[the last few years. The modern trade union…]

Scan page 8

the last few years. The modern trade union movement, represented by COSATU [Congress of South African Trade Unions], NACTU [National Council of Trade Unions] and some unaffiliated unions, has done much to mobilize workers to defend themselves against exploitation.

Ideas such as the independence of the working class and its leadership of the struggle have been resolutely fought for and most mass organizations identify with these. Socialism itself has become a popular slogan amongst large sections of the working class and the youth. Anti-capitalist struggle has become a major obstacle to the government's reform plan.

However, this is not enough to ensure that the working class successfully leads the national struggle and can establish its democratic control over society. The working class needs a political organization that will link the struggle against national oppression and capitalism into a single struggle for workers power and democracy.

Today the workers movement stands at the crossroads. Is it going to stop its struggle short and support negotiations as the ANC and the SACP [South African Communist Party] are urging it do? Or is it going to continue to rely on its independent mass struggles to win its demands? WOSA will seek to win the workers to this alternative politics which is summed up in the slogan we are our own liberators.

Is WOSA a vanguard party of the working class that seeks to rival the South African Communist Party (SACP)?

We don't believe that organizations can proclaim themselves as the leaders and vanguard of the working class. This is earned in There is no doubt task. WOSA is not organization while PAC, AZAPO and port. Most of the ma will support the SACP where it strengthens the position of the working class and will join it in a united front manner to build the unity of the working class.

Is this formation of WOSA not a potentially divisive step?

No! The idea that political pluralism equals division is nonsense and thankfully now completely discredted with the collapse of Stalinism.

Since 1928 when the CPSA, as it was called then, adopted the slogan of a Native Republic and developed the two stage theory, there have been essentally two traditions in the workers' movement.

On the one hand was the Stalinist view, held by the SACP, that our struggle is firstly directed against national oppression or apartheid and that only once apartheid has been destroyed can we begin a struggle for socialism.

On the other hand was the view that capitalism has been built on the foundations of national oppression. Therefore in order to secure national liberation a combined permanent struggle against national oppression and capitalism is needed. This will put in place a workers state. WOSA seeks to represent the second view.

Will WOSA not be isolated from the mass of workers who support other organizations like the ANC, PAC [Pan-African Congress/ or SACP?

that we face a daunting as yet a mass political particularly the ANC, SACP have mass supss organizations such as ist society. It is the workers who produce the wealth of that society. And while we are producing that wealth, the capitalists are stealing from us the fruits of our labor. This is the heart of the never-changing battle under capitalism.

Of course this gives workers a special interest. It is the workers, differently from all others in society, who have the most direct interest in getting rid of capitalism. Because it is the workers who are daily exploited, who labor for poor wages, while the capitalists go home to their big houses to enjoy the luxury produced by others.

So it is this special place in our society which makes us say that the workers organizations must always be independent from all other organizations. Our organizations must be free at all times to defend our interests in the factories, in the mines and on the farms.

This is important because we know that there are other forces which want freedom for the country but not freedom for the workers.

The independence of the working class can ultimately only be achieved with the building of an independent political organization of the working class that fights for a socialist society in which the working class controls the state and the economy for the benefit of all.

This is why WOSA has been launched to start the process of building such a powerful independent socialist organization of the workers.

What is WOSA's position on negotiations?

We believe that these negotiations between the government and sections of the liberation movement will not succeed in deThe following is an editorial from the August 1990 issue of Workers Voice, the quarterly magazine of the Workers' Organization for Socialist Action (WOSA).

Often you hear comrades say: "we agree with you that negotiations cannot lead to fundamental change, but what is your alternative? Under what circumstances do you see this powerful state surrendering power to the mass of oppressed people?"

The National Party [The main white party] is involved in the risky rescue operation known as apartheid from above.

Massive opposition is growing amongst the white middle and working class to the De Klerk reforms. In the English-speaking constituency of Umlazi over 5000 voters voted for the far right-wing of the Conservative party, failing by a mere 500 votes to win this safe seat from the Nats [the National Party].

Talk abounds amongst the far right of the "third freedom war" [this refers to the tradition of the Boer wars]. Some right-wing groups have not only begun to arm themselves, but have even started armed attacks. Notable was the attack on Melrose House, symbol of the Boer War defeat and the recent bombing of the NUM [National Union of Mineworkers] office in Welkom. Yet for fear of causing bitter malcontent in the armed forces, the government is powerless to act against the far right.

On the other hand the reforms that De

Scan page 9

lip speaks:

SOCIALIST ARTION es that it can novement not ; class. : have all the we disagree ¡olutely argue ; defend their id them in a them. It is le SACP will the working ind programs. of its alliance ial as well as sgle, and its of the great tremendous SACP plays iggle: WOSA who we are' the trade unions, civics and youth organizations are influenced by these mass political organizations.

We believe that by taking our politics into the mass organizations, by arguing for a socialist perspective while urging mass struggles forward, we will be able to win many workers to revolutionary socialism.

However, to do that we obviously need to have a clear perspective or program, as well as an independent banner to rally the workers to. We do not wish to end up confusing the workers and sowing illusions by hiding behind the banners of the nationalist organizations who don't have a socialist program.

What's meant by independence?

Workers play a very special role in capitallivering the central demand of our struggle; i.e., full and equal democratic rights for all. This will amount to a handing over of the power to the majority which the govemment is dead against.

For the government, the strategy of negotiations represents a decisive initiative to win the time and space to extract itself from the economic, social and political crisis that the system of apartheid is in.

Although the regime faces a deep economic crisis which makes it vulnerable to international pressure, power is firmly entrenched in their hands. State institutions rest on the military, police, and the electoral support of the majority of the whites. This the government is still able to rely on.

While the government is prepared to get rid of most of the racial laws on the statute books, such as the Group Areas Act and even the Populations Registration Act, they are not ready to hand over power to the majority.

The government could reintegrate the bantustans into South Africa and may even formally introduce some form of universal franchise. However the government will not grant majority rule. They will insist on some form of minority rights or veto [power] for the whites. This is necessary to ensure not only that the economic wealth remains in the hands of the small minority of whites, but also that material privileges are maintained for whites as a whole.

If the NP [Nationalist Party] is not going to break its pact with the white electorate, it follows that negotiations between the ANC and the government will not deliver a unitary, non-racial democratic South Africa in the current period.

WOSA absolutely rejects any settlement which offers "universal franchise" (as proposed by de Klerk) whilst still maintaining white privilege in any form. We support unconditionally the demand for one person one vote in a unitary non-racial South Africa/Azania.

Further than that, only when ownership and democratic control of the wealth of our society is in the hands of the majority, can we tackle the fundamental problems of poverty and social inequality for all.

But historical experience shows that the owners and controllers of wealth do not "negotiate" away their ruling position. The majority must seize back the wealth they have created. We stand a long way from this situation and therefore believe in maximum discussion and debate and a democratic process of decision-making on all items negotiated in the name of the people of South Africa to ensure that the struggles of the people are not compromised.

As part of this process of democratic debate, we call for a Constituent Assembly based on universal franchise. Before that happens, no organization can claim the right to negotiate with the government on our behalf and speak in the name of all of us.

In the light of what has happened in Eastern Europe how does WOSA see the future of socialism?

As a political tendency, we always warned against equating socialism with what existed in Eastern Europe, China and the USSR. We stood by the understanding that socialism meant an even more democratic society than what exists in the most democratic of capitalist states.

You see, we believe that it is necessary to renew the concept of socialism. Therefore, there cannot be the slightest doubt that for more than 150 years there was a consistent definition of socialism, among the overwhelming majority of Marxist and non-Marxist socialists alike, which did not equate socialism with the disappearance of private ownership of the means of production.

Socialism meant for all these scholars and political agitators a society qualitatively superior to capitalism in terms of average standard of living, of social equality, of human freedom (including political freedom and civil rights), of pluralistic democracy and cultural diversity and of weakening of institutionalised authority (the state, the bureaucracy and its "secular army").

For Marxists, that implied a withering away of commodity production, of market economy, of social classes and of the state, in short it meant a classless society. Only in the late iwenties and the early thirties was that consensus broken in favour of a radically reductionist definition of socialism, identifying that new social system with the abolition of private property in the means of production. That reductionist definition was produced by Stalin.

In Eastern Europe (and in China to a more limited extent) what occurred were indeed mass uprisings of the workers and youth.

That they have taken on a direction of restoring capitalism can be understood when one examines the consequence of [over] 40 years of Stalinist rule that has led to these economies being wrecked, to them lagging far behind the West European economies and to the continued fall in the living standards of the people. It is understandable therefore that the masses identify prosperity with the market.

If we take this together with the way 1 Communist regimes acted to depoliticize 1 people as a means of retaining their contr (as can be seen by the ease with which t Hungarians have embraced South Afric then we can realize the extent to which t cause of socialism has been damaged in t short term.

However, in the medium term we belie that the future of socialism is assured. Ti is not simply because of the continu existence of revolutionary socialist orgas zation[s] in most parts of the world. It mainly because of the continued class stru gle that arises out of the inherent contradi tions of capitalism.

The periodic attacks on wages, t sackings [laying off] of millions of worke in the interests of profits, the growth of s cial inequality to the point that it provok

----- pull-quotes -----

It the work society. And wh capitalists are si