July 31 marked the 72nd anniversary of the South African Communist Party. After it had been outlawed for 40 years, 50,000 people attended the public launch of the SACP as a legal party, outside Soweto in July 1990. Since then its membership has grown from several hundred to over 40,000. RAYMOND SUTTNER, a member of the ANC's top body, the National Working Committee, was elected to the SACP's Central Committee in December 1991. Speaking with Green Left Weekly's FRANK NOAKES in Johannesburg earlier this year, he gave a personal view of the role and future of the SACP.
"The first thing to say is that the Communist Party has a degree of humility about its role in the present and the future which has been forced upon it. The collapse of Eastern Europe has caused us to rethink many of our frameworks for understanding the political situation. This has implications for all Marxists, but I would say in our case we haven't completed the process of reassessment. The second factor which has impacted on our thinking and has forced on us the sense that we don't have all the answers, is that the terrain upon which we operate is different.
"Understanding this terrain is quite difficult, because it's not the same as a conventional western European bourgeois democratic situation. Yet, at the same time, the opportunities for the struggle that were not there before 1990 are quite substantial; how to conduct them effectively in a way that's empowering is difficult. But it's not something that confronts the Communist Party alone; ultimately it confronts the ANC as well", says Raymond Suttner, a former prisoner of the apartheid regime.
"As I see it, the Communist Party hasn't yet developed a clarity about its own character and its role in the transition. One example of that is when the party was relaunched as a legal party it used the phrase: "a mass party of quality", the meaning of which is not clear to me. We are grappling with the viability of conceptions like vanguard party. Obviously, we reject the self-proclaimed vanguard
role, but if you're playing a vanguard role, what does that mean?
"I think we are moving towards a conception that the socialist project is not the property of the Communist Party alone; that its success in South Africa is dependent on the broadest range of left forces unifying and using their strength to advance democracy in such a way that the conditions for socialism are created.
"This requires the Communist Party acquiring a degree of cohesion and understanding of the present situation and the road ahead which I don't think we have acquired yet. Secondly, it requires the sort of organisation inside the Communist Party, and beyond it, that can secure the achievement of these democratic and socialist goals."
Late last year the SACP chairperson, Joe Slovo, writing in the African Communist, initiated a far-reaching and controversial debate about the role and extent of negotiations. This debate was clearly necessary, but a few people on the left have chosen to interpret this as the SACP leading the ANC into an unprincipled compromise.
Suttner says they have their facts wrong about the strategic perspectives debate, because in the end it was adopted unanimously by the ANC. But, he adds, "The Communist Party has not got one position in regard to negotiations, and the ANC hasn't got one position. We may come to decisions, but within the ANC there are a number of different perspectives.
"Joe Slovo advocated certain positions. My problem with them is not that they are wrong, but that they are insufficient and not part of an overall perspective towards the transition.
"I would say that that's a defect in the overall liberation movement approach to negotiations. We proclaimed that negotiations are part of the struggle when, in fact, we rely on negotiations to deliver everything.
"The weakness of the liberation movement as a whole is that we haven't developed an adequate
strategic perspective for the current period. Many of the concepts that we've used are inadequate and flawed; I would go further and say there are a lot of concepts that we've worked with, mind sets that we've inherited, that we haven't yet come to terms with or properly re-evaluated."
Growing rapidly from a small underground party into a mass party in such a short time presents problems as well as possibilities. How does the party begin, for instance, to develop the political understanding of new members?
"The South African Communist Party is mass, but it's not mass by South African standards really, because the ANC is almost a million members. But it's mass enough to raise the problems you mentioned. This is part of the problem that I'm referring to: in developing a strategy you may well develop unanimity on the way ahead at the level of the Central Committee, but to diffuse that and get an injection of ideas from all levels is dependent on personal education at those levels.
"We've got to be very careful to avoid complacency, because the Communist Party is very popular." Suttner quotes the results of the Markinor opinion poll, which showed the SACP as the second most popular party in the country after the ANC. Eight per cent of respondents indicated that they would vote for the SACP as their first choice, with a further 39% saying they may vote for it.
"But that doesn't resolve the question, because if a Communist Party is to lead by virtue of its strategic understanding and so on, it requires a level of discipline and understanding born of conducting political education which many of us went through. We haven't been able to do that in the period since unbanning. The induction of members of the ANC, where they are given a booklet, Organising for Freedom, is one thing, but they don't have to grasp Marxism-Leninism. We haven't coped with that yet.
"The very success of the Communist Party looms with impending problems of a very serious kind unless we urgently attend to organisational questions."
The SACP doesn't have the structures to facilitate the necessary political education, or to raise adequate funds, he points out.
"I would say that a very large percentage of the members of the Communist Party are members because they have admiration for the role that it has played in the past; they do not have a full understanding of Marxism-Leninism."
Suttner adds that he is no longer sure what it means to have a full understanding of Marxism-Leninism. "What I consider a full understanding is not the same as certain other tendencies in the Communist Party.
"So", he continues, "we have this almost emotional commitment to the Communist Party. Our job, obviously, is to translate that into a commitment and understanding that becomes a weapon. I don't think we've done that.
"There is no difficulty in recruiting members to the Communist Party: it's massively popular. Personally, I don't think that's a wholly healthy thing, because it's not a popularity which is always a result of understanding. It's an identification with the Communist Party militants.
"Just about everyone who's been a martyr, top leaders of MK [Umkhonto we Sizwe, the people's army], all those people are usually communists. That's why the Communist Party has got this unique image. It's not been a collaborator in government or class collaborationist, it's been at the forefront; that's why I think people have this incredible emotional response."
Suttner recalls that even before he was a member of the party, when on speaking assignments, people would assume he was in the SACP: "When you were introduced they would chant: ANC!, ANC!, ANC!, and then [in hushed tones] party, party, party".
Is the response to the party just at the emotional level though? No, Suttner says. "There is a commitment to socialism; a lot of workers are distrustful of the ANC, and they see the Communist
Party as striving for social and economic reconstruction."
So there is a certain ideological commitment, but, Suttner stresses, "one mustn't take that to mean a full acquaintance with Marxism-Leninism, or even a smattering of it. In so far as COSATU [Congress Of South African Trade Unions], for example, also has a commitment to socialism, it would be that same commitment that would drive people to the Communist Party.
"Some people don't want to join the ANC, and they just join the Communist Party; personally, I think it's completely wrong, I would like to see a rule preventing that. In a limited number of cases I think people have a degree of contempt for the ANC because it's not really a class organisation, and because of the alleged superiority of Marxism-Leninism.
"Overlapping leadership means a lot of us play a very key role in the ANC in the first place, and we don't play that role as a unified bloc". SACP Central Committee members don't always vote the same way on the ANC National Executive. But "what I find happens is the Communist Party gives a gloss on ANC perspectives which points to broader social and economic perspectives and mass involvement. That's what we're tending to do at the moment."
Overlapping leadership can be a double-edged sword. Jeremy Cronin, another leader of the SACP, told Green Left Weekly, "Most of our full-time activists are full-time in COSATU or the ANC; that's a problem for the party". He qualified this by pointing out that it was also a source of strength. About one-third of all elected regional ANC executive positions are held by party members, and their numbers grow with every new election.
"I think for it [SACP] to play a leading role requires a unifying, cohesive, strategic perspective", Suttner says, and he doesn't believe that they're there yet, although he points to a paper prepared by Jeremy Cronin, which was discussed and adopted by the Central Committee in February, as part of that process.
In section one of the paper, "The SACP in the Transition to Democracy and Socialism", the party leadership reaffirms its criticisms of "bureaucratic socialism" as it exited in the Soviet Union. Bureaucratism led to "the withering away of any mass democratic movement (including effective trade unions)". It goes on to say that the administrative command system went hand in hand with the one party state, unconstitutionality and "massive criminal abuses" in the Stalin years.
Says the document, "Our party has already condemned these malpractices. But our condemnation, so far, has often tended to be a moral criticism. There is nothing wrong with a moral criticism, but clearly we need to carry through a more far-reaching Marxist analysis as well.
"What are the implications of all of this for the socialism we should be trying to build in our country?", the document asks. It answers in part: "The socialism we should be building:
"1. will not be (one) party centred, or state-centred — which is not to deny the importance of both a Marxist party (or parties) and a socialist state.
"2. that is, it will be rooted in working class and broad mass participation — both to make the socialist breakthrough, and to develop and deepen it.
"3. therefore, socialism will be essentially fought for, developed and defended, not bureaucratically, but by a popular movement."
It goes on to outline what this means in the South African situation, and states: "[S]ocialism is not so much a separate entity from the national democratic revolution, as a crucial part of, or stage in deepening and defending it ... therefore, in the course of the NDR [national democratic revolution] we should continuously seek to create momentum towards socialism, capacity for socialism, and even elements of socialism."
"The character and tasks of the SACP should, then,
be defined to a large extent by the kind of socialism we hope to build, and by the related perspective we have of the path to that kind of socialism", it concludes.
Suttner adds, "The Communist Party has not got a guaranteed role in the future. One of the things we've been saying is that 1992 may not have been different without the Communist Party, without the Central Committee of the Communist Party; it wouldn't have made a fundamental difference.
"What I'm saying is either we've got to conclude that we don't have a role in the present period and face up to that honestly, or else we've got to grapple with the situation — and the process is in motion now of doing that — and come up with a redefinition of our position in the current period.
"Jeremy's paper speaks of developing elements of socialism as we go along, basically in the process of democratisation. Now that to me is what would have been described as revisionism in the past", says Suttner. While capitalism developed within and on the basis of feudalism, "socialism had to create its own basis afresh. So that position is being challenged in this paper; that's just one example of a challenge to orthodoxy, and I agree with it completely."
These sorts of developments Suttner sees as necessary to drive the SACP forward, but he says, "I see the debate being, in the first place, about popular empowerment". The discussion inside the SACP "will aid the development of the broad democratic forces. I believe that the success of the South African revolution — if there is a revolution, because I don't think we can assume that — is dependent on strengthening the ANC as a broad democratic organisation, and strengthening all the democratic forces beyond it. Because you're not going to have a successful transition toward democracy, beyond democracy, unless you have these other forces of civil society playing a full role."
And what of the alliance between the SACP and the ANC?
"There is no objective reason to warrant breaking this alliance. What would be the most profitable
process is the mutual penetration of ideas between the Communist Party and the ANC.
"This alliance is under strain because, as in most liberation movements, when you approach the period of power, the radicals tend to come under attack from big capital, from the capitalist-controlled media and so forth. There's been a lot of pressure on the ANC to break the alliance. Whereas in the days of the ANC in exile, the Communist Party was almost a route to power within the ANC, it's no longer the case. A number of leaders, Central Committee and Political Bureau, are no longer members.
"So the alliance is taking some strain, but I would argue that it's in the interest of both organisations to continue. I hope that we will develop a broad socialist vision which the ANC adopts as well."
The main question confronting the socialist movement as a whole, according to Suttner, "is the question of empowerment, the question of combining both representative and direct democracy. I don't think there's any success story in the world, where people have been able to be empowered on a number of different fronts, and that to me is the problem of the future.
"We have this problem now with negotiations where people are just waiting for successful negotiations, waiting for elections. This is very dangerous because the power that they have is not really being deployed. We've got to stop thinking of people's power as being located in political organisations only and work out how we can have permanent people's power through a number of different modes of organisation."