Potentials for African Anti-Capitalism

Responses to this post

-----

Don't think that was my post, comrade Berend!

But in general you make very good points, especially about
anti-privatisation campaigning being not merely defensive but *offensive*
insofar as it imagines the project of decommodification (and embarks upon
direct action to carry it off)... but I think you are moving too far from
'working class' towards multitude if you think that there is some sort of
alleged fading of production/reproduction differences (albeit which public
sector workers embody and are, generally, doing very well at grappling with
in some settings, including SA).

I don't think, under capitalism, we can ever get too far away from those
distinctions. Ashwin Desai was telling me yesterday that some of the Durban
comrades are being forced to come back to these questions too, as the
momentum behind some of the community struggles temporarily ebbs.

At a theoretical level, Berend, instead of imagining that the neoliberal
ultracommodification agenda is something completely new and different, is it
not feasible to think of it in the way Rosa Luxemburg did, namely as a kind
of amplified 'accumulation by dispossession' (the phrasing David Harvey now
employs)? I'm trying to apply that idea to African conditions in a context
of resurgent imperialism, without wandering into Hardt/Negri Empire-land
(with all its distractions), in a paper I'm presenting next week (abstract
below). Anyone want it -- just let me know offlist.

Now, off the armchair I go, and over to the City Hall rally...

----- Original Message -----

From: "Berend Schuitema" 
I am very much turned on by the last Negri posting you made.  I am rather
inspired by it! He suggests an easy answer to why the old limited
proletarian subject is no longer the revolutionary driving force as such,
but that we should look at the public sector workers as being at the cutting
edge of a much broader drift, linking of course with the multitude idea...
Seems to me also that the classic distinction between "production of labour"
and "reproduction of labour" is a fading one.


***

Potentials for African Anti-Capitalism

Uneven Development and Popular Resistance


by Patrick Bond

presented to the conference on

The Work of Karl Marx and the Challenges of the 21st Century


sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy of the Ministry of Science,
Technology and the Environment, the National Association of Economists of
Cuba, the Cuban Trade Union Federation and the Centre for the Study of
Economy and Planning

Havana, 5-8 May, 2003


ABSTRACT


Amongst many features, contemporary capitalist uneven development
incorporates at least five dynamics discussed at the outset of this paper:


a) the tendency to overaccumulation of capital, at local, national, regional
and international scales;

b) myriad attempts at the displacement of overaccumulation, into spatial and
temporal 'fixes' that fail to resolve crisis tendencies;

c) in the process, the amplification of (so-called) articulations of modes
of production and reproduction which entail heightened ethnic/racial,
gender, environmental and cultural expropriations--and indeed the extension
of an entire system of capital accumulation via appropriation and
dispossession;

d) again, in the process, the tendency towards the commodification of all
aspects of life, including those traditionally held in common social
ownership; and

e) backlashes by oppressed peoples that are, albeit, yet to be combined in a
manner consistent with the socialist project.


How do these dynamics operate in Africa, especially during an epoch when
some rulers have succeeded in not simply repressing popular dissent but in
ruining the very idea of socialism? After reviewing some theoretical
propositions about Marxist political economy, this paper makes the case that
Africa's problems have emerged not because of the continent's
'marginalisation' from capitalism, contrary to some contemporary elite
reformist rhetoric (the New Partnership for Africa's Development). The
opposite is true: systems of accumulation by dispossession of African
resources have worked extremely well for global capital. The paper then
spends particular attention exploring two questions drawn from the fifth
feature, resistance: what kinds of anti-capitalism are emerging from diverse
experiences in some of the main centres of capital accumulation and
disaccumulation, and what kinds of arguments and political strategies may be
required to invoke explicitly socialist potentials in Africa?

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

Patrick wrote:

> But in general you make very good points, especially about
> anti-privatisation campaigning being not merely defensive but *offensive*
> insofar as it imagines the project of decommodification (and embarks upon
> direct action to carry it off)... but I think you are moving too far from
> 'working class' towards multitude if you think that there is some sort of
> alleged fading of production/reproduction differences (albeit which public
> sector workers embody and are, generally, doing very well at grappling
> with in some settings, including SA).
>
> I don't think, under capitalism, we can ever get too far away from those
> distinctions. Ashwin Desai was telling me yesterday that some of the
> Durban
> comrades are being forced to come back to these questions too, as the
> momentum behind some of the community struggles temporarily ebbs.
>

Seems to me its in times of lull when theory needs to catch up with
practical gains. What is called "ultra-left", in any case new social
movement formations should also take stock of the reality that to a large
extent our media clout has been helped on by ANC-establishment defensive
positions. To a certain extent, in my view, over stating our state of
sustainable organization. The great danger in these ebbing periods is the
potential for capitulations - seems to me that the TAC stand-down sends a
very mixed signal. The direct assault on the "arrogant whites" (Manto on
Heywood, the ANC apologist who carried these lines in his flame and fury vs.
Dale and Richard), also mention some of the lines about "foreign sponsored"
whiteys carried by Smuts Ngonyama in my view is not something which can be
wished away as merely arrogant and incidental. Gradually the true nature of
ANC hegemony seems to be showing its Morogoro lines of "blacks in general,
Africans in particular" ethics. In this regard we could also view the inner
nature of the current "liberation movement", in connection with the
offensive standby for Mugabe. Dale wrote an article on financial interest of
the ANC to do this, I believe that it has to be looked at from a "hegemony
building" perspective.


> At a theoretical level, Berend, instead of imagining that the neoliberal
> ultracommodification agenda is something completely new and different, is
> it
> not feasible to think of it in the way Rosa Luxemburg did, namely as a
> kind
> of amplified 'accumulation by dispossession' (the phrasing David Harvey
> now
> employs)? I'm trying to apply that idea to African conditions in a context
> of resurgent imperialism, without wandering into Hardt/Negri Empire-land
> (with all its distractions), in a paper I'm presenting next week (abstract
> below). Anyone want it -- just let me know offlist.
>

I never thought of myself as "autonomist", let alone "anarchist" - but it
seems the pendulum is swinging that way. The "multitude" concept seems to
have grabbed re-imagination quite significantly and probably for sound
reason. My attempt to blur "production and reproduction" is really following
in the wake of the remnants of rigid ML thinking about vanguardism of the
proletariat. Seems to me that the old formulation of Popular Fronts to
accommodate other class formations, especially the peasantry, in itself is
problematic because of the need to integrate the "working class" with the
growing masses of unemployed, dispossessed and poor, who are not well
defined, if anything an undefined lumpen proletariat who, in the classic
sense, were useless or dangerous in struggle.

But this aside, I think the number one problem we are facing today is
simply method and style of organization. While vanguardism is not all that
pronounced, apart from some armchair groups who still see themselves as
representing the workers, there seems to be far too much "committeeism"
going on - committees get elected with poorly defined constituencies, and
we find the principle of position, power and influence of individuals
kicking
in with entrenched leadership formations. There is little room for open and
transparent organization, easy access to participation and easy flow to
other nodes of action, etc.

When I was in Porto Alegre Dennis introduced me to Prof Alexander Buzgalin.
I have translated/edited somewhat a first draft translation into English
from Russian of his "alter globalization and new social movements: theory
and practice" and feel that it is actually hell relevant for us to consider
during this time of lull.

I hope I am not out of order if I post this work up chapter by chapter, say
two per week?

> Now, off the armchair I go, and over to the City Hall rally...
>

Can't do that, but there in spirit - live in East London!

Berend

---

Berend Schuitema wrote:

> I never thought of myself as "autonomist", let alone "anarchist" - but it
> seems the pendulum is swinging that way. The "multitude" concept seems to
> have grabbed re-imagination quite significantly and probably for sound
> reason. My attempt to blur "production and reproduction" is really following
> in the wake of the remnants of rigid ML thinking about vanguardism of the
> proletariat. 

Vanguardism of the proletariat? I have no idea what this refers to. 
There is a concept of the vanguard party and there is also a notion of 
the working class as revolutionary agent. But I think you have created 
an amalgam of two entirely different ideas.

> Seems to me that the old formulation of Popular Fronts to
> accommodate other class formations, especially the peasantry, in itself is
> problematic because of the need to integrate the "working class" with the
> growing masses of unemployed, dispossessed and poor, who are not well
> defined, if anything an undefined lumpen proletariat who, in the classic
> sense, were useless or dangerous in struggle.

A Popular Front was never seen as accomodating other class formations in 
general. It was rather a strategy to coalesce socialist and lesser-evil 
capitalist parties. Lenin developed a strategy for integrating the 
Russian peasantry in the struggle to overthrow Czarism, but he never 
advocated a coalition with the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets). With 
respect to the unemployed, there is nothing in Marxism that would regard 
them in the same light as the lumpen. These are two entirely different 
social categories. In capitalist society, the unemployed tend to 
identify their class interests with the workers--such as the piquetero 
movement in Argentina. Lumpen elements, on the other hand, tend to 
subsist in the criminal netherworld as pimps, petty thieves, 
prostitutes, drug dealers, etc. In Colombia, they play a big role as 
recruits to the rightwing death squads. In Germany, they flocked to the 
Nazis.

> But this aside, I think the number one problem we are facing today is
> simply method and style of organization. While vanguardism is not all that
> pronounced, apart from some armchair groups who still see themselves as
> representing the workers, there seems to be far too much "committeeism"
> going on - committees get elected with poorly defined constituencies, and
> we find the principle of position, power and influence of individuals
> kicking
> in with entrenched leadership formations. There is little room for open and
> transparent organization, easy access to participation and easy flow to
> other nodes of action, etc.

Are you referring to affinity groups? From what I have seen of them in 
action over the past couple of years, they are accountable to nobody.

Louis Proyect 

-- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

------------

> Louis Proyect wrote:

> Vanguardism of the proletariat? I have no idea what this refers to.
> There is a concept of the vanguard party and there is also a notion of
> the working class as revolutionary agent. But I think you have created
> an amalgam of two entirely different ideas.
>

May well be so, rather clumsy - but my approach is not rectilinear from the
orthodox texts, getting words to "infuse" into the ground realities - I am
dealing more with perspectives from these ground realities themselves.
Praxis is the working at ground level dealing with problems of "how to
organize" in the local context. Sure know what the vanguard party is all
about - in the South African situation we have the SACP entrenched in COSATU
membership which is all nice and fine. There are also a number of newer
formations around which see their roles as "vanguard of the proletariat",
on the radical fringes we also have political movements like the APF, which
may well be more expressive of the vanguard role, there are social
movements, thematic and local - which do not exactly see their roles as
vanguard of the working class.

Recently there was a debate article in Umzebenzi in which the GS, Blade
Nzimande spoke about the need for the SACP to join with social movements for
infusing direction and ideology. It is in this project proposed by the GS
where the idea of vanguard of the working class becomes relevant. The
effectiveness or otherwise of the SACP as vanguard of the working class is a
question which I am not directly addressing here - comrades like Dale
McKinley are better equipped to do that. My immediate concern is really
about why branch level constructs seem to lack capacity in general, and in
particular unable or unwilling to take the lead in mobilization of the
unemployed, addressing local issues effect the urban and rural poor. While
it may well be that the scale and nature of the independent new social
movements which taken the gap may be overstated
or other wise, the fact is that there is growing movement in new style
civics, anti eviction local groups, the anti-debt and reparations  movement
Jubilee, the definitely vanguard Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, Anti
Privatization Forum and all that - this is where the real action front has
fallen.

We are thus dealing with a praxis situation, not a theoretical ivory tower -
but ground realities. How would you see this complex of struggle sites
merging as one, under the Vanguard Party? I see one major practical
problem - when we speak of such a party we are speaking of ONE such a party,
one Chairperson, one deputy Chairperson, one SG and all that, backed
ofcourse by a well oiled "body politique". Such a party will have to provide
a strategy and plan of action which then indeed LEADS the overall struggle
and taking along all these already active and spontaneously developed local
groups and all that. Here we are speaking of an hierarchical structure
which, once state power is seized, does not go the same way as the ANC of
South Africa, or even Lula's Workers Party in Brazil in which they get stuck
with the state and its powers. The next phase should be that the Vanguard
Party dissolvers itself as hierarchical structure and we have something
approaching a "movement of movements" situation, stateless and classless
society. I am looking at an alternative in the "movements of movements"
which is based on direct participatory democracy already in its own
structures, which may well dispense with the Lenin construction, supposed to
be interim in any case, and work like some of us think the World Social
Forum should function: no top down structure but a radical flow from below
of democratic aspirations swarming in convergences with many leaders, rather
than one top dog, one party which, by historical experience lends its to the
building of personality cults and all that.

Maar goed evidently I have a problem with classic Leninism which was right
for the October Revolution, but I cannot see this same approach work out
today just like that. Speaking thus rather limply of my doubts about
the "vanguardism of the proletariat", could also say something else as
well - but maybe you can help out here and give an answer as to how you
would see such a construct working.

> A Popular Front was never seen as accommodating other class formations in
> general. It was rather a strategy to coalesce socialist and lesser-evil
> capitalist parties. Lenin developed a strategy for integrating the
> Russian peasantry in the struggle to overthrow Czarism, but he never
> advocated a coalition with the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets). With
> respect to the unemployed, there is nothing in Marxism that would regard
> them in the same light as the lumpen. These are two entirely different
> social categories. In capitalist society, the unemployed tend to
> identify their class interests with the workers--such as the piquetero
> movement in Argentina. Lumpen elements, on the other hand, tend to
> subsist in the criminal netherworld as pimps, petty thieves,
> prostitutes, drug dealers, etc. In Colombia, they play a big role as
> recruits to the rightwing death squads. In Germany, they flocked to the
> Nazis.
>

No doubt, as you say, there is plenty of revolutionary experience around,
and the implementation of a Popular Front among them. Lenin had a lot to
teach about its construction as applied in the October Revolution situation.
But we are dealing here with the South African situation. We are speaking of
a past praxis of a National Liberation Movement in the context of
decolonization, and in the case of Vietnam, for example, anti imperialism.
We are  speaking of a situation where the role of the vanguard party was
first fused with the National Liberation Movement in the pre-Morogoro
context, later confused as one within the National liberation Movement after
the Morogoro Conference in 1968. The classic plan of the popular front as I
understand it, is that once state power is seized the roles of the
components change. In the case of Vietnam the vanguard party drove through
and we had a Communist State. In the South African situation the concept of
National Democratic Revolution seems still born and stuck within the body
politique of what I would call a "lumpen bourgeoisie" - not the vanguard of
the workers in control and leading, but now being led by the nose into the
neo-liberal order.

So I have my questions about what has happened, but even more interesting
question to ask - how would we see such an approach working in the current
context of Empire? Could be an interesting discussion. My hope is that the
new social movements develop ground based democratic thrusts in a sort of
spontaneous system of many little soviets spawning and sustainable at local
levels, with periodic convergences to manifest a hegemonic  challenge and do
Lenin over again, but only this time round a step better - no need for a new
bureaucratic set up but melting down in the heat of democratic
communicability of movements of movements in a new world order. Ofcourse,
the WSF has already shown that the spontaneous nature of free flowing
democratic swarming of movements of movements is a topic for hot debate.
Probably behind the scenes there are groups working to reestablish a
"vanguard party" with a return to the welfare state. I would opt for the
idea proposed by Buzgalin, the Moscow communist who seems to answer for both
the validity and the shortcomings of the Lenin model at once.

Now about the unemployed realtionship to the workers, and lumpen item you
raise. Here again is not about what is what we want, what is right or wrong
because such and so was already dealt by Comrade Lenin. Here we have praxis
needing resolution. Sure, unemployed workers can automatically identify with
those organized and who have jobs. No doubt about that - I myself am a
veteran organizer of unemployed and know of the challenge first hand. In
South Africa we are not speaking of the unemployed who had, but are out of
jobs. We are speaking of endemic unemployment with masses, 40% of the
"economically active", with an own social economy merged in the so-called
informal sector. 90% of the outake from high schools do not end up ion the
dole, which would be helpful in reminding them that they are now members of
the employed in suffrage of the organized workers, they simply start their
adult lives as unemployed and have to make ends meet. The SACP today speaks
of two economies, one "economy" in control of the whites, and the other by
blacks. We should add a third, the social economy of the masses of urban
unemployed and rural poor - the "informal sector". A system with an
underside of survival of the fittest, the shebeen trade is very substantial,
trade in stolen goods provides a lot of sustainability, while the drugs
trade, prostitution etc should be seen as a vital fabric in the underclass
economy.  On the surface we have the people engaged in the "informal
economy" and probably statistically counted as the "self employed". We have
a potboiler situation flaring out in local struggles most of which have
social movement characteristics than the makings of cognizable units of any
Vanguard Party around. That we are speaking of a lumpen element is clear,
speaking of the unemployed as automatically identifiable with the working
class not so clear. Which brings me to the crux of the matter:  What to do
about this?

>
> Are you referring to affinity groups? From what I have seen of them in
> action over the past couple of years, they are accountable to nobody.
>

I am speaking of struggles manifesting locally. They are accountable to
themselves, very dispersed, some taking matters in hand and reconnecting
their cut off water and lights, others spontaneously flare up when
communities experiences that their homes are being repossessed by greedy
bankers.  Gradually the social movements are profiling themslves in a
coalition called the Social Movements Indaba where probably some could start
chatting up the Vanguard Party approach. Maybe your inference here is that
they should be accountable to the Vanguard Party? We are not speaking of the
hip culture of first generation western internet users, or as you put it -
"affinity groups"!!!!

Berend

-------------------

Berend Schuitema wrote:

> Sure know what the vanguard party is all
> about - in the South African situation we have the SACP entrenched in COSATU
> membership which is all nice and fine. There are also a number of newer
> formations around which see their roles as "vanguard of the proletariat",
> on the radical fringes we also have political movements like the APF, which
> may well be more expressive of the vanguard role, there are social
> movements, thematic and local - which do not exactly see their roles as
> vanguard of the working class.

Wouldn't the term "rearguard" be more appropriate to describe the SACP?

In any case, I wouldn't pay much attention to how "Marxist-Leninist" 
groups, large or small, use this term to describe themselves. It is 
based less on the historical example of the Bolshevik Party than it is 
on certain schematic misinterpretations of that example that reached 
their culmination in the 1924 Comintern.

> We are thus dealing with a praxis situation, not a theoretical ivory tower -
> but ground realities. How would you see this complex of struggle sites
> merging as one, under the Vanguard Party? I see one major practical
> problem - when we speak of such a party we are speaking of ONE such a party,
> one Chairperson, one deputy Chairperson, one SG and all that, backed
> ofcourse by a well oiled "body politique". Such a party will have to provide
> a strategy and plan of action which then indeed LEADS the overall struggle
> and taking along all these already active and spontaneously developed local
> groups and all that. Here we are speaking of an hierarchical structure
> which, once state power is seized, does not go the same way as the ANC of
> South Africa, or even Lula's Workers Party in Brazil in which they get stuck
> with the state and its powers. 

I think we need to understand the state in Marxist terms. Lula and Thabo 
Mbeki have taken over the reins of a capitalist state, while Lenin, Mao, 
Castro and others smashed the state and constructed new ones on a 
completely different class basis. It is quite interesting that in the 
course of rejecting old-line Leninism, which really meant Stalinism, Joe 
Slovo also ended up rejecting the dictatorship of the proletariat. Once 
you reject that, you naturally lean in the direction of reformist solutions.

> The next phase should be that the Vanguard
> Party dissolvers itself as hierarchical structure and we have something
> approaching a "movement of movements" situation, stateless and classless
> society. I am looking at an alternative in the "movements of movements"
> which is based on direct participatory democracy already in its own
> structures, which may well dispense with the Lenin construction, supposed to
> be interim in any case, and work like some of us think the World Social
> Forum should function: no top down structure but a radical flow from below
> of democratic aspirations swarming in convergences with many leaders, rather
> than one top dog, one party which, by historical experience lends its to the
> building of personality cults and all that.

A radical flow from below of democratic aspirations swarming in 
convergences? I myself prefer assaults on state power led by 
battle-tested revolutionaries. In any case, if anti-globalization 
activists want to protest capitalism, who am I to quibble. I just don't 
see that leading to a revolution anywhere. Revolutions require a much 
higher level of organization and accountability to the mass movement. 
The last successful revolution that most of us can remember took place 
in Nicaragua in 1979. I recommend George Black's "Triumph of the People" 
for a blow-by-blow description of how a true vanguard was forged.

> The classic plan of the popular front as I
> understand it, is that once state power is seized the roles of the
> components change. In the case of Vietnam the vanguard party drove through
> and we had a Communist State. In the South African situation the concept of
> National Democratic Revolution seems still born and stuck within the body
> politique of what I would call a "lumpen bourgeoisie" - not the vanguard of
> the workers in control and leading, but now being led by the nose into the
> neo-liberal order.

Well, this describes South Africa but I wouldn't view the struggle of 
the Vietnamese as a popular front. Popular fronts tend to be electoral 
formations that emerge as a last-ditch effort of a section of the 
bourgeoisie to stave off proletarian revolution. In a way, the New Deal 
in the USA was a form of the popular front. In the colonial world, there 
is such an underdeveloped local bourgeoisie that even if there is 
something that appears to be a multiclass alliance, like Mao or the NLF, 
it lacks the decisive weight of the big bourgeoisie that you find in 
France, Germany, etc. In South Africa, Brazil and elsewhere, formations 
such as the Workers Party and the ANC act as a middle-class layer 
between the proletariat and peasantry of the neocolony on one hand and 
the imperialist bourgeoisie on the other.

Louis Proyect 

---------------