The rand gained for a second day as an illegal strike at a South African platinum company ended and the dollar weakened against major peers before Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke speaks tomorrow.Anglo American Platinum, the world’s biggest producer of the metal, said miners at two of its operations returned to work today.
Gold jumped to a two-week high as Bernanke prepares to speak amid speculation he will provide further guidance on plans to scale back asset purchases.“It looks like the strike news is starting to lose its effect,” Jim Bryson, head of foreign-exchange trading at Rand Merchant Bank, said by phone from Johannesburg.
“The rand is strengthening in line with everything else. With Bernanke speaking tomorrow, the market is in wait-and-see mode.”South Africa’s currency advanced 1 percent to 10.0631 per dollar as of 4:12 p.m. in Johannesburg.Yields on benchmark 10.5 percent bonds due December 2026 dropped 13 basis points, or 0.13 percentage point, to 7.99 percent.Bullion slid 23 percent last quarter as some investors lost faith in the metal as a store of value and Bernanke said the Fed may slow asset purchases this year if the economy continues to improve in line with its third party merchant account.
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MDC betrayed the workers of Zimbabwe even at its birth in 1999. There were two contradictory forces during the launch of MDC. While revolutionary workers wanted an independent party to fight the neo-liberal policies of the Mugabe regime, reactionary forces made up of conservative members of ZCTU, middle class organisations, the church and NGOs were inclined towards an abstract fight for 'democracy' i.e. bourgeois/liberal democracy. The latter group prevailed hence the movement spearheaded by the working class fighting the IMF's neo-liberal structural adjustment programme was hijacked by a party ready to compromise with neo-liberalism by supporting privatisation. So yes, Tsvangarai is ideologically a 'puppet of the West' (as Mugabe dismisses him) whose agricultural policy has been dictated by the white settler bourgeoisie or commercial farmers. He is seen as the better of the two evils as Zimbabweans are fed up with Mugabe's tyranny and third party payment gateway, not that he represents the interests of the working class in any shape or form. When the only socialist MP elected on an MDC ticket Munyaradzi Gwisai put forward an alternative land programme he was attacked and threatened with expulsion from the organisation. Because of its conservative outlook MDC attracted many white farmers to its side. Eddie Cross, a leading member of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries became the MDC's economic advisor. His policy is to speed up privatisation (of services like water and health) and meekly and vigorously implement the IMF conditionalities that are responsible for the current economic crisis.
However, it must be noted that when workers formed MDC in Zimbabwe, MMD in Zambia, the Australian Labour Party and the Labour Party in Britain they were intervening in politics. The idea was to elect trade union delegates to parliament in order to legislate laws and measures that would protect workers - something that industrial action was unable to achieve. However, this did not in any way advance the course of the workers except to bring about reformism within capitalist society. Unfortunately this strategy was based on the false premise that the power of the bourgeoisie resides in parliament. On the contrary, the power of the bourgeoisie resides in capital outside parliament and in fact capital controls the state and parliament itself.
As Vladimir Lenin correctly observed, for a revolution or for revolutionary 'regime change' to take place workers need revolutionary theory. The workers' slogan should be; 'revolutionary regime change' because not every regime change will deliver on the demands of the working class. Left to their own devices trade unions as mass organisations are incapacitated from playing that role. The history of all revolutions has taught us that left to their own devices the workers, however revolutionary, cannot transcend trade unionism or economism. Or as Rosa Luxemburg put it, 'the objective conditions of capitalist society transform the economic functions of the trade unions into a sort of labour of Sisyphus, which is nevertheless, indispensable' . The historical limits of trade union politics therefore is that it inherently amounts to 'bourgeois politics of the working class' , its consciousness cannot transcend the boundaries of bourgeois ideology and consistently develop revolutionary consciousness. Only revolutionaries can make a revolution. That is, only a politically party made up exclusively of professional revolutionaries can deliver on the demands of the working class.
Put differently, the major weakness of the trade unions, according to Lenin, is ideological. Hence Lenin's insistence that 'without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement', indeed, there can be no revolutionary 'regime change'. It is the historical duty of revolutionary intellectuals to inject that revolutionary theory to the workers from outside through deliberate propaganda and agitation. Agitation means that revolutionaries must champion the daily struggles of the workers for better wages and conditions of service while propaganda is about imparting revolutionary theory or working class ideology to the workers.
Trade unions were created by the working class during the period of the peaceful development of capitalism - they are essentially defensive organisations of the workers to increase the price of labour in the labour market, and for the improvement of labour conditions. Revolutionary Marxists endeavourer by their influence to unite them with the political party of the proletariat. Revolutionary parties must set up cells within trade unions to win them to their side. Winning influence in trade unions and setting up party cells for them is particularly important as workers are the most consistent fighters for justice and true democracy and yet they do not develop revolutionary consciousness spontaneously on own their own.
While revolutionary activists must work in existing trade unions they must always be preserved as broad organisations of union members affiliated to different political parties. It is not advisable to try and bring them under the direction of a single party. Indeed, to try to make all trade unionists BNF members would be dangerous and ill advised as it might narrow the dimensions of the trade union movement and thus weaken the solidarity of the workers themselves. This is not the same thing as saying that unions should steer clear of politics. It is important that the trade union movement forges strategic and tactical alliances and partnerships with progressive political parties such as the BNF and non-governmental organisations which have a common vision and minimum platform. However, it is wrong to identify the interests of the party with the interests of the trade unions or to try and 'make the party responsible for individual acts of individual trade unions'.
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