Cursory reflection, leaning as it does on crude political categories like “Left” and “Right”, nevertheless reveals a peculiar feature of our time with surprising clarity. A form of double movement wherein the Left is falling apart while the Right consolidates. Unlike Polanyi’s “double movement” (wherein capitalism is both freed and to be constrained at the same time), what I am describing is a global shearing movement rather than a kind of ambivalence.
Although crude, the categories of Left and Right gain credence in the deepening political schism that has been noted everywhere in the world. More and more national elections are tending to 50/50 outcomes which are often decided on less than a 1% difference in votes. Crude categories for crude times!
These 50/50 election outcomes are simplistically misinterpreted as Left/Right outcomes by many commentators. The American Right represented by the Republican Party is a more cohesive and distinct formation than what is found on the American Left which is more dispersed and involved in a more partial relationship with the Democratic Party.
In South Africa, where the voting patterns are very different from those in the US, the fragmentation of the Left tripartite alliance of the ANC, Cosatu and the SACP itself foretold the fragmentation of the ANC as the leading political party of the Left.
Has it always been this way? Has “the Left” always been an insipid contiguity of splintered causes? Has “the Right” always been such a globe-straddling, sharp-edged edifice? My sense is that it is an emphatic “no” to the former and a qualified “yes” to the latter.
I want to put aside the question of the basis of the unity of the Right and rather bring Left dissension into the foreground as the more interesting phenomenon that needs to be understood — as something that was not always the case.
My own limited experience confirms for me that the fragmentation of the Left was not always the case. I grew up in and on the Left in South Africa and have remained there among some of its many contemporary fragments. The 1980s apartheid state of emergency was the crucible in which so many Lefties were made and largely unified. The ANC-aligned United Democratic Front was diverse yet characterised by a deep solidarity that stood the test of a sustained violent onslaught. Once upon a time, we were comrades on the Left. We asked in the Struggle song: “Who Left? Who Right?”. That was all we needed to know back then.
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The degree of dissensus that is now characteristic of the Left in South Africa (and seemingly everywhere else in the world) is striking and in stark contrast to the unity of the South African Right. The distances between civic organisations, peoples’ movements, trade unions, and Left political parties like the ANC and the EFF are very wide indeed. The Left has become more indistinct and even illegible through fragmentation.
There is no doubt that the once comradely Lefties turned on each other soon after 1989. The fall of the Berlin Wall foretold the crumbling of the Left in South Africa. Many Lefties that I know have even come to detest each other to varying degrees depending on which little fragments they ended up holding to and where they were located during the shameful State Capture period. Resentment, betrayals, guilt, scapegoating, whispering campaigns and broken promises are all to be found in thick swathes in this tragic saga of people who had once shared a revolutionary trench.
But, tragic as it may be, why erstwhile comrades fell out is not the best question we can ask of this phenomenon. The question here is about the basis of unity on the Left. It is this basis which slowly gave way after 1989, the lack of which produced the symptom of a now-dissolved solidarity.
What was the basis of pre-1989 comradeship? The conventional explanation is that Left unity could be forged more easily in the heat of an intensified struggle against a singular enemy, the apartheid state as the concentrated manifestation of the Right. These battle lines were also clearly drawn globally in that bifurcated Cold War era — it was the USSR and its allies versus the US and its allies. It was a time when everyone knew where they stood.
It was black and white for us back then. Then it became grey. Therefore, the story goes, when Grand Apartheid was vanquished the Left became dissipated — they could now pursue their own freedoms. Undeniable as this is as an experiential account there is something hollow and insufficient about it. It is all about ex-post symptoms and not enough about the causal basis.
We return to the question: What was the basis of the pre-1989 unity of the Left in South Africa? We need to address this question in serious terms if we want to know why the Left has now become so fragmented. More importantly, it is on this path that we may find a more robust principle to sustain a revived solidarity of the Left.
That principle is a unity which in our time ought to be the unity of the Many but will not necessarily be so. The voting patterns of American and European workers provide ample evidence of this. Left solidarity, therefore, cannot have its basis in majoritarianism even if it seeks to represent the Many.
In a neoliberal epoch, something more basic is needed to undergird and hold the Left together as a political formation which may be for the Many but not necessarily of the Many.
This is not mere nostalgic yearning for a long-gone comradeship in a bygone black-and-white world. It is an urgent, existence-relevant search for a principle of Left solidarity in the coming battles for a future in which a more humane and grace-filled kind of being in the world is possible. DM
As a left-leaning social democrat, I would argue that South Africa does not have any significant parties on the left. The ANC lost any credible claim to be called left when it ditched the RDP in favour of GEAR and this was only the precursor to the replacement of the ideal of participatory democracy with a Struggle elite by Thabo Mbeki. It talks a good left game but its actions (and inactions) are in contradiction to this. It is simply a party of racialised nationalism now. The EFF are fascist in word and deed. VBS and the EFF leadership are exhibit A. I call both the ANC and EFF the “faux left”.
The real left is trapped in a conflict of Utopias. Lots of grand plans for different shades of an ideal and nothing of practical use on the ground. Endlessly waiting for a revolution that never comes (and revolution is often romaticised and seen as the only way). Dreams of revolution are useless for solidarity in the present context. Progress needs to be incremental rather than a complete disassembly of the current system. Too many on the left are impatient and yet see no progress at all while they wait for their revolution.
If the left want solidarity and progress, they need to be SMART about their objectives in the sense of the business acronym: S Specific M Measurable A Agreed R Realistic T Time-bound. This requires discussion and a plan of action for the SMART objectives.
That about sums it up I guess. One small change however – the so-called “Left” will remain fragmented until they are able, once again, to unite behind a clarion call that shows them a common enemy. That enemy is already being shaped for purposes of the coming solidarity as uncaring greedy and racist white capital (of course, greedy black capital will remain external to the shape of that enemy). An enemy to give them a cause. A cause to give them a revolution. An after the revolution they will fragment again whilst a few of their number get rich, then they will call for unity again and find another enemy.
Jeff Rudin was on here again recently. I agree with him when he says the real problem isn’t race per se but economic class. You are correct about the need for a common enemy but the “enemy” that is being put forward is too much of an intellectual abstraction. Can one see “white monopoly capital”? Can one touch it? The vast majority of people can’t unite against something that is not obvious. Apartheid was obvious in a brutal, in-your-face way. Its manifestations were real and physical.
The common enemy of the Left should, of course, be poverty. Poverty is also brutal. It is also in-your-face.
Apartheid was not defeated by revolution, though many activists felt that way. It was defeated by an accumulation of incremental countermeasures and a negotiated settlement at the end. The activists may once again feel cheated of their revolution but we need a war against poverty in the same way: small, SMART steps. There’s the unifier enemy and there is the strategy.
To me, Left evokes the struggle for shared prosperity (as opposed to inequality), and liberalism. The goal that should unite the left is some agreed level of social democracy. If a clear enemy is needed, it should be the Plutocrats – WMC and ANC elites – that scheme to favour their class, and thereby exacerbate inequality. Economic realism is essential.
I have no argument against any of that. I particularly agree with a programme for shared prosperity (as opposed to inequality) and that economic realism is essential.
Start with ensuring market friendly low labour unit costs in production in order to be able to compete against the likes of China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh etc.
Once we have fuller employment it may be possible to talk about a socialist leaning world – until then it is simply a pipe dream
I won’t disagree with that. The employed are strongly privileged in our law above the unemployed. I worked in China for ten years and saw firsthand how they did it. Factory worker wages were very low indeed – much lower than our minimum wage – but the government provided subsidised land for factories on condition they built dormitories and canteens for migrant workers.
A very low wage is less of a problem if the worker does not pay for accommodation and eats for free. Remittances to the rural areas then helped economic development there and many younger siblings had a bit of seed capital to move to the cities and start micro-businesses. That little bit of socialism of the government providing subsidised land with some conditions attached actually helped the private market.
It was a small, SMART step.
The fundamental problem is of course that Socialism doesn’t work. Capitalism with all its flaws is the ONLY system that maximises the common good. Advanced capitalist societies such as those in Scandinavia, New Zealand and other mainly European nations can afford to accomodate a fairer society with a large socialist segment but the kind of socialism punted by the left in Africa is just a recipe for failure. Look at the bottom ten nations in the field of just about anything and compare them to the top ten in the fields of just about anything. The evidence is overwhelming. I hate the vulgar concentration of wealth in the top one percent and want desperately to see the masses uplifted but you wont find the answers with Marx or Castro or any of their bedfellows
The only basis on which solidarity can stand is a pragmatic approach to solving South Africa’s problems. The left and right approach referred to in the article is a complete misunderstanding of reality. People generate wealth and not economic systems and policies that discourage people from working and producing are a disaster for the majority. Capitalism is not great and socialism is probably a bit worse but the success of both depends on their application and leadership.
The excessive current unemployment is a clear indication that the application of “left policies” have been disastrous for many South Africans. I am not sure that “right policies” would do much better. What is needed is a pragmatic approach or a mix of both policies to deal with the poverty while stimulating the economy to get real economic growth to pull down the unemployment rate and get more people working. We will never get very far while so many are not working.
For “pragmatic approach” read “rule of law”. Only speculators, gamblers and bribers engage in economies that do not have predictable outcomes at law. The uncertainty around South Africa’s future security of tenure (expropriation of land, forced redress of past economic gains, BBEEE, continual calls for rebalancing of the wealth gap) will mean that the financial basis for a social pact will never be created. And thus will our uneducated, untrained youth be damned to a life of poverty amongst the country’s riches.