I have been reading a book titled “Soviet Political System; perceptions and perspectives” by Devendra Kaushik. My late father purchased the book in 1985. I have only recently developed an interest to read the book. I often hear some in the BNF talk about democratic centralism. The author says that “The essence of democratic centralism lies in organic combination of uniform, centralized, planned management of the economy, social and cultural development with local initiative and creative activity based on diversity” He further says that “This implies that all bodies of state power from the lowest to the highest are elected and accountable to the people, and lower bodies abide by the decisions of higher ones”
Reports of the Global Competitiveness Index suggest that Botswana scores highly on macroeconomic management. The central government is to my knowledge responsible for macroeconomic management of the country. We also have centralized planning in the form of National Development Plans. There have been calls for decentralization of powers and functions. The author says that Lenin’s democratic centralism extended “the fullest freedom of various localities and even of various communes of the state in developing multifarious forms of state, social and economic life”
Botswana to scores lowly on innovation. I do not see how we can provide space and opportunity for innovation if we do not as suggested by Lenin accord the greatest freedom to localities and communities to develop. This is particularly so given that according to the author, Lenin’s understanding of democratic centralism excluded “both extremes of parochialism bordering on anarchy and bureaucratic centralism”. When a select group thinks it has a monopoly on ideas of how to take the country forward you have parochialism. When local authorities cannot make simple decisions without reference to central government you have bureaucratic centralism.
Of particular interest to me is Article 16 of the Soviet Constitution of 1977. The author quotes the constitution as saying “the economy is managed on the basis of state plans for economic and social development, with due account of sectoral and territorial principles, and combining centralized direction with managerial independence and initiative of individual and amalgamated enterprises and other organizations, for which active use is made of management accounting, profit, cost, and other economic levers and incentives”
The key word for me is profit, for I am yet to hear our local Marxists deal with the notion of profit without equating it to exploitation. It seems to me that we seem to get stuck at only addressing the ownership of the means of production issue but do not address the issue of costs and profit. The capitalist argue that profit pays for innovation and use of capital. What incentives are the Russians talking about, over and above the issue of control of the means of production? What sort of management accounting are the Russians talking about? Is it possible to exclude profit from the economy?
I must confess that I have a problem with profit, more especially when I have to pay it. I am yet to get a justification for the levels of profit that we pay in this country. Generally publicly traded companies happily report profits going up by 25% annually. Why should they always strive to make 25%, why should they not make 10%? Of course there is talk about inflation and moving capital to more profitable areas. It seems to me that we forget that retention of profits in the hands of a few places pressure on the very companies that they own to extract more from the poor the following year to retain the same profit levels.
Supposing a company made profit of P1 million last year. It is then put under pressure to make a 25% increase in profits this year. This means it has to make profit of P1.25 million. The 25% increase comes either from cost savings or more costly purchases. As we all know cost savings usually means staff reductions. If we do not get staff reductions we have increases in costs to the customer. This is particularly so where the number of customers does not increase.
The economic model that we follow creates a vicious cycle. If you place a huge amount of capital you have to extract more from the poor or those least capable to spend. We should rather be looking at profit in absolute terms not in percentage terms. We should then place more purchasing power in the hands of as many people as possible.
Our government often talks about the private sector overcharging it. What does it expect? If there is one customer, capable and buying your goods and services, it is to this customer that you look to make the greatest profit. If government wants lower prices it needs competitors for the goods and services. In an environment where government bureaucracy makes doing private sector business difficult it has to pay the price of making itself the only consumer of goods and services. In order to increase customers for goods and services government must place wealth in the hands of citizens and citizen controlled entities.
Our government must seriously look at the so called few captains of industry and business in this country. Sure they finance the ruling party, but they then make government handicapped, for they can only consume so much of goods and services. They leave government in a situation where it is the only viable consumer of their goods and services. As government complains about the high prices that it is charged for goods and services it must look at the nature of its relationship with the ruling party. In my view private sector finance of the ruling party leads to high prices being paid by the government.
The author makes reference to American sociologist, Enrico Opocher as saying that in most western democracies there has developed “a phenomenon called partocracy” that “represents on the institutional plane the transition from the system of plurality of parties to that of the single party-from the subordination of parties to the state to the subordination of the state to a dominant party” This is exactly what we see when a few powerful individuals finance a ruling political party. They view it as an instrument for subordination of the state to their wishes.
One might even in view of this suggest that the refusal to fund political parties is really about subordination of the state to a dominant political party. Those who through the ruling party subordinate the state are unlikely to let the ruling party allow funding of political parties for to do so would allow subordination of parties to the state thereby freeing the public service from discharging its mandate to serve the state without fear of political reprisals.
Overall I think Botswana is more like a disfigured Marxist country than a capitalist country in the sense that we have a very tightly controlled planning regime. We have a very weak private sector and we have very little is any local control or initiative. The question then becomes, if Botswana has strong features of a Marxist country, what does an opposition that pushes a Marxist line have to offer that distinguishes it from the current setup? Of course we have heard of talk of social democratic setup, socialism and centre right. These are just labels to some of us. What does the opposition say that is different from what the current regime is doing?
The author also raises the subject cooperation of political parties. He quotes Lenin as saying “We stand firmly by the principle of Soviet power, i.e. the power of the majority obtained at the last Congress of Soviets. We agreed and still agree to share power with the minority in the Soviets, provided that minority loyally and honestly undertakes to submit to the majority and carry out the programme, approved by the whole…..” The author also provides an explanation of how the one party stage arose in Russia suggesting that it came about as a result of non cooperation of the Bolsheviks. The only requirement is that the cooperating parties represent the working class.
I believe a narrow approach to the definition of working class creates problems for some of our people. When one looks at the definition of democratic centralism, technological and scientific advances, and working relationships, pre-occupation with so called working classes results in a distorted understanding of what nation building is about. How can one talk of social and cultural development if the interests of one class takes precedence over all else?
Can a planner at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning or at the Office of the President be allowed to say the sort of thing that I am saying about the relationship between political party funding and high prices for goods and services paid by the government? If none of them is allowed to interrogate this without fear then we have the state being subordinate to the party. The state’s universe of thought should never be dictated to by political party considerations.
