DOCSLIB.ORG

The International Socialist League and Revolutionary Syndicalism in South Africa, 1915-19201

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The International Socialist League and Revolutionary Syndicalism in South Africa, 1915-19201 “The Industrial Union is the Embryo of the Socialist Commonwealth”: The International Socialist League and Revolutionary Syndicalism in South Africa, 1915-19201 Lucien van der Walt The focus of this paper is the International Socialist Industrial Workers of Africa was the first trade union for League, the main revolutionary socialist organization active African workers in South African history. Although the in South Africa in the latter half of the 1910s. The Interna- question of the International Socialist League’s analysis of tional Socialist League was founded in September 1915 and racial oppression in South Africa does not form a central absorbed into the Communist Party of South Africa in July focus of this paper, it will also be suggested that the organi- 1921, having played a central part in the processes that led zation developed a coherent analysis of racial oppression in to the founding of that Party over the previous year. South Africa, and advocated the removal of racially oppres- 2 This paper provides a re-examination of this important sive laws through industrial action. organization, disputing the views dominant in the literature. The first part of this paper situates the International So- The conventional view in the literature is that the Interna- cialist League within the context of the historical literature tional Socialist League was always a radical Marxist party, and within the context of the international socialist move- and that its role in founding the Communist Party was sim- ment of the early 20th century. The second part of this pa- ply the product of this basic political commitment. It is also per will look at the history and political theory of the Inter- asserted in much of the literature that the International So- national Socialist League and at the attempts at industrial cialist League ignored (at best) the question of racial op- organization with which the organization was associated. pression in South Africa. Although both the International Socialist League and the This paper will challenge both of these claims, drawing Industrial Workers of Africa were very small organizations, extensively on primary sources. It will be demonstrated, it is when we understand them within their international firstly, that the International Socialist League was a revolu- context — as part of a far larger revolutionary socialist cur- tionary syndicalist organization, and not a Marxist group. rent — that we best grasp their full significance. Interna- As such, the International Socialist League held that ra- tionally, the organization to which the International Social- cially integrated revolutionary industrial unions should ist League exhibits the greatest political affinity was not the overthrow capitalism and the State, replacing both with “Marxist left wing of the Eu ropean socialist movement,”3 workers’ self-management of the economy . Hence, the or- but the revolutionary syndicalist I.W.W. The significance of ganization must be situated within the context of the inter- this reassessment of the International Socialist League is national revolutionary syndicalist movement of the early threefold. Firstly, it is a contribution to our understanding 20th century, a movement exemplified by the Industrial of the nature of the early socialist movement in South Af- Workers of the World ( or I.W.W.) in the United States of rica, and, simultaneously, a critique of the conventional America. It is for this reason that the International Socialist historiography. Secondly, it is a contribution to the recovery League sought to organize revolutionary industrial unions of the history of revolutionary syndicalism more generally. in South Africa, the most notable of which was the Indus- This field of research is relatively undeveloped, especially trial Workers of Africa. Founded in September 1917, the with regard to revolutionary syndicalist groups in areas © 1999: Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. XIX No. 1 6 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. XIX No. 1 (1999) such as Africa. Thirdly, the reassessment provides a partial The argument that the International Socialist League examination of the approach adopted by revolutionary syn- was a radical Marxist group and a forerunner of the Com- dicalists in South Africa vis -a-vis racial oppression, and munist Party — that is, the notion of political and organiza- hence, is a contribution to our understanding of revolution- tional continuity between the two organizations — may be ary syndicalist analyses of racism more generally. traced back to the interpretation of the history of the early Histories of Socialism: A Critical Look at the South Af- socialist movement in South Africa developed by writers rican Historiography associated with the Communist Party. This body of work was developed from the 1940s onwards, as a number of Despite the small size of the International Socialist writers — Brian Bunting, R. K. Cope, Lionel Forman, League — the organization probably never had more than a few hundred members4 — the organization has loomed “Lerumo” (Michael Harmel), Eddie Roux, Jack and Ray Simons19 and, more recently, Jeremy Cronin — began to large in most discussions of the early socialist movement in produce published histories of socialism in South Africa. South Africa. The International Socialist League appears in works ranging from academic studies, to conservative anti- These works — which I will refer to collectively as the Communist polemics,5 Pan-Africanist accounts,6 contemp o- “Communist school” of South African socialist history — rary socialist newspapers,7 and the histories written by ac- were strongly influenced by the Communist Party’s own tivists in the Communist Party of South Africa, and its suc- views of its history and of what constituted correct socialist cessor, the South African Communist Party. Despite their policies. Cope, for example, was a sympathizer of the Party varying perspectives, however, these accounts generally and was commissioned to write a work celebrating the life share the view that the International Socialist League was a of W. H. (“Bill”) Andrews, a long-time Party leader (and radical Marxist organization similar to Lenin’s Bolshevik founding me mber of the International Socialist League), in Party in Russia and that the International Socialist League’s the 1940s. Forman was a key intellectual in the Party in the role in founding the Communist Party of South Africa was 1940s and 1950s. The Simonses involvement in the Party a natural and obvious outcome of this affinity. Thus, we spanned many decades. Forman and the Simonses produced read in various accounts that the International Socialist detailed histories of the resistance movement in South Af- League was launched and led by “revolutionary Marxists,”8 rica. Brian Bunting and “Lerumo” were active in the Party occupied itself with “following the teachings of Karl from the 1940s onwards, and Cronin, from the 1970s. Marx” 9 and with “applying Marxism to South Africa,”10 Roux’s case differs slightly, in that he had left the Commu- and acted as “tireless propagandists” for Marxist ideology.11 nist Party at the time he published his accounts. A founder Already built on firm Marxist foundations, the “entire out- member of the Young Communist League, and one-time look” of the International Socialist League is described as editor of the Communist Party’s newspaper Umsebenzi “ever more deeply colored by…the teachings of Lenin,”12 (Worker) and member of the Communist Party’s political and consequently, the organization played a central role in bureau, Roux withdrew from the organization in the late founding the Communist Party. Thus, the International So- 1930s, deeply disillusioned by years of infighting and cialist League is described as the “Communist nucleus” of purges. Yet, whilst Roux wrote his works after his break “true socialists”13 in Communist Party publications. with the Party, he still shared many assumptions about the There is a strong tendency in the literature to present the early history of socialism in South Africa with his peers who remained party loyalists. International Socialist League as simply a chapter in the history of the Communist Party, a sort of Communist Party It is in the work of the Communist school that the habit- in embryo, the first six years of South African communism. ual presentation of the International Socialist League as a Take, for example, the March 1944 issue of the Party Or- radical Marxist organization seems to have been first devel- ganizer, an organ of the Cape Communist Party of South oped in a systematic form. In the historiography associated Africa: “The Communist Party of South Africa was really with Communist Party of South Africa and South African founded in 1915 under the name of ‘The International So- Communist Party leaders and intellectuals (Bunting, Cope, cialist League’ as a result of a split in the Labour Party on Cronin, Forman, Lerumo, and the Simonses), the Interna- the question of the War.”14 Less ambitiously, perhaps, other tional Socialist League is typically characterized as part of Communist Party accounts refer to the International Social- the anti-war Marxist minorities movement: thus, the Inter- ist League as the “direct forerunner”15 or the “main founda- national Socialist League is typically praised for developing tion” and direct predecessor16 of the Communist Party of an anti-war analysis “closely approaching the stand of South Africa. Similarly, the autobiography
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Between Empire and Revolution : a Life of Sidney Bunting, 1873-1936
    BETWEEN EMPIRE AND REVOLUTION: A LIFE OF SIDNEY BUNTING, 1873–1936 Empires in Perspective Series Editors: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong Tony Ballantyne Duncan Bell Francisco Bethencourt Durba Ghosh Forthcoming Titles A Wider Patriotism: Alfred Milner and the British Empire J. Lee Th ompson Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860–1920 Hayden J. A. Bellenoit Transoceanic Radical: William Duane, National Identity and Empire, 1760–1835 Nigel Little Ireland and Empire, 1692–1770 Charles Ivar McGrath Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire Sarah Irving Empire of Political Th ought: Indigenous Australians and the Language of Colonial Government Bruce Buchan www.pickeringchatto.com/empires.htm BETWEEN EMPIRE AND REVOLUTION: A LIFE OF SIDNEY BUNTING, 1873–1936 BY Allison Drew london PICKERING & CHATTO 2007 Published by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited 21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH 2252 Ridge Road, Brookfi eld, Vermont 05036-9704, USA www.pickeringchatto.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission of the publisher. © Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited 2007 © Allison Drew 2007 british library cataloguing in publication data Drew, Allison Between empire and revolution : a life of Sidney Bunting, 1873–1936. – (Empires in per- spective) 1. Bunting, Sidney Percival, 1873–1936 2. Social reformers – South Africa – Biography 3. Communists – South Africa – Biography 4. Lawyers – South Africa – Biography 5. South Africa – Politics and government – 1909–1948 6. South Africa – Politics and government – 1836–1909 7. South Africa – Social conditions I.
    [Show full text]
  • 100 Spouting Anticollaborationist Slogans Against Those on the Left
    THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE LEFT IN THE UNITED STATES* Stanley Aronowitz During the 1960s and early 1970s, majority sentiment on the American left held that the American trade union movement had become a relatively conservative interest group. It fought within the Democratic Party, and in direct bargaining with corporations and government, for an increasingly narrow vision of its interests. For example, when confronted with the demands of blacks for full equality within the unions as much as within society as a whole, labour leaders responded with a dual position. The unions remained committed in general to civil rights at the legislative level, but were primarily protective of their members' immediate interests in higher pay and job security. When these interests were in conflict with the demand for full equality, some unions abandoned all but a legislative commitment to civil rights. On the question of the Vietnam war, most unions were either bellicose supporters of the Johnson policies, or remained silent, due either to the ambivalence of some leaders about the war or to unresolved debates among members. The left was aware that a section of the trade union leadership distinguished itself from the generally conservative policies of a section of industrial unions around the ILGWU, the building trades, and most of the old-line union leaders (all of whom grouped around George Meany). This more liberal wing of the labour leadership was led by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and included most of the old CIO unions except the Steelworkers, as well as some former AFL unions (notably, the Amalgamated Meatcutters, some sections of the Machinists, and the State, County, and Municipal Employees).
    [Show full text]
  • Bio-Bibliographical Sketch of Baruch Hirson
    Lubitz' TrotskyanaNet Baruch Hirson Bio-Bibliographical Sketch Contents: Basic biographical data Biographical sketch Selective bibliography Sidelines, notes on archives Basic biographical data Name: Baruch Hirson Other names (by-names, pseud. etc.): R. Mettler ; K. Shanker Date and place of birth: December 19, 1921, Doomfontein (South Africa) Date and place of death: October 3, 1999, London (Great Britain) Nationality: South African, British Occupations, careers: Historian, editor, physicist, lecturer, political activist Time of activity in Trotskyist movement: 1944 - 1999 (lifelong Trotskyist) Biographical sketch Note: This short biographical sketch is based upon the obituaries and appraisals listed under Selective biblio- graphy: Books and articles about Hirson, below. Additionally, Hirson's autobiographical work Revolutions in my life (1995) has been consulted. Baruch Hirson was born on December 191, 1921 at Doomfontein near Johannesburg in the Transvaal province (South Africa) as a son of Joseph Hirson, an electrician, and his wife Lily (b. Clingman). The parents were Jews who had immigrated to South Africa from Latvia, which then formed part of the Czarist Empire. The boy was named after his recently deceased grandfather, but in conformity with at- tempts of better integrating into the new society was often called Bertram or Bertie for short. In 1946 Hirson married Yael Sherman (1926-?) who later became a paediatrician. The couple got two sons and one daughter: Denis, Allen and Zoe. Hirson grew up in a lower middle-class white Jewish community, was sent to the Talmud Torah (a Hebrew school) at the age of four, and attended primary school and high school from 1927 to 1938 and then earned his living by various jobs.
    [Show full text]
  • After 125 Years, San Francisco Building Trades Council Adapts To
    121th Year OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION TRADES COUNCIL OF SAN FRANCISCO Volume 121, No. 1 January 2021 www.SFBuildingTradesCouncil.org Construction After 125 Years, San Francisco Building Workers Trades Council Adapts to Changing Times Considered w PLAs, Political Combat and a Commitment to Unity Fuels the Fight for Workers at High-Risk By Jacob Bourne s the San Francisco Build- for COVID-19 ing & Construction Trades Council Approaches its Infection 125th anniversary in Feb- ruary, labor leaders reflect w New Public Aon what’s kept the council’s fight for the future of working tradespeople alive and Health Message thriving through many decades of politi- Underscores Need cal and economic change. “We have always been providing high for Vigilance on value on display,” said SFBCTC Secre- Jobsites tary-Treasurer Rudy Gonzalez. “What Aerial view of that really means is that we’ve been construction n December, SFBCTC promoting and serving as a backstop in on multiple leaders convened with buildings this fight for economic equality, safety on in San industry partners and City I the jobsite and workers. We’re working Francisco’s staff from the Department of to secure a generation of work for people Transbay Public Health and Department — and it’s not something new. We’ve had Transit Center of Emergency Management (continued on page 18) District. at a town hall to discuss the surging numbers of COVID-19 cases on construction jobsites Building Trades Demand Workers Voice is and what to do about it. The Mayor’s Office later explained why construction workers are Heard in Natural Gas Ban Law at high risk and the crucial pre- w Local and State Efforts to Reach Environmental Goals Require Collaboration cautions to prevent infections.
    [Show full text]
  • Issue No. 129, Summer, 1988
    -' Australasian ~ NUMBER 129 SUMMER 1988/1989 IfO cents Social Patriots Enlist for New Pacific War • own 1 • 1- For Proletarian Internationalism! Dwarfed by a huge Australian flag emblazoned with "heart of a na tion," second-hand dealer Bruce Whiteside proclaimed: "We are again facing a threat of invasion." The 1300 people packed into this hall on Queensland's Gold Coast in May, including the state Labor Party deputy leader .T')m Burns, erupted into massive applause. Later the announcement of a bomb threat provoked cries of "the Japanese have done it" and Tokyo stock exchange, largest in the world. Rise of Japan Inc fuels chauvinist fears in White Australia. "yellow peril," ment, which is now triggering a (Australian, 28-29 May). The 31 ~ational Action posters proclaim- The coming of Japan as the filthy anti-Japanese backlash in October morning edition of ing "White Australia, the workers' Asian economic. "superpower," Australia. The hysterical, racist Yomiuri Shimbun, circulation 9.6 cause!" and "Oppose the Japanese symbolised by the rise of the Gold Coast meeting prompted the million and one of Japan's two property invasion." value of the yen against both the Japanese consulate to complain main bourgeois dailies, carried a, Anti-Japan chauvinism extends US and Australian dollars, has led that "people were confusing mem- page four headline "Rising anti- far beyond the tiny fascist fringe. to a surge in Japanese tourism and ories of World War II with the Japanese feeling in Australia." Its Treasurer Keating weighed in, a mini-boom in property invest- realities of. modern-day Japan" article featured photos of fascist Continued on page six Russian Nazis Raise Their Heads Soviet Workers Must Crush Pamyatl Recent statements in Soviet Leningrad which does not evoke "t" ~':' newspapers report an ominous memories of this hero city's %: development.
    [Show full text]
  • German Hegemony and the Socialist International's Place in Interwar
    02_EHQ 31/1 articles 30/11/00 1:53 pm Page 101 William Lee Blackwood German Hegemony and the Socialist International’s Place in Interwar European Diplomacy When the guns fell silent on the western front in November 1918, socialism was about to become a governing force throughout Europe. Just six months later, a Czech socialist could marvel at the convocation of an international socialist conference on post- war reconstruction in a Swiss spa, where, across the lake, stood buildings occupied by now-exiled members of the deposed Habsburg ruling class. In May 1923, as Europe’s socialist parties met in Hamburg, Germany, finally to put an end to the war-induced fracturing within their ranks by launching a new organization, the Labour and Socialist International (LSI), the German Communist Party’s main daily published a pull-out flier for posting on factory walls. Bearing the sarcastic title the International of Ministers, it presented to workers a list of forty-one socialists and the national offices held by them in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Poland, France, Sweden, and Denmark. Commenting on the activities of the LSI, in Paris a Russian Menshevik émigré turned prominent left-wing pundit scoffed at the new International’s executive body, which he sarcastically dubbed ‘the International Socialist Cabinet’, since ‘all of its members were ministers, ex-ministers, or prospec- tive ministers of State’.1 Whether one accepted or rejected its new status, socialism’s virtually overnight transformation from an outsider to a consummate insider at the end of Europe’s first total war provided the most striking measure of the quantum leap into what can aptly be described as Europe’s ‘social democratic moment’.2 Moreover, unlike the period after Europe’s second total war, when many of socialism’s basic postulates became permanently embedded in the post-1945 social-welfare-state con- European History Quarterly Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • The Communist Party of Great Britain Since 1920 Also by David Renton
    The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920 Also by David Renton RED SHIRTS AND BLACK: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Oxford in the ‘Thirties FASCISM: Theory and Practice FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND BRITAIN IN THE 1940s THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A Century of Wars and Revolutions? (with Keith Flett) SOCIALISM IN LIVERPOOL: Episodes in a History of Working-Class Struggle THIS ROUGH GAME: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in European History MARX ON GLOBALISATION CLASSICAL MARXISM: Socialist Theory and the Second International The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920 James Eaden and David Renton © James Eaden and David Renton 2002 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-0-333-94968-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St.
    [Show full text]
  • MARX, MARXISM and the BRITISH WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT: SOME CONTINUING ISSUES for the 21St CENTURY1
    MARX, MARXISM AND THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT: SOME CONTINUING ISSUES FOR THE 21st CENTURY1 John Foster John Foster, Emeritus Professor, University of the West of Scotland, International Secretary, Communist Party of Britain, author of Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974), joint author of The Politics of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-In (1986), The Caterpillar Occupation (1988), Capital and Labour in the North Sea Oil Industry (1996) and the New Penguin History of Scotland (2002). Email: [email protected] Abstract: For Marx the British working class was both a practical inspiration and a challenge. Britain’s was the world’s first majority proletariat and in the 1840s was also the first to create a mass working class party. Yet in the second half of the 19th century British trade unions changed direction, allied themselves with bourgeois political parties and worked within the assumptions of the existing system. Marx’s explanation of this transformation is, the article argues, of continuing importance for our understanding of working class consciousness—with its key elements carried forward by both Luxemburg and Lenin in their critique of the revisionism of the Second International. The main intent of the article is to use more recent examples of working class mobilization in Britain to show the continuing relevance of this analysis. It focuses in particular on the issue of the relationship between the working class and a Marxist party. In doing so it draws on the Soviet school of Vygotsky and Leontiev to argue for a dialectical and materialist understanding of the development of working class consciousness in which the role of a Communist Party, in Marx’s terms, remains critical.
    [Show full text]
  • Revolutionary Syndicalist Opposition to the First World War: A
    Re-evaluating syndicalist opposition to the First World War Darlington, RR http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2012.731834 Title Re-evaluating syndicalist opposition to the First World War Authors Darlington, RR Type Article URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/19226/ Published Date 2012 USIR is a digital collection of the research output of the University of Salford. Where copyright permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Please check the manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. Re-evaluating Syndicalist Opposition to the First World War Abstract It has been argued that support for the First World War by the important French syndicalist organisation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) has tended to obscure the fact that other national syndicalist organisations remained faithful to their professed workers’ internationalism: on this basis syndicalists beyond France, more than any other ideological persuasion within the organised trade union movement in immediate pre-war and wartime Europe, can be seen to have constituted an authentic movement of opposition to the war in their refusal to subordinate class interests to those of the state, to endorse policies of ‘defencism’ of the ‘national interest’ and to abandon the rhetoric of class conflict. This article, which attempts to contribute to a much neglected comparative historiography of the international syndicalist movement, re-evaluates the syndicalist response across a broad geographical field of canvas (embracing France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Britain and America) to reveal a rather more nuanced, ambiguous and uneven picture.
    [Show full text]
  • People, Place and Party:: the Social Democratic Federation 1884-1911
    Durham E-Theses People, place and party:: the social democratic federation 1884-1911 Young, David Murray How to cite: Young, David Murray (2003) People, place and party:: the social democratic federation 1884-1911, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3081/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk People, Place and Party: the Social Democratic Federation 1884-1911 David Murray Young A copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Durham Department of Politics August 2003 CONTENTS page Abstract ii Acknowledgements v Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1- SDF Membership in London 16 Chapter 2 -London
    [Show full text]
  • Exodus General Idea of the Revolution in the XXI Century
    Exodus General Idea of the Revolution in the XXI Century Kevin A. Carson 2021 Contents Reviews 5 Abstract 6 Preface 7 Part One: Background 8 Chapter One: The Age of Mass and Maneuver 9 I. A Conflict of Visions .................................... 9 II. The Triumph of Mass in the Old Left .......................... 15 III. The Assault on Working Class Agency ......................... 42 IV. Workerism/Laborism .................................. 49 Chapter Two: Transition 52 I. Drastic Reductions in Necessary Outlays for the Means of Production . 52 II. The Network Revolution and the Imploding Cost of Coordination . 57 III. The Impotence of Enforcement, and Superiority of Circumvention to Resistance . 70 IV. Superior General Efficiency and Low Overhead .................... 74 V. Conclusion ......................................... 78 Part Two. The Age of Exodus 79 Chapter Three: Horizontalism and Self-Activity Over Vanguard Institutions 80 Introduction ......................................... 80 I. The New Left ........................................ 81 II. Autonomism ........................................ 90 III. The 1968 Movements and the Transition to Horizontalist Praxis . 98 IV. The Post-1994 Movements ................................ 100 Chapter Four: The Abandonment of Workerism 115 I. The Limited Relevance of Proletarianism in the Mass Production Age . 115 II. Technology and the Declining Relevance of Proletarianism . 116 III The Abandonment of Proletarianism by the New Left . 117 IV. The Abandonment of Workerism in Praxis . 127 Chapter Five: Evolutionary Transition Models 131 Introduction and Note on Terminology . 131 2 I. Comparison to Previous Systemic Transitions . 132 II. The Nature of Post-Capitalist Transition . 146 Chapter Six: Interstitial Development and Exodus over Insurrection 157 Introduction ......................................... 157 I. The Split Within Autonomism .............................. 159 II. The Shift From the Factory to Society as the Main Locus of Productivity .
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Samir Amin Preface English Future of Maoism Mao Is
    1 SAMIR AMIN PREFACE ENGLISH FUTURE OF MAOISM MAO IS BACK The Marxism of the Second International, workerist and Eurocentric, shared with the dominant ideology of the era a linear view of historical progress in which every society must pass first through a stage of capitalist development before being able to aspire to socialism. The idea that the “development” of some societies (the dominant centers) and the “underdevelopment” of others (the dominated peripheries) is an imminent product of the worldwide expansion of capitalism was completely alien. Understanding the polarization inherent in capitalist globalization is essential for formulating any view about transcending capitalism. This polarization lies behind the possible rallying of large fractions of the popular classes and above all the middle classes (whose development is itself favored by the position of the center in the world system) of the dominant countries to social-colonialism. At the same time, it transforms the peripheries into a zone des tempêtes, in a continual natural rebellion against the capitalist world order. Certainly rebellion is not synonymous with revolution, but only with the possibility of revolution. On the other hand, grounds for rejecting the capitalist model are not lacking in the center of the system, as 1968, among other things, illustrated. Undoubtedly, the formulation of the challenge by the Communist Party of China (CPC), at a given moment, in terms of the country-side encircling the cities, is too extreme to be useful. A global strategy of transition beyond capitalism in the direction of world socialism must articulate the struggles in both the centers and peripheries of the system.
    [Show full text]