Let's avoid generalisations about the ‘old left’ and ‘new left’

On Saturday 12 September 2009, anti-capitalist activists including former and current members of the South African Communist Party met in Grahamstown for a plenary of the Conference of the Democratic Left. This was followed by a national meeting in Cape Town the week after. According to the organisers – who include former SACP leaders Mazibuko Jara and Vishwas Satgar – the national consultation was directed at securing a minimum of 150 000 endorsements before the conference, which aimed at creating an new leftist platform that focuses on addressing issues that affect people and on building socialism from the ground instead of obsession with state power. Satgar was quoted in the Mail & Guardian saying that the idea was to do away with the old model of socialism that used the Stalinist formula: ‘Our starting point is recognising that those old models are in crisis. We want to get to the renewal of the left politics… With the old left you capture the state first through the military or elections, and then you change the society. With us it is not about the state. We want to build power from below.’ In the same article, Mazibuko Jara indicated that their hope was to capture disaffected members of ailing socialist parties and Congress of South African Unions (COSATU) and that within the South African Communist Party, Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO), Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA), there are genuine socialists, workers, radicals and militants who support the broad goals put forward by the Conference of the Democratic Left.

Jara believes that although many socialists identify with both the ANC and its alliance partners, a space exists for a more united vehicle to drive the improvement of people's lives: ‘Despite the massive support that the ANC continues to enjoy, so long as it is unable to redistribute wealth and structurally transform this economy, there will always be a case for socialism and the organisation of political and social forces to advance a socialist agenda.’

The search for united platform for building democracy and socialism from below is a noble ideal that deserves the support and involvement of everyone interested in opening up and broadening the space for effective participation of the people on the ground in contesting the dominant neo-liberal trajectory and in ensuring participatory, bottom-up, people-centred and pro-working-class democracy as part of the efforts towards a socialist egalitarian society.

In this sense, organisers of the Conference of the Left – envisaged to take place in March 2010 – should be commended for engaging in a critical search for new left politics and structures centred on the reality of the masses at the grassroots and focusing on building democracy and socialism from below. However it is important for 'the new left' to acknowledge that part of the crisis of sections of the left that held to the Stalinist model was failure to contextualise socialist theories to the specificities and particularities of time and place. There was also an aversion to and a suppression of the diversity of thought and multiplicity of currents within the Marxist traditions. The blind, dogmatic, a-contextual application of Marxist theory promoted the notion that the soviet model is the ‘alpha without omega’ of how the revolution and society should be organised. This cultivated the treatment of any discourses on the interrelation between race and class and any proclivities towards world revolution and permanent revolution as heresy.

The notion of the then USSR as the model, the two-stage theory as the grandmaster plan and the South African Communist Party (SACP) as the vanguard created an intolerance to leftist politics outside the framework of the tripartite alliance.

The terms liberation movement and leftist/Marxist became synonymous with tripartite alliance and Congress of South African Trade Unions-South African Communist Party (SACP) respectively. Leftist and socialist formations operating within Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninist Maoist, Africanist and Black Consciousness traditions and social democrats were scoffed at, treated with intolerance or treated as if they do not exist. For the soul-searching efforts to find and build a new platform for building power from below to yield a united socialist front it is critical that it be informed by and should acknowledge the multiplicity, plurality and diversity of traditions within the so-called ‘old left’, instead of lumping all past and present leftist and socialist/communist platforms with soviet-style communism. The history and traditions of left/socialist politics in South Africa is not the history of the South African Communist Party. The history of socialism locally and globally is not the history of Stalinism. There has always been – within the left – a movement against bureaucratic centralism, Stalinist dictatorship, and bourgeosie reformism and revisionism.

The anti-Stalinist section of the left and socialist/communist fraternity is not free of mistakes. It is in dire need of attuning its strategies, tactics and programs to the new realities. Indeed this section of the ‘old left’ should locate itself within 'the new left platform' or have intimate / critical links with it. But it will be doing injustice to history to equate the left with Stalinism. To associate all leftist parties with the reformism, revisionism and bourgeosie turn of many former and so-called socialist/communist parties will be an inaccurate or disingenuous record and interpretation of history. It is in sense that one argues that it is gross generalisation for Vishwas Satgar and his team to characterise all of ‘the old left’ as Stalinist, manipulative and preoccupied with state power rather than with building grassroots-based structures and programs that facilitates change in society. This equals ignoring the diversity of trends and currents within leftist and socialist circles.

The reality of the matter is that ‘the old left’ includes parties and organisations that have been consistent in fighting Stalinism, and in initiating working-class based organisations, projects and initiatives geared at promoting socialist ethos from below. To lump all of the left and socialist fraternity in South Africa and internationally with structures such as the South African Communist Party and AZAPO of the 1990’s will be tantamount erasure of several years of international and local activism by anti-Stalinist socialists – within and outside of Marxist traditions. To the best of their abilities – and operating within strict constraints – these anti-Stalinist activists and collectives have sought to build democratically run organisations. They were and are still visible and active in community struggles, working class organisations and various organs of people’s power.

One cannot just lump the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) of the period between the 60s and 80s (with its rich history and traditions of grassroots-based activism, community-centred activism and pioneering role in the development of civic and labour formations) with the post-94 Azapo. It cannot be correct to equate the internal democracy within the United Democratic Front and the Mass Democratic Movement with the democratic processes and practices of an ANC whose practices and processes are also influenced by state power and all the challenges and seductions that goes with it.

With scanty material resources, activists from the structures of the New Unity Movement, Workers Organisation for Socialist Action (WOSA), AZAPO of the 70s and 80s, the Marxist Worker Tendency within the ANC, the trade union movement and recently SOPA, have been consistent in articulating the socialist alternative and initiated several programs and projects which included political campaigns, community and worker projects and publications like APDUSA, Azanian Labour Journal, Frank Talk, Work-in-Progress, and In Defense.

The impact and durability of these programs in most instances are affected more by the scarcity of human, material and financial resources and sometimes lack of committed and disciplined cadres rather than by the ideological and political line of the concerned parties. For the envisaged united socialist democratic front or coalition of the democratic left to face the realities on the ground it must not believe that a correct ideological and political line is all that is needed to make an impact. Recognising this will enable it to take some lessons from the challenges, failures and small achievements of the most revolutionary sections of the old left instead of completely dismissing all of them as failed projects.

The other important fact to consider is that the ‘new left’ itself is not free of contradictions and serious challenges in terms of strategy and tactic, clarity of theoretical/ ideological and political program and issues of leadership, allocation of power and decision-making. For an example, many organisations in the NGO and social movement section of the left are one-issue based organisations whose life-span, and scope and direction of work/activities in most cases depend on funding by local and multi-national corporations and or institutions related to the United Nations and other regimes and regiments of global capital. Some NGOs and social movements have also created no-go areas in certain communities, vigorously monopolising the right to interact, work with or advocate on behalf of certain communities or locals.

These institutions are not free from the tendency to speak for and on behalf of the masses without engaging the massive in decision-making and policy-formulation processes in real terms and genuinely empowering communities to be in charge of the process of bringing about social change. There are several cases of disempowering the people through claiming to be the voice/advocates of the people, and several instances of leadership and power struggles. In some instances the NGO/social movement fraternity is purely an industry and an enclave for elitists and academics who only use it as a platform to either make their curriculum vitas elaborate or to build their individual profiles.

For some the social movement and community struggle environment is just a research terrain from which they come with seminal books and award-winning documentaries. The advocates of the poor become the new elites and gatekeepers. Yet there are several organisations of the social movement and even some NGOs that have emanated organically as poor people's fervent search for means to ameliorate their conditions and passionate search for an alternative society to the one in which their voice/ power ends with putting a cross on the ballot box.

There is also the issue of skewed communication/interaction or selective association with the broader left. For an example, on the very day of the 12 December 2009, in Durban there is a national plenary workshop towards the State of the Nation Truth Conference. There seem to be no indication whatsoever of interaction, conversation and information sharing between the organisers of the Conference of the Democratic Left and the organisers of the State of the Nation Truth Conference. Clearly it is erroneous to present the old left as a homogeneous, monolithic entity, neither will it be proper to treat the new left as such. These are some of the hard truths that those engaged in the search for a united new left platform will have to confront. Part of this will be critical, strategic engagement with segments of the old left that may not join the united new left platform.

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* Mphutlane wa Bofelo is a writer-activist with a passion for using creative education, literature and theatre as tools for transformation and development.
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