AREMSON CAN ONLY BEST BE CELEBRATED IN TAKING UP THE TASK FOR BUILDING A MASS PARTY TO ORGANISE THE WORKING CLASS.
The tragic end of Comrade Abiodun Aremu vie a hit & run vehicle does not in any way distract from fully appreciating the role he played in the working class movement and struggle to improve the lot of working masses over a period of four decades plus with the peak period being the struggle to end military dictatorship and the renewed struggle against the civilian wing of the ruling class as they seized the paraphernalia and instrument of power in the Fourth Republic.
Only to further pauperise the working masses through unrepentant imposition of mass misery and poverty as they posit that there is no other way forward than hand the state and economy to capitalist sharks to continue to tear us into shreds as mice meat to feed the greed for profits by tiny numbers of the members of billionaires club, Western and Chinese capital mongrels.
Aremson rightly recognised that the problem with Nigeria and indeed the neocolonial Africa was its continued bondage in the prism of capitalism, through the IMF/World bank dictates of deregulation and privatisation, government after government imposes the same failed prescription of social cuts, mass unemployment, poverty wages, devaluation and inflation.
None of the goal of transforming or diversifying the economy achieved after close to five decades of no brake applied to the rabid impositions of neoliberal capitalism as a panacea on the economy with its attendant scorecard of total failure.
Aremson duly recognised the above on the grounds of his subscription to the ideas of Marxism and as a consequence defined his path of struggle as organising the working class to resist and arrive at the necessary socialist consciousness with which to contend with the ruling class and wrestle power from its grip.
Through its role and work in the Kolagbodi Foundation, Aremson organised yearly lectures, gathering the cream of the larger working class movement to decipher the state of the labour movement, setting an agenda and task for the working class movement in pursuit of a movement conscious of itself and its capability and historical destiny, under the right philosophical framework of the ideas of Marxism.
The first decade of the 21st century for the working class in Nigeria, can rightly be characterised as the decade of “General Strikes” and Resistance against deregulation.
As the trade union movement provided the leadership with which the working masses locked horns unendingly with the ruling class, resisting its push to deregulate and privatise the oil & gas industry, and hand over the wealth of the country to private profiteers and international capital at the expense of the wellbeing of the working masses. The strikes were near insurrections and outright mass pronouncement of a rejection of the ruling class.
On the strength of these struggles and strike actions, the key lesson was drawn that Class Struggle ultimately is Politics. Since no matter the power of the General Strike to ground society temporarily, the Ruling class returns back to continue to exercise power, and after the respite returns again to attack the living conditions of the working masses, knocking them more harder than before and inevitably eroding whatever gains was won by workers in the last struggle.
This vital lesson of posing the question of power was in itself the basis for the betrayal of the working masses. As labour leaders, even having come under pressure to register a party, dished it to join the ranks of the bourgeois and contest under their parties to come into power.
From leaders of the mass movement they became “friends of the masses” acting on behalf of the ruling class against the overall interest of the working masses. A direct consequence of the failure to build a mass party of the working masses to take on the ruling class.
Aremson like the many others organised Marxists also drew the right conclusion for a turn to politcs, however unlike these turncoat so called “friends of the masses” both in the labour movement and outside of it, politics was the building of a political party with which the working masses can confront the ruling class, not joining a party of the millionaires and billionaires but building a party for the millions of the working masses.
This is why Aremson is not a mere “friend of the masses”, like the many so call pro-democracy fighters claiming credentials of struggle and attendance at the barricade and have assumed power in various forms, without fundamentally making any difference in the life of the working masses, if anything they have further entrenched the perpetuation of agonising misery.
WHO THEN IS AREMSON?
Aremson is a socialist. He counts among the very few countable numbers of Socialist, who despite his Stalinist background remain committed to the cause of socialism. The collapse of Stalinist bureaucracy and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, following a series of events among which include the Yanayev coup in 1991 with Gorbachev as the last ruler.
While “Socialism was pronounced dead”, many so-called socialists jumped ship becoming “born against” Marxism and welcoming themselves in full embrace of “liberal democracy” and triumphant reign and permanent dominance of capital worldwide. “The end of history” was announced, so also “The end of class struggle”.
While, we cannot say he converted and fully subscribed to Leon Trotsky’s prognosis in his classic Revolution Betrayed (written in 1936) with regards to what happened in the Soviet Union, therein he identified that the isolation of the Russian Revolution in backward Russia, and the failure of a successful revolution in the west, provided Stalin with the oxygen to head the bureaucracy that was in turn to behead the revolution.
Trotsky had insisted that a political revolution was needed to overthrow the bureaucracy and restore workers democracy thereon instituting workers control and management over the means of production and wealth of society, otherwise it was only a question of time for the victory of the counter revolution and capitalism will be restored.
Somehow Aremson found the logic, the right one at that to continue to be a Socialist and he must be applauded for this singular feat. And this he was till the very end. At one of his last gatherings, he had called for the Joint Action Front (JAF), to become the JAF Party. Putting voice to the need for a nucleus of left activists acting together and functioning as a political unit in the struggle for actualising a mass party built on a Socialist Alternative manifesto. More than ever before, this is the task before the working class, trade unionists, and socialists today.
With another successful coup in Madagascar, surreptitiously on the back of a successful working class youth led revolt against the Rajoelina regime and all of the increasing messianic crowning of Ibrahim Traore of Bukina Faso.
There are growing illusions in the military, which in turn is undermining the working masses and its revolutionary strength to take on the ruling class and not have its power hijacked or usurped.
The struggle against capitalism and imperialism is struggle only the working masses, with working class leadership and programme can alone accomplish, of course with the support and solidarity of workers internationally.
There is the urgent need to organise the working masses to pose the question of power in its own terms and programmes to transform society and country for the benefit of the working masses.
The 2027 general elections is knocking on the door, Aremson will love nothing else, and indeed will insist that we take up this task as the best means to celebrate his exit. Is the Labour Party reclaimable with Peter Obi exit from it.
Can the Labour Party be repositioned to be a party of struggle for the working masses to contend with all the wings of the ruling class.? Are there any other parties, or individuals, or groups, the need for united front of the left to take on the bourgeoisie and the whole of the ruling class in a struggle for power.?
This is Aremson’s assignment to those of us still alive to find the strength to continue to act and struggle and as well grow the Socialist consciousness for a revolutionary upturn of capitalism.
Aj. Dagga Tolar
(For Movement for a Socialist Alternative)
