­dela’s successors continued to walk in his footsteps. The truth, however, is that this is precisely what they did, at least in respect of all the funda­mental questions of policy on which the ANC’s near twenty-year rule has been based. Mandela and Gear Mandela played the decisive role in the abandonment of the Freedom Charter and every­thing the ANC was believed to have held sacred until then. The decisive break was the adoption of the Growth, Em­ployment and Redistribution (Gear) programme in 1996. Gear was to bring the ANC government incrementally into open collision with the work­ing class – in the workplace, townships and squatter camps and tertiary education institu­tions and introduced the first serious strains in the Tripar­tite Alliance. The difference between Mandela’s reign and that of all his successors is more in style than substance. Somewhat unfairly, for in­stance, Mbeki, who proudly proclaimed himself a Thatch­erite, has come to be person­ally associated with Gear. Yet Gear was adopted under Man­dela’s presidency. In spite of the fact that Mbeki spearhead­ed the adoption of Gear, he did so with Mandela’s (and that of the rest of the ANC leadership including the SACP’s) full blessing. Within the period between his release in 1990 and the ANC’s accession to power four years later, Mandela’s position swung from an unswerving commit­ment to the Freedom Charter and a reaffirmation of its na­tionalisation clauses at its heart as fundamental to ANC policy, to a declaration, well before the ANC entered parliament that privatisation – at the heart of Gear’s original strategic ob­jectives – was now the ANC’s fundamental policy. It was Mandela that led the ANC to power with the promise of jobs for all, and the same Mandela who declared in parliament af­ter Gear had been adopted that the ANC government was ‘not a job-creating agency’. In performing this heart transplant, Dr Mandela did not consult the patient. Whereas the adoption of the Freedom Charter was the culmination of the most democratic process in the ANC’s history, the adoption of Gear was profoundly undemocratic. The Freedom Charter was the summation of the in-puts of thousands of workers in urban and rural areas and of people of all walks of life across the country whose proposals were written on pieces of paper and forwarded to the Congress of the People there to be incorporated. Gear on the other hand was developed behind the backs not just of the membership, but of the majority of even the ANC cabinet itself. It was adopted and implemented in 1996, and presented to the member-ship at the ANC’s Mafikeng conference in 1997 as an accomplished fact after it had already been approved by big business. As former MK leader, SACP Central Committee member and Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils confirms, in an admission astonishing for its honesty, under Mandela’s leadership, the ANC betrayed the ‘poorest of the poor’ to domestic capital and imperialism in the Codesa negotiations. Business pacts with Mandela Quoting Stellenbosch University’s Sampie Terreblanche, Kasrils writes: ‘…by late 1993 big business strategies – hatched in 1991 at the mining mogul Harry Oppenheimer’s Johannesburg residence – were crystallizing in secret late-night discussions at the Development Bank of South Africa. Present were South Africa’s mineral and energy leaders, the bosses of US and British companies with a presence in South Africa…’ What transpired out of these ‘late-night discussions’? Kasrils reveals: ‘Nationalisation of the mines and [the commanding] heights of the economy as envisaged by the Freedom Charter was abandoned.’ Kasrils describes how the ANC leadership prostrated itself before domestic capital and imperialism: ‘The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt… a wealth tax on the super-rich to fund developmental projects was set aside, and domestic and international corporations, enriched by apartheid, were excused from any financial reparations. Extremely tight budgetary obligations were instituted that would tie the hands of any future governments; obligations to implement a free trade policy and abolish all forms of tariff protection in keeping with neo-liberal free trade fundamentals were accepted. Big corporations were allowed to shift their main listings abroad.’ The roots of the ANC leadership’s latter-day disenchantment with the constitution, and their growing exasperation with the parliamentary democracy itself, are to be found in the trampling of their own internal democracy. Contrary to the propaganda of the old regime, the ANC leadership, despite its embrace of the SACP, was never infected by the ‘disease’ of communism. Mbeki, whose ideological outlook has falsely been portrayed as fundamentally at variance with that of Mandela’s, in stating such was merely echoing within earshot of the working class what Mandela had made crystal clear already back in 1956, within a year of the adoption of the Freedom Charter, and later at the Treason Trial in 1964. He did not want the Freedom Charter to be confused with socialism. The Freedom Charter, he explained ‘…is by no means a blue-print for a socialist state. It calls for the redistribution, but not nationalisation, of land; it provides for nationalisation of mines, banks, and monopoly industry, because big monopolies are owned by one race only, and without such nationalisation racial domination would be perpetuated despite the spread of political power. As we have pointed out before, the ANC’s support for nationalisation has never been as a step towards the abolition of capitalism, but to use the state to accelerate the development of a black capitalist class in much the same way as the Nats did for the development of an Afrikaner bourgeoisie. As Mandela explained in the Treason Trial: ‘The ANC’s [nationalisation] policy corresponds with the old policy of the present Nationalist Party which, for many years, had as part of its programme the nationalisation of the gold mines which, at that time, were controlled by foreign capital.’ Mandela before elections The ANC finds itself at this point in history, not because it has been derailed from the historical path it plotted for itself, but because this is where, given its history, social character and historical purpose, it has always been headed. The ANC’s surrender of the mandate of the Congress of the People at Codesa was no deviation from this path. In fact it was the fulfilment of the ANC’s historical mission. It was signalled in Mandela’s Treason Trial speech where he made clear the leadership’s preparedness to compromise even on the fundamental principle of majority rule based on one-person-one-vote by offering to negotiate for a limited number of seats for blacks for a fixed period to be followed by a gradual increase after a fixed period. He signalled this further by engaging in secret negotiations with representatives of the apartheid regime’s intelligence services and big business as early as 1985 for which he had no mandate from his own organisation. The ‘talks about talks’ that followed in the form of more high level engagements with the regime were preceded by talks with members of the political establishment in 1987 in Dakar Senegal. The abandonment of the armed struggle without any consultations with the MK cadres or even Chris Hani, proved that the armed struggle had always been nothing more than a propaganda of the deed tactic to force the regime to the negotiating table. Codesa was the logical sequel. The Nobel Peace prize was conferred on Mandela and De Klerk to perpetuate the myth that the negotiated settlement was the fortuitous confluence of the conversion on the road to Damascus of an Afrikaner-led capitalist establishment and a Mandela-led ANC leadership magnanimous in its victory. But as even Mandela felt obliged to point out, the country was liberated not by him or the ANC leadership but the working masses themselves. If imperialism and the capitalist establishment in SA exerted pressure on the apartheid regime to negotiate with the ANC it was because they understood that the struggles of the masses – from the 1973 strikes in Natal to the 1976 uprising of the youth to the insurrectionary movement of the 1980s spurred by the establishment of the UDF and in particular the socialist consciousness of the workers of Cosatu – posed a mortal threat to their system. Had white minority rule be overthrown by an insurrection of the masses, the future of capitalism itself would have been threatened. The behind-the-scenes negotiations with Mandela had convinced the more far-sighted strategists of capital that Mandela was a man they could do business with. Mandela had never contemplated the abolition of capitalism. His problem was not capitalism per se, but a capitalism that favoured one race against the other. For this the ruling class is forever grateful to Mandela. The ANC leadership was never committed to thoroughgoing transformation of SA society. Far from desiring the over-throw of capitalism, it sought accommodation within it. With capitalism now in the throes of its worst crisis since the 1930s, the incapacity of this capitalist government to fulfil the expectations of the people has become more and acute. The crisis of capitalism is reflected now in the ANC itself. New workers’ party Almost as if conspiring to affect symmetry in the life cycle of the party he led so heroically and that of Mandela himself, history appears to have determined that Mandela’s passing should coincide with the implosion of the ANC. For the ruling ANC elite Mandela’s passing is certainly a welcome distraction from the latest blows to their credibility as the Public Protector’s reports just released contained damning findings of corruption and maladministration against two of his ministers to add to the ongoing saga of the provisional report into corruption associated with the more than R200m spent on president Zuma’s private residence in Nkandla, Kwa-Zulu Natal. No doubt the ANC leadership will use Mandela’s death to try and revive the fortunes of a party that has alienated the working class to the point where the special congress of the National Union of Metal Workers scheduled for 13-16 December, is widely expected to pass a resolution not to support the ANC in the 2014 elections and to withhold its R8m contribution from its campaign coffers. Against the background of a survey of shop stewards political attitudes revealing that 67% of Cosatu shop stewards would support a workers’ party should Cosatu support it. The passing of such a resolution would reverberate across organised workers within and beyond Cosatu, almost certainly split the federation itself and deal a severe blow to the ANC’s electoral performance. That is why Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini, leader of the pro-Zuma capitalist faction in Cosatu, has wasted no time in cynically using the occasion to appeal for unity for “Mandela’s sake”. But any benefit from the sympathy of the masses will be at best temporary. For all Zuma’s eulogising of Mandela as SA’s “greatest son”, for many the country is being presided over by its worst. So low is Zuma’s standing that his closest advisors are reported to hold him in barely concealed contempt cringing at the thought that the ANC’s most revered leader is to be buried by its most reviled, who with his shameless embrace of Zulu chauvinism had revived the very tribalism that the ANC was created to combat, clearing the way for the relatively progressive nationalism of the ANC to follow in the ignominious footsteps of the racist reactionary nationalism of the apartheid Nationalist Party. In burying the founder of the modern ANC, the first by the last, Zuma will be burying the modern incarnation of the party itself. With him will be buried the last rays of its halo as a liberation organisation. The death of Mandela will most likely accelerate the process of the ANC’s decline. Around him the ANC was still able to cohere, to bask in his reflected glory. With the Workers and Socialist Party, already with the support now of the National Transport Movement – the 50 000-strong break away from Cosatu’s corruption infested SA Transport and Allied Workers Union, - acting as a beacon, the way is being cleared for the emergence of a mass working class alternative with a socialist programme. Thus whilst the capitalist class mourns the imminent collapse of its Codesa salvation, the working class has awoken to the sounds of the guns of Marikana – the party they believed for so long to be their own is in fact the party of the bosses. What happened in reality was an exchange of political captains of capitalism; the racist white government was replaced by a ‘non-racist’ democratically elected government based on the black majority. The establishment of the Workers and Socialist Party represents an historic step for-ward: the reclamation by the proletariat of its class and political independence, its liberation from the ideological and political prison camp of the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance in which it was incarcerated for nearly two decades. The march towards a socialist SA, from which the working class had been diverted since 1994, has now resumed. The capitalists and their spokespersons are justified to be worried by the death of Mandela. Even if some of them are shedding crocodile tears, the point is that he gave SA capitalism a new lease on life. It is almost twenty years now since his ANC came to power. These twenty years have consistently revealed the brutality of capitalism – poverty, unemployment and inequality to which his ANC leaders refer as triple challenges. Under capitalism they cannot do away with them. Only under socialism will the workers rid society of these capitalist evils. It remains for the workers and youth of today to follow what is the best example set by Mandela – selfless and determined struggle – but also to learn that in the struggle we are fighting a compromise with a class enemy is impermissible, because they inevitably lead to betrayals of the masses as capitalism cannot meet their aspirations. More importantly, they must learn that the working class should only rely on its independent political leadership, organisations and programme to transform society in its own interests and those of the poor, for a socialist South Africa and a socialist world.

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From The Archives Of  Women And Revolution-Volume One

Markin comment:

The following is an article from an archival issue of Women and Revolution that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of  Women and Revolution during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

Women and Revolution-1971-1980, Volumes 1-20  


http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/w&r/WR_001_1971.pdf