Reply to: Re: Stalinist ANC?

[Jon Flanders <72763.2240@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 >> Stand up at a workers' meeting in South Africa and tell them they ought to
be damn well satisfied with what they've got, and see what response you get!
<<Hugh Rodwell

 Jon Flanders:

  Who on earth is saying anything like this? Isn't it obvious that now that de
jure apartheid has been overthrown, the way is clear for the development of
the class struggle?

  You can call me a stageist if you want, but certainly here in the US we have
advanced as a result of the destruction of Jim Crow. Now of course we have the
development of a black upper class and immiseration of a large section of the
black working class. This is a result of the workings of capitalism cleared of
the undone democratic tasks.

  Leaders like Mandela and Martin Luther King rose to the tasks presented to
them. They should be saluted for what they did, not vilified for what they
never promised to do or could not do.

  Adolph Reed had very interesting piece in the Village Voice recently on the
subject of a movement of nostalgia in the black upper class for the "good old
days" of segregation. Farrakhan taps into this in a big way.

  The recent film, Devil in a Blue Dress, set in post WW2 LA, with Denzel
Washington, is suffused with this longing for the past. It portrays a world
that had certainty of place and position that neither money or love could
change. Check it out, particularly the last shot before fadeout.

  My point is, yes, capitalism can  be more brutal in a way, without the
consolation of community created in the segregated barrios and ghettos, where
all the social layers of the oppressed shared a common foe. What will
transpire in So. Africa, and here too, is an awakening of class consciousness
and solidarity, made possible by the anti-apartheid and civil rights
struggles, that will cross racial lines and create a new community of the
oppressed.

  I have had some small experiences of how this will happen. A few years ago I
got into a debate over the death penalty with a white co-worker, while a black
co-worker sat silently listening. After hearing this discussion his whole
attitude changed towards me.

  "Damn," he said, "I didn't know there were any white folks that thought like
you." In a society still racked by de facto segregation, it will only be in
the class, that these kinds of discussions and common experiences will take
place and  multiply.



  E-mail from: Jonathan E. Flanders, 29-May-1996




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