File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9801, message 6


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"pragmatic reconciliation" has superceded the revolutionary 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



 



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