OUR ERRORS, OUR WEAKNESSES – Fred M’membe

To begin with, I would like to refer to a saying of Lenin, that the attitude – that is to say, the seriousness of purpose – of a revolutionary party is measured, basically, by the attitude it has towards its own errors. In the same way, our seriousness of purpose as a party will be measured by the attitude we take toward our own errors.

Of course, our political opponents are always alert to know what those errors are. When those errors are made and subjected to self-criticism, our political opponents take advantage of them. When those errors are made and are subjected to self-criticism, they may be used by our political opponents, but in a very different way. This is because in the former case, our errors would not be corrected, and in the latter, they would be. That is why we take a forthright and serious attitude toward our own errors.

We should stimulate the revolutionary criticism of our members; we should stimulate it. It is sometimes argued that we should not publicise our defects and our errors because in doing so, we are helping our political opponents. This idea is completely false. To not be open and frank in facing up to our errors and shortcomings in a courageous, resolute way is what will make us weak and help our political opponents. The constant fight against our defects and weaknesses is, in fact, a fight against our political opponents; and we must always be on the ready.

Our party is growing very fast. We are receiving more new members every day. Of course, there are a few who, for varying reasons, have left the party. There has been an attempt to exaggerate the numbers of those who have left and make it appear like there’s a mass exodus of members, especially on the Copperbelt where there have been protracted or what may appear like intractable intraparty fights for leadership.
This very fast growth of the party is bringing with it new and many organisational and ideological challenges, which may take some time to resolve. But our desire to instantly solve these challenges should not lead us to improvise. We have learned that no isolated measure, no matter how just or effective it seems, can lead to the true, progressive solutions we are aiming for. We must understand, above all, that the only way to tackle systematically the problems of our party’s fast growth and overcome our weaknesses is by dealing with the situation in its entirety and following the laws of the construction of a socialist party; that propaganda measures are incapable, in themselves, of automatically eliminating weaknesses, deficiencies or faults that are quickly becoming habits.

On the other hand, experience has shown that in such circumstances, it is necessary to avoid unilateral judgments, avoid excessive zeal, and now, also watch out for those who are too demanding, the demagogic “champions”, who tend to crop up in such situations in order to divert the attention from their own weaknesses, faults and deficiencies and pretend to be demanding when they are really opportunists trying to avoid being called on to account for themselves. We must demand to the utmost, but we must also watch out for those “superdemanders”. We must be firm, but just in our demands, we must avoid witch-hunts, which are foreign to our methods, our principles, and the character of our party.

Let dignity and decorum, courage, spirit, and revolutionary honesty take the floor. Let criticism of defects be a constant and be directed at all alike. We are referring to correct criticism, well-founded, healthy, constructive criticism at the right time and place and formulated in the right way. We make a clear distinction between criticism formulated by revolutionaries and ill-intentioned, insidious, and slanderous attacks made by our political opponents or which play into the hands of our political opponents. We must be firm with attacks passing for criticism, wherever they are made manifest. Everybody in the party has a place and means for correctly expressing criticism, always with a view of strengthening the party, not weakening it.

Let us fight with the same energy and firmness of spirit against our defects. Let us wipe out all our shortcomings and show revolutionary intransigence in putting the detractors and the faint-hearted in their place. Members should give it their all, leaders should make their lives and work examples of dedication and industry.
We have not always acted wisely. We haven’t always made the best decisions. But we are always certainly able, with all the honesty in the world, to detect in time any error, any wrong decision, recognise it, rectify it, and carry on; because even when you travel through the mountains with the help of a compass, or today GPS, from time to time there can be some drifting away from the right path – just as ships sailing on the ocean occasionally drift off course a little – but you always keep going ahead in the right direction.

But we can assert, above all else, that we have been capable of rectifying mistakes and that today, our party is stronger and more solid than ever before.

However, since nobody can predict the future, we must always be ready to face up to the most difficult situations. Difficult situations differentiate those who have their feet firmly on the ground. We are absolutely convinced that those who vacillate and are faint of heart will weaken, but our party will grow in the face of adversity.

We never even insinuated that the challenge would be an easy one; we never hid from the members of our party the fact that there would be severe trials, enormous difficulties, and titanic efforts, heroism, willingness to sacrifice, firmness, courage, patriotism, and class consciousness required in order to fulfil our commitment to the masses of our people.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party