"Peaceful coexistence": Gorbachev's policy toward South Africa

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Black working class will resist all attempts to perpetuate oppression and exploitation.

At a recent forum on peace and disarmament in Moscow, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stated bluntly that the Soviet bureaucracy was seeking "world stability" and "peaceful coexistence" with U.Ș. imperialism so it could devote more attention and resources to the Soviet Union's economic problems.

Speaking in the Great Kremlin Palace on Feb. 16, Gorbachev said, "Before my people, before you, and before the world, I state with full responsibility that our international policy is more than ever determined by domestic policy, by our interest in concentrating on constructive endeavors to improve our country.

"This is why we need lasting peace, predictability, and constructiveness in international relations."

Gorbachev, according to New York Times writer Philip Taubman (Feb. 16), indicated that "the Soviet Union wanted to resolve regional conflicts...and help fight terrorism."

revealing illustration One indication of what Gorbachev meant by helping "to resolve regional conflicts" is contained in a keynote the bourgeoisie the necessary guarantees.' Second, he suggests that the ANC 'work on comprehensive guarantees for the white population that could be implemented after the elimination' of apartheid. Such guarantees, he says, would suit white liberals while neutralizing hard-liners.

"His third suggestion is the most remarkable: the idea of a parliament of two chambers—one based on proportional representation, the other with the right of veto based on equal representation of all four major racial communities [i.e., Black, mixed-race, white, and Indian]. This is close to proposals made by Botha advisers.

"Mr. Starushenko points to Kenya and Zimbabwe as countries where whites have been made to feel safe after independence. These countries, he says, show what might be achieved in South Africa by offering guarantees to the white and other minorities...

"His proposals make sense in terms of Soviet Marxist analysis of the situation. Mr. Starushenko sees a two-stage struggle: Only after the 'liberation struggle' has ended can the struggle for the 'national democratic revolution' begin.' Dovetails liberal capitalist wing In recent months, important ruling-class circles in Europe, South Africa, and even the United States have called for the gradual dismantling of apartheid and for negotiations with the African National Congress (ANC), one of the main components of the liberation movement.

This more lucid wing of the capitalist class is concerned that unless apartheid is modified in time, the struggle of the Black majority could radicalize to the point of threatening capitalist property relations in South Africa.

One concrete proposal that has received support from this capitalist sector—a proposal put forward by South African Chief Gatsha Buthelezi-is the creation of a twochamber parliament in which all opposition forces, including the ANC, would participate.

With the Soviet Union's new political position on South Africa, it is clear that the African National Congress will come under increasing pressure to accept the policy of sharing political power with the so-called "progressive" elements of the white capitalist class. The international apparatus of the Kremlin wields great influence over sectors of the ANC, particularly its exiled leaders.

The policy of "peaceful coexistence" in South Africa would require the South African liberation forces to betray the national and social revolution in the interests of imperialist private property.

An impossible compromise But such a compromise as advocated by Buthelezi —and now the top Soviet leadership-is an impossible one for the Black masses.

South Africa, compared to Kenya or Zimbabwe, is a very urban and industrial society. The majority of the employed South African population is made up of wage workers and their families.

A powerful Black South African working class, organized in mass-based trade unions, has risen up against apartheid and capitalist exploitation. It has championed the struggle for democratic demands-—"One person, one vote"—with the struggle for better working conditions and trade-union rights. working class of the West, to the advanced capitalist countries of Europe, to come to their assistance.

In 1919, the Bolsheviks founded the Communist International (or Third International) with the goal of advancing the world socialist revolution. They saw the Soviet Union as the advanced outpost of this struggle.

Within a decade after the victorious October Revolution, however, the Soviet leadership broke with the proletarian internationalism of the Bolshevik Party.

Under the conditions of a long civil war and the intervention of 14 imperialist armies, the leadership team assembled by Lenin and Trotsky was severely weakened and finally defeated by a rising bureaucratic caste headed by Joseph Stalin.

The democratic institutions of workers' rule were destroyed and replaced by the dictatorial rule of a monolithic party. The new bureaucratic caste amassed great economic privileges, which they would steadfastly defend against the Soviet working class.

Counterrevolutionary cooperation

After 1923, the process of bureaucratization became accelerated. Out of this development arose for the first time the theory of "building socialism in one country." Stalin argued that socialism could be built in the Soviet Union if there was no foreign intervention and if there was no war.

Thus, the policy of the Soviet bureaucracy was directed at subordinating actual revolutionary developments that threatened "world stability" and the status quo. The bureaucrats feared that the extension of the world revolution would spread into the Soviet Union itself and threaten their immense economic privileges.

"Peaceful coexistence," which looks to détente with the major capitalist nations, has been the bureaucracy's justification for betraying one revolution after another.

In the name of forging an alliance with alleged "progressive" capitalists, the Stalinist misleaders hold back and block the revolutionary struggle of workers and peasants against their capitalist rulers. They argue that if workers take over the factories and peasants take over the land, it would alienate the "progressive" capitalists. They misname this counterrevolutionary policy a "two-stage" revolution.

From Spain in the 1930s to Chile in the early '70s, the Stalinist parties dominated by the Kremlin have led the workers and peasants to bloody defeat.

In a speech to the United Nations in October 1985, President Reagan appealed to the Soviet Union to "contribute to solving regional conflicts throughout the Third World." The U.S. ruling class understands full well how the policy of the Stalinists meshes in with its own imperialist plans. Reagan's intransigence is designed to pressure the Stalinists into making even greater concessions to imperialism.

Gorbachev's response to Reagan has been to say "yes." The recent example of South Africa, where the proletarian revolution is on the order of the day, is a good illustration of the Soviet bureaucracy's counter -revolutionary foreign policy.

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