[DEBATE] : Cost of steroids: $2,800,000,000,000 (yes 11 0's)

[Dominic Tweedie]

Your difficulty, Yoshie, is that you mistake the institutions for the class.

You may say that class agency can only be materialised through
institutions, and one can agree with that.

But you go further, to evacuate the class and leave only the
intitutions. In your imaginary schema, institutions have become
priestly agents in themselves. This is perfectly expressed in your
phrase "institutions that have powers to reshape political economy"
(funded by a stealthy Tobin Tax, perhaps?).

If you were in South Africa, I suspect that your natural place would
be the Treasury (a.k.a. the "treachery" or Department of Finance).
This department is full of people we call technocrats, whose whole
existence revolves around their fanatical faith in an "institution
that has powers to reshape political economy" which, they believe, is
their own one.

Or, if you were in South, it is possible that you would see that the
entire struggle, and especially including the SACP's component of the
struggle, is to organise the masses as a free collective subject that
is the master of its institutions, and which will never again
surrender agency to those institutions and never again be
subordionated by them, as was so nearly the final case under Thabo
Mbeki.

That is the meaning of the scenes at Polokwane where the delegates
made the recall sign (rotating forearms, also like winding wool) to
Terror Lekota. We have seen these clips hundreds of times on TV.
Everybody understands exactly what they mean.

The work of the Party is to organise the masses to reclaim control
over their institutions. The role of the Shikota, or Zillekota, or
Bigger Snacks for the Rich Party, which will have its first convention
this weekend, is to reserve those institutions in the hands of the
bourgeoisie. This new party is led by the same Lekota and other
boss-figures like Barney Pityana and Sam Shilowa.

It could not be very much plainer, really, Yoshie. Ordinary South
Africans do understand it very well. Maybe you would like to bring
your clipboard over here some time and so a few interviews at
taxi-ranks and in workplaces? If you do so, I think you will find that
the role of the SACP is well understood and appreciated.

Domza, VC!




2008/10/30 Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com>:
> It does seem difficult to define what the role of the Party is in the Alliance.
> Yoshie