Capitalism, socialism, communism, democracy etc.

Pondering wrote:

I don't agree with the suggestion of inevidibility, as though it is fate. I don't believe in fate, individual or collective. Agency matters. 

People who believe politics tends to move in cycles also believes these cycles can be arrested though establishing a constitution that prevents a political system from degenerating. That’s why constitutions try to establish things like limits on powers, separation of powers, checks and balances, basic rights and responsibilities, minority rights, individual rights, group rights, civil rights, separate branches of government, federalism, independent legislatures, representative democracy, independent judiciaries, etc..,,

..this is more appropriate here. 

Sudan’s revolution enters its second phase: disrupting the state

quote:

A wave of sit-ins

Currently, protests and mobilisation are happening all over Sudan. Resistance committees are engaged in daily confrontations with violent security forces and their lethal weapons. And as well as mass demonstrations, the committees are organising sit-ins.

Sit-ins bring people together over food and drinks in their neighborhoods, in a public space where they can exchange ideas but also receive services such as health checks. This is important in light of the privatisation of the health sector, which restricted access to quality health and medical services to those wealthy enough to pay for them.

Sit-ins began in urban and rural areas across Sudan in 2020. That year, thousands gathered in front of their localities’ buildings or in public spaces for days at a time, demanding the right to decide how to use resources and space in their cities, towns and villages, and protesting over local issues.

The sit-ins revealed that people knew the solution to their problems, but officials did not want to listen. The transitional government had given promises to some of these protestors that their demands would be addressed, and ignored the rest – wasting what could have been a golden opportunity to address and respond to major demands fuelling the ongoing protests.

For example, in Abu Jubeiha (a resource-rich but poor city in the Kordofan region), people protested against the mining of ‘dirty gold’ by companies affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces militia and the government, which used toxic chemicals at a high cost to health and the environment.

People also protested for the right to choose the decision-makers in their localities. In Karari, Umbadah, Jabal Awliya in Khartoum state and elsewhere in the country, people demanded the dismissal of former regime employees who were still in positions of power. Protesters asked for general assemblies where financial and performance reports would be discussed. For them, participation at this level of power was a real stepping stone towards controlling public money.

quote:

Democratic practice

Resistance committees have always demanded the right to elect local government officials; it is a demand aimed at strengthening the democratic process at grassroots level.

In a move away from the classic elitist model of Sudanese politics, in which political parties view the people merely as ‘the masses’, resistance committees are engaged in politics at a community level, using genuinely participatory practices.

For resistance committees, becoming genuinely democratic involves building broader connections and membership among the residents of their neighbourhoods, and collectively building the ethics and principles of their struggle.

To ensure transparency and information-sharing, the resistance committees in Bahri (or Khartoum North), for example, publish pamphlets about the current political situation, their positions on issues and their activities.

Focusing on daily struggles does not mean forgetting strategy. The committees’ eyes have always been on Sudan’s old and persistent problem: that wealth and power are monopolised by a political and military elite that does not pay attention to the interests and demands of the majority.

Issues of local governance and the democratisation of resistance committees can be understood as a step in the historical process of the revolution, in which each phase builds on the previous one. Learning from the first phase of the revolution, which started in December 2018, the second phase is using organising not only to mobilise and protest, but as a tool to access wealth and power.....

Simply changing the figurehead, or dissolving one government to put another in its place, will not bring about real change. Long-term change needs to disrupt the structure of the state itself, to destroy its foundations, which have been devoted to creating grievances and monopolies, and to abolish the political clientelism that has always robbed the people. Rebuilding the state requires building alternatives and challenging old political practices in order to redefine politics.

Words of wisdom that I wish fellow Canadians would take to heart. The BNA Act is an evil, racist, colonial constitution. Our energies have been diverted to electing back bench nobodies under a FPTP system and we call it democracy and wonder why nothing changes.

On the Bowman Crisis

PALESTINE SOLIDARITY AND THE FUTURE OF THE DSA

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has rapidly become the largest socialist formation in the US, has faced serious questions and contradictions since its explosive growth in the wake of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign. Mushrooming from fewer than ten thousand members to over ninety thousand members in just five years, the organization has restored hope for many that a fighting Left may return to the “belly of the beast.” However, the DSA has struggled with issues of internal democracy as well as of political principles. The primary contradiction embedded in the fabric of the DSA is its prioritization of electoral politics and the Democratic Party over grassroots mobilization and socialist principles. This is evident in the fact that its growth has recently stagnated and begun to fall, as the strategy of riding Sanders’ presidential campaigns is no longer available. 

This contradiction has emerged most visibly in a dispute over U.S. Congressman and DSA member Jamaal Bowman. The attempt by DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC), the primary political leadership of the organization, to dissolve DSA’s national BDS and Palestine Working Group has been the latest turn in the months-long struggle within the organization around the question of accountability to the Palestinian BDS picket line. The BDS working group had galvanized a rank-and-file demand for U.S. Congressman and DSA member Jamaal Bowman to be expelled following his repeated, active support for Israeli apartheid. 

Instead of disciplining Bowman, the NPC retaliated against its activist base. Although there has been widespread outrage, the conflict remains unresolved and points to the fundamental contradiction in the DSA between electoral expediency and socialist principles.

THE CRISIS

In a decision by its NPC-appointed National Electoral Committee, the DSA endorsed US Congressman and DSA member Jamaal Bowman for his 2020 congressional run. However, in 2021 Bowman voted to send additional military funding to Israel to the tune of $4.4 billion, before taking part in a propaganda tour of Israel with J Street, a liberal Zionist organization. Bowman has consistently stated, as in a May 2021 interview, that he opposes the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and does not align himself with organizations supporting it—which, ironically, includes the DSA. In 2017, DSA endorsed the BDS movement at its national convention, the highest decision-making body of the organization, in a vote by hundreds of delegates representing chapters around the country.

Bowman’s actions came shortly after a mass uprising, the Unity Intifada, took place across historic Palestine against Israeli ethnic cleansing and repression, as well as a massive Israeli bombing campaign on Gaza. This period of uprising and repression in the spring and summer of 2021 witnessed a high level of solidarity across the US as well, with mass protests and a level of attention and support for Palestine not previously seen in this country. “Block the Boat” efforts successfully prevented the offloading of cargo from an Israeli shipping company, and for the first time teachers unions crafted solidarity resolutions. Mass protests accompanied renewed attention to BDS and generated an overall improved standard for solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. 

The contrast could not be more stark between these popular efforts on one hand and, on the other, the continued bipartisan US political and military support for Israel, and the actions of DSA member and congressional representative Bowman in particular. It is no surprise then that the DSA’s BDS and Palestine Working Group was alarmed by Bowman’s comments distancing himself from BDS in May 2021. The working group reached out to his office shortly thereafter, beginning a months-long process of fruitless efforts to change his position...... 

..i watched numsa build for many years. it was promising. all this before the "party".

Take Back the Unions for Their Members

What we are witnessing in the labour movement today is quite simply a tragedy. At a time when the working class is suffering as never before, leaders of South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) are tearing the young federation to pieces.

The working class needs this federation to strengthen and grow. It is the only potentially militant, independent grouping of trade unions in South Africa. And it is not just a question of the labour movement needing such a leading force. It is the working class movement as a whole.

Community organisations are weakened if they are unable to get the active support of organised workers. Abahlali baseMjondolo (the people of the shacks) needs the active support and resources of organised workers. The Xolobeni struggle for the “Right to say No” is strengthened by the support of a federation of workers. The loss and the setback to the working class movement will be huge.

What Lies Behind the Dispute

The heart of the dispute inside Saftu comes down to a strategic difference over how to build the working class movement politically. National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) argues that the correct way is to build what it calls a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard Mass Party. The Saftu General Secretary and a number of affiliates favour the building of a mass working class party or Movement for Socialism. Numsa established its “vanguard party,” the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP). It now wants Saftu to throw its weight behind the SRWP. It views as a class enemy anyone who stands in the way of that project.

And here is the first error, which can be traced back to the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party after the 1917 revolution. The Bolshevik Party regarded itself as indispensable to the working class. Without the Bolshevik Party, the revolution would fail. And it was not just the Bolshevik Party, it was its leadership. And not just its leadership, it was the General Secretary. So the interests of the working class become reduced to the interests of the Party and thereafter to the infallible leader.

Defence of the Party becomes synonymous with defence of the working class. Perhaps it was more understandable at a time when the Bolshevik Party had just successfully played a leading role in a revolution. It is rather less understandable when the party we are talking about is a largely dysfunctional, factionalised, small grouping of mainly Numsa worker leaders and staff. It is an organisation that was able to secure only 24,439 votes nationally in the last election. It is support for this organisation that Numsa appears to be willing to shatter Saftu, a federation of 600,000 members.

What an irony. The famous Numsa Special Congress in 2013 led to Numsa’s expulsion from Cosatu because the affiliates of Cosatu required allegiance to the ANC. Numsa is now ready to break Saftu apart because it requires allegiance to SRWP. Is there no learning from history?

Whence the Factionalism?

Factional politics are narrow politics. Politics which fetishises a tactic or strategy at the expense of having a perspective of the interests of the working class and the poor as a whole. Numsa fetishists a particular form of political party. Only a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard party will retain a revolutionary perspective. Only a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard party can be relied on to not sell out. Look at Syriza; Podemos: living proof.

Era of Investment Companies

And then there is the other aspect of this tragedy – the sell-out to a lifestyle for union leaders funded by a union investment company. In Numsa’s case it has been a particularly insidious process because of the business that the investment company engages in. The main customers of the Numsa Investment Company (NIC) are the union’s members. This has become clear as the sordid story of 3Sixty Life (the main subsidiary of NIC) has unravelled through amaBhungane and GroundUp.

3Sixty makes its money by selling insurance policies to workers. Numsa organises 350,000 workers. A perfect synergy you might think. The benign view of this model is that Numsa’s company makes money by selling policies to members and then ploughs that money back into the union for the members’ benefit. It must have looked like a pretty model on someone’s computer 15 years ago.

But what of the consequences of turning your members into customers? What of the consequences of turning your shop stewards and staff into sales people? What of the consequences of giving the union leadership a source of income separate from the subscriptions of its members?.....