Editorial: The Fallacies of Opportunism. (1926)

Editorial from the May 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Opportunism has been the grave of many a movement that commenced blessed with the brightest hopes. It has an old and disastrous history in the annals of the working class, and yet it flourishes still, alluring with bright but treacherous promises myriads of workers whose energy and enthusiasm is wasted on fleeting and harmful objects instead of being directed towards the abolition of wage slavery.

Opportunism takes two main roads, one the road that is very, very long but has flowers to be picked by the way; the other the road along which emancipation is to come like a thief in the night—ushered in by a handful of “leaders” behind the backs of the people.

But the wayside flowers wither rapidly, and in like manner the “benefits” that are obtained with much labour and misery wither and become burdens in a very short time. Such are Old Age Pensions, Unemployment Insurance, and the like.

The quick road is full of pitfalls and quagmires, and the travellers along it are brought to ruin by the ignorance of the masses, the duplicity of the leaders, and the power of the masters. Along this road secrecy is one of the watchwords, and one after another secret movements have collapsed through betrayal by some of those taking part.

There was one secret movement, however, nearly 100 years ago, which, from one point of view, worked out in an ideal manner until it came to the final plunge—and then its very secrecy sealed its doom. This was the Barbès insurrection in France in 1839. So well was the secret kept that the main body of those taking part knew neither the leaders nor the plan of action until the day appointed for the rising, and when the leaders turned up nobody recognised them and squabbles and disorganisation resulted.

The opportunist brings his panaceas on to the historical stage then bows and vanishes, only to return again with a fresh one or an old one in a new dress. One by one these panaceas fail to accomplish their purpose and are cast aside.

The question arises, how is it that people are so ready to try false paths when the real remedy for their troubles is so simple and lies ready to hand ? There are two principal reasons. First, leadership offers rich prizes to those who covet an easy life, and inflates the vanity of those who seek popular applause. Secondly, when someone offers to do the work and relieve others of the thinking and worrying those others are inclined to support the saviour.

Many of those who profess a desire for a change in the social system and contend that they aim at the same object as we do, yet fall out with us for our methods as being either “unpractical” or “too long.”

We urge that the workers must first understand before they act—understand Socialism before any attempt is made to introduce it.

The difference in method leads to a fundamental difference in propaganda We are all the time engaged in disseminating knowledge of society, in the past and present, among our fellow workers, whilst the opportunists are a great part of the time engaged in disseminating rallying cries, enthusiastic phrases, and heaping abuse upon great men who occasionally play them false.

The results of the opportunists’ methods are plain to be seen by those who care to study history. The Co-operative, the Labour Party, the Industrial Unionist Movement, and the Communist Movement, to name only four, are illustrations to the point. The first two have been netted by the Capitalists, the second is dead, and the third is truly “evolutionary”—in a state of constant change !

The “evolution” of the Reformists becomes more interesting as time passes. After years spent impressing upon the workers the necessity of achieving “something now” and not worrying about “the dim and distant future,” events seem to be bringing the I.L.P. up with a jerk, if the editorial columns of the “New Leader” are anything to go by.

The Editorial of 12th February, commenting on Snowden’s recent speech, runs as follows :—

“Sir John Simon, in his reply, narrowed down our case to ‘gas and water Socialism.’ To gas and water one may add electricity and even, as Mr. Churchill once proposed, the railways. Such changes, conceived in this spirit, would leave the fabric of Capitalism intact, and even the nationalisation of the land would be no more than the last blow at Feudalism.” (Italics ours.)

Well! Well ! So all the pother was simply about seeing the back seams of feudalism’s breeches !

The step by step “evolutionary” method of reaching Socialism has not been a success. Brailsford already made that admission by inference in an article entitled “Socialism in our Generation” in the “New Leader” on January 1st, 1926. The article opens up with the suggestion that the I.L.P. are turning over a new leaf. The opening is so interesting that we cannot refrain from quoting it at length :—

“From its earliest days the Socialist movement has drafted its programme in two chapters. In the first it set out demands attainable here and now. In the second it states its ultimate aim. The first chapter varied, as time went on, with the circumstances of each country : sometimes stress was laid on the Parliamentary vote ; sometimes on the Eight Hours’ Day ; or, again, upon reforms in education and housing, or on the needs of the unemployed. This was the “practical” minimum programme. The second chapter was much less modest: it called for nothing less than the ending of the capitalist system, and the public ownership of all the means of production and distribution.

There were good reasons for this division. Every Labour movement grew as it showed tangible results. It had to interest men and women who cared nothing for theories and Utopias. It could not ignore the needs and wrongs of the moment for the sake of the distant transformation. But the method has its evils : when once you have separated the two chapters it is not easy to bring them together again. You draw a line, you print your Chapter II, in bold capital letters, and straightway you have jumped from the humdrum world of Parliamentary debates and general elections into the millennium. As the pioneers passed away and the second generation of experienced Parliamentarians took their place, the consequences became everywhere apparent. More and more it is the detail of the “practical” programme which absorbs us ; the faith in a hazy, Utopia survives, but the will to realise it is no longer the driving force. Strangers who watch our movement often liken it to a “religion.” The analogy is dangerously true. We have our week-day creed and our Sunday visions. We make ourselves at home in the City of Destruction, and from time to time, with warm hearts, and uplifted eyes, we sing of the New Jerusalem.”

Surely the above is a damaging admission from the side of the “practical” men if ever there was one ! While picking the withering flowers they have forgotten the object they set out to seek. Verily out of their own mouths are they convicted !

If they did but forget the object it were bad enough, but they did worse and it is their leaders who furnish us with the information.

We have already had occasion to comment upon the South African Labour Party, but a little further comment will do no harm, and will illustrate how the “practical” programme of Labour Parties leads them to take action diametrically opposed to the interests of the workers.

“The Bill which enforces the “colour bar” in all the industries of South Africa has passed its third reading in the Lower House. It applies to Indians and to Kaffirs, though not to half-castes. It reserves to men of the white races every skilled or semi-skilled trade, and in effect forbids a native to manage a machine. His place henceforth is fixed by law as a mere labourer. He may contrive to educate himself, but the law forbids him to use his sharpened intelligence in the preserves of the white man. 

This Bill, one of the most inhuman in the records of the white race, represents the joint policy of the more Conservative Boers and the South African Labour Party. It aims at preserving the wage standards of white labour against native and Indian competition. (New Leader, 12/2/26.)

Such is the way of the opportunist. To the class conscious Revolutionist the workers of the world are one as against the International Capitalist Class, whatever be the race, the colour, or the creed.

The many workers who support the opportunist parties must eventually come to the conclusion that short cuts and “practical” programmes are worthless. If they would emancipate themselves from the present sordid struggle for bread then they must accept and struggle for the Socialist solution to their troubles, which involves the avoidance of both the shambles and the sheepfold.

Whither South Africa? (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the western outskirts of Johannesburg lies the “shanty-town" of Newclare—an ugly sprawl of wooden shacks, patched up with canvas and corrugated iron, dirty and horribly overcrowded. Buried deep in the misery and squalor of Newclare and other places like it, live the Native workers of Johannesburg and the gold-mines of the Rand.

On February 13th this year, two armoured carloads of police drove into Newclare. Their object was to make a surprise check-up on passes, the documents which the law compels all adult male Africans to carry to show they are in work (and which, incidentally, most of them are unable to read).

These “pass laws” have never been completely effective. They are even less effective now when the Natives have been flocking into the towns in such large numbers that the authorities have found it quite impossible to keep up with them. And so, to remind them that the law still exists even though it cannot be administered properly, the police have taken to making surprise raids (often in the middle of the night), in which they make a sudden swoop on an area, quickly round-up likely suspects, arrest those found without passes, and carry them off to gaol. Sometimes the arrests run into hundreds, and the raid looks more like a minor military exercise.

Perhaps because it was only a small raid, the one on February 13th did not pass off quite so smoothly as usual. When the police tried to make an arrest on this occasion they were immediately attacked by a large crowd of Natives who eventually forced them to retire under a hail of stones and other missiles. Having driven off the police, the crowd then proceeded to throw barricades across the streets and began stoning every vehicle they found carrying Europeans, at the same time setting fire to shops and looting the contents.

The rioting continued unchecked until the following day, when heavy reinforcements of armed police and firemen were drafted to the scene, and to other places where disturbances had also broken out in sympathy. Covering the firemen with rifle and machine-gun fire to enable them to fix the hoses and at the same time prevent the crowd from cutting them, the police began to occupy the area. The crowd resisted fiercely, attacking both the police and the bands of armed Europeans who were now also roaming the district, bent on taking matters into their own hands. (The presence of these gangs was one of the most significant aspects of the riot, and is a disturbing indication of the level to which racial feeling has now risen inside South Africa.) Finally, after several hours of pitched battles, the police cleared the streets, and the disturbances came to an uneasy end.

The incident itself has since been referred to the Riots Commission, which is already sitting to consider five other cases of rioting. All of them have occurred within the last six months.

What has brought South Africa to this perilous pass? What has brought about this situation, in which certain elements in the White group are already expressing their intention of suppressing all future trouble, whatever the cost and whatever the consequences? Where some of the politicians are already talking about the dangers of civil war? South Africa has always had a racial problem. What has happened in the past few years to bring it to such a terrible state?

To answer these questions, we must first make a brief review of the events that have taken place since 1948.

The Past Two Years

There are two main political parties in South Africa, the Nationalist Party under Malan, and the United Party under Smuts. In addition, there are two smaller organisations, the Afrikaner Party led by Havenga, and a Labour Party.

At the last General Election, held in May, 1948, the Nationalists and Afrikaners combined had a slight majority over the United Party and the Labour Party. This enabled them to form a Coalition Government with Malan as Prime Minister, and Havenga in the key position of Minister of Finance.

Backed largely by the Boer farming vote, the Nationalist Party has always taken an extreme line on the racial question, and, indeed, they fought the election on this issue. Malan himself, in a speech at Praal on the 20th April, 1948, said about the election that it was 

  “dominated by the question of whether the European race would be able to maintain its rule, its purity, and its civilisation or float along until it vanishes for ever in the black sea of South Africa’s non-European population.”

Once in power, there is no doubt that Malan would have been prepared to go the whole way with his extreme racial policies if it had not been for the reluctance of Havenga to go the whole way with him. As his Government depends upon the support of Havenga and the Afrikaner Party, he has had to give way—at least for the present. This, however, has not prevented him from pressing on with all kinds of other repressive legislation, with or without the support of Havenga. Prominent in this legislation has been: —

(a) The pushing forward of the general ideal of "complete separation” of all the racial groups of South Africa, “socially, residentiary, industrially, and politically.” This means that, the four groups of South Africa—the Whites, the Coloureds (people of mixed blood), the Indians, and the Africans, will be for ever kept strictly apart. In line with this, legislation has already been introduced forbidding inter-marriage between Europeans and Coloureds (laws already exist forbidding marriage between Whites and Indians, and Whites and Africans).

(b) The intention to keep the Natives on the Reserves, and away from the towns—in Malan's own words, “the Native reserves must become the true fatherland of the Native." In the towns they must henceforth be regarded as “visitors.” 

(c) Repeal of the previous Government’s law allowing the Indians three representatives in Parliament.

(d) Abolition of present Coloured vote, and in its place a similar system to that now operating for the Natives in which they are allowed three separate representatives (who must be Europeans).

(e) Repeal of the previous Government’s Bill recognising Native Trade Unions.

(f) All training of Native skilled workers to cease.

(g) All voting rights to be taken away from the Indians, and from all Natives living away from the Reserves.

As the culmination to all these repressive activities Malan is now about to introduce an identity-card system by means of which every person in the Union will eventually be registered according to “race.” Its effect will be to put every individual, once and for all, into a racial classification from which there will never be a chance of escape. To the darker-skinned African it will be just another document to add to the others he has to carry already, but for the Coloured group its effects will be profound. It will put an end, in fact, to all possibility of a white-skinned Coloured person “passing over” into the White group.

Finally, the Nationalists have extended the racial laws to cover the Cape Province, formerly the least subject to prejudice. In the post offices, non-Whites are now directed to separate counters; there are separate exits and entrances at the railway stations; “Jim Crow” travels the trains; and rides shamelessly on the buses, where Europeans now sit in the front and members of the other groups sit at the back.

All these things show clearly that the Malan Government is determined to put the clock back in South Africa. But what of the United Party and Smuts? Are they any different? Only to this extent— that whilst they do not wish to put the clock back, they neither wish to put in very far forward. Their alternative boils down to a few reforms here and there which they hope will take the sting out of the Natives' rebelliousness, relieve the pressure on the Indians and Coloureds where it hurts them most, and leave them all once more contented with their inferior position.

The same applies to the Labour Party. Only recently there was a split in their ranks when their Leader and Deputy Leader in Parliament voted against the Indians being allowed the vote. One member abstained and the others voted in favour of the Bill, which was in any case a milk-and-water effort that only allowed them representation by Europeans.

What it comes to is this, irrespective of Party, irrespective of class, almost the whole of the White group are united in refusing to allow the non-Whites anything like a position comparable with their own. They may differ here and there amongst themselves as to which particular rung of the ladder each of the other groups should occupy, but one thing they are agreed upon—that they, the Whites, belong near the top of the ladder and the others a long way further down.

They continue to deceive themselves that they can maintain this situation, that for ever and ever 2½ million Europeans can keep the other 9 millions in subjection. There never was a more forlorn and fantastic hope, nor one with graver possibilities of terrible consequences for themselves. Speaking in the South African Parliament three days after the riot. Smuts said: —

  “Something new is coming into the life of this country. We are accustomed to the orderly conduct of our Natives and on the whole our Natives are well behaved, but some change is coming about  

  “Unless this new development is stopped and stopped at once and unless firm measures are taken no one can be sure of the future of South Africa.” (Johannesburg Star, 15/2/50.)

Unfortunately for Smuts, for Malan, for all the vast majority of Europeans in the Union who think like them on the Native question, there is a change taking place in the Natives, not only in South Africa, but throughout the whole of the continent. Smuts has sensed the change and would like to explain it by the recent activity of Malan and the Nationalist Party. What he fails to recognise is that whatever the Nationalists have done to provoke matters, they have only helped to bring more quickly what is bound to have come in any case. What all the Whites of South Africa fail to face up to is that the Natives are on the move, and will not stop until they have gained the same position as the Whites.

On this question we can do no better than quote from our pamphlet. “The Racial Problem.” What it said three years ago is even more relevant now than it was then:—

  “As industry develops, they (the Natives) will learn more, and want more, and then the same position will face the South African White worker as faces the American White worker at the present time. Then will the South African workers, White, Native. Coloured, and Indian, be at their own cross-roads. What their decision will be we do not know nor do we intend to guess. What we say to the South African workers we have already said to the American workers. They must realise that their interests as workers lie together: until they do so they will remain divided and weakened, wide open to the attacks and encroachments of the capitalist class. Much worse may result; the logical end of the road which the South African White worker is treading can only be bloody violence and destruction. No group can permanently hold down another many more times more numerous than itself, and sooner or later the working class, particularly the White section, will have to face up to the situation and make their decision.”

Recent events in South Africa have served only to underline the warning contained in this statement. The White workers in the Union will ignore it at their peril.

Stan Hampson

Capitalism and apartheid (1970)

From the May 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many political analysts of South Africa have seen in the Afrikaner based National Party the political representative of landed interests with the mainly British United Party and the more radical Progressive Party being concerned largely with the mining and industrial interests. This view has usually been developed along the negative line, of what a capitalist-orientated party would not do. It is suggested that since apartheid, the acclaimed ideal of the Nationalists, would be disastrous for the economic prosperity of South Africa in today's industrial and viciously competitive world, it could not possibly form the policy of a capitalist party.

True as this statement is, it is only of minor relevance to present political realities in South Africa. Firstly it should be noted that fully fledged apartheid (separate self-governing states for each of South Africa’s ethnic groupings), is treated by the National Party in much the same way as the Russian Communist Party treats communism. It is an ‘ultimate’ aim which stays far from achievements, whether the year is 1948 or 1970: a conscience absolver whose only practical evidence is a scattering of Bantu reserves constituting one seventh of South Africa’s territory in the worst and most backward areas.

The National government proves as well as anyone the impossibility of reconstituting the old tribal institutions amongst Africans in the reserves, for they have long since been smashed through the combined effects of military conquest, Christianity and urbanisation. It makes no attempt beyond social discrimination to constitute the Indian, Coloured, Malay or Chinese derived sectors of the population into self-sustaining territories. The situation is well summed up by this extract from the 1967 Unesco report on apartheid.

  In spite of the ideology of apartheid, in spite of the uprooting of thousands of families, the complete separation of peoples into tribal ethnic groupings in South Africa has proved impossible. The closely integrated economic structure. the location of all the major industries, ail the mineral wealth, all the important harbour facilities, and all the best arable land in that part of South Africa which was outside the reserves in white ownership, meant that Africans — as well as Coloured and Asians —remain dependent on the town and farming complex of White South Africa for a livelihood . . . In fact, whatever the stated policy of the Government, there has been an increasing number of Africans admitted to urban areas.

While early Afrikaner nationalism could be more easily attached to the interests of a land owning farmer class distinct from mining and industrial capitalists, drawing as it did nearly all its support from the country districts or plateau land, this is not the case with the National Party variety. The Nationalists certainly captured the plateau land vote, but their rise to power really came through the impetus from the urban working class.

In particular the Thirties depression, together with a severe drought which drove thousands into the towns looking for jobs, in competition not only with the skilled British workers but also many industrially trained non-Europeans, provided the political base from which the National Party grew. These Afrikaner workers carried with them many of the out-dated customs and political prejudices of the country and incorporated them into a political ideology which grew from the discipline of urban industrial life.

Once established, the National Party was able to detach quite a large section of the British working class vote that had formerly gone to the racist Labour Party. Electoral pacts were made between the two organisations and the first National Party government relied for its power on the balance held by the Labour Party members. Having used the Labour Party to get into the seat of power it then discarded it. The Nationalists had the racism and anti-capitalist slogans of the Labour Party; the Unionist and later the United Party had its British patriotism, so the Labour Party quietly faded away, having nothing better to offer.

The British industrialists have long supported, vocally and financially, the United Party rather than the Nationalists and the latter have made propaganda of this among both urban and country workers, but this in itself does not brand the Nationalists as anti-capitalists in the general sense. Afrikaner nationalism saw itself being attacked on two fronts. Firstly, by the colonialist interference of British imperialism and secondly, by the opposing nationalisms of the African and Indian. To deal with the first it was seen as essential to build up a strong industrial South Africa, and to deal with the second to develop apartheid. Here was the Nationalists’ dilemma, for the first policy inevitably came into conflict with the second. The result was a compromise of sorts; strict apartheid was thrown out, but there were increasing measures of social discrimination in housing, health and political rights.

Having said that the National Party is not establishing strict apartheid, which would be disastrous for industrial development, it still remains a fact that policies pursued by the regime have not helped the development of South Africa’s industrial potential. In particular they have, through a combination of Pass laws, segregation in residential areas, repression of trade unions etc., bolstered with state power the system of migratory labour. This system was common during early industrialisation, but unusual and highly unsuitable to the commercially complicated and automated structure of modern capitalism. Such a structure requires a trained, disciplined and reliable work force and this can only be approached where workers are permanently resident in urban areas, settled in their family relations and having the inducement to involve themselves in industry. The migratory labour system prevents this by herding workers together in all male compounds, or male ghettos, by denying them political right in urban areas, and by turning their attention back towards their small patch of land on the reserve. The result, as H. R. Barrows has explained, is that:

   Though the traditional structure of the African family and tribal life is disintegrating because of its inadequacy when brought into close contact with the developing exchange economy with its implicit wage system, its breakdown is being protracted by the system of segregation and migrant labour. The social disadvantages of sudden disruption have been avoided at the cost of delaying specialisation. As a result, there is to-day no self supporting peasant economy, no permanent agricultural labour force, and no stable urban population.

Labour turnover in South African industry is enormous, compared with similarly industrialised areas elsewhere in the world. The Tomlinson Commission recorded turnovers of 117 per cent in a period of ten months in Johannesburg around 1948 and Sheila Van der Horst a figure of 138 per cent in East London generally, with 600 per cent in the building industry around 1957.

The National government is committed to the further industrial expansion of South Africa, but it is hampered by an out-dated political ideology, which it can only enforce by a massive system of state repression. It is a capitalist party since it governs a country completely dominated by capitalism, and a long way from the agricultural economy of the old Boers. Afrikaner farmers have themselves invested in industry, merging more and more into a common capitalist class, and there has been a significant growth in state corporations, and state financed industries under the Nationalists. While the removal of all racial barriers in employment and political rights might well advance industry in South Africa tremendously, such a course should not necessarily be expected in the immediate future. Further repression might lead to a bloody revolt, yet it may well be the fear of the existing native white ruling class in South Africa of such a revolt that causes them to support National Party policies. Capitalism would not fall through such a revolt but the existing capitalists might well be turfed out. Even the United Party is aware of this and has retained from the days of Smuts’ leadership a less rigorous policy of “separation” of the different ethnic groups. Only the now dissolved Liberal Party has openly demanded a multi-racial society, and in this they have only really represented the hopes of foreign capital for a greater field of exploitation in South Africa.

Mike Ballard

Editorial: A Lesson in Politics (1921)

Editorial from the February 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reports to hand of the result of the Parliamentary elections in South Africa furnish the usual lesson to those who follow the Labour Party policy of building up a political party with unsound—because politically uneducated—material. As to the issue between the Smuts and the Hertzog, we do not feel the slightest interest in that. But if it is true, as the “Daily Chronicle” (11.2.21) states—and we have no reason to doubt it—that the former party “have already won 72 seats out of 132, . . . It has been won largely by the effacement of the Labour party, whose strength has fallen from 21 seats to 9,” then we are interested in as much as we are called upon to point the usual moral.

We have stated time and time again, even to weariness, we are afraid, the only issue upon which the workers can be organised to pursue a steady and consistently progressive path is the plain issue of Socialism. That, of course, means long years of educational work, but it is the only way. When the workers understand the principles of Socialism all side issues cease to interest them. A question such as shall South Africa become a republic or remain part of the British Empire is the sort of question politically ignorant workers can be led to butcher each other over for ages, but the Socialist, who knows that the only thing that matters is whether the workers of the world are to live under capitalism or under Socialism, is not going to be side-tracked into voting capitalist upon ANY issue.