Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 22:28:52 +0100 From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org> Subject: M-I: SACP: Parliamentary democracy and the dictatorship of the At 06:09 PM 8/14/97 +0100, Jim Hillier made the following challenge, which arose out of the discussion about the murder of Chris Hani but has much wider significance, not only for the future of struggle in South Africa, but IMO for implications about what is the tradition of marxism applicable more widely in the world. I think it is better separated out of the Chris Hani murder thread. >The shift by Slovo was an accomodation to the new line in Moscow. >Comrades can take a look for themselves by downloading Slovo's *Has >Socialism Failed?* from the SACP website [http://www.anc.org.za/sacp] > >Slovo's attacks on Stalin and the Soviet Union in that pamphlet laid the >basis for a shift away from the perspective of an uprising of the >working class as the key to the South African revolution. New leaders >who came to the fore, particularly after Hani's death (most notably >Jeremy Cronin) then began a similar process inside the SACP as the >Eurocommunists had inside their parties three decades before, and the >dictatorship of the proletariat and the working class preparing for the >seizure of power went out of the window. > <snip> >No, Cronin and the late Slovo were following in Kautsky's footsteps, not >Gramsci's. I have now re-read Jeremy Cronin's article on Parliamentary Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the First Quarter 1996 issue of the African Communist. It notes that the phrase was not contained in the CPSA's founding constitution of 1921, nor is the concept as such contained in the 21 Conditions for Admission to the Communist International. And while it was included in the 1962 party programme, it was not included in the 1989 programme. But Cronin accepts the challenge of Lenin's formulations and argues in some detail what is correct in the concept and what is misleading or incorrect in the use of the term. I rather assume that Jim Hillier has access to this article and I would ask him more pointedly for specific criticisms. If necessary we could try to find ways of making it available. It seems to me to have important implications not only for the completion of the South African national liberation struggle but for struggle under all conditions of representative democracy, and for an assessment of the contribution of Leninism to marxism in this century. Chris Burford London. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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