In 1920, the Communist Government of the Soviet Union faced a terrible problem it knew exactly how to solve – but would not. After three years of communism, the people were starving. This would have been expected by any non-Marxist and, more interestingly, probably by most Marxists too. The civil war had caused harm, but much more harm had been done by ‘war communism’, with state control over everything and state confiscation of crops. How to end starvation? Easy. Withdraw the dead hand of the state and allow a free market in agriculture.
The Marxists, including Lenin and Trotsky, knew it but hated it. They hated the market. They hated the thought of people choosing for themselves. They wanted communism, where a tiny ruling elite (none from the working class) tells everybody else what to do. This was the whole idea behind the October 1917 coup (a power grab by a small bourgeois gang of professional politicians).
Eventually, forced by circumstance, Lenin allowed the ‘New Economic Policy’ (NEP), which restored the market in agriculture. To the relief and the horror of the Marxists, agriculture immediately recovered, crops improved dramatically, and the people could eat again.
In 2021, the African National Congress (ANC) Government faces the terrible problem of unemployment, the Number One concern of ordinary South Africans. The latest figures show unemployment is now 43% (including those who have given up looking for work). In his recent budget speech, finance minister Tito Mboweni admitted the scale of the crisis.
Everybody, including the ANC, knows how to reduce unemployment. It has been shown throughout history, and in modern times throughout east Asia. Allow a free market in labour. Remove the shackles that prevent poor people from getting formal jobs. End the horrible central bargaining councils whose sole purpose is to shut poor people out of the formal economy. End the stifling labour laws that make it nearly impossible for poor people, however enterprising and inventive, to become employers. End the ruinous minimum wages. Stop racial affirmative action, which undermines black confidence and stigmatises worthy black workers. Stop BEE, which is a form of legalised corruption. Stop employment equity (making racial proportions in every work level the same as those in the population at large). Reduce the miles of red tape that strangle business.
The ANC knows all this. It knows affirmative action and employment equity are destructive nonsense. That’s why ANC politicians never send their own children to schools with affirmative action teachers, and never send them to schools where 92% of the teachers are black, as in the population at large. The ANC knows any income, however low, is better than no income at all. That’s why it distributes small social grants to the needy, including a child support grant of R460 a month. It knows a free market in labour, without government interference, would immediately and dramatically reduce unemployment.
But it can’t bear to make these reforms. Like the Russian communists in 1920, its ideology comes first. Like them, it hates the market and hates the idea of ordinary people making their own choices. Like them, it is obsessed with power and control, and would gladly ruin the country – which it is doing – rather than relinquish either.
In 1920 in Russia, any successful private farmer was called a ‘kulak’, and was an enemy of the people, liable to be fined or exiled or killed. His property could be seized (foreshadowing Robert Mugabe’s land grabs and the ANC’s expropriation without compensation). The communists desperately wanted more food, but anybody who grew more food was prosecuted as a kulak. Unsuccessful farmers, who did not grow enough food, were urged to grow more but, if they did grow more, they were also prosecuted.
The ANC regards successful capitalists in a similar way. It begs for overseas investment, but condemns overseas investors as racist exploiters who want to profit from African poverty. It rants against ‘white monopoly capitalism’ but clamours for capitalist goods. It says it is open for business but then makes clear it is closed for business – for example, with complicated BEE laws, carrying a ten-year gaol sentence for any businessman who violates them.
In the late 1920s, Stalin took full control of the communist state. He reversed the NEP and collectivised the farms. All farmers became slaves of the state. The result was a catastrophic famine, in which millions of people starved to death. Marxists around the world thought this was wonderful. ‘Intellectuals, academics and editors in Europe and the USA (including The New York Times) hailed Stalin as a great progressive force and the USSR as a workers’ paradise. The few who told the truth about the USSR, such as George Orwell and Malcolm Muggeridge, were denounced as right-wingers and reactionaries.
The policies of the ANC, including BEE, minimum wages and hatred of capitalism, are similarly admired by the modern equivalents of those intellectuals, academics and editors in the West today. Their approval will count more for the ANC than the welfare of the South African people.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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