A lot of illusions in the ANC/SACP (African National Congress/ South African Communist Party) have been buried with Mandela, so that we can begin to look at the Mandela period differently. For example, there have always been struggles and movements in South Africa not controlled by them. Long before Mandela got out of prison, there was a strong mass movement in the 1980s that was independent of the ANC/SACP, most of whose leaders were exiled or jailed.
Class struggle carried on despite their absence and was led by a loosely-affiliated “radical democratic” movement called the United Democratic Front (UDF). It comprised new unions of militant black workers like the Dunlop Rubber workers in Durban; community-based organizers among the black youth called “the comrades”; draft resisters among young white men; a vigorous culture of protest and resistance in poster art, drama (“The Dunlop Play”); and militant poetry for worker audiences in the thousands (“Black Mamba Rising”).  
The UDF did not develop communist politics or a revolutionary party, though it might have been fertile ground for both. But in 1990 the ANC/SACP leadership returned and began to negotiate an end to legal apartheid.  
These Pretoria negotiations were “demobilizing” to UDF activists (in their phrase), and many remained wary of the Mandela forces as a result.  The legacy of the UDF lived on after the 1994 ANC election victory: in the independently-organized squatter movements in the shacktowns described in the vivid book by Ashwin Desai, We Are the Poors; in the opposition to the ANC/SACP/COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) neoliberal economic policy called GEAR; and in the campaign against the HIV/AIDS epidemic led by former ANC’ers like Zackie Achmat, who refused to take HIV drugs himself as long as they were not available to the poor.
Such forces continued to resist the “normalization” of capitalism under a ruling class which had narrowly opened up to include a few black entrepreneurs, while installing a new black political class in the government. Even some unions in COSATU, the AFL-CIO-like trade union federation which was the third part of “the Alliance,” continued to strike against the impoverishment of workers under GEAR.  COSATU to an extent became, with left intellectuals, a home for dissents from the ANC.
Now there are new UDF-like upsurges of class struggle and new glimmerings of anti-capitalist organizing in South Africa.  The COSATU-affiliated mineworkers’ union was challenged by a new more militant union group which led the platinum miners’ bloody strike against the multinational giant LONRHO and its ANC supporters. The latest turn to the left is the announcement at the convention of the metalworkers’ union (the largest union in the whole of Africa) that they were breaking definitively with the ANC, and that, because the SACP had abandoned the working class, the union would work for a new party to fight for socialism.  
While still expressing sorrow and respect at Mandela’s death, the metalworkers were in fact repudiating his line and his organizations.  There are many others, from students and intellectuals to wildcat strikers and the housing movement, who may be expected to sign on to a call for a return to anti-capitalist struggle in South Africa.  No doubt at the outset this will keep many aspects of the old communist line (such as socialism as a transition to communism).  
But a new field has been opened up with Mandela’s death.  It’s up to PLP and revolutionary communists everywhere to jump into solidarity with the new struggles in South Africa.  Like workers in motion in Haiti and Bangladesh, they are openings to a new communist internationale rising from the ashes of the old.

There is life in the class struggle in South Africa.  Leading the wave is a strategically important strike that is galvanizing workers and disrupting the global platinum market and the South African economy. On January 23, the world’s big three platinum producers, Anglo American, Impala, and Lonmin, were struck by seventy thousand miners in the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU). This new and militant union is up against the African National Congress government, whose police fired rubber bullets into three thousand strikers trying to stop scabs at Anglo American.  
The strike was expanded on Feb. 3 by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the largest union in Africa, which joined in with their own wage demands.  While the AMCU miners have diverged from the traditional ANC miners’ union (the National Union of Mineworkers), NUMSA has gone further, breaking completely with the ANC and thus opening a new era of class struggle.
Class Struggle Survives the ANC Sellout
We can now see the anti-apartheid period in South Africa as a great wave of antiracist struggle forced into a deadend by its ANC leadership. These leaders reformed the apartheid state but left racist capitalism intact.  Imperialists worldwide first fought the anti-apartheid alliance, which also included the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, and labeled participants as communists and terrorists. But when it became obvious that apartheid was a losing strategy for maintaining capitalism in a majority-black society, the rulers changed their tune.
Once the alliance agreed to keep capitalism intact, local bosses and imperialists everywhere praised Mandela to the skies. Despite this misleadership, the class struggle went on independently of the alliance from the 1980s to the present day. Twenty years after the first ANC election, workers suffer the same level of poverty, 10 percent higher unemployment, and a level of inequality among the highest in the world. So they continue to rebel.
With the ANC alliance discredited, what politics will lead the new struggles — reform or revolution? The same clash of ideas can be seen throughout the world, among armed fighters in Syria (some of whom are genuinely fighting for a better world), garment workers in Bangladesh and Cambodia, antifascists in Greece and Pakistan, and students in Chile and Haiti. We need a new communist internationale, the Progressive Labor Party, to lead our class worldwide. Slowly but surely, workers will get there. Militant strikes, breaking with pro-capitalist leaders, can become schools of worldwide revolution.
Two years ago, these same South African platinum miners ushered in the new era with a bang with their ferocious strike against Lonmin’s mines at Marikana. Taking many casualties, they battled not only the company but the National Union of Mineworkers (the key union in the ruling alliance) and the killer cops of the ANC state, whose massacre of 34 strikers reminded everyone of the apartheid years. (The dictatorship of the capitalist class was intact under a new governing party.)
Now the AMCU strikers seek “a living wage” instead of “an apartheid wage” — a doubling of the entry-level monthly pay to 12,500 South African Rand (US $1,129). The raise would threaten the current economy of platinum production. With NUMSA now in the strike, will more workers start thinking about using their power to abolish capitalism and the wage-and-profit system altogether?
Killer Cops Prop Up the Rand
The strike exposes many contradictions in that system. On one side are the local ANC bosses who would like to placate workers and strengthen their political position by showing some improvements in miners’ conditions, along with stronger regulation of foreign direct investment. On the other is international Big Platinum, which wants to keep miners as low-paid as possible and expects the ANC to keep them in check.
The government is pretending to strengthen health and safety provisions in the mines. But the ANC also needs its killer police, their main strikebreaking weapon, to prop up their credit rating and the value of their currency (the rand). In 2012, labor disputes lowered the economy’s growth rate to 2 percent and knocked 25 percent off the value of the rand.
Imperialist investors are worried about the weak performance of South African platinum mines, which contain 80 percent of the world’s reserves but account for only 53 percent of market share. There is high demand today for platinum, a component of catalytic converters and fuel cells, as carmakers turn away from petroleum. But the striking workers stand in the way of capitalist dreams of higher profits. They must save their own lives and capital be damned! The battle lines are drawn.
The Fight for Communism
But again, with what politics?  Forces on the left seem to be reorganizing as the ANC weakens. Amid expanding strikes and a tide of community protests (about thirty a day), NUMSA’s breakaway from the ANC alliance could give a push to organizing directly against capitalism. The NUMSA is exploring a movement for socialism. While these forces seem honestly opposed to capitalism, PLP would point out that history has shown that fighting for socialism leads directly back to capitalism. Even though we hail the tremendous advances that occurred in the Soviet Union and China, in the final analysis, socialism is state capitalism. The working class must abandon socialism as a stage and fight directly for communism.
PLP believes such discussions are exactly what workers everywhere need, and we look forward to working with the comrades in South Africa who are taking up this task. We will learn from one another to create a new communist internationale, the only alternative to the grind of racist capitalism, constant economic crisis, and endless imperialist wars over strategic resources like oil and platinum.

In the last few months, my PL club coordinated an intensive distribution of flyers in our area. We distributed approximately 300 to 400 CHALLENGE flyers daily. The flyers dealt with education reform, energy reform and the attacks against teachers here in Mexico. The main idea was to inform parents and elementary, middle, high school and college students that the purpose of the new reforms wasn’t to help and improve workers’ conditions but to benefit a few capitalists. The smear campaigns and many attacks against the teachers show how the capitalists try to keep people from fighting against the system, and reforms or laws that only benefit them.
We had daily distribution of flyers, and people at the majority of schools took them and shared with us comments or situations about what they were then going through. Only in two of the schools did we meet youth and people in general who were unwilling to take flyers; some threw them away, and crumpled them up. That experience momentarily made me sad and discouraged. I wondered “how useful is this?”
But when other people stopped, came back to talk about their issues and agreed with the flyer’s arguments, and discussed how we’re all affected by the daily bombardment of the newspapers and news, I understood that what the Party is doing is useful. I realized I have a lot to study to learn PLP’s ideas, so that when someone takes an attitude like that, I could approach them and try to encourage them to read it, and if they disagree to talk about it or share it with their group.
Currently, we’re meeting every Saturday to study with a new comrade who’s doing her medical internship, and has participated in some of our flyer distributions and went to a communist school on racism. We’re getting ready to start another school where we can invite people who live close by, friends and folks who know the Party; we’ll discuss Road to Revolution III.
We’re planning to continue the flyer distributions once a month. We’re also organizing a CHALLENGE distribution network  for the people we’ve been talking to, or have been meeting with, or friends we want to invite to get to know the Party.
Personally, I want to organize my schedule better to make time to study the documents I haven’t read yet or those I don’t understand. I want to begin talking to friends, family and acquaintances about the Party, and to invite them to meet comrades and practice with them to lose my fear about talking to people.
I’m committed to becoming more responsible and dedicated to achieving a better understanding of the Party’s ideas and to recruiting many people to fight for the working class, for communism and to destroy capitalism.
A Red Youth

*********************

I am a medical student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). I met the Progressive Labor Party in May through a friend who invited me to discuss PLP ideas. The first document I read in the club was Road to Revolution IV (RRIV). I liked the ideas of that small pamphlet. When I heard that the Party fought for communism, although I didn’t entirely understand it, I knew that was something good. Fight for class equality? That seemed like a good idea. A red army of workers and students, armed struggle to take power from capitalists? That is excellent!
This is the first time I am writing to CHALLENGE. We’ve read several documents, but I liked RR IV the best, and Jailbreak has been hard to understand, you know, because of Dialectical Materialism [the philosophy of science and nature used to advance our communist theory and practice]. I thought the struggle against sexism was very important. I learned many interesting things, including that it’s a form of racism that allows the bosses to increase their profits, that as a woman it’s harder to get a job, that I could get fired for getting pregnant, that we get lower salaries and fewer rights and that part of “women’s work,” such as domestic work, is unpaid and increases the bosses’ profits.
These study groups have taught me many things. Some I haven’t understood, but I’m convinced that the capitalist system doesn’t work for anybody. I’m also convinced that I have to study much more. From the beginning I was willing to change my capitalist ideology for a communist ideology, and I’m very happy with that!
I’ve been part of a communist school where we discussed racism. Most significant was the participation of many people who described their experiences with racism, how we are all affected, how it’s present all the time, everywhere. This time I didn’t talk because I didn’t feel ready, but I heard the disappointment expressed by my comrades — which is what I call them now. I believed that because they worked the fields or were workers, they wouldn’t understand the complexity of this topic. I was wrong. They are people who are very conscious of our conditions under this system.
I’ve also been involved in flyer distribution at several schools and universities with my PL club. In some there was a lot of participation and acceptance of people; in others that wasn’t the case. I must admit that at my medical school people have refused to take the flyers. My classmates have big expectations of personal success. They’ve bought the capitalist idea that personal success is synonymous with a better life. But I’ll persevere. I know that our Party has members in the medical field; they should write more often in CHALLENGE to show that even in the U.S. doctors struggle and suffer under capitalism.
Our next project is a communist school on Road to Revolution III. I got assigned to cover the Paris Commune. Wish me luck.
PLP student

The world’s imperialist powers are debating the best way to prepare for the next potential world war—a conflict that would no doubt exceed the wholesale killing of the working class in World War I (50 million) and World War II (100 million). Will 2014 prove a repeat of 1914, the first eruption of global war? Can the U.S. uphold its military guarantees and forge credible coalitions, or will it forsake its allies as imperialist rivalries sharpen?
These are the big questions coming out of the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where leading capitalists hold their annual convention. U.S. and U.S.-leaning billionaires and their lackey politicians, think tankers, and media stars assemble at the luxurious resort to ponder the future. Their earnest deliberations, of course, are more focused on their profits than the millions of workers’ lives they are all too willing to put at risk. This year’s main sponsors at Davos included imperialist heavyweights JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as British and French oil giants BP and Total. The theme was especially ominous: “Reshaping the World.”
But the bosses’ vision is limited by their class outlook. Their “reshaping” ignores the role to be played by the international working class. In the same way, their analysis of World War I failed to account for the outbreak of the 1917 communist revolution that established workers’ power in what became the Soviet Union. (Caught short, seventeen capitalist countries tried to crush the Soviet revolution with an eight-year invasion. They failed.) Nor, a generation later, did the bosses anticipate the communist seizure of power in China that was sparked by World War II.
Both of these revolutions transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of workers. Both  inspired more billions of workers worldwide. Unfortunately, they were also the first communist-led revolutions and made serious political errors. Under the guise of socialism, the Soviet Union and China eventually reverted to capitalism. Both societies had retained too much of the baggage of capitalism, notably a wage system that created inequalities between different groups of people.
Two World Wars —Two Communist Revolutions
But for the international working class, the positive lessons of history remain clear. Two world wars generated two communist revolutions. As today’s leading imperialists prepare to fight it out for profits, markets, energy and cheap labor to exploit, our class must organize itself for the next imperialist world war. We must prepare for a successful communist revolution that will have learned from previous mistakes.
In particular, we must win workers to see the necessity to abolish capitalism’s wage system. We must rely on the collective wisdom of our class to distribute the fruits of social production according to the communist principle: “From each according to commitment, to each according to need.” No more bosses, no more profits, no more racism, no more sexism. And no more imperialist-driven wars.
For U.S. rulers to uphold their military guarantees, they must deal with U.S. workers who stand in growing resistance to a draft. Workers are disgusted with the decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the millions of casualties there. They are fed up as they see hundreds of thousands of GIs return home without limbs, emotionally broken or suicidal. In addition, economic crises are afflicting tens of millions, driving masses out of their homes and into poverty and raging unemployment. Our youth cannot find their first jobs. Aging workers are suffering permanent joblessness.
These conditions fall mostly on black, Latino and Asian workers and youth because of the racism intrinsic to capitalism. Without racism, and the divisions and super-exploitation that stem from it, the rulers’ profit system could not sustain itself. This is why we’re seeing the bosses train their mad-dog police on these targeted groups.
The Progressive Labor Party has a job to do — to lead workers to the understanding that the bosses’ oppression will end only when its source — the profit system — is destroyed.  Communist revolution can emerge from still another global imperialist war, but it won’t happen spontaneously. We must build PLP into a mass party in the two dozen countries in which we are now organizing.
Meanwhile, the bosses’ think-tankers plod their path towards wider wars. One insightful insider at Davos was leading economist Nouriel Roubini, who had predicted the mortgage bubble and the bosses’ latest economic crisis two years before it happened, in 2006. He has toiled for the bosses’ International Monetary Fund, the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the U.S. government. Roubini tweeted, “Many speakers compare 2014 to 1914, when WWI broke out and no one expected it. A black swan in the form of a war between China and Japan?” Later that day, January 23, he noted, “Echoes of 1914: backlash against globalization, gilded age of inequality, rising geopolitical tensions, ignoring tail risks.”
In economist lingo, “black swan” and “tail risk” mean surprise events with catastrophic consequences.
World War I A Product of Imperialist Rivalry
But while noting the growing opposition to the effects of globalization (the bosses’ code word for imperialism) and inequality, Roubini ignores the fact that World War I was no surprise. Capitalist historians cite the surprise assassination of the Archduke of Austria as the war’s trigger in an effort to hide its underlying causes. In fact, the leading imperialist countries were already fighting for control of colonies in Africa and Asia with naval blockades and military conscription to build up their armies. For a parallel, one need look no further than the current battles for control in Africa. French troops are descending on that country’s former colonies as the U.S. and China vie for control of oil, gas and vital minerals on the same continent. Can global conflict be far behind?
Then there’s the Far East. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, seemingly spoiling for a U.S.-backed military showdown with China, backs Roubini’s grim assessment: “[He] has escalated the war of words, telling ... the Davos conference ...that the increasing tensions between China and Japan were similar to the competition between Germany and Britain before World War I... [Abe] then went on to argue that China’s annual double-digit increase in military expenditures was a major source of instability in the Asia-Pacific region. Mr. Abe previously stoked controversy in December when he visited the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese war dead are commemorated, including 14 Class A war criminals” (New York Times, 1/24/14).
But while Abe hopes to goad the U.S., Japan’s post-World War II protector, into supporting near-term (and possibly nuclear) war with their mutual Chinese foes, ill-prepared U.S. rulers aren’t so quick on the trigger. Preempting Abe, CFR director Joseph Nye thinks the U.S. and its allies have more time to build up for a confrontation with China. “Whereas Germany in 1914 was pressing hard on Britain’s heels (and had surpassed it in terms of industrial strength), the U.S. remains decades ahead of China in overall military, economic, and soft-power resources” (World Affairs, 1/13/14).
Warmakers Desperate to Rally A Reluctant Working Class
Nye’s procrastination meshes with CFR president Richard Haass’s warning that U.S. policy makers need both time and urgency to rally the home front for a potential World War III. The publicity for Haass’s new book Foreign Policy Begins at Home notes:

A rising China, climate change, terrorism, a nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, and a reckless North Korea all present serious challenges. But U.S. national security depends even more on the United States addressing its burgeoning deficit and debt, crumbling infrastructure, second class schools, and outdated immigration system.

The problem facing U.S. rulers is that their retrenchment from costly open warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, a calculated measure to help them prepare for wider global war, risks misinterpretation by key allies. Commenting on Davos, London’s influential Financial Times (1/20/14) noted:

The most important emerging theme in world politics is America’s slow retreat from its role as global policeman. Some of America’s closest partners now talk openly of a diminished U.S. global presence. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, recently gave a speech in which he said: “The United States gives the impression of no longer wanting to get drawn into crises.” As a result, he said, America’s allies are increasingly factoring in their calculations ... the possibility that they will be left to their own devices in managing crises.

U.S. Rulers Direct Worldwide War Machine
Secretary of State John Kerry seized the Davos pulpit to fire back. There he tried to reassure the critical U.S. allies that are now uncertain about U.S. support and continued U.S. control of crucial Mideast oil:
I must say, I’m perplexed by claims I occasionally hear that somehow America is disengaging from the world – this myth that America is pulling back, or giving up or standing down,” Kerry said. “In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. “The most bewildering version of this disengagement myth is about a supposed U.S. retreat from the Middle East. You can’t find another country, not one country, as proactively engaged, or that is partnering with so many Middle Eastern countries as constructively as we are, on so many high-stake fronts.
Kerry said U.S. military engagement across the globe was “as broad and as deep as at any point in our history.” A recent article by whistleblower Nick Turse on the liberal TomDispatch website backs up Kerry’s militarist promises. It reveals low-profile U.S. global war preparation despite the Iraqi and Afghan drawdowns:

[I]n 2012 and 2013, U.S. Special Operations forces were likely deployed to — or training, advising, or operating with the personnel of — more than 100 foreign countries.  And that’s probably an undercount. In 2011, then-Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that Special Operations personnel were annually sent to 120 countries around the world. They were in, that is, about 60% of the nations on the planet.

Build Progressive Labor Party
How many workers are aware that military deployments cover more than 1,000 U.S. bases worldwide, particularly in oil-rich regions? The bosses are warning us that they are ready to send us into the most lethal wars in world history. In the meantime, they heap wage cuts, home foreclosures, racist attacks and permanent joblessness on our backs to pay for those wars. Our only answer must be to build the Progressive Labor Party into an organizing force for the international working class. Our only goal must be to enable communist revolution to emerge out of the ruling class’s hellish war plans.