Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1997 19:25:58 +0100
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: M-I: Critique of Cronin's article


This is an attempt at a considered response to Jim Hillier's criticism of
the article by Jeremy Cronin on Parliamentary Democracy and the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. 

I welcome the way he assisted in making the original article available and
the disciplined way he has concentrated on political and ideological
argument. If I misrepresent him or draw the lines of demarcation
incorrectly, I rely on him to come back. The subject is extensive and it
may take some time to clarify the lines of demarcation.

The basic charge is a very grave one: that leading members of the South
African Communist Party alive and dead are revisionist.


JH acknowledges that Cronin deals with the questions openly. At least
Cronin is not labelled with the Leninist accusation that you cannot catch
an opportunist with a formula.


As JH's critique shows, it is difficult to separate the specific criticisms
of the theoretical handling of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DOP)
from what is clearly his overall appraisal of the politics of the SACP in
the triple alliance, of participation in the government of national unity,
despite the neo-liberal economic policies of that government. 

JH does not address the challenge of how the SACP should operate in
conditions of representative democracy in which their allies among whom
they have such strong influence have a majority of seats in parliament. I
would suggest to JH that there are hundreds and hundreds of comrades in
South Africa as determined, honest, and intelligent as himself, who will
have tried to critique the same article by Cronin. The difference is that
they will have had to do it in a context in which their decisions will be
judged not just in terms of whether the ideas are theoretically correct but
whether they are also politically correct. 

Such comrades would not be able unchallenged to write such a one sided
description of  Mandela as in 

>the ruling bloc produced (with imperialist assistance) a leader who was
prepared to
>sacrifice the political form of apartheid in order to protect the rule
>of the bourgeoisie. 

They would find that loses them credibility immediately. 

They would also know from having lived through it, the superficiality of
JH's analysis that 

>The ANC/SACP/COSATU alliance ...  had the regime on the ropes

Considering how much JH emphasises standard Leninist positions about state
power depending on bodies of armed men and the need for the state to be
smashed, it is surprisingly abstract that he appears to ignore the fact
that the army of the apartheid state was not defeated, was not smashed
(defeated in Angola but not in South Africa) and was waging a murderously
successful undercover war promoting "black on black violence". It was not
impossible at one stage that the Zulu areas in Natal would have seceded
with consquequences as bloody as those associated with the partition of
India. 

It is a mark of the abstract nature of JH's criticism that the comrades in
the SACP with which he would have been in most sympathy, those around Harry
Gwala, came from the Kwazulu/Natal area, where it has now been revealed on
very strong evidence that one of the local communist party leaders, leading
a body of armed men, was minded by the same minder in the apartheid
security forces as was minding his opponent war-lord in Inkatha. On the
face of it however, he had presumably seized a degree of state power in the
communities he led and had built up armed force and could not be criticised
for this from a dogmatic purist postion. 

Except that from an appraisal of the overall balance of forces, South
Africa was still at the stage of a democratic revolution. It could not jump
to a radical revolution. It needed to work with religious people, liberal
and capitalists in defence of bourgeois democratic human rights, and in the
first place that representative democracy could proceed without a
murderous undercover war against democrats by the state's armed men.

It is a mark of the fidelity of the allegiance to the *essence* of the
marxist and leninist clear-sighted emphasis onthe importance of armed force
in state structures that the current SACP leadership describes April 1994
merely as a "breakthrough" and not as a revolution. It is a mark of the
abstract and dogmatic nature of JH's approach to marxism that he considers
that the revolutionary and democratic forces had the regime "on the ropes"
by the turn of the decade, and to expect the SACP now to be championing
armed insurrection/revolution against a government led by Mandela.

There are many countries in the world in which under pressure, the ruling
class has been ready to switch from representative democracy to armed
fascistic terror. It is for sound materialist reasons to do with the
central question of armed power, which JH emphasises, that marxists do not
dismiss the relative, limited, conditional, concessions of bourgeois
representative democracy in favour of revolutionary rhetoric. 

I have tried to link these general comments about the present political
stage in South Africa with the question of armed force to try to focus back
on the theoretical issues handled directly by the article of Cronin on
Parliamentary Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and JH's
criticisms of this article.

The Communist Manifesto argues "The Communists ... do not set up any
sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the
proletarian movement". 

I would charge JH with making of the phrase "dictatorship of the
proletariat" such a sectarian principle.

Other contributors have already argued that Marx's use of the phrase is in
a wider context in which "dictatorship" was virtually synonymous with
"government" or "ruling". Marx expected the revolutionary working class to
take executive action decisively to weaken the power of the exploiting
classes and pressurise a radical transformation of society. 

If marxist theory is to be more than an abstract thesis it is  not credible
to insist on a formula of words that have acquired connotations of
arbitrary use of power against the majority of the people. Lenin
acknowledges from  time to time that he may "fall into extremes" or "bend
the wand". To insist on a formula in a fierce polemic with Kautsky that
"only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of class struggle to the
recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat" as indeed the hall mark
of marxism is to impose sectarian principles on the movement. If the phase
is the hallmark of marxism, how does JH answer the observation that it does
not appear in Lenin's summaries of Marx's teaching such as his essay on
Karl Marx (1913/14).
 
How does JH account for its absence from the extraordinarily strict 21
conditions for joining the Communist International?

Part of the problem is the degree of prominence given by dogmatic followers
of Lenin to his method of shaping the application of marxism in the course
of determined polemics with opportunism and revisionism. Applied
mechanically by less creative people than Lenin this produces a rigid and
sectarian politics. 

The anti-revisionism struggle was taken to a new high in the late 50's and
early 60's with the Sino-Soviet split in the international communist
movement. I have not studied closely the 1962 SACP document that JH praises
but it occurs to me that the inclusion of the phrase DOP in that may
indicate some effects of this polemic. But at that time although the
Chinese side understandably wanted to emphasise the revolutionary potential
of wars of liberation in the colonial and neo-colonial world, as far as the
line was concerned for the capitalist countries with representative
democracy, it was a task of accumulating strength. 

JH does not address the challenges of accumulating strength under
conditions of representative democracy but appears ready to condemn a
leading member of the SACP for revisionism for arguing openly in a reasoned
way why "dicatorship of the proletariat" should not appear on their banners. 

Much of Cronin's article does address this question. One of the most
interesting quotes is which I did not know before, is from Marx on the
"Class Struggles in France":



"The comprehensive contradiction of this constitution, however, consists in
the following: The classes whose social slavery the constitution is to
perpetuate, proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, it puts in
possession of political power through universal suffrage. And from the
class whose social power it sanctions, the bourgeoisie, it withdraws the
political guarantees of this power. It forces the political rule of the
bourgeoisie into democratic conditions, which at every moment help the
hostile classes to victory and jeopardise the very foundations of bourgeois
society."

This is a highly contradictory situation. Cronin argues that the marxists
have to be part of it, and in my opinion he scores when he argues that a
dogmatic interpretation of the Leninist position puts marxists outside it.
JH has not indicated whether he thinks that marxists should at present wage
a struggle against such serious revisionism within the SACP or should have
split and formed a Leninist communist group. Cronin and the SACP are
challenging the right wing tendencies in the triple alliance around the
forthcoming conference of the ANC. JH would presumably think that people he
regards as comrades should be outside that debate. 

Lenin himself gives a more rounded and dialectical description of the
nature of the class struggle, in the section with this title in The Marxist
Doctrine (in "Karl Marx"):

"That is any given society the strivings of some of its memebers conflict
with the strivings of others, that social life is full of contradictions,
that history discloses a struggle between nations and societies, and , in
addition, an alternation of periods of revolution and reaction, peace and
war, stagnation and rapid progress or decline - are facts that are
generally known. Marxism provided the clue which enables us to discover the
laws governing this seeming labyrinth and chaos, namely the theory of class
struggle. Only a study of the whole complex of strivings of all the members
of a given society or group of societies can lead to a scientific
definition of the result of these strivings."

I think the SACP is addressing that chaotic and contradictory picture in
conditions in which the development of the global capitalist economy make
it very difficult to pursue direct socialist policies in South Africa. 



JH concentrates quite a proportion of his criticism of Cronin's article on
arguing the specific point that it is necessary to understand that the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat can only be exercised through the
leadership of the party. Other contributors I feel have adequately
demonstrated that Marx's use of the term by no means extends to such an
interpretation. IMO that seriously distorts Marx's usage which is a wider
concept about the general hegemony of the working class, which are assumed
to be the great majority of the people, over the exploiting classes. 

If JH wants to make the serious charge of revisionism against leading
members of the SACP one question is whether they play down the class
struggle in favour of a worship of reforms and in favour of a class-blind
social peace. Thus Lenin wrote in a formula I would support as a balanced
and not merely a polemical formula and which I think is currently relevant,
in "About the Liberal and Marxist Understanding of the Class Struggle" 1913,

"Marxism recognizes the class struggle as fully developed, 'nationwide'
*only* when it not only embraces politics but also takes in politics the
most essential thing: the structure of state power. Conversely, liberalism,
when the workers' movement has somewhat gained in strength, no longer dares
to deny the class struggle, but tries to narrow, clip, castrate the concept
of the class struggle."

One of the things that emboldened me to challenge JH on his serious
criticisms of leading members of the SACP was that in the latest version of
the African Communist which I have available to me, 1st quarter 1997, there
is a high emphasis on the class struggle. The SACP's Central Committee
Discussion document is entitled "Let us not lose sight of our priorities".
Immediately after the introduction the next section is entitled "National
Democratic transformation - but under which class hegemony?"

There is a direct challenge to the liberal technocratic tendency within the
ANC to try to treat its strategic question as a technical classless question.

Immediately above this passage of text is a picture of demonstrators with
SACP slogans. One is carrying a placard "Make Police Accountable: Join
Community Policing Forums".

Now perhaps to JH that is an example of petty reformism and revisionism. To
my way of thinking it is precisely addressing the question of the role and
control of the bodies of armed men that exist in any state, and it is
explicit, about what the political contest of their use. Yet it is done in
a way which unites with people to deepen democratic reforms already partly
won, rather than raising abstract slogans about the "dictatorship of the
proletariat".



This polemic is very fundamental and raises many questions. I went back to
the Critique of the Gotha Programme to read the usage of the phrase DOP
there. Marx raises it in the context of his private criticisms of the
opportunism of the unity programme. It cannot necessarily be taken out of
context as a political slogan in its own right. Indeed he argues that what
is required is a long period of transformation which he cannot imagine
taking place under Bismarck's  police state. The fundamental line of
demarcation I am begining to think for me with JH, is that I think the SACP
leadership is indeed raising slogans around a strategy of *attempting*
significant moves towards such a class based transformation, under
conditions in which the fascistic use of bourgeois armed forces have been
neutralised but the state is far from a socialist state. 

The formula about "National Democratic transformation" seems to me to be
important one. It is a concept that can be used in conditions of bourgeois
representative democracy. It does not exclude that that process of
transformation may be revolutionary. That depends on how much the
reactionary classes resist, and how much they accommodate. It does not
preach acquiesecent faith in the good will of the reactionary forces.
Rather it raises vigilance about their purposes. It does not rule out a
qualitative lurch in the balance of power such that this state becomes in
its principal aspect, socialist, in which the transformation has to
continue further. It does not rule out further weakening of the repressive
dictatorial role of the bourgeois state prior to such a change. It
integrates the struggle for socialism with the struggle for democratic
rights but from a working class perspective, not an abstract idealist
perspective.

On re-reading the Critique of the Gotha Programme I cannot claim that Marx
envisaged such transformation occuring before the revolutionary transfer of
state power. Nevertheless I think it is not ruled out, and I think it is
arbitrary and dogmatic to label leading members of the SACP as revisionist
for working with the gains of representative democracy that have so far
been won, and attempting to deepen them in explicit class terms.



Chris Burford,

London.




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