Struggling for Communism, Not Socialism: “It’s a Process”
SOUTH AFRICA—A comrade who was part of us briefly said he had “a problem reconciling our political line with his own views.” The struggle to recruit him will be helpful with other friends who share some of his ideas.
We had assumed that he was on board without deeply struggling with him to find out whether he agreed with our line. This conversation was an opportunity to try to understand his thinking.
He asked how society can function without money. We explained that in capitalist society, the material basis for most of the problems, if not all, is money. Money is the reason for poverty and greed, the reason for corruption and homelessness.
To destroy capitalism, we should do away with money completely and live by communist principles, where each person contributes according to their ability and commitment and receives according to their needs. That would be the most logical thing.
We need to explain further to the masses how this will be done practically. There are some examples which we can use. Before class society, people shared everything without money. After the Chinese Revolution, masses of people set up communes, mostly in rural areas. They produced and shared everything collectively without money.
Also, in the Cultural Revolution in China, there were barefoot doctors who were ordinary workers who learned in classes and then in practice how to cure diseases and treat wounds. They took their knowledge straight to the masses to help them, as they worked alongside them.
Christian was open to our ideas. He’s been a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP). We explained we don’t think that the model the SACP proposes is beneficial to the working class. The SACP is in alliance with the African National Congress, who are openly serving the bosses, not the working class. The SACP is supposed to be the vanguard of the working class. They are not taking any leadership. Hence the working class generally is suffering here.
Christian views socialism as the final product to emancipate the working class, which is wrong. Socialism was never meant to be a final product. It was meant to be a transition period. Communism was supposed to be the final goal. They are not advocating fighting directly for communism.
We agreed on many things. But our point of contention is: how do we achieve our stated goal, to liberate the working class? He believes we can do that through socialism and we believe that only by fighting directly for communism, will we be able to liberate the working class.
We had underestimated our ideological differences. Struggling with him won’t be mechanical. It’s going to be a process. Our conversation was a good start to that process. We can expand on that to talk more about communism, how will it function.
We talked about how we will organize healthcare in communism. About the state of hospitals here. We said that in communism when we are dealing with healthcare, we won’t be solely focused on building hospitals.
Many things that we do are harmful to our health and drive people straight to hospitals. In communism they should done away with. But because we are living in capitalist society, they sell these things just for profit. For example, diabetes kills more people here than HIV-AIDS. The only plan to address this is treatment, not prevention.
We need to encourage people to exercise more, to eat healthy diets. But now under capitalism they can’t. Many people can’t even afford to buy healthy food. The food they can afford is harmful to their health. But under communism, we will provide people’s basic needs, including only healthy food. This will eliminate the need for them to go into the hospitals in the first place.
By talking and exposing that dynamic, Christian was able to see that there are benefits in what we are proposing. We will continue to struggle with him sharply around our line. Hopefully, he and many more friends will see that the only way for us to achieve the liberation of the working class is communism, and the only party that fights for communism is the ICWP.