Re: Stalinist ANC?

[Adam Rose <adam@xxxxxxxx>]

Louis writes:
>
> On Wed, 29 May 1996, Hugh Rodwell wrote:
>
> >
> > Although Stalinist, not Maoist, the ANC provides a perfect example of this.
>
> Louis: What does it mean to call the ANC "Stalinist"? This is an abuse of
> language that beggars description. Does the ANC have a "2-stage" theory?
> First the bourgeois-democratic revolution, then the socialist revolution
> or some such thing? The ANC has never been clear about anything except
> ending racialism and instituting democracy on the basis of one person, one
> vote. Any reference they have made to socialism has been merely a vague
> salute to the notion that the needs of corporations in South Africa must
> be weighed against the needs of the poor and working-class. Mandela and
> Oliver Tambo are not Marxists and never pretended to be.
>

Louis, I can't see why it is particularly controversial to describe
the ANC as a Stalinist organisation. This isn't to say that they
conduct purges or have gulags, just that the dominant strand in ANC
politics IS a sort of Stageist theory, in contrast to either a more
class based approach or the more classic liberal nationalist ideology
that the ANC started off with. It had to have this sort of politics
in order to achieve mass mobilisations but at the same time not
fundamentally threaten the capitalist system.

If it wasn't dominated by this sort of politics, how do you explain
the symbiosis between it and the CPSA ?

>
> Nobody on the Marxist left at this point entertains any illusions that the
> ANC is about to challenge capitalist rule in South Africa. This has led
> small socialist groups to rail against ANC "betrayal".
>

It's not so much "betrayal" , since as you say the ANC wasn't going
to deliver anything else anyway. And of course, it is absolutely
brilliant that Apartheid has been got rid of. Did I love it when
I got slow motion replays of Blacks shooting those AWB bastards
on the evening news ? Didn't the Tories hate it when Mandela was
released ?

It's just that it can't possibly solve the problems of the majority of
South Africans, ie Black workers. A different set of politics ,
and a fight against the bosses and the [ ANC } government, is required
to do that.

> It was won through the armed struggle of African liberation
> armies in combination with the Cuban army.
>

You overstate your point. I think the struggle of South African workers
was the crucial element, in the townships and in their unions.

Adam.


Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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