Capitulation or Class Struggle?

The US elections this month capped a year of global polls which overall reflected a clear ongoing rightward political shift. Donald Trump’s decisive victory confirmed that we are in a new period of world politics, one marked by the death of liberalism as the dominant ideology of the western imperialist ruling classes.

This shift has causes that go much deeper than Trump. The fundamental driver is the breakdown of US hegemony. When US imperialism’s global dominance was unrivalled, liberalism offered the perfect cover for American finance capital’s growth and penetration into every corner of the world. But the very system of liberal globalisation has itself undermined the base of US dominance, including by creating conditions for the rise of China and other regional powers. This contradiction is what’s at the heart of the current world situation.

In order to shore up US global dominance, the western imperialists have discarded their high principles and are taking a sledgehammer to the pillars of the liberal system as the pressure increases on all fronts. The mask is off, and the forces of right-wing reaction feel the wind in their sails. The working masses face tough times ahead, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and other neocolonies at the sharp end of the crises tearing the liberal world order apart.

How can the international working class defend itself in this situation and begin to fight back? That question runs through the articles in this issue of AmaBolsheviki Amnyama. It is inseparable from the great question of our time, as explained in the latest issue of Spartacist:

In “The Death of Liberalism”, G. Perrault lays out a materialist analysis of the dynamics underpinning Trump’s comeback. This makes clear why clinging to the liberals is a wretchedly bankrupt response to the rise of right-wing populism. Those on the left who follow this course will only continue to alienate the working masses whose living standards have been ground down by neoliberalism.

It is the struggle of the working class and its entry onto the scene which is the decisive factor that can reverse the current political dynamic. To defeat right-wing reaction, revolutionaries must fight at every stage to break through the main obstacles that hold this back.

In the West, the current trade-union leaders mainly do so by chaining the working class directly to the liberal wing of imperialism. In the Global South, it is by telling workers to rely on the nationalist elites and alliances like the BRICS+ bloc to lead the struggle against US imperialism. But from Xi Jinping’s bureaucratic regime in China to Ramaphosa in South Africa, these elites’ primary response to the turmoil in the world has been to plead for “normalcy” and uphold the institutions of globalism. They merely ask that bodies like the UN Security Council and the WTO be reformed to better reflect today’s balance of economic power.

To be sure, some of these regimes do adopt a confrontational course, objectively disrupting the status quo, when elite interests are on the line. The Ukraine war, provoked by years of NATO expansion, is a prime example. A Russian victory, which appears imminent, will be a major blow to US hegemony impacting the balance of power in Europe and beyond. This is what’s behind the lame duck Biden administration’s latest escalation, authorising the Zelensky regime to use long-range American and British missiles to strike Russian territory. This move will hardly stop the Russian army from grinding down the Ukrainian forces on the battlefield, but it does bring the world a step closer to nuclear armageddon.

While a Russian victory in Ukraine will be a blow to US foreign policy in the short term, that does not mean backing the war aims of Putin and the Russian oligarchs is a progressive way forward to fight US imperialism. On the contrary, by turning Russia into the oppressor of the Ukrainian nation, a Russian victory will make it even more difficult to unite Russian and Ukrainian workers to struggle for their interest of driving out the US and NATO.

This is particularly important to grasp for revolutionaries on the African continent, where growing numbers of working people mistakenly look to Russia as a force against imperialism. This point is developed in one of two presentations our comrades gave at the Lenin Centenary Conference held in Abuja in January (see “The Breakdown of US Hegemony and the Struggle for Workers Power”).

As this presentation emphasised, to unite the victims of US imperialism, Leninists must put forward an independent path of struggle for the proletariat against the imperialists and against all bourgeois forces. Looking to Putin, Xi, or the ruling elites of the Global South to lead a struggle against imperialism and reaction is the road to disaster and defeat. Nothing shows this clearer than their responses to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The article “Why Can’t Anyone Stop Netanyahu?” explains why none of them have been able to stop, or even slow, the Zionist carnage. The pro-Palestinian movement is at an impasse. What’s needed is to change course, linking the domestic struggles of workers internationally to Palestinian liberation. This can only be done by fighting for revolutionary communist leadership in opposition to the liberal and nationalist leaders who currently dominate the movement.

We reprint another talk given at the Lenin Centenary Conference. “In Defence of Permanent Revolution” lays out key lessons of the anti-apartheid struggle and other elements of Trotsky’s permanent revolution that the ICL has reasserted as part of our tendency’s programmatic reorientation in recent years. The essential lesson is that the fight for communist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle is central to revolution in the neocolonial world.

This perspective is espoused in the article “Bangladesh: Tasks and Dangers”. It explains why the vital tasks raised by the student-led uprising can only be resolved if revolutionaries fight to polarise the movement and break the masses from those who conciliate the bourgeoisie and the Yunus interim government. The presentation “Argentina: The Tasks of Trotskyists in the Struggle Against Milei” also focuses on the fight against imperialist subjugation, polemicising against the Argentine Trotskyist movement’s failure in this strategic task.

The breakdown of US hegemony is shifting the political terrain all around the world. Southern Africa is no exception, as the elections this year in Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa all attest.

The May elections in SA showed clearly that the post-1994 model has run its course. Up until now, the ANC was able to support itself politically on the votes of the black majority, using this to carry out a neo-apartheid policy centred on defending the assets and dominance of white monopoly capital. This treacherous set-up rested on the one hand on the ANC tops’ ability to browbeat the masses into accepting that there was “no alternative” to the Washington Consensus. At the same time, relative stability and marginal economic growth allowed the ANC to shake some crumbs from the white master’s table, using these to both ameliorate some of the worst poverty of the masses and grow the ranks of the black elite.

Over the past decade and a half, this has become increasingly untenable. The essence of the “GNU” formed after the May elections is that the ANC enlisted the direct political support of openly pro-imperialist, white-dominated parties like the DA and FF+ in order to preserve its position and carry out the dictates of the Randlords and imperialists.

While this course conforms in the short term to the ANC tops’ self-preservation instinct, even before Trump’s return it was clear that their decline would only continue. The global pressures are going to intensify, particularly as a result of the US ratcheting up economic and military pressure on China, South Africa’s biggest export market. In response, the ANC leaders can only delude themselves with fairy tales about navigating the world turmoil by “having no enemies” and steering clear of “spats among global powers”.

To be sure, the course of the ANC under Ramaphosa has been met with bitter denunciations from nationalist opponents, trade union tops and even the ANC’s own Tripartite Alliance partners. But as we explain in “How We Got Here, How to Fight Back”, for all the talk about fighting the GNU nothing is actually being done to organise a real struggle.

Why not? Because although the leaders of MK, the EFF, NUMSA and the SACP all oppose the coalition with the DA, mobilising the working class for a serious confrontation with the GNU and imperialists is not currently acceptable to the black elites. As a result, their alternative to coalition with the DA is to try to cobble together and repackage the bankrupt post-1994 model. All of them are searching in vain for a supposed “progressive, anti-imperialist” wing of the ANC that will face the wrath of the markets by opting for a coalition with MK and EFF.

This alternative has met with little enthusiasm from the black masses, who in their own way sense that reuniting the ANC/Tripartite Alliance “family” is a road to nowhere. Contrary to the talk of “black unity” spouted by Floyd Shivambu and others who have flocked to Zuma’s MK, it is plain to see that the black masses are even weaker and more fractured than before the elections, while the position of the white rulers has been strengthened.

With appeals to “unity”, nationalists like Shivambu peddle subordination to the black elites, which in reality means dividing the proletariat and oppressed black masses. To see this, we just have to look at what they have done in the face of the GNU’s murderous campaign against the zama zamas at Stilfontein and other abandoned mines.

For months, there’s been a hysterical campaign to scapegoat African and Asian immigrants as the main source of all the misery and depravity in this oppressive society—from unemployment, to violent crime and the ongoing spate of food poisoning. In October, the government seized the opportunity by escalating Operation Vala Umgodi (“shut the pit”), threatening to turn abandoned mine shafts into mass graves for hundreds of zama zamas. The aim was to strengthen the position of the GNU and paper over cracks in the coalition by targeting a marginal and desperate section of the toilers.

Against this vicious attack, it’s urgently necessary to fight to mobilise the mineworkers’ unions—AMCU, NUM, NUMSA, etc.—to defend the zama zamas. This is in the direct interest of workers throughout the mining industry, who face an unrelenting jobs bloodbath and can easily imagine finding themselves in the zama zamas’ situation within the next few years. A fight by the unions to shut down Operation Vala Umgodi would put them in a much better position to wage defensive economic struggles and push back against the GNU’s pro-imperialist, anti-union agenda.

But what has the response been of the nationalists and trade-union leaders who claim to oppose the GNU? MK has actively egged on the murderous campaign. The EFF, while urging the government to conduct its clampdown in a more “humanitarian” manner, also supported the aim of the Operation (a similar tone as the NUM bureaucracy).

Some trade union leaders have rightly denounced the government for victimising the zama zamas and blaming them for the horrible conditions in the mining communities (AMCU, SAFTU and GIWUSA). But none of them are doing anything to actually mobilise the working class to fight this attack. While they raise a number of supportable demands, without a class-struggle path tying the defence of the zama zamas to the objective interests of the working class their interventions come down to illusion-breeding appeals to the GNU for “justice” and “compassion” for the oppressed.

The crisis at Stilfontein gives a snapshot of the central problems at the root of the weakened, disoriented state of the left and workers movement. The far left groups and left-wing trade unions have been utterly incapable of competing with the radical nationalists and counterposing a class-struggle course to fight white monopoly capital. The result is a total absence of a working-class political pole, which was already plain for all to see heading into this year’s elections.

To confront this crippling problem, we intervened in the elections calling for a critical vote to the EFF. Our campaign sought to highlight the contradiction between the EFF’s progressive demands and its nationalist strategy, programme and methods—which are a barrier to pushing forward the struggle for these demands (see “The Road to Land and Jobs”). Although our forces are very modest, our intervention outlined a concrete perspective for cohering a class-struggle pole to fight for leadership of the national democratic revolution.

In contrast, the majority of left groups sat this one out. Their dismissive attitude toward the masses’ illusions in the EFF and other nationalists reflects the wrong view that the fight against national oppression is a diversion from the class struggle. But far from weakening the nationalists’ grip on the black masses, this pseudo-left posture only fed into the main outcome of these elections: a rightward shift in the political centre of gravity, including among the nationalist opposition forces. The MK’s version of populism—combining appeals to the masses’ desire for radical economic measures with promoting anti-immigrant chauvinism and other reactionary divisions—is in the ascendant, and this is the main pressure battering the EFF.

The EFF’s real political activity is shifting to the right, adapting to this climate. At the same time, the party leadership around Malema is also polishing its left-wing credentials in an effort to close the ranks and stem the losses to MK. For example, its discussion document for the upcoming National People’s Assembly reaffirms the EFF’s radical demands and talks about the need for the working class to form its own party “distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes”. Yet as their response to the Stilfontein crisis shows, when it comes to taking a stand to defend the interests of the working class and oppressed black masses in the here and now, on the question of the zama zamas the EFF is on the side of the Randlords and their GNU.

It would be a defeat if the EFF is simply torn apart by right-wing defections to MK, with leftists dropping out, demoralised, one by one. But trying to reconsolidate by doubling down on the party’s same old nationalist, parliamentarist strategy and programme is also no answer to the current impasse. To the Fighters who want to fight, not capitulate, we say it’s necessary to chart a completely different course, one that fuses the struggle for national liberation with the class struggle. This means rejecting not only the “Progressive Caucus” with MK, but the whole strategy of unity with the black elites.

With class struggle at an ebb, defensive struggles are crucial for uniting and strengthening the working class in the face of right-wing reaction. Revolutionaries must stand in the front lines of struggles against state repression and other attacks on working-class and democratic gains, seeking at all times to build them and push them forward along class-struggle lines.

The campaign to defend Xolani Khoza, an EFF militant and trade-union activist who was one of the first victims of GNU repression, is an example of what must be done on a much broader scale. By mobilising trade unionists, radical nationalists and socialists in united-front action, it points the way to overcoming the divisions among the masses to resist the GNU attacks on them. We continue the fight to mobilise broader forces in Xolani’s defence, and also to defend Nigerian leftists facing the death penalty).

In the course of these defensive struggles, as well as through debate and struggle over strategy and programme, communists must fight to win the confidence of the working class and prepare it for the shocks and struggles to come. We see this issue of ABA as a weapon for doing that.