"Stalinist ANC"

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It is not easy to understand why someone coming from a Trotskyist
background would have to see the ANC and expecially the SACP as
"Stalinist". But it is hard to get beyond a level of debate that
is about symbols, rather than the concrete reality of the choices
that appeared to face genuine revolutionaries at the time.

Hugh, I think, in this case said he meant by Stalinism, in essence
"stagism". Jon F has given one response to that which seems clear
enough to me.

I continue to have a strong recollection of the remarkably simple way
Joe Slovo put it at a speech in London celebrating the 63rd (?)
anniversary of the SACP: the struggle was one of national liberation.
It would lead on to the struggle for socialism. *The time and pace of that
transformation would depend on the relative strength of the working class.*

No rigid compartmentalising. No barriers to starting to develop some
ideas and practices now, eg the Civics one wonders. But also a
recogniton of the realities of power and influence.

Which leads me to wonder why Trotskyists are so concerned about
stagism. If it is because they dislike a reliance on building the
revolution in ome country, then it has to be said that the history of
globalisation and neo-liberalism has moved the terrain in their direction.
It is much harder to build socialism in one country.

If on the other hand it is a desire for a working class that is somehow
going to be pure of bourgeois and petty bourgeois illusions, that is the
biggest illusion of all.  And no substitute for an
analysis of how 95% of the population could effectively be appealed to
in order to further democratic goals, including socialist goals, as the
phase of struggle permits.

But perhaps I should encourage a supporter of Trotsky to say why an
awareness of stages of struggle is essentially a "bad thing". Certainly
I feel a criticism of the ANC or the SACP as "Stalinist" is largely
a criticism at the level of symbolism.


Chris
London





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