YET ANOTHER African country, and another coup. The coup in Madagascar and the coming to power of the military, led by Col. Michael Randrianirina, following three weeks of protests on the streets by working-class youth against the cost-of-living crisis, made worse by outages of water and electricity supply, which grew to a call for the impeachment of President Andry Rajoelina, is a pointer to the enormous role and power of the working masses, if united and acting as a force to take on the ruling elites and the capitalist system.
However, this time around, the movement on the streets has had no feature of posing the question of power directly for itself as a class representative of the working masses. Indeed, its major political demand was the call for the impeachment of Rajoelina, which saw the military stepping in with its gun to help accomplish it. And immediately that was accomplished, they seized power. According to Col. Randrianirina, it was “taking responsibility because the country was on the brink of collapse.”
This middle-class origin explains why, from the very beginning of the protest, it is merely posed as a protest and no more than an attempt to draw the attention of the state to some issues. The question of politics and power is drawn directly from the streets and ultimately injected into the protest movement. They rightly identify the things that are wrong in society but are not capable of linking these wrongs with the nature of the capitalist system and the need to organise to replace it.
When in reality, the street protests and actions of the working masses were aimed at rescuing the country from the misrule of the ruling elites, it had paid the ultimate price, as many as 22 people were shot and killed on the streets, with another hundred injured by the police in this country of 30 million people.
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While we welcome the end of the antipeople Rajoelina regime, Marxists do not share any illusions whatsoever in the new military rulers. Interestingly, the protest had been decisive enough to ground the country to a standstill. Rajoelina had been made barren and incapable of governing any longer. But this was where it stopped, with the cry and demand on banners for “Rajoelina Resignation.” It lacked the consciousness that the organised force of the working masses was the real power and the very wheel that enables society to function. But painfully, under the economic guidance of capitalism, the wealth and resources of society are appropriated not to meet the needs of the working masses, but to meet the greed for super-profits and provide exclusively for a luxurious lifestyle for the tiny number of ruling elites and their cronies, condemning the working masses who toil day and night to a life of excruciating poverty and mass misery.
Why is this so? Why is the mass movement not capable of transmuting and seeing itself as a political force that can end an oppressive regime and assume power for itself as a class distinct and different from the ruling capitalist class? This, of course, is directly connected to the weakness of the trade union movement and the refusal of a labour bureaucracy to recognize the historical destiny of the working class to provide the needed revolutionary leadership to the whole of the oppressed strata of the working masses and a programme for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with socialism.
The Gen-Z Revolt
In recent times, similar revolts have taken place in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Morocco, Kenya, and Nigeria, with mass protests and uprisings strong enough to oppose the rulers and reject their continued grip on power over society, but still too weak to constitute themselves as a class of their own to bid for political power directly, overthrow capitalism, and commence a socialist transformation of society.
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And this is not unconnected to the character of the movements with their brand of “leaderless” and unstructured groupings based on fluid, fast-mode, plain, and digital organizing.
The Gen Z revolt continues to be a growing model with a degree of success in organizing mass protests but failing to appropriately understand the dynamics of power relations, the stratification of society into classes, the state of the means of production of goods and services, and the control and distribution of the wealth and resources of society.
In Madagascar, they chose the name “Gen Z Mada,” with a skull-and-crossbones anime of Japanese origin as the symbol and flag of the protest, a feature also seen in protests in Indonesia and the Philippines. Of course, the digital space is a common feature of the movements, with social media tools like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram used to coordinate protests. But even the street protests have confirmed that no form of cyber protest can ever replace the organized movement and takeover of the streets as a means of fully grounding society to a halt and rendering the control of the ruling class over the state and society null.
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What is the class composition of Gen Z? Of course, on the streets there will be no denying that, like all major protests worldwide, they are largely made up of working-class youth with some middle-class layers of petit-bourgeois youths armed with technical savvy and digital skills, and change-seekers assuming responsibility to drive the protest.
The trade unions have not helped matters in this regard, with a bureaucratic labour aristocracy that sees itself as not the same as the working class, aping and tailing after the ruling class. Even in the case of Madagascar, where the Malagasy Trade Union Solidarity joined the movement after about a week of protest, the protest had succeeded in grounding society, with schools already closed and workers independently providing support and joining on their own. Yet its trade union leaders did not seek to play any leadership role or qualitatively come forward to act in the interest of their class by directly posing the question of power.
This middle-class origin explains why, from the very beginning of the protest, it is merely posed as a protest and no more than an attempt to draw the attention of the state to some issues. The question of politics and power is drawn directly from the streets and ultimately injected into the protest movement. They rightly identify the things that are wrong in society but are not capable of linking these wrongs with the nature of the capitalist system and the need to organise to replace it.
And again, there is a conscious attempt, even from inside, to limit the demands of the protest not to directly pose the question of power to itself, but to look to a so-called oppositional wing of the ruling class to step up and take power, and where this is not on offer, for the military to step in and take political power.
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So why this fear to pose the question of power, to organise mass movements against mass misery and yet shy away from posing the question of political power? We have witnessed repeatedly these movements and protests of youths on the streets boldly coming out against governments from the early 2000s across nearly all continents, from Latin America and Asia to Africa.
To fully understand this phenomenon and the features of these mass protests, we must return to the late 1990s in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and the US and behold the protests against the World Trade Organization, International Financial Institutions of the IMF/World Bank, and the G8 summits in Seattle, Paris, London, Genoa, etc. The tightening grip of a world economy set on recession had launched an attack of social cuts and austerity measures from the mid-1980s through all of these institutions of capital in country after country in the neocolonial world, with mass misery growing in wide proportions.
This heralded a mass movement for “reforms” and calls for “social justice,” with the best successes being halting or forcing meetings of these institutions to be postponed. A global protest movement was born in the cities of Western capitals.
Why was the perspective of a socialist alternative, the only scientific basis on which capitalism can be confronted and defeated not on offer? Rather, capitalism was being rebranded and made synonymous with globalization. The leading role of the working class was no longer a common feature of discourse on how society can be transformed amid the mass decay and slowing growth of the world economy and increasing deindustrialization.
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It was a new era of capitalist triumphantism set in motion by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, bringing an end to Stalinism and the bureaucratized regimes of so-called planned economies in Eastern Europe and Russia, hoodwinked by the false analysis of the “end of history” and the “death of socialism.”
These tumultuous, earth-shaking events were to have a huge impact on consciousness, with new visionaries defining new paths of how to organize “against the system.” A new generation of thinkers and writers, unaware and unwilling to acknowledge the dialectical foresight of Marxism, even over its own march on the sands of time, as clearly put forward by Leon Trotsky. Indeed, this co-leader with Lenin of the 1917 Russian Revolution, who even paid with his life to defend Marxism, theoretically put into words and explained what happened to the USSR. Fifty years ahead of its collapse, in his book titled Revolution Betrayed, he explained that a Stalinist bureaucracy had taken over power and was set to behead the revolution, driving it to a state of distortion and correctly identifying the need for the bureaucracy to be overthrown as the only path to preventing the restoration of capitalism.
Rather than blaming Marxism and its socialist programme, Trotsky pointed out that the Russian Revolution had suffered from its isolation in a backward Russia, allowing it to stifle the democratic credentials of the working class and its organ of democratic control over society which was the very basis on which the revolution had been accomplished in 1917.
The Way Forward
To throw the baby and the bathwater away is not the method of Marxism, and cannot in the end lead to any transformation of society along a direction that meets the needs of the working masses. If Marxism is not restored as the guide and philosophical framework for organizing the working masses against the system, and the centrality of the working class in the process of leading protests, directly posing the question of power, and bidding to overthrow capitalism, there can be no victory.
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The trade unions have not helped matters in this regard, with a bureaucratic labour aristocracy that sees itself as not the same as the working class, aping and tailing after the ruling class. Even in the case of Madagascar, where the Malagasy Trade Union Solidarity joined the movement after about a week of protest, the protest had succeeded in grounding society, with schools already closed and workers independently providing support and joining on their own. Yet its trade union leaders did not seek to play any leadership role or qualitatively come forward to act in the interest of their class by directly posing the question of power.
Already, in its wake, there has been a coup scare in Nigeria. But the military, with its command structure and colonial origin, lacks the means to define and reorganize society in an alternative direction to meeting the needs of the working masses. It lacks all of the democratic credentials to assume power on behalf of the working masses, thereby usurping the leadership role of the working class.
But not to despair, the working masses will continue to draw lessons from these repeated movements and struggles of the working masses against the system. They will soon draw the conclusion that capitalism is the system that needs to be uprooted.
The Top brass of the Military Cannot Be Trusted
A majority of change-seekers have chosen to look away from the working class and, in so doing, pose the question of power back into the ranks of the ruling elites. In the neocolonial world, especially in Africa, the top brass of the military hierarchy claims for itself the self-entitlement, with all pretences of fulfilling the criteria of assuming power, and comes to power with the full endorsement of the working masses as the case of Madagascar demonstrates, celebrating the victory of ousting a repressive regime. Painfully, it is the rank and file of the military, who share the same bond and class with the wirking masses that are used to achieve this end of seizing power, when in reality they ought to break from and ally with their class members on the street to act in unison as oppose to false believe that they share the same class with Military topbrass.
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This is the scenario in regions of Africa where military rulers have come to power with the promise of curbing Islamic insurgents and laying the basis for society to be transformed. Of course, we have witnessed strong anti-French rhetoric and a new leaning toward Putin’s Russia, but basically no fundamental step in taking on capitalism, either inside or outside of the Sahel, with no respite in the war against the insurgents. No step whatsoever has been taken to develop the democratic features of the working masses and new power structures among their ranks and social classes. Power is wielded by a tiny few officers, laying the basis for new plots and coups that will further paralyse state and society. The best that has ever happened is settling down and announcing a transition that hands over power to a new wing of the same ruling class to continue from where it left off when it was kicked out of power.
Already, Col. Randrianirina has promised such a transition in the next 18 to 24 months. It follows from the above that Madagascar will not be any different, at best, from Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, or Niger. And it will certainly not be the last coup in Africa.
Already, in its wake, there has been a coup scare in Nigeria. But the military, with its command structure and colonial origin, lacks the means to define and reorganize society in an alternative direction to meeting the needs of the working masses. It lacks all of the democratic credentials to assume power on behalf of the working masses, thereby usurping the leadership role of the working class.
The Movement for Socialist Alternative calls on the working masses in Madagascar not to think the struggle is over. Not having formed Action Committees to take control of the protest, enliven and enrich the strength of the protest with the direct raw force of the working masses, and free itself from all of the bourgeois pretensions and illusions of the middle-class layers of the Gen Z Mada-led movement, asserting its own class interest, the working class must now come forward to draw lessons from the struggle and define the task ahead.
The vacuum will always be filled, and the military will continue to lay claim to power as long as the working class does not develop the necessary socialist consciousness, boldly coming forward and providing the needed leadership to the whole of the working masses to take on the ruling class and overthrow capitalism by abolishing the domination of all key sectors of the economy by both foreign and private capital so long as the crisis does not abate.
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The respite of a new face like that of Col. Randrianirina in Madagascar, and others that may rise, will only postpone the attacks on living conditions, which will return more viciously as the ruling class tries to manage the crisis of earning more income to service debt and generate super-profits for capital, sustaining their luxurious lifestyle at the expense of the well-being of the working masses while still holding on to power.
The promise from the new military strongman in Madagascar that his coming to power “marks a historic turning point for our country. With a people in full fervour, driven by the desire for change… we joyfully open a new chapter in the life of our nation” will never be fulfilled. Capitalism needs wage-slave labourers to survive. The fact that only 39% of the population have access to electricity with less than 12 hours of daily supply, and that 75% of its population lives below the poverty line, is not accidental. The economy is largely based on exports and completely dependent on France and Europe, meaning all of the resources needed to develop the means of production and improve the living conditions of the working masses are frittered away as profit, as well as to meet the luxurious well-being of a tiny number of elites.
The Movement for Socialist Alternative calls on the working masses in Madagascar not to think the struggle is over. Not having formed Action Committees to take control of the protest, enliven and enrich the strength of the protest with the direct raw force of the working masses, and free itself from all of the bourgeois pretensions and illusions of the middle-class layers of the Gen Z Mada-led movement, asserting its own class interest, the working class must now come forward to draw lessons from the struggle and define the task ahead.
While acknowledging the role played by Gen Z Mada, it must forthwith declare its independence from it and institute itself as a structure from the factory, schools, and community to provide the leadership it was unable to offer during the protest and see itself as a revolutionary force, declaring its political intention to directly, for itself as a class and for the class interest of the working masses, bid for political power.
Comrade Tolar writes from the Movement for Socialist Alternative.
