ANDILE NTINGI: Communism — be careful what you wish for

SA’s general elections are around the corner. Scheduled for May 29, they are arguably the most important in SA’s 30-year-old democratic history.

Like millions of eligible voters I am interested in their outcome, which will determine who governs our country in the next five years. I have been listening attentively to various political leaders contesting the elections and what they pledge to do for us as voters should we give them the mandate to govern.

All of these leaders, some of whom are market-orientated liberals such as the DA’s John Steenhuisen and others radical socialists such as the EFF’s Julius Malema and MK party’s Jacob Zuma, promise to redistribute wealth to eradicate poverty and close the gap between the haves and have-nots.

In between you get pragmatic centrist leaders such as ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba, Bosa’s Mmusi Maimane and Rise Mzansi’s Songezo Zibi, who lean towards free, competitive markets and protection of property rights, but also support social spending on the poor.

However, the leaders that grab my attention the most are those on the left who are threatening to expropriate land (commercial farms) without compensation, and nationalise banks and mines should they come into power.

The socialist camp is diverse and has some less radical strands in its ranks such as the ANC-aligned SA Communist Party and labour federation Cosatu, which tend to stay clear of land expropriation and nationalisation debates while resisting any attempts to privatise bankrupt state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that rely on taxpayers’ bailouts.

Communist ideology was the brainchild of two German political and economic philosophers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who in 1848 published The Communist Manifesto, a political pamphlet that amounted to a scathing rebuke of industrial capitalism.

At the time the pamphlet was published, capitalism was the prevalent economic system in Western Europe, as opposed to the feudalistic and agrarian Eastern Europe, which was still ruled by monarchs and landlords who generated wealth by exploiting unpaid labour and collecting taxes from peasants living on their lands.

In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels agitated for wage-earning factory workers (the proletariat) in Western Europe to revolt and overthrow their bosses (bourgeoisie) and replace the capitalist system with a classless, egalitarian society in which workers owned all enterprises and took control of government.

During the 20th century the ideas espoused in The Communist Manifesto became the foundation of revolutions in many parts of the world, including Russia, China, Cuba and across Africa.

Yet none of the countries that adopted communism — immortalised it in their national flags with the trademark hammer and sickle, signifying unity between farm and factory workers — achieved prosperity. Instead, the citizens of these countries found themselves trapped in political repression and poverty while their leaders lived in opulence.

The communist system was first adopted in 1917 by Soviet Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and was later expanded by Joseph Stalin, but collapsed in 1991, resulting in many countries in Eastern Europe in particular abandoning it in favour of market-orientated systems.

By the time communism collapsed it had caused famines in Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea, Ethiopia and many other countries. The five-year plans communist governments were so fond of implementing in state-owned farms and factories, which set targets for production prices and wages, created mismatches between demand and supply, leading to shortages of goods and food.

This inherent flaw in centrally planned economies undermined wealth creation because it disincentivised people from innovating or working harder. Because wages were fixed, the system did not reward workers for going the extra mile as their hard work and dedication did not translate into higher wages.

In a capitalist, markets-orientated society, shortages of goods are signals for business opportunities, which are quickly met by savvy business people pursuing profits.

The lack of incentives to encourage hard work and innovation resulted in communist societies being left behind technologically by their Western counterparts.

Despite the well-documented failures of communism, the ideology’s diehard fans still point to China as a case study that communism works. But China abandoned communism in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping, successor to the founder of communist China, Mao Zedong, liberalised the Chinese economy and allowed foreign investment to flow in, setting the stage for that country’s rapid industrialisation.

Today China is a mixed economy in which the state plays a major role in the banking and financial sectors, where it finances both state-owned companies and private sector industrialists.

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union’s last ruler, Mikhail Gorbachev, also recognised that communism does not work and instituted political and economic reforms known as perestroika and glasnost, which granted more political rights to the people of the union and introduced markets-driven policies.

Now, since communism has failed everywhere else it has been tried in the world, why do SA’s communists believe it will succeed here? Granted, capitalism is not perfect and has its shortcomings. It produces can result in inequality, recessions and unemployment, but countries that adopt it never experience famines.

Different economy

SA has a vastly different economy than the Western Europe Marx and Engels critiqued in the 19th century, or Russia’s agrarian economy that Lenin nationalised in 1917. We have a highly urbanised population and an economy that produces services in addition to minerals, manufactured goods and agricultural products.

Given that nearly 70% of South Africans now live in urban areas, can you imagine what would happen if food production was disrupted by seizure of productive farms by the state? There is every chance that we would experience the famines that starved millions of people to death in Russia, China and Ethiopia.

The majority of South Africans want urban jobs and housing rather than agricultural jobs. Expropriation of land — with compensation — must only take place if it is intended to facilitate urban housing and infrastructure.

If we nationalise farms, rest assured that we will add food to a long list of commodities and basic services that are in short supply in our country, joining electricity, water, healthcare and trains.

Moreover, if banks are nationalised we will have more VBS Mutual Bank-like disasters perpetrated by corrupt and greedy politicians, who could cause depositors to lose their savings.

• Ntingi is founder of e-procurement platform GetBiz.