In November last year, the ANC hosted a council meeting of the Socialist International in Johannesburg. This paper examines the ANC's history and current role within this global organisation.
Internationalism has for decades been an integral part of the political outlook and approach to the struggle of the South African national democratic movement led by the ANC. Since its inception in 1912, the ANC recognised the fact that our struggle was an inseparable part of the anti-colonial movement on our continent and globally. At the ANC's founding congress, representatives of the anti-colonial movement across our borders were represented.
Commitment to the principle of international solidarity has informed the approach of other formations in the Tripartite Alliance, which for years have been part of the international communist and labour movements. In the Strategy and Tactics adopted at the Morogoro Consultative Conference of 1969, the ANC took a step further and firmly located the principle of internationalism in the organisation's understanding of the international context of the struggle against apartheid. Internationalism as a principle and in political practice was understood to include the following:
The attainment of a just and equitable world order depends on the outlook of powerful countries and on how they conduct their foreign policies, as well as on the content and character of multilateral institutions. Further, building an alliance of progressive forces globally, in both developing and developed countries, is central to the strategic objective of attaining a better world. The ANC works not only with other progressive parties at a party-to-party level, but also cooperates with other countries of the South both bilaterally and within multilateral institutions.
The ANC's association with the Socialist International (SI) derives from this historical and principled approach. It was for decades an observer in the SI, and it became a full member from 1999.
HISTORY OF THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL
The history of the Socialist International dates back to the 19th century when the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, partnered other socialists to establish in 1864 the International Workingmen's Association, which became popularly known as the First International. It pursued the social and political emancipation of the working class and the poor, and the construction of a system without class and other forms of exploitation.
But this organisation was short-lived. It collapsed in 1879, in large part because of the ideological competition and divisions between socialists and anarchists. The defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 also contributed to the weakening of the socialist forces in Europe and, by implication, the First International itself.
It was in 1889 that the world socialist movement was reconstituted, now as the Second International, and Engels elected the honorary president in 1893. It was thanks to this organisation that 1 May was declared Labour Day, and 8 March as International Women's Day. In 1896, the organisation took a stance against colonialism by adopting a resolution on the right of nations to self-determination. This position was to be an important component of the struggles of the world socialist movement in the 20th century.
However, the Second International was to collapse with the outbreak of the First World War as the 'socialists' and those who later came to be known as 'communists' engaged in an ideological battle on the position that the organisation should take in the face of the impending war. While the communists finally won - as the Second International resolved to oppose the war on the grounds that it was the product of the competition among imperialist countries for control of the world - most of the leading Western European parties which were members of the organisation decided to support their national war efforts.
This was perceived by communists as both a betrayal of the working class and, at the same time, the failure of the Second International. Communists, in their outrage, attacked and dismissed the socialists as "chauvinists", "centrists" and even "opportunists". In one of his four pamphlets on the collapse of the Second International, the leader of the Russian communists, VI Lenin, wrote in his pamphlet, 'The Position and Task of the Socialist International': "There are such that are afraid to admit that the crisis or, to put it more accurately, the collapse of the Second International is the collapse of opportunism."
As the communists in Russia used the war to intensify the revolutionary offensive in their country and finally triumphed in October 1917, for its part, the Second International disintegrated and ultimately disappeared from the international scene.
The communists at the helm of post-revolutionary Russia, after the war, led the launch of the Third International, which was to be known as the Communist International (or the Comintern). At its second congress in July 1920, the Comintern adopted 21 "terms of admission" into the new organisation, which required of "parties wishing to belong to the Communist International to recognise the need for a complete and absolute break with reformism...". It further argued that "the difference between the Communist parties and the old and official 'Social-Democratic', or 'socialist', parties, which have betrayed the banner of the working class, must be made absolutely clear to every rank-and-file worker".
The social democrats invested their efforts in trying to revive the Second International, which was reconstituted in the 1920s as the Labour and Socialist International, and after the Second World War, in 1951, as the Socialist International.
IDEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL
As has been shown above, the Socialist International emerged as an organisation of the working class pursuing their liberation and that of all working people from exploitation. It also adopted a stance opposed to colonial domination.
From the beginning, debates took place among socialists about the means of attaining this objective. Some argued that the capitalist system could be reformed from within, and steadily turned round until the strategic objective was attained. Others asserted that, to eliminate a system of exploitation required the overthrow of the political system and, in that instance, the construction of non-exploitative society.
Those who adopted the second approach led the revolutionary uprisings that resulted in the establishment of the Soviet Union and later other socialist countries. They were at the forefront of attempts to build societies based on equity and of the practical acts of solidarity with struggling peoples in other parts of the world, including South Africa. This system has however experienced major reverses, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries in Europe. In part this was a consequence of weaknesses in the quality of leadership, failure to build and consolidate popular democracy, the trappings of the global arms race which sapped resources, and weaknesses in terms of management of complex social and economic relations in a modernising world.
Ideologically and organisationally, with the collapse of the Second International and the establishment of the Comintern, a break occurred between social democracy and communism. Social democracy, in that context, came to be associated with the "evolutionary" socialism based on pursuit of a peaceful and parliamentary transition to socialism, as opposed to the revolutionary and insurrectionary model which had brought about the Russian Revolution.
After the Second World War, in the context of the Cold War, many of the leading Western European social democratic parties went further, abandoning Marxism and the notion of class struggle as the guiding ideology, in favour of a position which argued for the reform of capitalism through, particularly, nationalisation in some key sectors of the economy and the establishment of a strong welfare state, with pro-labour laws and a humane social security system. Later, this position evolved further to integrate environmental issues, thus leading, in some cases, to electoral alliances with 'green' parties.
In many of the Scandinavian countries, social democratic parties became a dominant political force for decades, while in other parts of Europe they dominated for a brief period after the Second World War only to suffer the fate of being in opposition for long periods. In the latter countries, the conservatives were a dominant force whose influence in society marginalised social democrats.
"Values" such as respect for human rights and the promotion of democracy also formed part of the post-war social democratic repertoire, hence the notion of "democratic socialism" with which the Socialist International came to be associated. In fact, in its 1989 Stockholm declaration of principles, the Socialist International was to state that "democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society."
The end of the Cold War and, of course, the collapse of the Soviet Union, also had an impact on the social democratic forces in Western Europe. From the 1990s particularly, a "third way" tendency emerged among these parties, pioneered by the German Social Democratic Party, the British Labour Party, and the US Democratic Party.
This new tendency, as a response to the political dominance of conservatives among the Western electorate, argues for the reform of the post-Second World War social democratic agenda, particularly the notions of the welfare state and nationalisation. The emphasis now is on reforming the welfare state and strengthening the competitiveness of the capitalist economy. This is to be pursued in the context of social democratic "values" and the core concerns of the social security system and issues such as health care and education. These parties are important members of the Socialist International and do contribute to the determination of the organisation's outlook and agenda. During its revival in the 1970s, the Socialist International was essentially still a European movement, with some adherents in Latin America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL AND THE ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE
The national question, particularly in respect of the resolution of the colonial question, has historically preoccupied the attention of the international communist and social democratic movements. On this issue, the Comintern was ahead of the Socialist International, having deliberated on this question several times in the course of the 1920s. It was thanks to the intervention of the Comintern, for example, that the Communist Party of South Africa was able to gravitate with speed towards working with the ANC and recognising the primacy of the national democratic struggle in South Africa over a narrow, class-focused communist agenda.
Whereas the Socialist International as a body took time to come to terms with the anti-colonial movement, some of its members, especially after the Second World War, when the anti-colonial movement intensified in Africa and Asia, established fraternal relations with several political formations of the national liberation movements. South Africa has thus been visible in the ranks of the Socialist International for decades.
However, it was the South African Labour Party, not the ANC, which pioneered South Africa's membership of the Socialist International. The Labour Party, formed in 1909, was for the period leading up to the First World War a home to most of the nascent socialist forces in South Africa, which at that time were largely confined to the white minority. Yet the Labour Party, in its founding "Programme and Principles", committed itself to: "The discouragement of the movement of the Natives to the European centres and the encouragement of the development of the Natives in suitable native reserves"; and "the protection of Western standards against encroachment of Asiatic competition and generous financial provision to encourage Asiatic emigration from the country".
But it was not only this failure to grasp the national question that separated progressives from racists in the Labour Party. Like in Europe, the ideological battles over the First World War wrought havoc within the party. The position of the Labour Party was initially influenced by the stance of the communists, but when South Africa entered the war in 1914 in support of Britain by invading what is today Namibia, tensions intensified within the party. In August 1915, the Labour Party adopted a pro-war resolution. This prompted, a month later, the communists who were organised within the party as the "War on War League", to break away and establish the International Socialist League of South Africa, which was to apply for membership of the Comintern, and in terms of the 21 conditions of admission, merged with other communist forces in the country to launch in July 1921 the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). While the CPSA gradually came to terms, both organisationally and ideologically, with the national question, the Labour Party - pursuing the narrow interests of white workers -gravitated towards the right, even forming a "pact" with the National Party in the 1920s.
The Socialist International, for its part, also evolved, and from the 1970s in particular it started reaching out, both organisationally and in terms of its outlook and agenda, to parties and forces outside the borders of Europe. This shift is generally attributed in Socialist International literature to the presidency of the former German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, who, with the support of the former Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme, and his Austrian counterpart, Bruno Kreisky, steered the Socialist International, in the aftermath of the 13th congress of 1976, in a new direction.
In this period of its revival, the Socialist International reflected a variety of schools of thought about both its strategic objective and character of organisation within its constituent members. Such diversity, which continues to this day, includes such questions as whether the attainment of a non-exploitative society remains the strategic goal of the organisation; the extent of working class influence and direction in its identity; seriousness of intent on the issue of colonialism as it still manifested itself in Southern Africa and Southeast Asia; attitude towards the attainment of full sovereignty by former colonial countries; and the issue of whether geopolitics and an offensive against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries should define the character of its approach to world affairs.
With regard to the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle, the role played in this regard by Scandinavian social democratic parties, and Palme in particular, should not be underplayed. As early as the 1960s, some of these parties developed fraternal relations with a number of liberation movements, including those in Southern Africa. The ANC was recognised by these parties as the leading force in the liberation struggle in our country. It is in this context that Oliver Tambo, in his January 1987 Olof Palme Lecture in New York, could observe that: "Our own people will always remember Olof Palme as one of us, an unswerving opponent of the apartheid system, one who took sides by supporting the oppressed and our organisation, the African National Congress."
Hence the ANC, from the 1970s - and at the invitation of the Socialist International - started direct engagement with this organisation, at first as an observer. For the ANC, engagement with the Socialist International was part of the effort to build a strong, global anti-apartheid movement. The ANC also became associated as an active member of the two fraternal organisations of the Socialist International: the International Union of Socialist Youth and the Socialist International Women. With the end of apartheid, the ANC continued to participate in the Socialist International, and decided to seek full membership in 1999. The ANC sees the Socialist International as an important forum for the mobilisation of the world progressive movement around issues of a better world and a better Africa. The change in approach and focus on the part of the Socialist International as it re-established itself was not confined to reaching out to parties outside Europe. It also involved an engagement with North-South issues and participating actively in the struggle for the transformation of the global order. It was thanks to this shift that the Socialist International came to be visibly active as a global player involved, for example, in the resolution of the Middle East conflict, as well as in the regional integration efforts in different parts of the world.
Today, the Socialist International's African membership is significant -some 18 African parties out of a total of about 107 full member parties. Of the 31 member parties with a consultative status, eight are from Africa; and of the 16 member parties with observer status, four are African. This includes parties which were historically part of the alliance of anti-colonial forces, and others are based in parts of the African Diaspora. Many of these parties are, objectively, part of the forces that support efforts to achieve a better world and a better Africa.
THE ANC'S ROLE IN THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL
The strategic objective of the ANC is the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society in South Africa; and the attainment of global peace and stability as well as equity among and within nations. In its approach to the reconstruction and development of South African society, the ANC recognises the central role of black people generally, and workers and the middle strata in particular. It also acknowledges the role of, and seeks to win over, members of the white community and private capital to take active part in the reconstruction and development of South African society.
These positions derive from the Freedom Charter, which in addition to calling for a South Africa that belongs to all and in which people can experience a rising quality of life, asserts the ideal of peace and friendship among all nations and peoples of the world. Its National Conference in 2002 characterised these positions as defining the organisation thus: "The ANC, as the leader of the national democratic struggle, is a disciplined force of the left, organised to conduct consistent struggle in pursuit of the interests of the poor".
In many respects, the broad principles of the Socialist International closely mirror the positions of the ANC on many domestic and global issues. As such, our membership of the Socialist International derives from substantive commonality of principles and objectives; but also from the understanding that it is our responsibility to work with other organisations which pursue progressive governance, improvement of the quality of life of all, democratic reform of multilateral agencies and pursuit of the renaissance of the African continent.
In this interaction, the ANC will continue to pursue these objectives, relating to members of the Socialist International and other parties across the globe in a series of partnerships in which the interests of the people of our country, Africa, the developing world and indeed the genuine long-term interests of all people of the world are at the top of the global agenda.
This is an edited version of an information sheet first published by the ANC National Working Committee in November 2004.
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