Re: swp

[iwp.ilo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (CEP )]

You(Jim Miller) wrote:

    Carlos wrote:

>>The SWP *did* in fact proclaimed that the South African revolution
>>*could not* abandon the parameters of a bourgeois democratic
>>revolution (several articles), therefore theoretically abandoned
>>the thrust of the task of "ending capitalism".

    Jim:
>
>   The SWP supports the African National Congress, and has
>provided coverage in its newspaper, "The Militant," on the
>struggle against apartheid. The SWP also participated in many
>anti-apartheid action coalitions in the 1980s, when such groups
>existed.

    Carlos:

    True.  It is not dispute on this one.  The SWP, in fact, supported
    ANC, cover the news and participated in anti-apartheid
    demonstrations.

    Jim:
>
>   The struggle to end apartheid has a bourgeois-democratic
>character, not a socialist one. First things first. End apartheid,
>then the door is open to pose socialist tasks. In thinking about
>this one should not underestimate the difficulties of wiping out
>the political and economic structures of apartheid. These are
>huge tasks. This doesn't mean that you can't build a communist
>type of party in South Africa. You can. But that party has to put
>the tasks of overcoming the legacy of apartheid at the top of its
>agenda, while at the same time building a base of support for
>socialism.

    Carlos:

    You are precisely making my point.  Your writting is, in a
    nutshell, the essence of "revolution by stages", and Stalinist
    invention.  First the bourgeoi democratic revolution, then the
    stage of building the proletariat (in this case, replaced by the
    need of dismantling Apartheid).

    This the opposite of the theory of the Permanent Revolution
    (Trotsky) and the April Theses (Lenin) in which they explained
    how democratic tasks and the tasks of the bourgeois democratic
    revolution *can only be fullfilled* is the struggle evolves,
    uninterruptedly towards socialism.

    In the case of South Africa, the real economic roots of Apartheid
    will be eliminated by:

    a. Expropriating the white capitalists who still holds over 95%
    of all factories and of all good lands in South Africa.  You may
    very well realize some political reforms but they will remain in
    the framework of class exploitation of the overwhelming South
    African Black proletariat.

    b. Internationalism.  South Arican revolutionaries have two
    choices: either become the leadership of Black Africa expanding
    a revolutionarty movement first to the frontline states and then
    to the rest of Africa or Balck South Africa will become a fortress
    to stop the Black masses of the rest of Africa.  In fact, the ANC
    is continuing the policies of the former apartheid regime in
    relationship of immigration from other frontline states:
    electrified fences and deportations.

    Jim:

>   Some of the thinking of the SWP on this issue comes from a
>study of Lenin's theory of the democratic dictatorship of the
>working class and the peasantry, which he outlined, among other
>places, in the pamphlet, "Two Tactics of Social Democracy in
>the Democratic Revolution." For more information on this, see
>"The Coming Revolution in South Africa," by Jack Barnes, in
>_New International_ magazine, No. 5.

    Carlos:

    I'm familiar with both texts.  The one from Lenin was dismissed
    by Lenin himself as something "historically old and superfluos"
    and overcome by his "April Theses", precisely the text in which
    he went over the side of Trotsky on the question of the bourgeois
    revolution in Russia and oppossed Stalin-Kamenev-Zinoviev positions
    of supporting the "Provisional government insofar ...." --
    remember?

    The text by Barnes is just the continuation of his previous "Their
    Trotsky and Ours" in which the SWP proclaimed its abandonment of
    *real* Trotskyism and chenged for one of "literary admiration".
    "Their Trotsky and Ours" is the official abandonment of the central
    theory of the Permanent Revolution and the "The Coming Revolution
    in South Africa" the logical next step: abandonment of the
    Socialist revolutionary perspective in favor of the defense of
    bourgeois democratic revolutions at the time of decadence of both
    capitalism and democracy.

    So, all this discussion, Jim, was about you believing in the
    Socialist perspectives of the SWP.  They don't have it. I ussually
    do not discourage people from joining whatever they want to join.
    An you do not seem to me a naive person who doesn't know anything.
    You certainly choose based on an study you did.  Good for you.
    But, please don't try to pass your decision as one in which you
    joined a revolutionary marxist group.  You didn't.

    P.S.: I won;t even touch the cultish aspects of the SWP.  Your
    own defense of mediocre and ignorant Jack Barnes suffice to
    understand that, maybe, you are in the organization that you are
    looking for.

    Comradely,
    Carlos



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