April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

maintenance of the capitalist system of private property, they are no
threat to the capitalist state in South Africa.
It is true that at different levels a whole new layer of civil servants has
been appointed who come from the liberation movement. But this is
something that the ruling class in South Africa can accept as long as their
fundamental interests and property are not affected or threatened in any
way. If one morning Zuma were to decide that, for the sake of argument,
in line with the Freedom Charter, Anglo-American and De Beers were to be
nationalised under workers' control and run for the benefit of the majority
of the population, then we would see the state and the capitalist class use
all the means at their disposal to prevent this from happening. In this
example we can see the validity of the Marxist theory of the state.
The point for communists must be this: As long as capitalism continues to
exist, unemployment, poverty and corruption will exist. In South Africa
this has been proven by the fact that seventeen years of capitalist
democracy have not solved anything for the masses. In order to solve the
most basic needs of the masses, what has to be done is to mobilize the
masses and expropriate the capitalist class by nationalizing the
commanding heights of the economy under democratic workers’ control
and management. But the capitalists are not going to accept this and they
will mobilize the whole weight of the state apparatus against the mass
movement. Thus, a precondition for victory will be, at a certain point in
the process, to call for the dismantling of the capitalist state and the
handing over of power to the organs of mass struggle that the movement
will undoubtedly throw up. Then the building of a workers’ state, based on
the neighbourhoods and factories and on the four principles of Lenin can
begin.
But, as we said, all this seems to be a closed book to comrade Nzimande
who has his mind firmly fixed on “building working class hegemony” within
the bourgeois state.
Why (not) socialism?
In his speech at the YCL congress and on many other occasions Nzimande
repeatedly talks about the unfavourable balance of forces which makes it
impossible to move towards socialist revolution immediately. This is used
as the foremost excuse to introduce such policies as the NDR (National
Democratic Revolution) and the MTV (Medium Term Vision) that all
advocate solutions to problems such as unemployment, poverty, lack of a
good education system, racism and corruption in the here and now – i.e.
within the limited confines of capitalism – while postponing the concrete
question of a socialist solution to these problems to a distant future when
the balance of forces will supposedly be better.
Before we proceed in analysing the balance of forces we need to dedicate
a paragraph or two to ask comrade Nzimande the following questions: 1.
how are you going to solve these problems without breaking with
capitalism and the system of private property? 2. If you believe we can
solve these questions or even get vaguely close to solving them within the
framework of capitalist society, then why would the masses need
socialism?
While we wait for the reply from the comrade, we will proceed to explain
how Marxists would solve these questions. By expropriating the bourgeoisie
and nationalizing their assets under workers' control and management we
could immediately shorten the working week and thus wipe out
unemployment by sharing out work among all and, at the same time, use
the profits to raise wages and general living standards through increased