Civil
Society and Democracy
Mpume Sikhosana, Blade Nzimande
("African Communist" 1992. Reprinted in "The Marxist Review" no 12, Nov.1992)
The
crisis in Eastern Europe, the failure of democracy in Africa, and in the shadow
of the above two, the apparent “success” and “stability” of western bourgeois
democracy have all led to extensive soul-searching and debate amongst
socialists and Marxists on how national and socialist democracy can be brought
about in the contemporary period. These debates in South Africa, in particular,
have some underlying common assumptions. Some of these assumptions are:
- An uncritical revival of and
trust in the concept of “civil society” as the solution to establishing
democratic regimes.
- Related to the above„ the
notion that the development of strong independent, non-sectarian social
movements is a guarantee for democracy,
- A tendency to simply abandon
some of the fundamental concepts of Marxism-Leninism, without adequate
theoretical explanation of why they are no longer applicable, e.g. “dictatorship
of the proletariat” and “vanguardism”. Sometimes this is further
accompanied by a very uncritical acceptance of some of the long
discredited liberal notions of democracy.
- An evolutionary conception of
the transition to socialism, rather than a revolutionary one, which is a
very fundamental departure from the Marxist paradigm. Underpinning this
evolutionary transition to socialism is the notion that the vehicle for
this will be democracy, largely conceived in terms of liberal democracy.
It is in fact this conceptualization that has led to the emergence of the problematic
notion of “democratic socialism”. In fact we would argue that the concept
of “democratic socialism” is not merely used in a descriptive sense but
embodies a certain set of assumptions about democracy and transition to
socialism.
- Underpinning most of these
responses to the crisis of socialism is the stripping of democracy of its
class content; and the tendency to talk about “democracy in general”.
- In virtually all of the
contributions looking into the question of socialism and the democratization
of society is the absence of the analysis of the state, particularly the
role of the state in bringing about democracy. This seems to be an out-come
of an implicit, sometimes explicit, assumption that a vibrant civil
society will act as a watchdog on the state to ensure that it acts
democratically. In the development of the argument of “democratic
socialism” and in some of its variants (e.g., associational socialism),
there is a very glaring lack of the analysis of the role of the state in
building democracy,
- A rather strange assumption
made in many of these contributions is the notion that “organs of civil
society” will create democracy only if they distance themselves from
political organizations, and consequently for them democracy means “civil
society” distancing itself or disengaging from the state.
It
is some of the above issues that this paper wants to engage, with a particular
aim of highlighting in some detail the complexity of the issue of building
democracy, both in the national democratic phase of our revolution as well as
under socialism.
But
first a few words about the use of the concept “civil society” in some of the classics of Marxism. Many of
those in South Africa who invoke this concept seek justification for this in
the works of Marx, Engels and especially Gramsci. It is our view that the claim
is based on a serious misreading of those works. It is only really in their
early writings that Marx and Engels use the term “civil society”'. In these
early writings the main thrust of their argument is the challenge of Hegel’s
separation between political and civil society. They see this separation as
essentially an abstraction born of bourgeois society, in which it is
conceptualized falsely as an autonomous sphere in which people pursue their
interests.
Gramsci’s
use of the term "civil society" is not inconsistent with the critique
of the early Marx and Engels. Gramsci, however, enriches the concept. Gramsci's
primary concern is to underline how a dominant class exercises power throughout
society--that is, by hegemonic domination, primarily via civil society, and by
direct domination through state power. Gramsci's approach to civil society is
best summed up in the following passage:
The ideas of the Free Trade movement
are based on a theoretical error, whose practical origin is not hard to
identify; they are based on a distinction between political society and civil
society which is made into and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it
is merely methodological. Thus it is asserted that economic activity belongs to
civil society, and the state must not intervene to regulate it. But since in
actual reality civil society and the state are one and the same, it must be
made clear that laissez faire too is a form of state "regulation",
introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means. It is a deliberate
policy, conscious of its own ends, and not the spontaneous, automatic
expression of economic facts.1
In
other wards, the early Marx and Engels as well as Gramsci are essentially emphasizing
the continuities between so “called society” and political power, not the
discontinuities.
A Liberal
and one-sided Concept
For
our purposes, the surveying of the meaning of the civil society in Marx and Gramsci's
work leads to the following conclusions:
- The distinction between “political”
and “civil society” in Marx and Gramsci's works is a methodological
(descriptive) and not a theoretical distinction. In other words, one
cannot treat “civil society” without simultaneously addressing the question
of the state and the entire social relations underpinning society.
- The current conceptualization
of separating the “state" and "civil society" in most of
the contemporary debates in South Africa is a Hegelian one, and is rooted
neither in Marx's nor Gramsci's use of the concept. However, this
conceptualization is also a mechanical inversion of Hegel. If for Hegel
the state was the incarnation of reason that had to mediate over the “selfish
civil society”, for the “democratic socialist”
- ”civil society" is the
incarnation of reason that has to act as a watchdog to the state.
- In fact the current usage, as
will be illustrated below, is a liberal usage, and misreading of Marx and
Gramsci.
- An argument of a "civil
society" independent of state cannot be theoretically sustained
because it obscures the fundamental role of the state in bringing about
democracy.
Based
on the above assessment it is therefore important to concretely illustrate how
contemporary usage of this concept in South Africa is in fact a very
narrow-minded and one-sided approach to the question of building democracy.
Democracy
and Civil Society
The
discourse on “civil society” has been used in a variety of ways both in the
everyday language of the national liberation and mass democratic movements, as
well as in some of the theoretical reflections on the crisis of the Eastern
European socialism. However some of the more significant published debates have
raised this question within the context of the broad umbrella of “democratic
socialism”. From our survey of this literature there are a number of variants
of democratic socialism, including Swilling’s notion of “association socialism”,
Glazer’s “logic of democratic participation” and that variant found within the
ranks of our own Party.
The
intention of critically evaluating these is not an overall assessment of the
totality of their arguments on various aspects of the crisis of Eastern
European socialism. Nor is the aim to evaluate the concept of “democratic
socialism”' as such. 2 Our primary Concern here is to evaluate the
usage of the concept of “civil society” as it relates to democracy. First a
brief evaluation of Swilling and Glazer will be undertaken.
In
order to illustrate some of the core ideas informing the Swilling and Glazer variant
of “democratic socialism”, a few quotations will suffice. After criticizing what
he calls naive visions of “civil society” as expounded by proponents of a
free-market economy, Glazer presents his vision of the relationship between “civil
society”' and democracy ;
This
positive vision of civil society, goes beyond the call for individual freedoms,
since it urges active use of otherwise formal “rights” to establish the richest
possible array of the of voluntary activity, perhaps supported by the state. It
is also distinct from the (also important) demand for “direct democracy” since
it does not render individuals and voluntary organizations accountable to local
majorities or spontaneous crowds . Freed of its naive free market connotation,
the idea of an autonomous civil society is a crucial counter-weight to the
ambitions of any state.3
Swilling
also advances arguments that are similar to that of Glazer. It is important to
quote him in full as well in order to
fully grasp the essence of his arguments about the role of “civil society” in
building democracy and socialism.
Civil society has emerged as the
codeword for the associational life of a society that exists somewhere between
the individual actions of each person ( what some might call the “private
realm”) and the organizations and institutions constituted by the state (or
“public realm”). It is where everyday life is experienced, discussed,
comprehended, contested and reproduced. This is where hegemony is built and
contested. The New -Right, liberal intellectuals and even sections of the
liberation movement are of the view that civil society should include the
profit-driven shareholder-owned, industrial-commercial sector. This author is
of the view that a true "civil society" is one whet ordinary everyday
citizens, who do not control the levers a political and economic power, have
access to locally constituted voluntary associations that have the capacity,
know-how and resources to influence and even determine the structure of power
and the allocation of material resources .4
It
is our belief here that if we are to develop a correct approach to the question
of building democracy both in the immediate phase of national democracy and in
the period socialist reconstruction, we should spare no effort in exposing the
weakness and distortions embodied in such views.
Role of the
State
The
first weakness in the above accounts and conception of civil society is the
separation of civil society from the state What is more; there is a tendency,
particularly with Glazer, to counter pose civil society to the state, and
arguing that an independent vibrant civil society can act as a check against
the state. This is a distortion of Marxism and its conception the state,
whereby the state is the institutional political expression of relations in (“civil”)
society. In fact we would argue that the theoretical strength of Marxism and
perhaps its scientific character lies precisely in having exposed that the
state in capitalist social formations is the political expression of relations
in “civil society”. Marxism also exposed the fact that the separation between
“civil society” and the state is largely an ideological one that hides the true
character and source exploitation and oppression in capitalist social
formations
The
second weakness, related to the above is that of narrowly presenting the task of
building democracy only in terms “civil society”. This is extremely one-sided,
and the question of democratization cannot be separated from the question of contestation
and seizure of state power. It is our argument here that unless the national
liberation movement gets hold of state power the process of democratization of
South Africa cannot even begin to be set in motion. The arguments of these
variants of “democratic socialism” end up limiting the question of building
democracy to the task of developing an autonomous civil society”, as if this on
its own is adequate for purposes of building democracy, whether national or
socialist.
The
absurdity of these arguments is sharply revealed when Swilling suggests what
should be included and excluded in civil society. It is as if institutions of
capital and its reproductive organs can be easily removed from civil society as
one wishes. The end result of these arguments is not different to those of
liberals. In the same way as liberals want a private sphere free of state intervention;
these “democratic socialists” also want a civil society free of state
interference.
The
third area of weakness of these arguments is that there is an underlying
assumption that the state has no role at all to play in the process of
democratization. The state is presented as, by its very nature, incapable of
playing a role in the democratization process. This is simply incorrect.
However, even more serious is that this assumption prevents us from exploring
the question of the nature of the national democratic and socialist states that
should be constructed in order to deepen democracy.
There
is also a related argument that “civil society” will act as a watchdog against the state. The net outcome of such
an approach is in fact the opposite of what it claims to be fighting for, i.e.,
abandoning the terrain of the state to the whims of state bureaucrats and
capitalist institutions. Thus an important issue is obscured: How can, what
these “democratic socialists” call “organs of civil society”, play a role both
inside
and outside the sphere of the state? In other words, for them, the state ceases
to be an arena of contestation, but only requires pressure groups from outside
it to act as a check against its inherently undemocratic and bureaucratic
character.
If
the state is inherently unable to contribute to a process of democracy (whether
it be a national democratic or socialist one) we might as well forget about
struggling for the capture or seizure of state power. The fact that socialist
states of Eastern Europe became bureaucratic and oppressive toward the very
same classes they claimed to be standing for does not mean that a socialist
state is inherently undemocratic.
The
fourth and very serious omission in these arguments is their disturbing silence
on the role of political parties and organizations in the process of building
democracy. No matter how much one can engage in the wishful thinking of the building
of democracy as the task of an independent and vibrant “civil society”, political
parties do play a very significant role in this process. Political parties,
whether they be bourgeois, petty bourgeois or socialist, do not only play a
role in the process of democratization of society but they should play a role
in this process. Bourgeois and petty bourgeois political parties always
intervene to shape “civil society” in manner that will reproduce the type of
society these parties stand for. It is also incumbent, upon and perhaps the most
important function of a political party of the working class - like our Party - to unashamedly struggle for
the hegemony of the working class and the socialist agenda throughout all
levels of society. To suggest that the building of democracy is a task for “civil
society” and its organs is plain naivete of the nature of political struggle.
In fact, it is such a conceptualization that has led to the problematic
practice that is beginning to emerge within the national liberation movement
and the mass democratic movement that, for instance, issues of services and
development in townships are for civic organizations, and that “Political
issues” are for “political organizations and Parties”.5
Class
Struggle
To
develop the above point further it is also important to point out that
political parties are class parties, i. e., they represent the interests of
particular classes in society, whether it be the bourgeoisie, the petty
'bourgeoisie or the proletariat.6
In
fact, this is the essence of the class struggle, in that the class struggle
throws up political parties that stand for the interests of this or that class
or coalition or fractions of classes. Even in colonial societies the national
liberation movements that spring up contain within them a number of classes who
are always vying within those movements for political hegemony and supremacy.
Political parties and national liberation movements always strive to shape
society in a manner consistent with their own class interests. It is therefore
inadequate to tackle the question of democracy without relating this to the
question of class straggle and the role of political parties or movements
thrown up by that class struggle. The notion of development of democracy
primarily, and sometimes exclusively, through the building of a “vibrant civil
society” without taking into account the type of a movement or political party
that should be the political vanguard of this process is idealistic. This
argument can be harmful by disarming the liberation movement or our Party, by
encouraging them to desist from building mass organizations or intervening in
so-called “civil society”.
The
fifth and perhaps obvious weakness of the argument that the development of “organs
of civil society” within an independent sphere of civil society is a guarantee
for democracy, is that oppressive and capitalist institutions are also
independent organs of civil society. In fact the coincidence between this
argument and that of the ideologists of free market is particularly striking.
Furthermore even the apartheid regime's program of privatization can be
regarded as an attempt to relegate political and economic power without state
interference. By so doing the regime is hoping to reproduce apartheid through “an
independent and vibrant civil society”.
What
the above critical review of the usages of the concept of civil society clearly
shows is, that an assessment of the crisis of Eastern European socialism that
is purely based on the notion that the source of the crisis was largely due to
the suppression of the development of a vibrant civil society is not useful at
all. Our assessment should be based on an historical analysis of the
development of those societies in their totality, namely the nature of social
formations, the nature and role of the state, as well as the nature and role (
the communist parties that were in power and the imperialism onslaught on
socialist countries. It is only then that we can learn proper lessons out of
those countries for the future of national democracy and socialism in South
Africa.
Revival of
Liberalism
All
that the “democratic socialism” being reviewed above has done is merely to use
the crisis of Eastern European socialism as a license to revive liberalism in
the name of socialist and Marxism. Proof of this is the argument that has
become very fashionable among some sections of “democratic socialists” nowadays
that it was a mistake for Marxists and communist to simply dismiss liberal
freedoms as “bourgeois freedom”. That Eastern European socialism is in crisis
does not change the fact that the basic liberal political freedoms are
bourgeois freedoms, freedom for the bourgeoisie to dominate in capitalist
social formations! In fact what these arguments do is to search for socialist
democracy in bourgeois democracy. This amounts to nothing else than the
subjection of the class struggle to bourgeois democratic institutions. This is
in fact what social democracy is about. And social democracy has failed to
bring about socialism! Some of the
outcomes of this approach to democracy are classically illustrated by what is
advocated by Glazer thus: “a logic of democratic preparation allows for going
backward too. It would sanction a democratic counter ‘revolution’.” (!!)7
The
above quotation is a classic illustration of the extent t which so-called
socialists have become so confused about democracy. Any ‘ABC’ of Marxism would
tell you that there is n such thing as a democratic counter-revolution! Counter
revolutions are brutal, undemocratic, and most often bloody phenomena. The
violence that is sweeping our country and has led to the brutal killing of so
many thousands of our people is
counter-revolution.
Even theoretically, anyone who pretends to be a socialist and knows a bit of
Marxism should know that counter-revolutions are products of revolutions. It is
unthinkable for any people struggling for a revolutionary transformation of
society to become so “democratic” as to sanction counterrevolution against
their own revolution! Any beginner in Marxism also knows that the bourgeoisie
and imperialists will never allow any socialist or national democratic
revolution to succeed. The logical end of these arguments is the end of class
struggle and that is what the bourgeoisie always dream about. This dream is
being brought closer to reality by such conceptualizations and approaches-socialists
in the service of counterrevolution in the name of democracy and Marxism
The
greatest disservice that “democratic socialism” is doing is to Marxism itself. It
wipes out by a stroke of a pen the entire Marxist critique of liberal and
bourgeois democracy. It is as if Marxist theory has not undertaken more than a
century of the critique of capitalism and its political institutions. All of a
sudden, without much reference to these debates, we are told that the mistake
of Marxism was to throw away the baby with the bath water (i.e. throwing away
capitalism together with its liberal freedoms), as if socialism is simply an
incremental building upon liberal bourgeois freedoms.
Democratic
socialism and our party
Although
the concept of democratic socialism was firmly rejected at our Party's 8th
Congress and rightly so, it is important to evaluate this trend against the
background of the issue under discussion. This is important for two main
reasons: Firstly, the rejection of the concept of “democratic socialism” by our
Congress does not mean the end of the "democratic socialism" tendency
inside our Party. Secondly, the basis on which the concept of -democratic
socialism" was rejected at our Congress is not adequate. It is not enough
to reject this concept purely on the basis that socialism is inherently
democratic and needs no further qualifications. While we would agree with this
reasoning, it is not enough to stop here because it sounds as if we are merely
rejecting a label without closely examining the content of “democratic
socialism” as found inside our party.
Although
a thorough critic of this concept is urgently required, this task is outside
the brief we have set ourselves in this paper.
All that will be engaged here is how the variant of “democratic
socialism” as found in inside the ranks of our party shares some of the
weaknesses highlighted above on the conception of democracy and “civil society”. However it is important to ground this review
in some of the fundamental propositions of “democratic socialism” inside our
party.
The
first articulation of the approach of "democratic socialists" inside
the Party towards the question of socialism and democracy is to be found in
Slovo's assessment of the crisis in Eastern Europe. This intervention is
largely premised on the observation that the key to the crisis in Eastern
Europe was the separation of democracy and socialism. However there are a few
disturbing features about this assessment, which are worth highlighting. It is
the case with which "democratic socialism'' has simply abandoned some of
the concepts and approaches that have come to form the basis of Marxism Leninism,
both in its theory and revolutionary practice. The first of these concepts is
that of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DOP)." This term has
been abandoned not on the basis of any argued theoretical propositions but
simply because it has been applied wrongly in Eastern Europe. Slovo says of
DOP:
“The
abandonment of the term by most Communist Parties including ours, does not, in
all cases, imply a rejection of the historical validity of its essential
content. But, the way the term came to be abused bore little resemblance to
Lenin's original concept. It was progressively denuded of its intrinsic
democratic content and came to signify, in practice, a dictatorship of a party
bureaucracy. For Lenin the repressive aspect of the concept had impending
relevance in relation to the need for the revolution to defend itself against
counter-revolutionary terror in the immediate post-revolution period. He was
defending, against the utopianism of the anarchists, the limited retention of
repressive apparatus."8
There
are a few important issues that need to be highlighted here. It seems as if
here the concept itself has no problem in terms of its meaning and intention,
but just because it has been misused then, it should be abandoned. This
approach to eliminating concepts is very problematic. One wonders how far we
should take such a practice, because taken to its logical conclusion, we should
also abandon the idea of a Communist Party or even Socialism itself because
what Eastern Europe has done to the image of communist parties and socialism is
exactly what Slovo says of DOP. Similarly “democratic socialism" within
our Party argues for a mass party, largely for the same reason that
"vanguardism" was imposed on the peoples of Eastern Europe. Similarly
as Cronin points out our retaining concepts just because they form part of the
classics of Marxism Leninism is dogmatic. This is true. But what we take issue
with here is that the theoretical basis on which these concepts are being
dropped is very unclear, and according to Cronin again, dropping of concepts
just because they are politically embarrassing is opportunism.9
The
problem of dropping concepts without any sound theoretical basis is further
reflected in Slovo's arguments as to what Lenin meant by the DOP. In fact it is
simply not true to say that by DOP Lenin merely referred to dealing with
counterrevolutionary terror and was arguing against anarchists on the retention
of state power. The concept is one of the key concepts in Marxism itself.
Actually the substance of the concept from Lenin's point of view was positive
and aimed at smashing the bourgeoisie and its state machine and consolidating
the class rule of the proletariat as a goal in itself. That DOP had to be
specifically applied in the context of the White terror and the attack by
anarchists on the maintenance of the state was secondary to this overall
objective of the DOP. In other words DOP took the form-of dealing with White
Terror, but was not the substance of DOP as such. In fact Lenin points this out
emphatically when he says “The proletarian revolution is impossible without the
forcible destruction of bourgeois state machine and the substitution for it of
a new one.”1O This was the main task of the DOP! In fact Lenin
always firmly situated DOP within the context of the Communist Manifesto and
the experiences of the Paris Commune the broader tasks of guaranteeing that
initial transition from capitalism to Socialism. There is no clear illustration
of this than Lenin's State and
Revolution.
The
danger of abandoning concepts without any adequate theoretical explanation goes
beyond just the opportunism of such a practice but leaves certain crucial
questions and gaps in our approach to revolutionary transformation. For example
what does the abandonment of DOP mean for the transition towards socialism? Is
transition towards socialism ever possible when one treats the defeated
bourgeoisie with kid gloves? How are the victorious socialist forces going to
smash the capitalist state machine? Does this mean that we are for an evolutionary
transition towards socialism rather than a revolutionary break with the
capitalist past? Can attempts at evolution transition to socialism ever go
beyond social democracy? Even if revolutionary transition to socialism is a
possibility, what is the reason for restricting our strategies at this stage to
a particular path of transition? These
are some of the question that will have to be answered with the abandonment of the
concept of DOP.
The
above was by way of illustration of the key foundations and tendencies of “democratic
socialism" inside our Party which forms the background against which to
assess the question of the treatment of democracy and civil society.
Although
it might be regarded as unfair to criticize Slove for things he does not say,
after all his paper could by its nature
not encompass everything, it is important to interrogate some of the concepts
that he uses unproblematically, like the concept of a “socialist”, "civil society". Slovo argues:
Lenin envisaged that working class
power would be based on the kind of democracy of the Commune, but he did not
address, in any detail, the nature of established socialist civil society,
including fundamental questions such as the relationship between the Party,
state, people's elected representatives, social organizations, etc.11
We
believe that by his use of the terms "socialist civil society"
without any theoretical clarification is a serious omission on the part of
Slovo. In fact by so doing Slovo is committing a similar mistake to that of the
other "democratic socialists" as highlighted above, i. e., seeing the
development of "civil society'' as one of the key elements in democracy,
without demonstrating how. Since Slovo uses specifically the concept of
"socialist civil society" it is important, in the light of what Marx,
Engels and Gramsci said, to assess the theoretical validity of this concept.
The use of this begs one very fundamental question. If the
"separation" between civil society and the state is, as Marx pointed
out, an abstract dualism and a product of the transition from feudalism to
capitalism, can we then theoretically sustain a notion of a socialist civil
society? From our understanding of the use of the concept by Marx, the
separation is a product of the evolution of bourgeois society and one of the
key tasks of socialism is to bridge this separation. In fact this separation,
we would argue is an institutional expression of the alienation of
"man" in capitalist societies; the separation of the
"social" from the "political". The separation is reflection
of the relegation of human social needs to the private sphere of “civil society”.
Marx specifically points out that one of the tasks of socialist transformation
is that “man must recognize his own forces as social, organize them, and thus
no longer separate social forces from himself in the form of political forces”.
Socialist
Civil Society
No
doubt "democratic socialists" will throw their hands up in horror at
what might seem to be a collapse of political and social life into one and
therefore the subjection of “civil
Society”
to political life, Actually this issue is the crux of the issue on the question
of socialist democracy. It is in this area that “democratic socialists”, in the
way they pose the question of democracy, obscure the very real socialist
imperative of overcoming the contradiction between “civil society” and the
state. By arguing for the development of an autonomous civil society, they do
not address this Issue at all, instead they fall into the very same mould of
the separation of civil society and the state under capitalism. This obscures
the need for the creation of organs of (proletarian) state power that are
simultaneously organs of state power as well as autonomous mass social
formations able to act independent of the state. In fact this is what the
Soviets were originally, and they were intended to incorporate both these
qualities in them as the only concrete political path for bridging social and
political life as the highest form of human emancipation. It was not because
they were organs of state power that the soviets failed, rather it was because
their autonomous character as mass social formations was progressively stifled
by the party through the mechanism of a bureaucratic state. That this happened
in Eastern Europe does not mean that this is bound to happen, and that there
can be no simultaneous organs of state power that are simultaneously mass-based
and autonomous. It was not, we would argue, because of the inherently
bureaucratic character of the state that they merely became conduits of the
Party and the state bureaucracy, but it was because of the particular state
form that developed in the Soviet Union which stifled them - tight control by
the Party, merging of Party with state apparatuses, and more important
contextual problems of imperialism and its assault on the Soviet Union,
outlawing of the opposition and undermining the heterogeneous character of, and
debates within, the Soviets, etc.
Let
us however explore a bit further how organs of state power can be
simultaneously part of the state and at the same time be autonomous mass social
formations. One of the issues that we should attempt to closely examine on this
question is the debate between Kautsky and Lenin on whether Soviet should be
transformed into state organizations or not. This is one of the most crucial
areas of socialist theory and revolutionary practice that has hardly been given
the attention it requires. It is therefore important to quote liberally in
order to engage thins issue.
Kautsky
in his pamphlet The Dictatorship of the
Proletariate vehemently criticizes the Bolsheviks in power for, amongst
other things, converting the Soviet into organs of proletarian state power. He
argued that:
“the Soviet form of organization is
one of the most important phenomena of our time. It promises to acquire
decisive importance in the great decisive battles between capital and labour towards
which we are marching... But are we entitled to demand more of the Soviets? The
Bolsheviks, after the November Revolution, 1917, secured in conjunction with
the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries a majority in the Russian Soviets of Workers’
Deputies, and after the dispersion of the Constituent Assembly, they set out to
transform the Soviets from a combat organization of one class, as they had been
up to then, into a state organization. They destroyed the democracy which the
Russian people had won in the March Revolution. 12
Kautsky's
argument here is basically that for democracy to flourish in socialist Russia
at the time, the Soviets should not have been transformed into state
organizations. Obviously this argument would today find favour amongst many of
the 'democratic socialists," as they should have been left, in their
language to be organs of "civil society” independent from the state. We
could further state that perhaps this argument, taken to its logical conclusion
in the present debates in South Africa, the Soviets would have constituted part
of the "socialist civil society" separate from the organs of the
proletarian state. Indeed it is largely because of the hindsight of what
happened to the Soviets later that there is now talk of a "socialist civil
society,”
How
did Lenin respond to Kautsky in this regard?
“Thus, the oppressed class
[according to Kautsky-BN & MS], the vanguard of all the working and
exploited people in modern society, must strive towards the decisive battles
between capital and labour,” but must not touch the machine by means of which
capital suppresses labour. It must not break up that machine! - It must not
make use of its all embracing organization for suppressing the exploiters! Excellent, Mr. Kautsky ; magnificent! We recognize the class struggle - in the same
way as all liberals recognize it, i. e., without the overthrow of the
bourgeoisie.13
Lenin argues further that
“Whoever sincerely shared the
Marxist view that the state is nothing but for the suppression of one class by
another, and who has at all reflected upon this truth, could never have reached
the absurd conclusion that the proletarian organizations capable of defeating
finance capital must not transform themselves into state organizations”.14
To say to the Soviets: fight, but
don't take all the state power into your hands, don't become state organization
- is tantamount to preaching class collaboration and "social peace"
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.15
According
to Glazer this reply by Lenin would be an example of statist thinking. However
the question that essentially posed by Lenin in this reply to Kautsky, and
which should be a key question preoccupying all socialists at this poit in time
as this: After the overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie and its
institutions, what type of proletarian organs of state power should be put into place?
Marx had earlier givn this answer by saying in the Communist Manifesto that the
bourgeois state machine should be replaced by the proletarian organized as the
ruling class. In all the criticisms and reflects on the failure of Eastern
European socialism this question has hardly been engaged. In fact we would
argue that it is the very same organs of the working class that overthrew the
bourgeoisie that should become the new organs of proletarian state power, and
in the case of Russia in 1917 the Soviets. Otherwise what institution and
organs should have become the organs of the new proletarian state power? With the Soviets having become the new organs
of the proletarian state, there is no necessary connection between this
transformation and the bureaucratization that took place later. In fact the
Soviets as organs of state power in the proletarian state should have subjected
the state to the popular will of the working people instead of the other way
round. By so doing the Soviets would have been autonomous mass social formations
that wield state power at the same time.
It
would have been the strengthening of this character of the Soviets that would
have deepened socialist democracy in the Soviet Union. In fact this is what
would have laid the basis for the withering away of the state, i.e., organs of
people's power subjecting the proletarian state to their will, while
essentially remaining autonomous organizations of the working class and the
Russian people as a whole. This is in fact what Soviets operated as initially.
That Soviet democracy was later reversed, should not merely be sought in the
assumed (inherent) bureaucratic character of the state, but on how the Party
conducted itself in its wielding of state power.
By
posing the question of building Socialist democracy (instead of democratic
socialism) in this way, we will then be able to transcend the liberal bourgeois
and narrow notion of a vibrant and autonomous “civil society".
Building
Democracy
There
are three very important premises from which we should move from if we are
tackling the question of building democracy. Firstly, the relationship between
the state and "organs of civil society" is not a dichotomous one but
a dialectical one. Secondly, the building of democracy cannot be abstracted
from the conditions under which this task must be tackled. For instance in
South Africa our immediate goal is the establishment of national democracy in
the context of colonialism of a special type, and that national democracy
should lay the foundations for a rapid transition to socialism. This question
is important in that we can give content to concepts we deploy in our analysis.
Thirdly, the process of building democracy is in the last instance a political
process, whose realization is ultimately dependent on political leadership of a
particular type. If then building democracy is a political process, it cannot
exclude the very central issue of state power.
Given
the above conceptualization it is therefore not appropriate to talk about “organs
of civil society" but such organs should be organs of people's power as
the only organs that will ultimately guarantee democracy, both in the phase of
national democracy as well as in the building of socialism. A brief definition
of our understanding of organs of people's power and particularly the
differences between them and social movements is necessary at this state. For
us social movements are movements that bring together a "number of social
forces and even classes around a particular issue. Social movements are
therefore issue-based and can either be political, in the strictest sense of
the word, or non-political. Social movements do not necessarily aim at
fundamental transformation of society, but can be reformist or aimed at
changing particular aspects of policy on the issue around which they are
organized. Because of this social movements are subject to extreme fluctuations
in their strengths and weaknesses, and usually emerge as fast as they can
disappear.
Organs
of people's power on the other hand are organs that may or may not develop out
of social movements. Organs of people's power are primarily about fundamental
and revolutionary transformation of society. They are therefore about the
transfer of power to the people and are directly concerned with the wielding of
state power. However their social base can be the same as that of social movements
in that they are the organs that should form the direct link between the state
and the people in a national democracy and under socialism. In fact organs of
people's power are the form under which the people should exercise state power.
This is the essence of participatory democracy.
The
conceptualization of civic organizations, street committees, and people's
courts merely as social movements is problematic in two ways: Firstly, it is a
historical understanding of the origins and intentions of these organs in the
mid 1980ies. These organs were not merely social movements but were
specifically organs of people's power aimed at a revolutionary transformation
of South African society and establishment of people's power. To simply refer
to them as social movements is both a theoretical retreat and a reformist
understanding of their role even during this phase of negotiations.
Secondly,
the notion of social movements as used in some sections of the “Left” is
problematic in that it is an historical and abstract implantation of the notion
of social movements as developed in advanced capitalist countries. The nature
of social movements that develop in countries under the yoke of colonialism,
neo-colonialism and imperialism are fundamentally different from, for instance,
the Green movement in Europe or the Civil Rights movement in the U. S. The
former takes the character of organs of people's power and the latter tend to
be pressure groups. There is a radical distinction here. We should however make
it clear here that our argument should not be read as meaning that all social
movements should be organs of people's power. But the essential point we are
making is that the only guarantee for building both national democracy as
opposed to bourgeois democracy and socialist democracy is the building of
organs of people's power. And that civic organizations and trade unions are not
simply social movements. To want to convert these organs to just being social
movements is a liberal reformist project that merely wants to reverse history
and make these organs mere pressure groups in so-called "civil
society,"
Let
us briefly then situate the argument of the development of organs of people's power
as the key to the securing and strengthening of national and socialist
democracy. Struggles for democracy in colonial countries should always be
located within the nature of colonialism. National oppression and colonialism
tend to collapse what "democratic socialists" would call "civil
society" and “political life" in those social formations. Because of
this civic struggles tend to take on a political character, and political
struggles are rooted in civic issues. This is particularly so where social and
political life of people is rigidly controlled by a highly centralized state
where political and social opportunities are based primarily on racial
consideration. This is more so in Southern Africa, where its particular form of
colonialism (white settler colonialism was characterized by racial criteria
prescribing the place of different racial groups in the political, economic and
social life of the country. Such a situation can be summed up in term of the
early works of Marx and Engels and the incomplete separation between “civil
society" and the state, as is the situation in bourgeois democracies of
the advanced capitalist countries. That is why national liberation movements in
all Third World countries, and even more so in Southern Africa, incorporate
within them aspects of social movements, and social movements take on a
political form. It is this dialectical interpenetration that tends to throw up
organs of people's power and the closer working relationship between national
liberation movements and such organs.
**** **** ****
The
conceptualization of organs of people's power separates bourgeois from
socialist democracy. This conception an approach to building democracy also
cuts across the rather problematic divide between “civil society" and the
state. Here, we are, to use the phrase of some of our "democratic
socialists", defining the nature and content of the types of “organ of
civil society" that should be developed, i.e., at the root of it we are
talking about building people's power.
The
concept of "people's power" is rooted in our perspective of a
national democratic revolution, where the people are not just an amorphous mass
but area people united for the bringing about of a national democracy. This is
where the significance of the process of building democracy as a political
task, that should have organs of people's power as its agency, lies. It is also
only organs of people's power that are capable of practically bridging and
laying the basis for a longer term transition to socialism.
In
concluding this paper it is important to point out that our major concern is
the concepts that one uses have direct political implications. For instance the
shift away from developing our understanding of organs of people's power and
the new post February 2, 1990 vocabulary ("organs of civil society",
"an autonomous and vibrant civil society" etc.), is not merely a
change of concepts but perhaps a dangerous shift away from the perspective of a
national democratic revolution to that of bourgeois democracy.
Although
the concept of people's power still needs further elaboration, for the purposes
of this paper it is adequate for us to enter the debate from a different angle,
which for us contains the revolutionary perspective that should characterize
our Party in particular. Perhaps even more important for us is to begin to
point the way towards which a revolutionary socialist perspective should be
directed. For the strengthening of working class leadership and the socialist
perspective lie in the development of organs of people's power. In other words
organs of power should serve both as instruments for securing and deepening
national democracy as well as the organs for the transition towards socialism.
Of course in the process the nature and role of such organs will change as
conditions determine but they are the only structures that will ensure
participatory democracy and counter any tendency towards a bourgeois-democratic
settlement that might be found within the ranks of the national liberation
movement. This is the route towards national and socialist democracy which
"democratic socialism" fails to grasp,
The
perspective outlined above should guide us in our struggles around CODESA, the
nature of an interim government, in the struggle for a Constituent Assembly and
the type of democracy we are struggling for, whose constitutional basis should
be secured in this Constituent Assembly.
References
1.
Hoare, Q and Smith, GN ( 1971 ) (eds) Selections
from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio
Gramsci, London, Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 159-160
2.
Important as it is to critically examine the notion of "democratic
socialism", this issue is a subject on its own that requires a separate
intervention.
3.
Glaser, D (1990 ), "Putting Democracy back into Democratic
Socialism," Work in Progress, 75, April 1990, p. 30.
4.
Swilling, M (1991), “Socialism, Democracy and Civil Society. The Case for
Associational Socialism", Work in
Progress, 75 July/ August 1991, pp. 21-2
5,
See Nzimande. B and Sikhosana, M (1991), “Civics are Part of the National
Democratic Revolution", Mayibuye,
June, 1991,
6.
Embodied in the notion of political parties as class parties is the fact that
political parties can and also do represent a coalition of classes or fractions
of classes.
7. Glaser, 1990, p. 57.
8.
Slovo, J, (1990), "Has Socialism Failed?" The African Communist, no. 121, 2nd quarter, 1990, Slovo has in
fact developed his critique of the concept in “Socialist aspirations and
socialist realities". The African
Communist, no. 124, 1st quarter,. 1991.
9.
Cronin correctly points out in this regard that “The unprincipled abandonment
of basic concepts, not because they have proved to be wrong, but because they
are tactically embarrassing, is opportunism. But the freezing of
Marxism-Leninism into a closed and unchanging doctrine, a blue-print that
simply requires application in any given situation, is dogmatism, "Lenin
in not a statue", The African
Communist,' no. 127, p. 12.
10.
Lenin, VI (1976), On the Dictatorship of
the Proletariat, Moscow, Progress Publishers, p. 138.
11.
Ibid., p. 36.
12.
Quoted in Ibid, pp. 157, emphasis in Kautsky's original pamphlet.
13.
Lenin, Ibid, pp. 158-9.
14.
Ibid., p. 159.
15.
1b id., p. 161.
