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Socialist Action places great emphasis on the importance of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. This has led many political activists to charge Socialist Action with being caught up in an obscure historical debate with little relevance to the problems of social change today.

Theory and program, however, are not just books on the shelf, but are a guide to action.

Some currents in the workers' movement are today presenting an analysis that simplistically reduces the complex problems of the revolution in South Africa to a "national-democratic revolution" led by the African National Congress (ANC). This position neither captures the reality of South African economics and politics nor puts forward a strategy that could lead to Black workers' power and a genuine democratic revolution.

The idea of the "national-democratic revolution" flows from the notion that there is no immediate prospect of socialist revolution in South Africa and that it is first necessary to go through a stage where the economy develops on a capitalist basis. A strategic governmental alliance with the "national bourgeoisie" is required to complete the tasks of this stage of the revolution (land reform and national independence).

The forces supporting these aims, however, would vigorously oppose measures pointing toward socialism, such as the nationalization of industry under workers' control. This is the perspective of "national-democratic revolution" —the theory of stages— in colonial or semi-colonial countries.

Class against class

But the implementation of this two-stage theory would have disastrous results in South Africa. South Africa is an industrialized capitalist country. Twentynine percent of South Africa's workers work in the manufacturing industry. South Africa is clearly a country where all the problems of "class against class" are posed with a vengeance.

There has been a tremendous growth of the Black working class in the past decade. The National Union of Mineworkers alone has 200,000 members. There are 670,000 workers organized in the Black trade-union movement. Last year saw the highest number of strikes ever-469. Of these strikes, 181 were for higher wages, 97 were against firings or layoffs, 47 were for union recognition, 44 were conditions.

There were 378,000 work days "lost" in those 169 strikes. Approximately 1 million Black workers par -ticipated in the two-day workers' action in the Transvaal in November 1984, which was organized in part by the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) and the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA).

Many more statistics could be quoted. The point is clear: A potentially powerful Black working class already exists. It will mature and develop in the course of the struggle and will be the driving force of the South African revolution.

Who would run industry?

How would this working class fare under a revolutionary "national-democratic" government? Let us suppose for a minute that a government came to power in South Africa pledged only to democratic demands, such as ending apartheid and initiating land reform, but putting forward no program of transitional demands pointing toward socialism.

In this situation, who would run the factories and mines? How would problems of unemployment and inflation be resolved? Whose side would the government be on when strikers fighting for their vital class interests clashed with the police?

We can take the situation one stage further. In the urmoil and crisis that would accompany the end of apartheid and the installation of a "national-democratic government" there would inevitably be strikes, factory occupations, and workers' control. This has always taken place during social crises in countries with a large working class.

How would a government pledged to "national-democratic unity" with a wing of the capitalist class handle such a situation? There is every reason to believe that so long as the capitalist class retained a presence in the government, as well as its essential social and economic power, they would turn violently against the working class. There are scores of examples of governments calling themselves "national democratic" that have broken strikes and murdered working class militants-thereby preparing the ground for the crushing of the revolution.

Discussion in South African unions This is not just a concern of "side-line critics." There is an important discussion going on in the Black workers' movement today in South Africa about this problem. A significant number of South African trade JANUARY 1986 Ecau unionists, in fact, have spoken workers' power.

FOSATU has made clear its support for Solidarnosc in Poland. Both the widely respected South African Labour Bulletin and the FOSATU Worker News have published articles supporting the Brazilian Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores/PT). [See December 1985 issue of Socialist Action.] A wing of the mass resistance movement has carried the discussion of class independence even further. The Cape Action League (CAL) has written that they believe that "the interests of the bosses and workers can never be the same. Therefore, an alliance between.the workers and bosses can only serve the interests of the bosses.... We do not believe that it is possible to fight apartheid without also fighting the capitalist system that breeds it. We believe that only the working class can lead the struggle against economic exploitation" (Statement of the Cape Action League, quoted in Intercontinental Press, Nov. 18, 1985).

The National Forum and the Azanian Peoples Organization call for a socialist workers' republic. Obviously, not every participant in this debate has a perfect position on every issue, but a real debate is going on—one that reflects a real issue.

The "national-democratic revolution" perspective has nothing to say to the militants in South Africa concerned with these issues. The South African revolution demands a combination of democratic de -mands and working-class transitional demands pointing toward socialism. This is the only way to cement the alliance between the working class and all the oppressed. It represents the only way to develop the clarity of the mass movement on the profound interconnection between apartheid and the whole South African capitalist system.

A process of permanent revolution A 1983 statement by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International captures this combination of objectives well. "The South African revolution will conform with class reality, that is, with the social, economic, and political structures of the country. It will take the form of a process of permanent revolution that would seek to resolve the national question, the question of equal civil and political rights and the land problem in the interests of the great majority of the population: Africans, Coloreds and Indians.

" At the same time, given the preponderant weight of the industrial, mining, and agricultural proletariat in the working population, the struggle for these rights will be carried out through proletarian means of action and organization and will be combined more and more with the struggle for class objectives proper to the proletariat....

"The South African revolution will begin on the terrain of the national question. The struggle in the factories expresses above all the will of Blacks to organize as Black workers to win their emancipation. Their mobilizations combine diverse immediate de -mands (salaries, work conditions, residence rights, solidarity against repression) with the struggle for national-democratic demands for national liberation (equal rights, freedom of expression and organization).

"The development of the revolutionary process from a struggle for national-democratic demands into a fight for anti-capitalist objectives will thus be uninterrupted" (International Viewpoint, March 7, 1983, emphasis in original). IN THIS ISSUE: REVOLUTION IN SOUTH AFRICA •What is the nature of the South African revolution?-By Adam Shils • Black workers blaze a path to South Africa's fut ure—By Mic hael Schreiber •The Labor movement in South Africa-A four-way dialogue •Who's who in South Africa: A political g ossary-By AI Robertson SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1986 7

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8 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1986 By MICHAEL The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a "superfederation" founded a month ago in Durban, South Africa, is the culmination of more than a decade of struggle by the country's Black and non-racial trade unions.

The independent unions were born during the massive strike wave of 1973, when over 90,000 Black workers downed their tools. A year later, some 30,000 workers had joined the unions.

Today, membership in the Black and non-racial unions has mushroomed. Thirty-six unions, representing 500,000 workers, agreed to put aside some of their tactical differences and join together inside COSATU.

Another 200,000 workers are enrolled in unions from the Black Consciousness tradition that have expressed disagreement with COSATU's program to open membership to people of all races.

The growth of the trade unions has been paralleled by that of the anti-apartheid struggle. Actions such as last month's "Christmas boycott" of white-owned stores around Johannesburg have been led by coalitions of political, student, and community organizations.

There have been important convergences between the community and the trade-union wings of the movement. Trade unions, for example, helped to organize the November 1984 general strike in the Transvaal region, in which about 1 million people took part. The action was initiated by a student group and supported by affiliated chapters of the United Democratic Front—a mass-based anti-apartheid coalition.

Until very recently, however, many trade-union leaders had settled into a kind of division of labor with the community and political groups. Unions such as the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU), one of the major components of the new "superfederation," preferred to concentrate most of their activity on workplace issues rather than on broader anti-apartheid actions in alliance with community organizations.

Political action 'by the unions But the trade unionists' hesitations toward "political" action may soon be overcome. "There's no way we can divorce ourselves from the struggle," says Chris Dlamini, FOSATU president. "In the state of emergency, union people are also being detained and killed."

The newly elected president of COSATU, Elijah Barahi, made the same point to a Dec. 1 rally of 10,000 workers during the federation's founding conference. Within six months' time, he said, "If the pass laws haven't been lifted, we will instruct everybody to burn their passes and ignore policemen who order Blacks to produce their passes."

Mineworkers' General Secretary Cyril Ramaphosa told the rally, "The government has clearly demonstrated that it is no longer in control of the country. It is about time that the working class call on him to lay down his powers and let the legitimate leaders of this country take over."

The top spheres of world finance were quick to understand the potential threat to the profit system in South Africa posed by the newly unified trade-union movement. Business Week magazine noted that COSATU's "defiant bid for power" was "spearheading a stunning transformation of South Africa's political climate."

The Wall Street Journal nervously termed the new trade-union federation "the most organized political challenge ever from Blacks." It also warned, "To violently suppress the unions, as the government did in earlier decades, would incur the wrath of international opinion at a delicate time."

The Communist Party But big business is not alone in its puzzlement over how to deal with the growing political orientation of the labor movement. The South African Communist Party (SACP) appears to be equally ill at ease. Worker on British-owned farm in Natal Although the SACP has published several articles offering a wary approval of the trade unions' unification process, it drew the line when FOSATU General Secretary Joe Foster suggested in 1982 that workers should take a further step and build their own political organization.

An article in the Second Quarter 1983 issue of The African Communist, the journal of the Communist Party, charged that Foster's call for a new "workers' movement" would have a "disruptive and divisive effect" on the African National Congress (ANC) and would compete with the SACP itself.

But the Communist Party's diatribes against the tradeunion movement reach a new low in the most recent issue of The African Communist (Fourth Quarter 1985). Writing on the eve of COSATU's founding conference, the journal's editors allege that South African bosses are backing the unions in order to win support away from the ANC!

The African Communist refers to an appeal by Stallenbosch University Professor Blackie Swart, who warns employers and the government that using strong-arm tactics against the independent trade unions could lead to unmanageable unrest, which would cause workers to "shift toward more politically motivated organizations."

"In other words," the editors deduce, "he is appealing to the bosses to let the unions succeed in negotiations for higher wages and better conditions because failure at the negotiating table would throw the workers into the arms of the ANC and SACP."

From there a small slight of hand is necessary: "This explains why so many employers recognized the relevant trade union and allowed it to function. This explains why millions of rand are being channelled by the CIFTU, AFL-CIO, and other bodies toward South African unions, which it is hoped will develop into a 'third force' drawing workers away from the ANC."

Why the CP lies Lies and slander against working-class militants, of course, have been standard ammunition in the arsenal of the Stalinist Communist Parties of the world for almost 60 years. At the end of the 1920s, the revolutionary parties of the Communist International were broken and tamed to serve the short-sighted foreign policy of the conservative caste headed by Joseph Stalin that had taken power in the Soviet Union.

In order to redirect and mislead the revolutionary movement, the Stalinists had to trick the rank and file into believing that CP leaders who refused to back the takeover had somehow betrayed the membership. For Rick Kollektiff that task, slander was necessary.

For example, Leon Trotsky, respecter as one of the main leaders of the Russian Revolution, was said by the Stalinists to have "belittled Lenin." Later, in exile, he was charged with being "an agent of Hitler and the Mikado."

In the United States, James P. Cannon and other former CP leaders who had joined the Left Opposition against the Stalinists were were charged with being "counterrevolutionists" and "agents of American imperialism." (Cannon and the U.S. Trotskyists later went on to found the Socialist Workers Party.)

The "two-stage revolution"

A similar process took place in the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA-as the SACP was then named). In 1928, the Stalinist leadership in the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) bureaucratically ordered the CP to adopt a slogan calling for "an independent Native Republic as a stage toward a workers' and peasants' republic" [my emphasis—M.S.].

The formula of a "two-stage revolution" conformed with the new program of the Communist International, which met in Moscow that year. The program said that a "bourgeois-democratic" revolution was on the agenda in colonial and underdeveloped countries.

This revolution—which would win national liberation and democratic rights for the oppressed masses—was seen as a separate stage from a later struggle that would bring the working class to power and begin the construction of socialism.

In practice, the Stalinist theory required the working-class movement to form a long-term bloc with bourgeois forces that were deemed "democratic," "anti-imperialist," or "friendly to the Soviet Union."

Only a year earlier, the new line had been tested in China with disastrous results. The International had ordered the Communist Party to subordinate itself to the bourgeois Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang soon turned around and slaughtered thousands of workers and peasants who had been disarmed by Stalin's endorsement of him. [See Ralph Forsyth's article on China in this issue of Socialist Action.] Now the two-stage schema was to be introduced into South Africa. But some Communist Party leaders opposed it. The chairman of the CPSA, Sydney Percival Bunting, countered the Stalinist line with the observation that "the class struggle is here practically coincident and simultaneous with the national struggle."

Ernest Harsch, in his now out-of-print book, "South Africa-White Rule, Black Revolt," made some perceptive comments on the Stalinist misorientation of the CPSA. F Workers Parl nature of Sou the national 1 the direction ‹ "The cruci republic wou revolution. In would be un effective, revc "As the pa slogan, the sti the struggle l role of the B1 petty-bourgec struggle, and sectors of the After the H example, the 1 meetings with pro-Nazi.

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"This book, which privat production ex democratic it i by the capita peasants in su How does merely indica is not the Sou non-Marxist i simple twist ir According bourgeois-den Africa-forg: establishing a one vote;" anc "free farmers."

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e a path Africa into an imperialist power, they developed the revealed that over half the workers received about $12 a country in an uneven manner-forcing the Black month-but that was paid out mainly in bags of flour. majority into the mold of a super-exploited caste within What road does Jack Barnes suggest for Black the working class. farmworkers in their struggle for liberation? He puts To imply that the national oppression of Blacks can be forward one basic prescription in his report: Black uture substantially alleviated—let alone abolished—while workers must struggle to win the right to own land and capitalism remains is misleading on Barnes' part. It produce cash crops for the market. He suggests a South suggests to Black people that the capitalist class can be African "Homestead Act," reminiscent of the 19th induced to resolve their fundamental problems while century law in the United States that opened the Middle continuing to hold state power. Western frontier to settlement by farmers. the CPSA. Harsch, a spokesperson for the Socialist But the capitalists rely on the state superstructure, in But as far back as 1848, Marx and Engles could write, Workers Party in the United States, pointed out, "The large part inherited from colonial times, in order to fulfill "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into nature of South African society and the class dynamic of their need for cheap labor. That is why even "anti- two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly the national liberation struggle will in practice lead in apartheid" liberals, such as those in the Progressive- facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." the direction of challenging capitalism itself. Federal Party (financed mainly by the multinational A new peasantry? "The crucial mistake was insisting that a Black Anglo American Corporation) are opposed to Black republic would be brought about through a bourgeois majority rule. They counter the demand of Blacks for This observation in the "Communist Manifesto" is revolution. In this way the ECCI ensured that the CPSA "one person, one vote" by advocating a governmental ignored by Barnes, who opts for the resurrection of what would be unable to fight for a Black republic in an solution that grants the white minority veto power over is essentially a pre-capitalist economic category—the peasantry-already transcended in South Africa by effective, revolutionary manner. all decisions. "As the party's record showed after it adopted the The capitalists' drive for profits has created broad areas advanced capitalist methods of agricultural production. slogan, the stress on the bourgeois-democratic nature of of destitution in South Africa that rival the most In reference to the South African working class, Barnes states, "One of the goals of the South African revolution the struggle led the CPSA to de-emphasize the leading underdeveloped lands in the world. Barnes highlights the is the 'deproletarianization' of a part of this class, in the role of the Black working class, to look toward Black exploitation of Black farmworkers-one of the most petty-bourgeois figures as the 'natural' leaders of the brutal results of capitalist relations in South Africa. sense of winning the right to become property-holding struggle, and even to flirt with supposedly 'democratic' farmers." sectors of the white ruling class." Black farmworkers Barnes goes on to state that the highly productive large After the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed in 1939, for proletarianized for decades. Government statistics reveal The Black rural population has been highly factory farms should be broken up and re-divided. But this would create several problems: Efficient mechanized example, the Communist Party sponsored joint antiwar that economically active Blacks classified as "peasants" production would be made more difficult. And a new meetings with the capitalist National Party—which was fell from 51 percent in 1936 to 8 percent in 1951—and class of small competing landowners would disrupt the pro-Nazi. close community of interest that capitalism has forged When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the far less today. between the urban and rural proletariat. CPSA suddenly adopted a "pro-war" line. The work with Most Black tenant farmers who remained in white Revolutionaries would support a movement among the National Party was dropped in favor of alliances with areas after 1980 have been driven out. Black people in agricultural workers to take over the land. But private various "liberal" capitalist forces—including elements of the overcrowded government-created "homelands" are not land ownership is not the only demand that the struggle the ruling United Party. permitted to own more than four hectares of land to grow of rural Blacks might raise. One CPSA pamphlet of the time advised workers that their crops, and most plots are much smaller. In Russia in April 1917, for example, Lenin and the because of the war effort, they "must try all ways of The great majority of rural Blacks must labor on huge Bolshevik Party called for the nationalization of the land settling disputes with the bosses before calling strikes." highly mechanized and profitable white-owned farms. under the management of local democratic committees of (Between 1964 and 1982 the number of white-owned agricultural workers. They left to the farmworkers the SWP echoes Stalinist line farms fell by almost a third, as smaller farms were question of whether to break up the huge estates or The Stalinist "two-stage" line on South Africa has gobbled up by big capitalist corporations.) maintain them as cooperatives and state farms. found its echo recently in the United States-from a But mechanization has eliminated hundreds of Lenin conceded that nationalization was a bourgeois source that would have been completely unexpected six thousands of Black farmworkers' jobs. Between 1968 and measure since it would allow peasants to rent land from years ago when Ernest Harsch wrote his book. 1981 permanent employment on white-owned farms fell the state in order to sell their crops on the market. But at The Socialist Workers Party leadership has now by 50 percent. Seasonal employment declined by 70 the same time, he pointed out that decided that it's necessary to "strip away remnants of percent. nationalization—together with other acts such as sectarian and ultraleft obstacles" within the program that Those farmworkers who manage to get jobs are also government control of the banks and capitalist guided the Trotskyist movement for over 50 years. impoverished. A report published by the Farm Labor trusts—would serve as a "transitional measure" that But while ridding itself of alleged "obstacles" in its Project in 1983 reported that average cash wages ranged would "bring about a situation where Russia stands with program, the SWP appears to be lurching toward a from about $25 to $45 a month, although some workers one foot in socialism." : of the shameful opportunism. The August 1985 plenum of the received as little as $2 a month. A survey of the corn- Barnes not only breaks with the transitional method I by the SWP National Committee approved a report on the growing region of the Western Transvaal in 1980 xile, he struggle in South Africa by National Secretary Jack (continued on page 12, in “Who's who in South Africa”) ind the Barnes that replaces a Marxist analysis with one culled directly from the lexicon of Stalinism. 1 other In his report to the plenum, which is published in the position Fall 1985 issue of New International magazine, Barnes 1S1 being stresses, "What is on the agenda in South Africa is the

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