Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 22:36:25 -0500 (EST) From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena) Subject: M-I: Re: The One-Party State Peter F: >I think it clear in this respect that the ANC's role is both to >represent and to control the poor majority. The South African >"miracle" is explained by the proposition that the country is >pragmatically united rather than deeply divided. This theme of >"pragmatic reconciliation" has superceded the revolutionary >traditions of the ANC, SACP and COSATU, and has set South Africa >firmly on the road to reform... I think that is why the prospect of SA becoming an "ANC one-party dominant state" is not all that threatening to international capital. A broad-based, stable one party-dominant democracy may indeed be preferable to a rotating state administration which would add to the uncertainty and discontinuity which is anathema to capital development. I think the emerging preference of capital will be, not for multi-party "democracy", with its ridiculous (and potentially destabilizing) electoral rituals, but such a one-party state, so long as it is based upon *inclusive* majortitarianism, rather than on some *ethnic* majoritarianism. I think COSATU and the SACP are peculiarly poised to go along with this arrangement, even though "globalization" (which the ANC has embraced) is anathema to both organizations, a "neo-liberal" betrayal of their struggle. But they are not going to quit the alliance -- not yet -- because it is precisely through the ANC as the government that they retain their share of the levers of power. COSATU, for its part, is up to its elbows in joint ventures with white businessmen, mergers, take-overs and new enterprises. The SACP is left with a novice (and, since the fall of the Soviet Union, an ideologically muddled) leadership that is trying to move in several contradictory directions all at once. Theirs is the classic Hobbseian Choice; break entirely with the growing capitalist enterprise and risk losing white and moderate support (especially critical financial support), or, alternatively, go along with elite sentiment and continue to alibi a ruling class which necessarily promotes the increased black stratification in the new order. As long as the tripartite alliance keeps the lid on the disillusioned poor in the name of unity of the progressive forces, this irruptive situation will prevail. Under these conditions, the run of the one party-dominant state can be quite long, and may even become the prevailing model in some developing societies. Louis Godena --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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