Socialism

The Future Is सोसिअलिस्म

Most communist, bruised and full of self-commiseration, have not truly recovered from the humiliating collapse of Communism in the eighties. Those still visible in our country, like Jeremy Cronin and Blade Nzimande, survive mostly at the mercies of trade unionists and personal élan. They’ve indefatigable spirit that understands that sine qua non for the ultimately conquering the modern political arena is about choosing the popular courses of action. Frankly, it annoys me that such brilliant men are not given more platforms to put their cases by our popular media. My uncle, who was my father figure when I was growing up, insists that Communism was defeated, not by the insight of capitalism, but by ignorance, “ignorance driven by greed”. Most communist I've met share his sentiments.I grew up in the township of Mlungisi, Queenstown, a small town in the Eastern Cape. The promises of the Freedom Charter, which we interpreted to be of Socialist agenda, was our hope for better life, i.e. for those abarabuleyo [politically suave]. The streets we grew up in raised us on the premises of communalism, which in political lingo transferred into Communism; “The people shall share . . .” All that to the chagrin of our parents who were trying to raise us as responsible Christians. As the result, somehow, both Christianity and Socialism managed to merge in my personal convictions. Up to this day, the likes of my uncle, who were very active in the Liberation politics, remains a totally convinced Communist. He believes that Marxist materialism is the only educated outlook towards life. When he looks back to what he calls his ‘revolution days’ he does so with such amazing credulity and nostalgia for Socialism, that you’d think in his mind the Berlin Wall has not come down at all. His staunchness is more amazing when you know how alert he is to the inflated and the absurd. But is it reasonable?
When we were growing up, communist leaders had a way of exciting us out of the boredom of youth. They incited us into bravery. I doubt we would have been foolish enough to charge Hippos with only stones and petrol bombs had it not been for the fire flamed in us by our Communist leaders especially. Most of them had an ability foisting the threatening mayhem that was supposed to be the Liberating Movement into politics of sheer personal vitalism. I remember when I was in High School, sometime in the middle of eighties. We went to Comfimvaba to play sport with our neighbours at Daliwonga High School—I was in Freemantle. We ended up spending the whole day singing revolutionary songs at the banks of a river; waiting for bra Chris whom we had been promised was coming to sign us into Umkhonto Wesizwe. Alas, nothing came of the promise, and we had to return back in our dusty bus that inflammated my tonsils. My point is that Communist candour had a way of arousing our social anger hence we grew up admiring Communism as a cultural phenomenon and political vehicle of our liberation. We idolised the likes of Chris Hani as our heroes who had impatient disdain for the culture of business. We regarded business people as collaborators, if not harbingers of the apartheid system. As the result we burnt most shops in township, even those owned by black people, since most were owned by Indians and Chinese—we didn't think Indians were black then, and Chinese had an invidious honour of being ‘honorary white’ then.
When later on we attended liberal universities—ironically through Transkian government scholarship we looked down on as collaborators of the apartheid system—we were compelled to recognize the utility of business; to acknowledge that it makes the world go around. Still we had a low opinion of it and tolerated only the mechanics of its power as an inescapable occupational burden. At varsity I was personally politically non usurious. Most of my friends involved themselves deeper and deeper into politics. I was by then suffering from a traumatic incidence that saw a girl I grew up with being burnt alive in our township, because her father agreed to be a puppet mayor of the township. The incident ruffled my feathers the wrong way. In fact I ended up fearing and hating the Comrades, as we called freedom fighters then. Even though I accepted the need for radical social reforms in our country, you would not see me singing, petitioning or pamphleteering with front line groups. Perhaps cowardice played a role in this unconscious decision also. My respect for Communism had by then evolved to specifics of Socialism due in particular to the Catholic Church's social teachings influences on my life. I discovered that the two had a lot in common, except, of course, for the materialist outlook. I was not at all surprised later on when prominent English Marxists turned to Christianity for inspiration and revision. One of them, Terry Eagleton, a professor of English at Manchester University, has had tremendous influence in my political and philosophical convictions. Himself he has since reclaimed his Catholic past and now exhorts his comrades to read theology. Others like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri invoke St. Francis as a model of “the future life of communist militancy.” And Alain Badiou, arguably France's foremost Marxist, upheld St. Paul as the pre-secular augur of revolutionary universalism. Personally I first felt the communist plot lost in our country around 1999 when I attended a Khulata memorial lecture at Vista University (Port Elizabeth Branch) that was given by professor Palo Jordan. I cannot describe my sense of disappointment, of blank consternation that day. Jordan, with his characteristic candour, spoke words to this effect: “Comrades, since we came to power we had to be realistic and play according to the world order so we may gain the ability to sustain our freedom and create working opportunities for our people...” He spoke at length about adopting the middle road, which, to me then came across as a strange mixture of tempered pessimism with active opportunism towards neo-liberal economics. In short, what he was advocating to me was the same as running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. I’ve since noticed the same voice throughout the ANC (African National Congress) structures.My uncle had taught me that the meaning of pragmatism in politics is confused opportunism. He made me understand pragmatism as an improvised solution from bankruptcy of ideas, and a replacement of principles by expedience. Jordan at the lecture was telling me pragmatism excites and vitalises “the pluralism of inspired common sense.” It is through this prism I understand the present government’s pragmatic ideas as series of adventures (PDP, GEAR, NEPAD and now ASGISA) in the void, largely created by the permanent crisis of bankruptcy of ideas that is the condition of our times. Before Jordan's lecture I had thought Communism was just undergoing an identity crisis. After all I had believed Christ Hani when he spoke for more than two hours at the Green Parade shortly after he returned back from exile, words to this effect: “Comrades, History has not ended. We will mould a new, just society....” I believed that our heroes were forming new strategies before coming with convincing plans to take us to the next stage towards socialist egalitarianism. But later on Jordan convinced me that communism had collapsed and socialism was passé. The candour I admired in him worked against my newly earned weltanschauung.
What does an intellectually green young man does when encountering such peripeteia, such sudden change of direction from his hero?My uncle taught me that the capitalistic system of production has always been important to Marx and Engels as a vehicle of ushering a complete Communist state. He said Marx and Engels anticipated and celebrated Globalisation by admiring the universality of Capitalism: “The constant revolution of production and the endless disturbance of all social conditions.” The “everlasting uncertainty” where everything “fixed and frozen...all that is solid melts into air...swept away.” He showed me passages in the Communist Manifesto where Marx and Engels were bewildered by “constant expansion of markets, the daily destruction of old established industries.” What they called “the intercourse in every direction” that leads to “universal interdependence of nations” and the nail biting need for solutions for new emerging wants.
“Marxism anticipated globalism, but still chose against liberal economics;” is my uncle's verdict. The question really is whether they chose well. The glaring fundamental injustices of neo-liberal economic values, which becoming clear to all who have eyes to see, or no vested interests to defend: brutal exploitation of resources, ruthless competition, vulgar materialism, rampant consumerism, morbid individualism, obscene greed, odious hypocrisy, and so on and so on, are starting to vindicate their choice in the eyes of the many. I doubt anyone can dispute the fact that Libertarianism is biased against the poor; its freedom is that of a fox in the chicken coop. The best it can do is to provide windfalls for the poor in the form of social programmes.

The fall of Soviet Union is the stick that is always wielded against Communism; or government intervention into business to restrict injustices of market economies. Yet those who wield it are rarely aware that the Soviet system, though making claims to be “real socialism” wasn’t never a socialist state at all; at least not in a manner characterized by the democratic egalitarianism which defines true socialism. As a matter of fact, the Soviets distorted and defiled the very concept of socialism to an extent that Soviet Communism and American-style laissez-faire capitalism became the extreme ends of the same stick.

The triumphant ANC, as opposed to the struggling liberation movement, has been in pains trying to disassociate itself from Communism, and explain that it is not a socialist movement. In its discussion paper titled Economic Transformation For A National Democratic Society it has finally realised that it is chasing a bouncing ball in thinking that the “changes we seek” will emerge from the “invisible hand” of the market. “People acting collectively in the spirit of human solidarity must shape the contours of economic development. In this process the state must play a central and strategic role”, like in all emerging industrial economies of the world. It admits that; “We are still some way from our vision of the economic base of a national democratic society. The ownership and control of wealth and income, the poverty trap, access to opportunity and so on are, are all in the main defined, as under apartheid, on the basis of race and gender.”
Despite all that it still shies away from pursuing a full socialist agenda; preferring instead what it calls the “Developmental State”. What it actually means about this is vague.
In the modern era, calls for revisiting political discourse of socialist democracy are still met with cynical sighs of disbelief. Yet the situational circumstances of our times point to that as our only option if we are to solve the economic dilemmas of our era. Socialism does not dispute the production excellence of a capitalist system. Nor does it idolise the state as the only a redeeming force for the poor. It does not see the state as a vehicle of political regimentation that will end up creating social dependence on the government. Neither does it demands abandonment of liberty in favour of ideas of state control.

All Socialist Democracy calls for is an equitable distribution of national resources—yes this means coming up with compulsive measures to compel though who undermines the national to tow the line. Socialism means fair intervention of the government on economic issues and “creative chaos” of capitalism. If this is what the ANC means by the “Developmental State” then it is correct in saying it is still keeping to the vision of the Freedom Chater, albeit in evolved state to accommodate the realities of our times. But there comes a time when one has to implement a good, and that time for the ANC is now.

So far what we’ve seen from the ANC government, except managing contradictions, are stagnant programmes of stifling bureaucracy coupled with static state grants, and convocations ad nauseam. Hence it seems a paradoxical vacuousness of our times that even the political rhetoric of “bias towards the poor” serves only to feed the coffers of neo-liberal maintenance of the status quo that is biased against the poor.

Even in the U.S.A. more internal examination is emerging. In his new book, Is Democracy Possible Here?, Ronald Dworkin asserts that “the level of indifference the nation now shows to the fate of its poor calls into question not only the justice of its fiscal policies but also their legitimacy.” Perhaps these are the questions policy makers inside the ANC should also start asking themselves.

Also the firebrand president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is putting action where his mouth is by ensuring a minimum of equality in an age of globalization. If international business and financial institutions, whose favoured systems power only the elite, deprive governments sovereignty in economics policies, perhaps the lesser evil is for the country to disengage from their transnational loyalties. A new order, based on fair national benefits and equitable distribution of profits from natural resource is being born. It’d be sad for South Africa to miss that boat, and end up prey to internal opportunistic militant populist organisation.

I dare say the only path open to Developing countries, since it is also becoming obvious that the universe will not be able to sustain the world’s Western style of consumerism, is Gandhi’s ethical vision of democracy. The social costs of the obsession with ceaseless economic growth and promotion of multiplying desire have turn into the Beast crouching in the heart of greed.