Rubashov was a veteran of revolutionary struggle. He found himself, however, accused of anti-revolutionary activity. Dedicated party cadre that he was, he protested his innocence. But, as two of his comrades interrogated him, he came to the conclusion that, yes, he was indeed guilty of undermining the revolution.
How did Rubashov, the main character in Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon come to this conclusion? It is a question to which I will return in a moment.
Jeremy Cronin is a dedicated veteran of revolutionary struggle in South Africa. He finds himself, however, accused of anti-revolutionary activity. He protests his innocence. But as some of his African National Congress comrades engage him, he concludes that, yes, he has indeed been guilty of undermining the revolution.
How does Cronin so conclude? Had he not merely made a few innocuous comments about the suppression of debate and the alienation of the Left in Thabo Mbeki’s ANC? Were these comments not, in fact, made in the context of defending the South African Communist Party’s alliance with the ANC? Yes, they were.
Cronin concluded his own guilt — which prompted his pathetic apology to the ANC at the weekend — by the same kind of reasoning that underlay Rubashov’s change of heart. It resembles the reasoning that led many a communist apparatchik to admit guilt in Joseph Stalin’s show trials in the old Soviet Union in the 1930s. Baldly stated, it is:
- The revolutionary party (for which read the ANC in Cronin’s case) has, through study, developed a scientific understanding of where history is headed and how it will get there.
- This theoretical insight has enabled the party to lead the process of change — to become, if you like, a conscious instrument of historical inevitability.
- The party is, thus, always right; and any act is justifiable in its name.
- Any individual, hence, who — wittingly or unwittingly — is deemed by the party to have obstructed its progress is, ipso facto, guilty of crimes against both it and history’s purposes.
- So any humiliation is acceptable to the individual concerned if, having suffered it, it means he can remain a member of the party or be said to have conspired in the denunciation of his own crimes.
So ta-ta, comrade Rubashov, off to the firing squad with you.
And you, comrade Jeremy? Well, we shall see what magnanimity awaits you once you’ve said a dozen “Hail Thabos”.
Of course, the underlying reasoning motivating Rubashov and Cronin is crap de luxe. It is not a product of rationality, nor of logic, neither of science. Instead, it is a product of desperate hope that it is possible to secure a better future. In the case of Cronin, it is also a product of fear and funk — and of a desperate need to belong.
The fact is, however, that many intelligent people have thought they can make themselves the conscious instruments of preordained historical outcomes. Marxism is alone in having sought to dignify this nonsense with claims of “science”. Fascist tyrannies have tended to rely more on quasi-mystical notions, such as “destiny”.
Now, however, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are all supposed to be wiser. Did not the ANC, after all, (with the leech-like SACP attached) host the introduction in South Africa of a profoundly liberal and democratic Constitution? Of course it did. Moreover, do not the ANC’s and SACP’s basic documents now often avoid relying on the old nonsense? Yes, they do.
But, scratch a little and out the old nonsense pours. Put the ANC leadership in a spot, or give Joel Netshithenze a real problem to grapple with, and you can almost hear the rustle of Joel’s old Lenin Party School manual. A while later, and you can hear Joel cranking up the old iron law of history again. Then, a pause later, out pour the old certainties, bucketed in convoluted language its authors hope no one will understand.
It’s difficult being a member of the ANC or the SACP these days: you have to be both a liberal democrat and a Leninist.
The resultant confusion is evident in a pre-conference ANC document dealing with the media. Yes, the ANC leadership wants a diversity of media and opinion. But, no, it does not want the kind of diversity that produces a hostile opinion of it. And so on.
If ever we have the pleasure of reading Cronin’s defence of his craven capitulation at the weekend, we are unlikely to see reference in it to the single glaring lesson of his recent experience. It is that Cronin was right about the Mbeki leadership: it is authoritarian — it can’t take criticism, even criticism patently constructive in its intent.
I and my colleagues on this newspaper, though, may derive an additional, different lesson. We may think thrice before again defending Cronin or his ilk when they come under fire for expressing their right to their opinions.
Why?
Because Cronin has turned tail and fled from a battlefield on to which he had led others. He has deserted them so that he can lick the boots of his own tormentors. Those who followed Cronin on to that battlefield — and this newspaper, which was prepared stoutly to defend his right to express his view, nonsensical though it often is — must now face his tormentors’ bullets.
Pathetic, Jeremy, pathetic. And, as you say, not even tactical.