[Marxism] a thought on bombay/mumbai attacks

[Aaron Aarons]

>From: Tom Cod <tcod at hotmail.com>
>Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:34:30 +0000
>Subject: Re: [Marxism] a thought on bombay/mumbai attacks
>
>First of all, I don't think material conditions are worse off for blacks there,

If you leave out the Black elite, I don't think there's much doubt that MATERIAL conditions (food, shelter, etc.) are worse.

>moreover, to say that there's no real distinction between life under racist apartheid and what exists now is wrong and trivializes the oppression they suffered under apartheid.

Of course there's a real distinction. But one part of that distinction is that there was, under white-face apartheid, a Black workers' movement that was one of the most militant and class-conscious workers' movements in the world. That movement would never, undeopen white rule, have allowed the imposition of the neo-liberal agenda that the ANC has been able to impose.

>It's like saying the real historic gains of the civil rights movement in the South are trivial because we still live under capitalism, black politicians are corrupt opportunists etc. etc.

The main difference between the two situations is that there was no mass Black movement in the U.S. that was anti-capitalist, so there was no anti-capitalist struggle to betray.

>No, the Oppenheimers just didn't just "give" the blacks their freedom, the freedom to vote, to not have to endure the daily humiliations of apartheid segregation, they forced that from them through struggle which created that situation.

Yes, the struggle of Black workers and oppressed created the situation in which the South African and foreign capitalists were more than happy to give up the excesses of open apartheid, and make some Black petit-bourgeois rich, in exchange for the stabilization and strengthening of capitalist rule. Even if the Black poor hadn't gotten poorer as a result, this deal -- made by Mandela and the ANC behind the backs of the masses -- would still be a betrayal of historic proportions.

>Does that mean there isn't further work to be done or that we just be a cheering section for the ANC, the Black Congressional  Caucus or the AFL-CIO leaders, obviously not.  Your view is a classic ultraleft outlook that I don't think many of the ANC's political opponents on the Left would even agree with.  HIstory is never a perfect, clean process, those ostensible political purists who think it is are naive and misguided.

So it's sufficient for the revolutionary left to not "just be a cheering section for the ANC, the Black Congressional  Caucus or the AFL-CIO leaders"? Like it would have been sufficient for the Bolsheviks in 1917 to not JUST be a cheering section for the SR's, Mensheviks and the provisional government? After all, the Tsar and the aristocracy had been overthrown, which was at least as much of a change as was the elimination of open white rule in South Africa!

 - Aaron