Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

L ur-rerzt Irencis in the I'rodz~ctzon oJSo~th Afr~ctzn I-Iistory
The significance of revisionism lay in importing ideas of class into aca
'n Legassick and Gczry Minkley
the movement of resistance over the ar~alysis of South Africa undoubtedly
ced revisionists.
In parallel with revisionism in the academic arena went class analysis in the
on movement. Joe Slovo's 'South Africa-No Middle Road', published in
Since race discrimination is ... thc modzis opernndi of South Afi-ican
capitalism, the struggle to destroy 'white supremacy' is ultimately houtld up
with the very destruction of capitalism itself ... it is just as impossible to
conceive of workers in SA separated from national liberation, as it is to
conceive of true national liberation separated from the destruction of
capitalism (inDavidsonetal1976: 1 18.1 6 1l8.
To undcrstaud South Africa wc mus( appreciate the fact and fix it tirmly in
our minds that hcre we are dealing with a class society. In Soutli /\i;.icn ilic
capitalists. the bourgeoisie are tho domirrant class. Thcreihrc the stiiie.
other fornls of social organisation and oflicial ideas are conditioned bq, this
one fact of the supremacy ol'the bourgeoisie .... 7'1ie condition of tile black
workers in Soutli Africa, tho place in society allocated tons hy :ire capitalist
class, demands tliat we nlust assert our right to revolution .... ConsiJcr tlic
circun~sixnc~es in wi\ich\ve might position black capit;llisnl as the antitliesis
to white capitalism ... black capitalism instead of being tl~c antilliesis is
rall~er contil-ination ofparasilism with no recteeniing Seaturcs ~vliatsoevcr.
without any extenuating circumstances to cxcusc its exiilence jblhcki
liberntiorz and democracy by taking state power and establishing a worker's democracy-
achieving the same ends as articulated by nationalism. but by class nzeans. After all. as Lenin Revisionism became divided into 'structuralist' and 'social history'
wrote. 'To throw off oppression is the imperative duty of the proletariat as adernocratic force, and
is cerlainly in the interests of the proletarian class struggle. which is obscured and retarded by
bickering on the national question. Rut to go beyond these strictly limited and historical limits in
helping bourgeois nationalism means betraying the proletariat and siding with the bourgeoisie'
Si~nons 1983:413).
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