INTRODUCTION
At its 5th Special National Congress in December 2024 the SACP publicly
expressed its decision to contest elections wall-to-wall commencing with the
next local government elections. This arises from their critique regarding the
effectiveness of the Tripartite Alliance which should be reconfigured in order to
confront the challenges of the moment.
The SACP has for a considerable time been advocating for the reconfiguration of the Alliance. The suggestion for this reconfiguration is premised on the SACP’s understanding of the historical
significance of the Alliance. To discuss it will therefore require that we refer to
SACP documents as well as the historic positions of the international Communist movement.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRIPARTITE ALLIANCE
To understand the issues underlying the recent pronouncements by the
General Secretary of the SACP and backed up by its politburo, it is important to
briefly trace the historical development of the special relationship between the
ANC and the SACP. Without understanding how the Tripartite Alliance came
about, it would be difficult for many comrades to correctly contextualise the
current matters.
The ANC is in an alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and
the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Each Alliance partner is
an independent organisation with its own constitution, membership and programmes.
The Alliance is founded on a common commitment to the
objectives of the National Democratic Revolution, and the need to unite the
largest possible cross-section of South Africans behind these objectives.
Whilst the relationship between the ANC and the Communist Party of South
Africa (forerunner of the SACP) commenced as far back as the 1920s, the
Tripartite Alliance was only established after 1990.
It is historically correct to make references to the Congress Alliance of the
1950s which was coordinated by the ANC and consisted of Coloured, Indian
and White progressive organisations. This Congress Alliance was instrumental
in the success of grassroots campaigns against the Settler Colonial State’s
repressive laws. Mass actions like the 1952 Defiance Campaign, and the 1955
adoption of the Freedom Charter were based on the sharing of national
interests. Complementing the relationship between the ANC and the CPSA was
the SA Congress of Trade Unions.
However, this was not a tripartite alliance!
Some will ask the question: Why is the ANC referred to as the leader of the
National Democratic Revolution and therefore seems to wield massive
influence in the Tripartite Alliance? The answer lies in the proper understanding
of the directive given to the CPSA by the Communist International in 1928. We
expand on this later in this document. However, it suffices to mention that the
Comintern’s 1928 resolution on South Africa was to direct the SACP to
understand that its immediate and strategic task was to support the South
African struggle for genuine national liberation not a socialist revolution first.
We now address the SACP’s call and insistence on what it terms the
reconfiguration of the Tripartite Alliance.
The suggestion for this reconfiguration came from and has been spearheaded
by the SACP. To discuss it will therefore require that we refer to SACP
documents as well as the historic positions of the international Communist
movement.
SACP REASONS FOR THE RECONFIGURATION
The SACP document ‘Towards a reconfigured Alliance’, published in Bua
Komanisi says:
“It is this perspective (developed within the Comintern) that, by and large,
formed the theoretical foundation of our Alliance. The origin of the Alliance
was, accordingly, elaborated in the 1928 resolution of the Comintern
(Communist International) on the South African Question. The resolution,
which was adopted by the Executive Committee of the Comintern following
its Sixth Congress, and which was ratified by the Communist Party in South
Africa at its Annual Conference in January 1929, states:
The Party should pay particular attention to the embryonic
national organisations among the natives, such as the African
National Congress. The Party, while retaining its full
independence, should participate in these organisations, and
should seek to broaden and extend their activity. Our aim should
be to transform the African National Congress into a fighting
nationalist revolutionary organisation against the white
bourgeoisie and the British imperialists, based upon the trade
unions, peasant organisations, etc., developing systematically the
leadership of the workers and the Communist Party in this
organisation. The Party should seek to weaken the influence of the
native chiefs corrupted by the White bourgeoisie over the existing
native tribal organisations by developing peasants’ organisations
and spreading among them the influence of the Communist Party.
The development of a national-revolutionary movement of the
toilers of South Africa against the white bourgeoisie and British
imperialism constitutes one of the major tasks of the Communist
Party of South Africa.”
Elsewhere the document asserts that it was “the adoption of the 1928-1929
resolution on the South African Question which formally established the
Alliance.”
There is absolutely no basis for this extraordinary claim that the 1928
Comintern resolution on ‘the Black Republic’ in South Africa ‘established the
Alliance’ or provided ‘the theoretical foundation’ of an alliance between the
ANC and the SACP.
First of all, the directives in the Comintern resolution were directed solely and
exclusively to the then CPSA, now the SACP.
They were not addressed to the ANC for it to use to inform its relations with the
SACP. Neither do they direct that the CPSA should form an alliance with the ANC.
These are obvious and self-evident conclusions. The question that arises is –
why did the SACP advance a proposal which is obviously false?
The answer to this question is that the SACP was trying surreptitiously to
persuade the ANC to accept the proposal that the Comintern was prescribing
a process which would ineluctably mean that the ANC and the friendly and
supportive SACP would have to enter into an alliance.
This amounts to dishonest behaviour.
Perhaps of greater importance, the claim about the Comintern resolution
prescribing an alliance between the ANC and the SACP demonstrates a very
poor understanding by a Communist Party of the approach of the
international Communist movement to the important matter of national
liberation.
COMMUNISTS AND NATIONAL LIBERATION
The reason the Comintern adopted its 1928 resolution of South Africa was to
direct the SACP to understand that its immediate and strategic task was to
support the South African struggle for genuine national liberation.
The Comintern intervened as it did because at that point, the SACP thought
that its immediate task was to organise for a protracted struggle for the victory
of the socialist revolution.
In this regard, the 1928 resolution contains this observation:
…the Communist Party of South Africa found itself in stubborn opposition to the
correct slogan proposed by the Comintern calling for an independent native
South African republic as a stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic
with full, equal rights for all races.
During the 19th century, Marx and Engels spent much time discussing ‘the Irish
question’. Specifically, they were interested in two questions.
One of these was the liberation of Ireland from English colonial domination.
The second was the relationship between the colonisation of Ireland and the
struggle of the British workers for socialism.
Marx and Engels took the position that the British workers had to side with the
Irish people in their anti-colonial struggle in order to create the space and
possibility for themselves to wage a successful struggle in Britain for socialist
transformation.
In a November 1869 letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, Marx wrote:
I have become more and more convinced—and the only question is to drive
this conviction home to the English working class—that it can never do
anything decisive here in England until it separates its policy with regard to
Ireland most definitely from the policy of the ruling classes, until it not only
makes common cause with the Irish but actually takes the initiative in
dissolving the Union established in 1801 and replacing it by a free federal
relationship.And this must be done, not as a matter of sympathy with Ireland
but as a demand made in the interests of the English proletariat. If not, the
English people will remain tied to the leading- strings of the ruling classes,
because it will have to join with them in a common front against Ireland. Every
one of its movements in England herself is crippled by the strife with the Irish,
who form a very important section of the working class in England.
In a March 1870 communication, Marx wrote:
Thus, the attitude of the International Association to the Irish question is very clear.
Its first need is to encourage the social revolution in England.
To this end a great blow must be struck in Ireland…It is a precondition to the emancipation of the English working class to transform the present forced union (i.e., the enslavement of
Ireland) into equal and free confederation, if possible, into complete separation if need be.
In December 1869, Marx wrote to Engels saying:
For a long time I believed that it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy. I always expressed this point of view in the New-York
Tribune. Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English
working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland.The lever must be applied in Ireland. That is why the Irish question is so
important for the social movement in general.
In another April 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, Marx said:
Therefore, to hasten the social revolution in England is the most important
object of the International Working Men’s Association. The sole means of
hastening it is to make Ireland independent… And it is the special task of the
Central Council in London to awaken a consciousness in the English workers
that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is no question of abstract
justice or humanitarian sentiment, but the first condition of their own social
emancipation.
To end these comments by Marx and Engels on Ireland, we must draw
attention to this interesting observation by Engels in his February 1882 letter
to Karl Kautsky, that:
I therefore hold the view that two nations in Europe have not only the right but
even the duty to be nationalistic before they become internationalistic: the
Irish and the Poles. They are most internationalistic when they are genuinely
nationalistic.
In his May 1914 treatise on ‘The Right of Nations to Self-Determination’, Lenin
wrote:
As far as the theory of Marxism in general is concerned, the question of the
right to self-determination presents no difficulty. No one can seriously
question the London resolution of 1896, or the fact that self-determination
implies only the right to secede, or that the formation of independent national
states is the tendency in all bourgeois-democratic revolutions…
He proceeded to quote the ‘London (International Congress) resolution of
1896’, which said:
This Congress declares that it stands for the full right of all nations to self
determination [Selbstbestimmungsrecht] and expresses its sympathy for
the workers of every country now suffering under the yoke of military,
national or other absolutism.This Congress calls upon the workers of all these countries to join the ranks of the class-conscious [Klassenbewusste—those who understand their class interests]
workers of the whole world in order jointly to fight for the defeat of international
capitalism and for the achievement of the aims of international Social
Democracy.[1]
We have cited these observations by Marx, Engels and Lenin to emphasise the
attitude of the international Communist movement on the important question
of national liberation, and thus make the statement that the SACP should
have been fully alert to the significance of the 1928 Comintern resolution of
South Africa.
The Comintern resolution was reaffirming long-standing positions of the
Communist movement on the question of national liberation and had
absolutely nothing to do with ‘the South African Tripartite Alliance’.
We shall return later to this matter as it relates directly to the views of the
SACP about the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution.
COMMUNISM AND THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
Despite all the foregoing, it is factually correct that the ANC, the SACP and
COSATU did form and remain (with SANCO) in the South African
Revolutionary Alliance. This is the Alliance which the SACP wants
reconfigured.
Among others, the 1928 Comintern resolution says that:
the Communist Party of South Africa must combine the fight against all anti
native laws with the general political slogan in the fight against British
domination, the slogan of an independent native South African republic as a
stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic, with full equal rights for all
races, black, coloured and white.
Unfortunately, the 1928 Resolution does not discuss the importance of ‘the
independent native South African republic…with full equal rights for all races,
black, coloured and white’, to the advance to ‘a workers’ and peasants’
republic’.
But it is exactly here that we will find the objective reason for the formation of
the ‘alliance between the ANC and the SACP’.
To explain this, once again we shall depend on the established positions of the
international Communist movement.
Before doing this, let us draw attention to the fact that in its 1928 resolution,
the Comintern correctly identified the ANC as a national liberation movement,
its strategic task therefore being the emancipation of the oppressed from
national oppression.
Of course, and to the contrary, the strategic task of the SACP, like all
Communist Parties, is class emancipation – the emancipation of the working
class from domination and exploitation by the capitalist class: hence its task
of organising for the victory of the socialist revolution.
We will have seen that nowhere did the 1928 Comintern resolution suggest
that the SACP should displace the ANC as a leader of the struggle for national
liberation.
Rather, the Comintern directed that the SACP should work to ‘transform the
African National Congress into a fighting nationalist revolutionary organisation
against the white bourgeoisie and the British imperialists…’
The Comintern was interested in so transforming the ANC, as well as realising
the other objectives stated in the resolution, because it wanted a genuinely
independent ‘native republic, with full equal rights for all races, black,
coloured and white’.
It took this position because, as the 1928 resolution said, such a republic
would serve ‘as a stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic’.
We now revert to the established positions of the international Communist
movement to explain the immediate foregoing.
Let us start with a little-known sentence in the 1848 Communist Manifesto
written by Marx and Engels. This sentence says:
We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class
is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of
democracy.
Here, plainly, Marx and Engels advance the idea that the proletariat could
accede to the position of a ruling class by winning through a democratic
contest, and hence the vital importance of the existence of a democratic order
to enable the proletariat to take power peacefully – ‘winning the battle of
democracy’.
Consistent with, and to advance this view, in his 1895 Introduction to Marx’s
‘The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850’, Engels wrote:
The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal
suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the
militant proletariat, and Lassalle had again taken up this point.
In 1917, in his presentation on ‘The State and Revolution’, Vladimir Lenin said:
Engels realized here in a particularly striking form the fundamental idea
which runs through all of Marx’s works, namely, that the democratic republic
is the nearest approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat.For such a republic, without in the least abolishing the rule of capital, and, therefore, the
oppression of the masses and the class struggle, inevitably leads to such an
extension, development, unfolding, and intensification of this struggle that, as
soon as it becomes possible to meet the fundamental interests of the
oppressed masses, this possibility is realized inevitably and solely through the
dictatorship of the proletariat, through the leadership of those masses by the
proletariat.
Further, emphasising the centrality of this Communist approach to the
democratic republic, in his 1905 ‘Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the
Democratic Revolution’, Lenin wrote:
In answer to the anarchist objections that we are putting off the socialist
revolution, we say: we are not putting it off, but we are taking the first step
towards it in the only possible way, along the only correct road, namely, the
road of a democratic republic.Whoever wants to reach Socialism by a different road, other than that of
political democracy, will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary
both in the economic and the political sense.
If any workers, ask us at the given moment why we should not
go ahead and carry out our maximum program, we shall answer by pointing
out how far the masses of the democratically minded people still are from
Socialism, how undeveloped class antagonisms still are, how unorganised the
proletarians still are.Organise hundreds of thousands of workers all over Russia; enlist the sympathy of
millions for our program! Try to do this without confining yourselves to high-sounding
but hollow anarchist phrases – and you will see at once that in order to achieve this organisation, in order to spread this socialist enlightenment, we must achieve the fullest possible measure of democratic reforms.
When, as reported by Lenin, Marx said that ‘the democratic republic is the
nearest approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat’, he meant that the
democratic republic gave the best possibility for the Communist Party
successfully to organise for the advance towards, and the victory of the
socialist revolution.
In the Introduction to ‘The Class Struggles in France…’ we have mentioned,
Engels demonstrated exactly how the Party of Socialism would act, taking
advantage of the possibilities provided by the democratic republic, and wrote:
The revolutionary workers of the Latin countries had been wont to regard the
suffrage as a snare, as an instrument of government trickery. It was otherwise
in Germany. The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of
universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks
of the militant proletariat, and Lassalle had again taken up this point.Now, when Bismarck found himself compelled to introduce this franchise as the
only means of interesting the mass of the people in his plans, our workers
immediately took it in earnest and sent August Bebel to the first, constituent
Reichstag. And from that day on, they have used the franchise in a way which
has paid them a thousand-fold and has served as a model to the workers of all
countries.The franchise has been, in the words of the French Marxist
programme, transformé, de moyen de duperie qu’il a ete jusqu’ici, en
instrument d’emancipation – transformed by them -from a means of
deception, which it was before, into an instrument of emancipation.“And if universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed
us to count our numbers every three years… it would still have been much
more than enough.But it did more than this by far. In election agitation it
provided us with a means, second to none, of getting in touch with the mass
of the people where they still stand aloof from us; of forcing all parties to
defend their views and actions against our attacks before all the people; and,
further, it provided our representatives in the Reichstag with a platform from
which they could speak to their opponents in parliament, and to the masses
without, with quite other authority and freedom than in the press or at
meetings.Of what avail was their Anti-Socialist Law to the government and
the bourgeoisie when election campaigning and socialist speeches in the
Reichstag continually broke through it?”
HISTORIC TASKS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
The Communist Manifesto says:
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other
proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the
bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
When Engels and Lenin wrote about the imperative for the Party of Socialism
to take advantage of the possibility provided by democracy, for instance, as
Lenin said, to organise hundreds of thousands of Russian workers throughout
the country, in order to spread socialist enlightenment, they were addressing
this first task as stated in the Communist Manifesto – to attend to ‘the
formation of the proletariat as a class’.
What Engels described concerning the participation of the German workers
and their Social Democratic Party in the German legislature (Reichstag) was
exactly part of the process to respond to what the Communist Manifesto says
concerning the task to attend to ‘the formation of the proletariat as a class’.
Of course, the Communist Manifesto used the language ‘the proletariat as a
class’ because the socialist movement distinguished then, as it still does,
between ‘the proletariat in itself’, and ‘the proletariat for itself’.
The former refers to the workers who, by definition, live by selling their labour
power – the proletariat in itself.
The latter, the ‘proletariat for itself’, refers to workers who have reached such a
level of class consciousness that they are ready to discharge their historic
mission, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie – the ‘proletariat as a class’, as the
Communist Manifesto says.
END OF PART 1 (To be continued)
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