The SACP must shed ideological purism to win over ANC-weary voters

The South African Communist Party’s biggest political handicap heading into the November municipal elections may be its own ideological purity. It need not hide or apologise for its Marxist-Leninist beliefs, but it must recognise that electability is the central test of politics.

That tension recalls a debate Joe Slovo opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. As communist and socialist parties around the world fell into disarray, Slovo, then the SACP’s general secretary, offered a way to rethink what had gone wrong.

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Has Socialism failed?

His paper, “Has Socialism failed?”, challenged the triumphant view that capitalism had decisively defeated socialism. Slovo argued that socialism itself had not failed. Rather, it had been implemented through a political system that rejected multiparty democracy, tolerated tyranny, encouraged personality cults, suppressed internal dissent and excluded other voices from society.

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socialism without democracy

Communists, he wrote, could not claim an absolute right to lead workers or control society simply because they said they represented the workers’ historic aspirations. The way forward, he argued, was democratic socialism pursued by a party that won support through democratic persuasion and ideological contest.

That distinction turned left-wing defeatism into a debate about rebuilding. The economic foundations of socialism, in Slovo’s view, were not necessarily the problem. The political system used to pursue them was.

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the way forward is through thorough-going democratic socialism

The same question now confronts the SACP. Its ideological commitments may remain important to its identity, but the party must persuade voters, including those tired of the African National Congress, that it can translate those commitments into electoral support.

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the claim of right