Letter of Application to Join Spartacist South Africa

8 March 2011
Dear Comrades,

In the two years since I encountered Spartacist South Africa, section of the International Communist League (ICL), I have wholeheartedly been won over to the programme of Marxism. I have been convinced of the importance and necessity of Leninism and Trotskyism, and the need to build a revolutionary vanguard party based on the principles of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

In the era of global imperialism and capitalist decay as we are in right now, the ravages resulting from the capitalist mode of production are numerous and severe ranging from high unemployment rates; massive starvation; uncontrolled diseases and viruses; deadly droughts and famines; pseudoscientific medical practices such as homeopathy; religious and ethnic wars, to backward and oppressive practices such as anti-gay bigotry; polygamy; forced marriage through abduction; child slavery and religious fundamentalism and intolerance. All these horrors point to the urgent need to overthrow the backward capitalist system and replace it with a planned and democratically controlled mode of production that will improve the material conditions of humans on earth and therefore lead to progressive development.

In the 12 000 years or so since early mankind first attempted to control his surroundings through agriculture and the domestication of animals, human society has developed to an incredible level culturally, intellectually, scientifically and most notably technologically. The technology possessed by mankind today is enough to lift some of the burdens of labour from everyone’s shoulders. Developed even further with the advanced sciences now in mankind’s possession, it could even completely free humans from all such burdens to the point that work and recreation for humans would no longer have any demarcation. Unfortunately the economic and political system that dominates human society today (capitalism) is one that limits and even threatens to reverse the scientific and political gains that humans have thus far achieved. It is also a system that breeds suffering and poverty through exploitation and oppression. Capitalism now sits as a burden on human society benefiting a few filthy rich people, who are unprepared to share the wealth that they have not even produced, at the expense of the majority of mankind.

There is no doubt in my mind that such a barbaric system has to go. But it has also become clear to me that such a highly organised, armed and heavily defended system cannot simply be wished or booed away. Rather it is necessary to arm the one class that as Marx taught is posed the historic task of doing away with capitalism, the proletariat. It is necessary to arm the proletariat politically with the correct programme to do away with capitalism, and when the time is right, it is necessary that the proletariat be armed physically for the overthrow of capitalism. Having extracted a lot from the books and documents that I have read since my encounter with the Spartacists, the importance of having a correct and consistently revolutionary programme has become clear to me.

There are plenty of organisations, groups and parties that consider themselves to be “anti-capitalist”, but none that I have encountered thus far have as clear a programme and as lucid principles for doing away with capitalism as the parties of the ICL. While many left parties speak out against some of the injustices of capitalism, very few of them present a truly revolutionary programme of how to overthrow the capitalist system, and fewer still actually transcend beyond the faculties of rhetoric to the arena of action, when it comes to their programmes. In fact it is only the Spartacists that I have met so far, and the other parties of the ICL whose documents I have read, that present what can be called a truly revolutionary programme with a solid and revolutionary plan of action.

In the highly reactionary epoch that we are in now, characterised by the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the general trend of most of the radical youth is to align themselves to bourgeois or petty bourgeois political currents that only seek to fight for human rights and so called equality within the context of bourgeois democracy. I myself spent some time flirting with these ideas, and was highly frustrated by their inadequacy, in the years before I was introduced and won over to Marxism. Yet it is now very clear to me that the only road towards human emancipation is that of socialism moving towards communism, through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Even though the bourgeoisie have launched a massive and highly effective propaganda campaign, which depicts communism as having been a failed experiment, which has seen many would be revolutionaries reduced to the position of mere oppositionists within bourgeois democracy, it is clear to me that capitalism can do nothing but continue to breed the conditions for unrest and revolution that necessitate the existence of a revolutionary Trotskyist party. This has been seen in the recent upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt which ousted the dictators in those countries but left the bourgeois state intact due to a lack of class struggle and a revolutionary leadership, amongst the workers and masses, of the Bolshevik type. The lack of revolutionary leadership within these countries to smash capitalism once and for all convinces me even more of the need for me to assist in the building of a revolutionary Trotskyist party in Southern Africa to take full advantage of the inevitable upheavals, that will ensue in the region at some time in the future, and assist in directing them towards new October revolutions.

I have come to learn a lot about Marxism through my encounter with the Spartacists, and I have come to appreciate the importance of the teachings of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, as opposed to those of the nationalists, the anarchists and the rest of the reformist left such as the Stalinists. It is without a doubt that there is still a lot that I have to learn, but I am now convinced that the ICL is the only party with the necessary teachings and political programme that can arm me with the necessary tools to assume my part in future revolutions.

I would therefore like to state that I have read the “Declaration of Principles and Some Elements of Program” of the ICL and can say that I fully agree with these principles and accept the ICL’s programme. I have also read the “Organizational Rules and Guidelines” of the ICL and am prepared to abide by the party’s discipline. I vow to carry out the programme and policies of the ICL in all aspects of my public life, and I promise to act in a manner that will not contradict the principles of the ICL or contravene the party’s discipline.

The ICL’s ability to uphold the Marxist flag against counterrevolutionary petty bourgeois forces of reaction makes it a fully capable and crucial party for the steeling of young cadres such as me in communist politics and revolutionary internationalism. I therefore request to be allowed to join the ICL to help in the building of a revolutionary Trotskyist party in South Africa and assist in extending the programme of the ICL as far as I can.

Yours sincerely,
Notshe