Dale T McKinley: CROSSFIRE
What hole did Kuseni Dlamini (Crossfire, May 22 to 28) just climb out of to proclaim the death of the left? I’ll take a wild guess that it was the one he dug for himself in the depths of the corporate bowels of De Beers where, I have no doubt, the left was held in the lowest ”esteem” long before Dlamini even knew how to say ”dialectical”.
The volley of misguided missiles that Dlamini throws at the ”left project” and anyone hanging around in the vicinity, might be taken more seriously if it was, at the very least, informed by what has been happening within and between left forces over the past several years.
It’s one thing to engage in informed ideological polemics with what one perceives as the ”left”, wholly another to level charges of ”conspiracy to defraud” that bear the hallmarks of someone who has been spending far too much time fantasising about the merits of the Meiring report.
The bottom line is that the entire framework for Dlamini’s left death proclamation emanates from a rehashed Thatcherism whose stench-ridden corpse is continually, and ironically, resurrected to deny reality. Let’s take a quick look at how two pillars of Dlamini’s argument stand up to that reality.
Question: What institutional vehicle is being used in order to implement the very ”process of globalisation” that has, apparently, marginalised the ”nation state”?
Answer: The nation state itself. This is evidenced by that most ”globalised” of macro-economic programmes, the growth, employment and redistribution strategy, or by the recent state-led rescue operation from the excesses of ”globalisation” in Indonesia.
Question: Does a ”shrinking industrial working class” still constitute the primary social base of the left?
Answer: No. The dominant base of left social movements and political organisations that have arisen over the last several years across the globe is made up of landless rural workers, peasants, the unemployed and unionised industrial and agricultural workers.
It would seem Dlamini has yet to understand that he is barking up the wrong tree. It is not the left that is in need of holding on to a comforting but decrepit ”guiding faith”, or wallowing in a detached social and political ”dogma” of the past. It is precisely because left forces are trying to find relevant ways and means of struggling for an alternative vision and practice that there are no easy answers. Unlike death notices, revolutionary change does not happen by proclamation.
If Dlamini had taken time to conduct a bit of research he might have come across the South African Communist Party’s Strategic Perspectives document and many other international left programmes that speak directly to all the issues he so glibly accuses the left of avoiding. Or maybe it was too difficult for Dlamini to unearth the rich tapestry of left-inspired struggles being waged on numerous fronts from England to Indonesia and many places in between.
As we debate, hundreds of thousands of Indian workers and peasants continue to wage unrelenting battles for the preservation of their environment against the backward-looking industrialisation carried out by the forces of a so-called progressive ”globalisation”. Here at home, it was a broad coalition of left forces that fought for, and continues to resolutely defend, the ”individual rights” of women to have control over their own bodies.
The list goes on and on and in virtually every case, it is the forces of the left that are vigorously attempting to break down the barriers of ”fragmentation” that Dlamini seems to celebrate as part of the ”deepening and unstoppable globalisation of socio-economic activities”. Workable alternatives to the barbaric effigies of ”globalisation’s progress” are being offered and tested every day.
Dlamini’s analytical slumber even leads him to argue that the left must ”rethink” issues it has, fortunately, already dealt with. The left has every interest in ”involving itself in the process of wealth creation” – after all, it has been the workers of this country who continue to create the wealth over which they have no control.
Unfortunately for the De Beers of this world, the left is struggling to change, not ”deepen”, the existing ”process” of such wealth creation. As part of that struggle, the left understands that patterns of ownership must change and that the role of the public sector is central to effecting that change, rather than trusting in the Oppenheimers to show us the way to equality.
Unlike the champions of globalisation, the left does not practise the capitalist ”faith” of throwing the market bones. Of course there is a place for a market mechanism to help ”deliver the goods”, but it is a market which is not wholly dependent on the whims of capitalist speculators. When that favourite ”free market” mechanism, privatisation, makes the consumption of water a privilege, it is simply sound economics to fight for its public ownership. Or does Dlamini honestly believe that the old Margaret Thatcher cronies at British BiWater have the interests of Nelspruit’s township residents at heart?
To put it bluntly, many of us on the left are tired of the lamentably uninformed arguments of the Dlaminis of this world. The left might not have all the right answers and it certainly isn’t arrogant enough to offer a timetable for radical change. But, compared to the monotonous assumptions that ”inform” Dlamini-like arguments about socio-economic transformation, the left is far ahead in transforming itself to come to grips with present ”realities of a globalising and liberalising world”.
What social forces does Dlamini think are responsible for the ”reality” of mass impoverishment staring him in the face as he negotiates his way to the gilt-edged corridors inhabited by that paragon of institutionalised greed, De Beers Corporation? When South Africa’s mining houses defend the ”right” of their employees to receive a monthly wage of R800, are we to celebrate their ”transformative” vision of ”flexibility and pragmatism”?
The left’s transformation, on the other hand, is informed by the daily struggles of the majority of people who have had enough of the ”realities” of an inherently dehumanising globalisation – that’s dialectics, Dlamini. It is those real struggles that will continue to lead and shape the left, not some predetermined strategic blueprint emanating from uninformed intellectual proclamation.
Sorry to disappoint you Dlamini, but if the ”quality” and ”ambition” of the left’s ”critique” were the main determinants of its relevance, we would have won the battle a long time ago. The ”left project” is relevant simply because the ”realities” of present-day capitalism (in whatever new form it presents itself) have not come to an end.
I, for one, dream of the day when the left is dead – it will mean that humans have not only fully reclaimed their humanity, but that I’ll have weekends free.
Dale T McKinley, author of The ANC and the Liberation Struggle: A Critical Political Biography, works for the South African Communist Party and holds a doctorate in politics. This is written in his personal capacity