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Tag: crisis

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Numsa President Opening Speech during Central Committee at The Lakes Hotel and Conference Centre on 12 – 16 May 2014

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[threecolumns]20 Years After 27th April 1994: what is the state the South African Revolution?

“Nothing demonstrates better the increasing rigor of the colonial system: you begin by occupying the country, then you take the land and exploit the former owners at starvation rates. Then with mechanization, this cheap labour is still too expensive. You finish up taking from the native their very right to work. All that is left for the Natives to do in their own land at a time of great prosperity, is to die of starvation.” (Jean Paul Sarter, 2001)

Numsa National Office Bearers,
Delegates to this Numsa CC,
All Numsa Staff,
Invited guests,
Media present.

On behalf of the National Office Bearers of Numsa, I welcome all of you to this first Central Committee meeting of Numsa after our historic December 2013 Numsa National Congress.

As we seat here, we are meeting after the first South African National Elections in which Numsa as an organisation did not support any political party.

This Central Committee must help all of us to fully understand the moment we are in, from a clear Marxist-Leninist class perspective. There should be no confusion over what Numsa resolved to do, in the Numsa National Special Congress.
All of us must be very clear what these just ended elections mean to the working class of South Africa. All of us must be clear what our revolutionary and trade union responsibilities are, post the Numsa historic Special National Congress. Continue reading

South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis

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5 March 2014, Posted in NUMSA Bulletin

Lessons from Germany
South Africa’s structural unemployment crisis which affects the youth in particular could do with a good dose of German training medicine says Boniswa Ntshingila.

South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis

South Africa’s youth unemployment rate is amongst the highest in the world. Therefore one of the greatest socio-economic problems currently facing South Africa is youth unemployment.

According to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey by Statistics South Africa, in the third quarter of 2013, 34.8% of young South Africans1 could not find a job compared with less than 15% of adults over 34. If one breaks down the youth unemployment figures by race, the picture becomes more gloomy for African and coloured youth. In 2010, African youth unemployment hit 58%, coloured youth unemployment 45% while Indian and white youth unemployment were at 22% and 18% respectively. However, these figures do not correctly reflect the seriousness of the youth unemployment problem because it excludes young people that have not been looking for employment2.

If all young people are considered in the calculation of youth unemployment then the actual youth unemployment rate was 47.5% for the third quarter of 2013. This means that 1 in every 2 young people cannot find a job and has very little chance of ever finding a job. Continue reading

Book Launch: Marxist Considerations on the Crisis by Hungarian Marxist Balazs Nagy

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7pm Monday 31 March 2014, Conway Hall, Red Lion square.

This work was originally planned as “an article explaining the great economic crisis which erupted in 2007 from a Marxist point of view”.
However, while working on it Balazs Nagy quickly realised that a deeper understanding of this development would only be possible through grasping the nature and meaning of this current upheaval in and through the development of the economic-political system as a whole.
Therefore he “could not avoid going back – occasionally a long way back – to unearth the roots of the social content and important components of economic life and trace how they came into being historically”.
The present volume therefore contains Part One of this work. It starts with the efforts of classical socialist thinkers to understand imperialism as a stage of capitalism, then traces the persistent contradictions working in society and economy through the Twentieth Century.
This compelling and original account rescues and re-presents basic Marxist conceptions of these matters which are often overlooked in contemporary political discourse.
Balazs Nagy dedicates this book “to the memory of the pioneer who inspired these Considerations, the outstanding Marxist economist, my comrade and friend Geoff Pilling, who died before his time in August 1997”

Marxist Considerations on the Crisis  by Balazs Nagy
190 pages, paperback:
£9.99
ISBN 978-0-9564319-3-6
Published for Workers International by Socialist Studies, PO Box 68375, London E7 7DT,

One of the Secretaries of the Petofi Circle in Hungary in 1956, Balazs Nagy participated in establishing the Budapest Central Workers’ Council.
In his pamphlet: 1956: How  the Budapest Central Workers’ Council Was Set Up, he explains that even before the uprising and the brutal intervention of the Soviet army, workers had spontaneously started to organise their actions.
Forced into exile in Western Europe, Balazs Nagy came into contact with Trotskyism to which he has since dedicated his life. He is a founding member of Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International.

Numsa Views on the state of Class Struggles in South Africa and the Crisis in Cosatu

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“Numsa is calling ALL South African workers, Black and White and African, to join us in our United Front to demand the immediate and radical implementation of the Freedom Charter as the only basis for a truly democratic South Africa and in our fight against all neoliberal manifestations.”

Numsa Headquarters, Johannesburg

“People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.”

Lenin in “Three Sources and Three Component parts of Marxism”, March 1913

“Nothing demonstrates better the increasing rigor of the colonial system: you begin by occupying the country, and then you take the land and exploit the former owners at starvation rates. Then with mechanization, this cheap labour is still too expensive. You finish up taking from the native their very right to work. All that is left for the Natives to do in their own land at a time of great prosperity is to die of starvation.” (Jean Paul Sartre, 1964)

A.  The world we live in today and our 20 years of “Democracy”

It is impossible to deny that the world has seen the most severe crisis of the global capitalist system.  And, there is no end in sight, to this crisis. Continue reading

The Way Forward in North Africa and the Middle East

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Theses towards a revolutionary programme
by Balazs Nagy, Workers International To Rebuild the Fourth International, 20 February 2011
Biased, fragmentary and very incomplete as the media reports are, some things are clear:
1. These movements are desperately short of revolutionary leadership. The long years of ruthess dictatorship have strangled even the more or less petty-bourgeois parties. There is no sign even of any bourgeois leadership independent of the ruling authorities, apart from groups and individuals tied to the dictators whom the workers have thrown out. Continue reading

Stop the destruction of social gains! March separately, strike together!

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 In defence of the workers and people of Greece – first victims of capital’s offensive

European march on Brussels!Response to the “Common Appeal for the Rescue of the People of Europe” launched by Mikis Theodorakis and Manolis Glezos,

by Balazs Nagy, Workers’ International (20 February 2012) Continue reading

The ‘future’ the bourgeoisie wants: Back to Mass Poverty

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by Balazs Nagy
Another day, another worrying news item. One minute a sudden squall blows away the Dutch government’s oddly cherished triple-A credit rating; the next, the UK officially announces it is mired in – “double dip” – recession. That most distinguished of French dailies, Le Monde, carries a pre-May Day editorial headed “Spanish crisis rocks Europe”. Then the Greek people resoundingly toss out Papademos, the banker “democratically” inflicted on them as chief puppet in a government of marionettes. The first round of the Greek elections was certainly a powerful rejection of the austerity imposed by the bourgeoisie’s puny, misbegotten Europe. Continue reading