Whither Zimbabwe?

THE CONFUSION OF LONG voting lines and numerous delays in the recent Zimbabwean national elections has finally subsided. Robert Mugabe, who became the country's first Black Prime Minister in 1980, retained leadership of the long-time White-dominated country last week. Adding further to Mugabe's control, his party, the Zimbabwean African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) garnered well over a majority of the seats in parliament.

However, the closure of voting booths certainly does not signal the end of questions pertaining to Zimbabwe's future. Some wonder what the effect of the Prime Minister's promise of a one-party state will have on white and other minority political parties. Others question what Mugabe means when saying his victory represents a mandate for instituting "socialism."

As he told a reporter just after his 1980 victory, "Socialism is our byword." Mugabe echoed those same sentiments after last week's electoral success. However, despite Mugabe's crude political analysis, Zimbabwe is not a socialist country now and does not seem to be heading in that direction. According to Marx, who expounded most on how socialism is achieved, this social system requires a revolution initiated by the working class. Also, economic classes do not exist after socialism is intact. Both of these attributes are missing in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe's socialism came about through the ballot box and was largely the work of a few Black leaders rather than a large scale movement led by the working class. The transition from capitalism to socialism cannot be the work of a few elites, especially when they run a country that is so dependent on foreign capital. For genuine socialism in Zimbabwe, the working class, as a group composed of many workers, must take power of the state. The "self emancipation of the working class," in Marx's words, entails a revolution from below rather than a nationalist liberation at the voting booths. It requires the shifting of classes, not the shifting of offices.

Mugabe promised the Black Zimbebwean working class and peasants various social reforms before his 1980 election. Lower class Blacks rallied behind him to free the country--then called Rhodesia--from the rule of Ian Smith's white-minority government. In the wake of Mugabe's victory, workers pushed for better wages and peasants asked for more equitable distribution of and. After all, that's what they were promised.

But, the realities of the new nation for much of the Black population did not come close to Mugabe's pre-election promises. A strike wave rolled through the new Zimbabwe as coal miners, nurses and teachers made such demands as higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions. Mugabe's response to these events, despite his claims for a better life for all Blacks, was much the same as his conservative predecessors. Worker demands were ignored as the newly independent state quelled strikes and cleared channels for the inflow of foreign capital into Zimbabwe's cheap labor market.

OBSERVERS OFTEN flippantly slap a socialist label on many third world countries which have state-run economies, do not guarantee Western-style political rights or do not accept the imperialist foreign policy of superpower nations. But, the Zimbabwean political economy today represents something much closer to state capitalism than socialism. In state capitalism the government runs the economy rather than individual firms. The corporate body is larger and more centralized, but it must still accumulate profits at the expense of depressing workers' wages, just as smaller firms do.

The case to today's Zimbabwe is something entirely different than the formal definition of socialism. There is still a working class and a capitalist class in Zimbabwe. In fact, workers there have have felt the debilitating effects of capitalism just as harshly since Mugabe took office as when the country was ruled by a white minority.

Rather than moving towards socialism, Zimbabwe seems to moving towards a social system resembling today's Russia. Mugabe says the country will soon have a one-party rule. In running the economy, this party, just like the Russian Communist Party, will have to operate within the framework of international capitalism. Zimbabwe's national independence in 1980 did not coincide with its economic independence from the rest of the world. Zimbabwean capitalists, foreign and native, must trade with other countries. In so doing, they must abide by the same rules of the world market as other capitalists. Many times this means low wages for the working class in order to maximize profits for the corporation's owners. The losers in such a system, just as in countries with private capitalism, are the workers.