File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9708, message 224


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.






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