Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 9
Democracy is Ours
This part is the second-last
in the present series on Anti-Imperialism, Peace, and Socialism. This part is
designed to invite comrades to reflect upon the place of the anti-Imperialist
struggle within the entirety of world history.
That is why Issa Shivji’s
address on The Struggle for Democracy
and Culture (linked below) is used. It explicitly and correctly claims, on
behalf of the national-liberation and anti-colonial struggle, that for the time
being this national democratic revolutionary struggle carries the banner of
progress for the whole world.
For a long time past, and
into the future, until such time as the struggle for socialism itself becomes
once again the principal one, the National Democratic Revolutions taken
together constitute the main vehicle for human progress, bearing, and rescuing,
all that is noble and fine in humanity.
The bourgeoisie is a thieving
class and it will steal the clothes of the revolutionaries without any
hesitation if it sees the smallest, or the most temporary, advantage in doing
so. The Imperialist bourgeoisie wishes to reverse the appearance of its shameful
past and of its hopeless future. It wishes to claim the moral superiority that
the liberation movement has, and steal it.
Issa Shivji, the
revolutionary Dar-es-Salaam intellectual, shows very clearly how the monstrous
fraud is attempted. The constant droning about “good governance” is the extreme
of hypocrisy, coming as it does from the worst oppressors in history – the force
that has taken oppression to the ends of the earth – Imperialism. Read Shivji.
He tells it well. But also note the hypocritical machinations of our present
South African anti-communists, including but not limited to the DA. If you did
not know better, you could start to believe from what you read that it was
liberal whites who liberated South Africa from the old regime.
The struggle for democracy is
ours, not theirs. The struggle for freedom is ours. We are the humanists now.
We, the liberationists, are the principal creators of human history and we have
been for many decades past. The 20th Century was the liberation century and the
first anti-Imperial century. That was when we overtook the others in politics, in
morality, and in philosophy. But we were only starting.
In the 21st Century we will
finish the job, and finish with Imperialism altogether.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: The Struggle for
Democracy and Culture, 2003, Shivji.
