SACP play hard and nasty

[Sam R.]

Wotcher comrades,

The SACP appears, despite its penetration of anti-apartheid politics, to have played nice for a longtime. Mandela was disciplined by the SACP to be disciplined by the ANC. The SACP/ANC/TU accord held longer than the ALP/ACTU:::::::::CPA) accord.

As Mandela (SACP CC member), remarked, "The cynical have always suggested that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?"

But what if the reverse was the case. We aren't talking about Soviet alignment: we are talking about the kind of complex post-'68 tankie line which still privileges the industrial struggle in the formation of knowledge, but does not do so to the extent that praxis concretely replaces the ideologues of marxism leninism. So, yeah, people still actually read and think Anti-Duhring is useful in the SACP.

 

[overoceans]

I think I have some idea what you're getting at with this, but could you give us an OTL example of the sort of Communists you're thinking of?

 

[Sam R.]

I don't know South Africa quite well enough, but a comparison would be the Australian MUA or BLF where a complex dance happened between party and union (movement), where the party was forced left, and on the whole willing to be led left. Imagine if a few of the hotter heads in the ANC forced the SACP leadership to back them in forcing the ANC leftwards through the 1980s creating a pressure climax around the time when democracy would appear historically. Rather than the historically more staid and social democratic SACP what if the SACP had a more "workerist" streak than historical?

yours,
Sam R.