Re: Precapitalist South Africa?

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 17/06/01 11:51 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote:
> Bufrod:
> >In order to build a successful united front it is important to understand
> >the different positions of different sections of the working people.
>
> I advocate united fronts between working class organizations, not popular
> fronts between working class parties and bourgeois parties run by Tony
> Blair or Bill Clinton.

What Proyect or Bufrod advocate is pretty unimportant unless it links to
practice that can change the world. The practical experience of the South
African Communist Party is more telling (but of course not decisive).

What Proyect misses here is the concept of a united front as used by people
in a tradition he might consider Stalinist. It differs from formulas based
on an alliance of organisations.

Yusuf Dadoo referred to a united front of forces, and I think when this
issue has come up in the past Proyect has had a blind spot to this way of
looking at things. It has its own problems but it permits an analysis
beyond a tactical front of organisations. It is about building overlapping
alliances of forces.

For example the SACP showed an ability to interact with the Black
Consciousness Movement that arose in Soweto in the middle 70's and with the
Mass Democratic Movement. It handled relations with the ANC, and with
business and with international bodies in a flexible way in alliance with
the ANC and South African Congress of Trades Unions, not in spite of, but
*because* there was this overarching aim of looking for a wide united
front. I really think Proyect has a blind spot about this and his comments
are restricted to a Trotskyist analysis of the issues of popular fronts of
political parties in Europe in the 1930's. Is that unfair?



> >I have given the example of South Africa. Whether you agree with the SACP
> >1962 formulation of "colonialism of a special type" it is surprising to
> >write about South Africa without mentioning colonialism.
>
> I have no idea what "colonialism of a special type" means. Is a "special
> type" a secret? Do I have to answer some riddle like in "Turandot" to find
> out whether this means capitalist? If I don't guess the riddle correctly,
> will my head be chopped off?


I checked the web for the South African Communist Party before posting. I
do not recall their exact formulation and Proyect or others may be able to
supply a fuller explanation. What I recalled however is relevant to the
debate: that they needed a formula that took into account the specific
combination of continuing colonialism with fairly advanced capitalist
development. That is why there is an objective basis for seriously
comparing but also contrasting South Africa and Latin America.



> >Marx's last unfinished chapter in Capital Vol III refers to
> >
> >"the infinite fragmentation of interests and positions into which the
> >division of social labour splits ... workers."
>
> What make people like you and Yoshie so hung up on quoting Marx? I think if
> he knew that if people would end up quoting him in 2001 like radio
> preachers quote the Gospels, he spin in his grave at such a rapid rate that
> a dynamo attached to his corpse would supply the electricity needs of Great
> Britain for 10 years.

Because

a) any serious reference to Marx or Engels is to look at their method
rather than to apply a rule book. Their method is to analyse concrete
situations concretely but in order to determine the underlying processes.
(That could probably be expressed better: if so, fine.)  I felt it was
necessary and constructive to challenge Proyect's formulation brushing over
the fine detail of the formations of classes and strata in a particular
society.

b) because if we do not interest ourselves in apply the marxist *method* to
concrete political tasks, then we are reduced to talking about defining
ourselves as Marxists on subjective grounds, (with a capital M) unlike
non-Marxists, and as Revolutionaries as distinguished from
non-revolutionaries. To fight this out on subjective grounds rather than
objective grounds is a recipe for endless recriminations about who is
Marxist and who is not, rather than arguing in what has, as Doyle argues,
to be a collective endeavour to find a way ahead.

Yes the struggle against opportunism is a well recognised feature of some
varieties of marxism, but I would say it can only be done in relation to
the possibilities of political practice, in guarding against left
opportunist and right opportunist errors about real choices.

I think that Proyect by contrast sees it as a struggle that has to be waged
almost detached from concrete reality on the basis of subjective attitude.
Yet that way can only lead from the highest flown ideals to the politics of
a small friendship circle, defined by who you feel is really Revolutionary
like yourself, (and you never know when even those are going to disappoint
you and have to be denounced as having exposed themselves as opportunists).

I find it strange that a moderator of a list called the Marxism List should
suggest that when someone quotes a passage of Marx in argument with him,
they are somehow "hung up" on Marx.

If Proyect wishes to make a virtue of the revolutionary spirit of brushing
over what Marx called

> >"the infinite fragmentation of interests and positions into which the
> >division of social labour splits ... workers."

I would not question the fact that he has a strong revolutionary sense of
purpose, but I would question whether it is entirely marxist in methodology.

Really what we are up against, as Doyle implies, is that no one person can
hold truth in their hands on issues as big as this. Despite the internet
apparently being incredibly free, the social interaction inexorably exerts
a pressure for self discipline, if we are to learn anything together.

Chris Burford

London.