Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 4b
Hegemony and the NDR
In his 1905 article “Petty-Bourgeois
and Proletarian Socialism” (linked below), Lenin wrote:
“Can a
class-conscious worker forget the democratic struggle for the sake of the
socialist struggle, or forget the latter for the sake of the former? No, a
class-conscious worker calls himself a Social-Democrat for the reason that he
understands the relation between the two struggles. He knows that there is no
other road to socialism save the road through democracy, through political
liberty. He therefore strives to achieve democratism completely and
consistently in order to attain the ultimate goal - socialism. Why are the
conditions for the democratic struggle not the same as those for the socialist
struggle? Because the workers will certainly have different allies in each of
those two struggles. The democratic struggle is waged by the workers together
with a section of the bourgeoisie, especially the petty bourgeoisie. On the
other hand, the socialist struggle is waged by the workers against the whole of
the bourgeoisie. The struggle against the bureaucrat and the landlord can and
must be waged together with all the peasants, even the well-to-do and the
middle peasants. On the other hand, it is only together with the rural
proletariat that the struggle against the bourgeoisie, and therefore against
the well-to-do peasants too, can be properly waged.”
Joe Slovo wrote (in the SA Working
Class and the NDR, 1988):
“There is,
however, both a distinction and a continuity between the national democratic
and socialist revolutions; they can neither be completely telescoped nor
completely compartmentalised. The vulgar Marxists are unable to understand
this. They claim that our immediate emphasis on the objectives of the national
democratic revolution implies that we are unnecessarily postponing or even
abandoning the socialist revolution, as if the two revolutions have no
connection with one another.”
Hegemony is mentioned in the
first discussion document prepared by the SACP for the Special National
Congress held in December, 2009, and particularly the following section, taken
from the last page of the document.
“… it is
important that as communists we are clear that working class HEGEMONY doesn’t
mean working class exclusivity (still less party chauvinism). Working class
hegemony means the ability of the working class to provide a consistent
strategic leadership (politically, economically, socially, organisationally,
morally – even culturally) to the widest range of social forces – in
particular, to the wider working class itself, to the broader mass of urban and
rural poor, to a wide range of middle strata, and in South African conditions,
to many sectors of non-monopoly capital. Where it is not possible to win over
individuals on the narrow basis of class interest, it can still be possible to
win influence on the basis of intellectual and moral integrity (compare, for
instance, our consistent ability, particularly as the Party, to mobilise over
many decades a small minority of whites during the struggle against white
minority rule).”
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-texts: Petty-Bourgeois
and Proletarian Socialism, 1905, Lenin.
