TRANSFORMATION 14(1991)                                                      ARTICLE
       IS SOCIALISM ON THE AGENDA?
        A LETTER TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN LEFT
                                                               Ronald Aronson
     Now that Zambia Airways flight Q08 has finally taken off from Lusaka to
 New York, the separation I need from South Africa to begin this reflection is
 starting to impose itself. It is a strong impulse that tells me to write a letter, not
 an essay - even if it contains an argument, references to sources, footnotes.
 Writing it as a letter stresses my subjectivity, the strong feelings behind my
 intervention, the personal character of my impressions, their limitations to this
 individual and to his particular experience. And it reminds us that I do not write
 as an expert on South Africa. Above all, it allows me to shape this argument as
 I feel it, as an'urgent appeal, on behalf of commitments I share with those to
 whom I write. After all, it is as an intellectual of the Left, a philosopher who
 has spent most of his energies thinking and acting in the tradition of Marx,
 Marcuse, and Sartre and towards the kind of social transformation we have
 always identified with the name of socialism, that I was invited to South Africa.
 I have visited out of a commitment to doing in South Africa what I have always
 tried to do at home, using theory to clarify action and action to test, clarify, alter
  and expand theory. A letter reminds us all that I am writing in the first instance
  to specific people, friends with whom I have had the several parts of this
  dialogue whose larger curves I am now able to present. And I am writing to
  those I have and have not met, comrades and colleagues who stretch across a
  broad but clearly defined political space.
      I have been to South Africa two times now, in 1987 and 1990, to teach and
  lecture. Each time it has been an intense experience, each time a genuine
  interaction in which I gained as much as I gave. Each time I did not merely
  bring ideas worked out in Detroit, but have had to think in situation, developing
  thoughts with and against dozens of you in a serial way. Each time I have come
  to certain conclusions and presented them in South Africa or sent them back
   afterwards.
      Inevitably, this second trip became more focused on specific issues than the
   first: I became more and more involved in debates on the Left over how to
   understand and act in the current situation, indeed on who the Left is and how
   it sees itself. At the same time your disagreements forced me to clarify and
   develop my own ways of thinking about politics in order to see how these might
   be relevant to your situation.


   ARONSON                                                       TRANSFORMATION
   I
     Again and again I was asked: What has changed in the three years since your
  last visit? What are your impressions of Squth Africa today? Most generally,
  these are summed up by the simultaneous answer of two colleagues I hadn't
  seen for some time: 'Everything has changed/Nothing has changed.' Everything
  - foremost on people's minds is no longer the brutally enforced and seemingly
  endless stalemate with an unyielding state; the time of negotiations over the
  transformation is finally here; the key components of apartheid are going or
  gone. Nothing - in the cities and townships and countryside and bantustans the
  transformation seems slight indeed; the state is still firmly (and sometimes
  brutally) in command; none of the urgent problems has been solved. Let me
  describe the changes in my own experience of South Africa, as a visiting lecturer.
  In preparing for my trip in 19871 had occasion to make several telephone calls
 from Detroit to Durban, and in some of them I found it necessary to inquire
  about the African National Congress' attitude towards the question of the
 academic boycott. I recall how struck I was to learn during one of these that
 international telephone calls were assumed to be routinely monitored by the
 state security police. This was the beginning of a series of experiences of
 learning what it was like to lecture, and live, under possible surveillance in a
 police state. My first visa, after all, was only granted after direct questioning
 and with the admonition, 'Remember, stay out of polities'.
     At least five thousand people were in detention during that visit, and the state
 of emergency cast a pall on all political talk and activity. I felt that I toed an
 invisible line of what could and couldn't be said, and had to be careful, several
 times each day, to avoid stepping across that line. Anyone might be a police
 informer; certain things could be talked about openly and certain things not;
political meetings of groups that had not been banned were assumed to be
bugged. The word 'sanctions' could not be discussed publicly. Speaking in
public, I learned a new skill: how to make my point by again and again
attributing it to someone else - my American students, for example, or
Americans in general. I recall how difficult it was to discuss openly the question
of the boycott, and especially the contacts I had initiated with the ANC office
in New York, even though it was vital for the local SANSCO activists to find
out that I had done so. Questioned by one of their leaders at a meeting to
determine what attitude they should take towards me, I had to express what they
wanted to hear by a kind of lame circumlocution that any security agent would
notice.
   The mood was grim, but determined and defiant. Everyone knew of someone
in detention, many had themselves been detained. The insurrectionary wave had
been broken, the sense had collapsed that South Africa might be transformed


TRANSFORMATION                                                            ARONSON
overnight. But the revolutionary optimism of 1984-86 was still on people's
minds. Everyone knew that the fall of apartheid was inevitable, as was a massive
transformation of social and political structures and daily life. Certainly the
wave of state repression was postponing the transformation, perhaps for as many
as ten or twenty years or longer. But it was inevitable, and would be sweeping,
initiated by the freeing of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the ANC. The
mood was grim but still deeply optimistic, reflecting the breadth of the mass
movement, even if repressed, and the universal sense that the stalemate was
temporary. No one accepted the current constitution, indeed including the
Minister for Constitutional Affairs: South Africa was awaiting transformation.
    Even the most negative side of the situation had its positive effect. No one
knew who might be picked up next or when and this fear created a sense of unity.
The clarity about who the enemy was - the state as personified by President
Botha - created a focus and even optimism based on a sense both of moral
certainty and of historical inevitability. In the Richard Turner memorial lecture
 I spoke about the paradox that an American comrade could find hope in South
 Africa; but it was true. In ironic counterpoint to this reflection we learned that
 the young man who had chaired the SANSCO meeting two weeks earlier was
 detained the day of that lecture.
     Lecturing in 1990 was totally different. It was no longer necessary to walk
 on eggshells. One no longer felt under surveillance. We knew the security
 police had not been retired or laid off, but I no longer worried about who might
 be listening or what might happen to me. A handful of people were in detention
 (Yes, I had to get reading materials to one of my students who was detained: the
 reality of state power was undeniably real), but the enormous difference in
 quantity seemed to have become a difference in quality. The best word to
 describe the new mood was open. The stalemate was over, a period of transition
 had begun, the outcome of which no one could foresee. The sense of being
 embattled had lifted. It was possible to talk, to think, and above all, for so many
 of my friends, to organize. Just to be able to go to an ANC meeting was, for
  others as well as for myself, a remarkable event. So long vilified, so long
  tabooed, and now here was the ANC openly organizing demonstrations, selling
  literature, recruiting members. I now met the same SANSCO leader who had
  questioned me and was later detained at the ANC Women's League launch,
  decked out in a bright red Communist Party shirt and fez.
     Granted, no one knew for sure how long this openness would last - and how
  much it would be punctuated, and controlled, by police action. This meant that
  some of the openness had to be restrained, and underground cadres and secret
  strategies had to be kept on the ready. Nevertheless, one of the clouds over
  South Africa since the banning of the SACP and the ANC, the systematic


  ARONSON                                                         TRANSFORMATION
  political repression accompanying the imposition of apartheid, had largely
  lifted. A new freedom of speech and thought were now the order of the day. '
  II
    Accordingly, with the state of emergency lifted, might not the mood be more
  relaxed, even optimistic? I, for one, felt more normal than on my first visit,
  walked around alone more frequently, talked less guardedly. Yet while walking
  in Durban or Johannesburg or Cape Town (which I did for a long time every
  day), in a very important sense I actually felt greater uneasiness than before.
  Yes, one could see that the great evil of apartheid was collapsing all around, but
  wasn't this happening in a way to generate anxiety rather than enthusiasm? A
  white man, out walking alone, say on the Berea in Durban, can feel this when
 encountering a black man. Typically, we would look at each other a bit
 uncertainly and indirectly, as if not knowing what to expect from each other,
 perhaps as if to figure out how to address each other. The clear roles of
 dominance and submission between people passing on the sidewalk that were
 still apparent three years ago (the Pass Laws had just been abolished) had eroded
 further, but new roles had not yet taken shape, imposing no clear relationships
 between strangers. Is he a middle-class black resident of this or a nearby
 neighborhood going grey? Or a 'garden boy' or other domestic worker? Or is
 he on his way to work elsewhere (from where, and why was he walking around
 here, in a white area)? Or, as so many whites around me worried, was he looking
 for someplace or someone to rob? It is hard not to be affected by elaborate alarm
 systems, endless gossip and newspaper stories about car theft and house theft
 and robberies and murder - all at a rate enormously higher than the violent
 United States. And so I wondered, how does he see whites who see him thus?
 What is he thinking? How much anger must be growing within the expanding
 yet frustrated consciousness of being the vast majority, and on the verge of some
 connection to political power, but still today being excluded from meaningful
political participation, still today without sufficient or sufficiently high-paying
 work, still today a stranger to the splendid homes and cars of this neighborhood?
 The old deference has not been replaced by a new equality or any other new
 stable relationship, but rather seems to have given way to a new nervousness,
based on mutual fear.
    Yes the mood has indeed changed since 1987. But, surprisingly, I found little
of what I had expected the most: optimism. Unexpectedly, the mood is decided-
ly less hopeful than three years earlier. The only enthusiastic statement I heard
came, appropriately enough, from an American diplomat in Cape Town who
sounded like a small-town Rotarian: 'they' were 'getting things sorted out', and
if they kept on, they would have a wonderful future in a beautiful country.


TRANSFORMATION                                                           ARONSON
Among South Africans, I encountered strikingly little optimism - a considerable
amount of passive faith in leaders - in Mandela's and FW de Klerk's ability to
work out global issues, but this was combined with a remarkable weight of
pessimism about specifics.
   During my first visit I looked hard at the main lines of South Africa in 1987,
brushing by the reservations of those (mostly English-speaking) whites who
opposed apartheid 'but' insisted on 'how complicated the situation is'. Inas-
much as the 'complications' had been mostly justifications for passively sup-
porting Botha and resisting majority rule, I argued, and still believe, that they
evaded the fundamental moral-political-constitutional issues concerning apart-
heid and majority rule. In response, I insisted on the utter simplicity and clarity
of such issues, especially for as long as the state remained committed to minority
rule and was enforcing it by making war on the vast majority of its people
 (Aronson, 1990). Three years later, as a second-time visitor, without abandon-
ing this insistence on the moral need to rid the world of its last outpost of
 statutory white domination, I discovered myself, remarkably, stressing how
complicated is the picture facing South Africans. Like everyone else, it seems,
 I have begun to focus away from the moral imperative to end apartheid as soon
 as possible and to move toward majority rule, and toward the thousand and one
 tasks that will have to be undertaken along the way and for years afterwards.
     This was brought home by my second-year Politics class at the University
 of Natal, in response to my question about whether they anticipate that the world
 their children will grow up in will be better than the world their parents grew
 up in. Only one person in this half-black, half-white group of over fifty students
 raised a hand to say yes; a majority said no and a sizeable minority wanted to
 qualify their statements. But what about Mandela's release? What about the
 imminent end of apartheid? What about the coming advent of majority rule?
 None of these facts made my students any more cheerful about the problems
 their children would have to face. What about the fact that they were now, white
 and black, sitting next to each other at the same university, for most of them
 their first encounter with the other race as equals? While everyone seemed to
  admit that this marked significant social progress, it didn't really dent the
  grudging mood or make the tasks at hand seem any more positive.
    The mood also stems from a second and related reality: the real balance of
  forces in South Africa today. De Klerk's brilliant maneuver was to release
  Mandela, unban the ANC, begin negotiations, and move to end apartheid before
  he was forced to. Today, on the one hand, the mass democratic movement can
  no longer be banned but, on the other hand, it is nowhere near being strong
  enough to impose its vision of a solution (whatever that might look like). On
  De Klerk's side the economy is still intact, white morale is still relatively high,


ARONSON                                                           TRANSFORMATION
capital is still self-confident, the police and military are still in charge, loyalty
to the state apparatus is still solid. On the movement side, mass political
consciousness and organization are still at a relatively low level, the black
working class is still relatively small and relatively recently organized, blacks
are still largely lacking formal education and skills in running the economy and
government. Of course, in 1989 the mass democratic movement decisively
unbanned itself; but for the state to negotiate the future constitution of South
Africa with its leaders means taking advantage of the current impasse between
the movement and the white minority. A trade-union activist quoted by Steven
Friedman in Building Tomorrow Today speaks of workers' organization in the
mid-1980s, saying that in another ten or twenty years, the working class will be
unstoppable - having grown, organized itself, practiced democracy, engaged in
militant activity (Friedman, 1987). Clearly De Klerk and his advisers have
looked ahead and pondered this - and have decided to act earlier, at eleven
o'clock, while neither side can impose its terms on the other, rather than waiting
until nearer to midnight, when their powers would have diminished, when all
that might remain to be negotiated might be the terms of surrender.
     What this means for the movement is that the release of Mandela and
unbanning of the ANC and SACP are elements of an overall strategy, conceded
to be sure because of the movement's growing strength, and because of the
demographic reality reflected by its indomitable will, but conceded now only
because of the movement's weakness vis a vis the state and the forces it
 represents. Hie pessimism I encountered reflects the historical reality that De
 Klerk has grasped so well: any settlement at this point in history will be drawn
 to create a coalitional form of majority rule that protects the privileges and power
 of middle- and upper-class whites. Negotiations may be described by the
 movement as a 'terrain of struggle' - to the state they are rather ways of
 institutionalizing a new balance of forces. The notion of a 'terrain of struggle'
 tries to put a good face on the movement's weakness to impose its will in political
 or military terms. It acknowledges that negotiations will reflect neither side's
 victory over the other, but a new compromise. But it veils the fact that from De
 Klerk's point of view, this compromise is intended to institutionalize and
 stabilize new relations of power. Inasmuch as these new relations fall decisively
 short of majority power in a full political, economic, or social sense, it is absurd
 to expect the negotiations to produce this power. From the movement's point
 of view negotiations involve conceding how formidable white power still is.
 Yet the movement still gains the chance to consolidate positions already won
 and provide space for continuing the struggle for a more meaningful majority
 rule.


TRANSFORMATION                                                           ARONSON
HI
   This, then, is the new mood I found among blacks and anti-apartheid whites:
that so much has to be changed, that so much is wrong, will still be wrong, the
day or week or month or year after liberation. More, that no force or class or
leader (or social or economic arrangement) seems powerful enough, or capable
of, dealing with everything that needs attending to. I think the earlier hope that
'everything' will be better when apartheid is abolished, with the advent of
majority rule, has hit the reef that everyone should have known was waiting for
it. Where three years ago I found, and was myself nourished by, the unrepentant
optimism defying the state of emergency, today that optimism seems all but
vanished.
  The community of resistance - always at best half myth and half reality - seems
more fragmented today. Certainly part of the sense of disorientation and
suspicion and bitterness is due to the fact that for a few, power and position seem
to be getting close enough to touch. Negotiations will mean serving some
interests and scuttling others, meeting some needs and ignoring others. No
wonder suspicions and hostilities among onetime allies is growing: they will
only increase. To the degree that the iron lid imposed by the apartheid state has
been lifted, the shared resistance to repression can no longer serve to unite
people. Can 'the movement' remain a single force especially inasmuch as its
minimum goals, acceptable to some, are closer and closer to being met, and the
current balance of forces precludes meeting its maximum goals? After all, isn't
it inevitable that in any foreseeable settlement the dynamics of class within the
movement will make themselves felt? Once apartheid is ended, won't the black
petty bourgeoisie have genuinely different interests than the black working
class? Won't blacks drawn into the governing coalition insist on restraining the
more militant youth, perhaps repressing them as 'necessary'? And won't a full
range of other differences begin to be felt within the ANC/UDF movement,
including along ethnic and racial lines, revealing it to always have been an
uneasy coalition of diverse interests one of whose greatest achievements was
simply staying united?
IV
   Liberation will lead those who are brought into the seats of political power to
become responsible for the economy's smooth functioning, and its continued
integration in the world economic system. Won't this make them become
equally preoccupied with preserving the privileges and power of the dominant
economic interests as the surest path to safeguarding their own power? I am not
even speaking of betrayal here - won't they perceive their ability to aid the
masses as depending on stabilizing the economic system and its relations of


ARONSON                                                          TRANSFORMATION
privilege and power? Isn't that already happening as the negotiators decide the
future constitution, due to be submitted in the least democratic way - plebiscite-
fashion, to voters at a referendum? These questions, heard again and again
during my visit, inspire a profound and bitter helplessness among many, after
years of equally profound and bitter struggle.
   However these questions may be answered in the months and years ahead,
those who regard ourselves as being on or sympathetic to the Left have a special
stake in thinking about them clearly. After all, we distinguish ourselves by a
dual commitment, not easily harmonizable, to realizing the most democratic and
egalitarian possible transformation of South Africa, and to basing all steps in
this process on the most realistic possible appreciation of the actual historical
situation. Radical hope, which we all more or less share, entails keeping the
vision of a genuinely humane alternative society alive, but it equally entails
understanding and acting within the real-world limits and possibilities of
achieving it. The Left's Scylla and Charybdis are a political despair that tries
too little because it never finds that conditions are ready, and a reflexive
optimism that sees everything as always possible, and accordingly either at-
tempts too much or blames leaders who don't. Minimalist temperaments and
maximalist temperaments will always exist. Sometimes the one sights the true
curve of events, sometimes the other. And sometimes neither. The Left needs
to be guided by a different stance: relating hope to a realistic assessment of what
is possible. This means founding hope, keeping it alive but giving it a hard-
headed basis. This passing through the eye of the needle is one of the most vital
tasks a Left can give to itself, and one of an intellectual Left's great services to
the rest of the movement.
  At issue, first of all, is developing an appropriate perspective. After all, how
we see things can be every bit as important as what we see - indeed, no serious
school of thought, least of all Marxism, would any longer separate the one from
the other. Resigned passivity may ignore genuine possibilities, just as activity
founded on illusions of what is possible may lead to discouragement. A
reasoned hope is one of the most vital principles of political action: knowing
when to admit defeat, when to celebrate, when to continue struggling, are among
the most essential of political traits.
  And here is where I see a major problem on the South African Left today - not
knowing what to expect, what to hope for. One encounters alternating mini-
malisms and maximalisms, neither genuinely founded on a serious study of just
what is possible today. Most South Africans I talk to are hoping for too much,
or despairing too quickly. They are defying what is really possible, or caving
in to the narrowest definitions of reality. Some are doing both. Providing a clear
sense of just what is possible and impossible, plausible and implausible in South


TRANSFORMATION                                                             ARONSON
Africa today, connecting this to the actual forces in motion and their relationship
- these are tasks not best left to 'our leaders' but that should be undertaken by
all who read this. Doing so entails asking what kinds, and degrees, of transfor-
mation are on the agenda. What forces are required, what strategies necessary,
what space is available, for precisely the kinds of democratic and socialist
changes the Left may advocate?
   As an outsider and as a non-specialist in South Africa, I want to suggest a
perspective for thinking about these questions. I also want to present some of
my impressions of what is possible, designed as provocations to further thought,
based on my experience of South Africa in August and September, 1990.
V
  The question of what is possible in South Africa today can be best approached,
I believe, by asking another question: Is socialism on the agenda in South
Africa?
     It is useful to begin this reflection from within the traditional Marxist
perspective in order to assess the possible success of a traditional Marxist
paradigm. From within Marxism, it seems to me, the answer is obvious: while
it is an immensely powerful colonial export economy, South Africa's level of
industrialization is still too low, its level of wealth and culture too low, its black
working class still too small and young, the level of urbanization still too low,
to seriously pose the prospect of socialism as Marx construed it. The balance
of forces leading De Klerk to negotiate now only confirms this: if the (white)
bourgeoisie will no longer have a world in its own image, neither will the
(black) working class, or indeed the democratic movement, be able to create a
world in their image. As De Klerk must see it, white privilege and power can
be maintained within majority rule because the majority does not have a single,
coherent will, and/or lacks the power to exercise its will.
  This precludes socialism as Marx construed it: this is the objective prognosis
to be drawn from this subjective and objective reality. But what if socialism
could somehow be imposed, through a minority seizure of power? The fact
rema ins that high levels of wealth and culture are not remotely foreseeable under
any imaginable form of socialization. Rather what would lie ahead is repeating
under socialism 'the old filthy business' decried by Marx in The German
Ideology - scarcity, the struggle for survival, inequality, domination, classes.
    Certainly there are those Marxists who, regarding themselves under the
influence of Lenin or Trotsky (the first moved by a willingness to anticipate
revolutions elsewhere and the second by an unreasonably optimistic theory of
'permanent revolution'), imagine that some form of socialism might be achiev-
able at a relatively low level of industrialization. But what do these theories tell


ARONSON                                                         TRANSFORMATION
us? Given the relationship between classes, it might be possible to' seize power'
before the working class is sufficiently large, sufficiently experienced in in-
dustrial struggles, and the economy sufficiently developed, to make possible the
kind of advanced industrial socialism anticipated by Marx. 'Readiness' in this
sense is a more subjective matter than I have been making it, and some argue
that to deny it of South African workers is to demean them, to belittle ordinary
people's widely demonstrated capacity to intervene in history. Certainly, it can
be argued, one historical example after another - the Soviet Union, China,
Vietnam, - proves that such a seizure of power is possible in conditions of
underdevelopment.
   We may recall Trotsky's famous words to Martov, as the great Menshevik
walked out of the Congress of Soviets after denouncing the Bolshevik seizure
of power as premature: 'Go out, into the dustbin of history*. It has since been
the classic reproach to all those who would hesitate at a revolutionary moment
because their fidelity to theory was stronger than to the proletariat. But 70 years
later, as communism unravels, its party-dominated and oppressive ('Stalinist')
forms explainable by Russia's low level of development and extremely small
working class at the moment of revolution, no amount of reference to revolu-
tions in Cuba or Yugoslavia or other underdeveloped countries can reassure
South Africans (Lowy 1981). As it has turned out, the 'seizure of power' is not
to be confused with the building of a socialism capable of retaining the support
of its people. Engels once commented (in another context):
         The worst tiling that can befall the leader of an extreme party is
         to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the
         movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which
         he represents, and for the realization of the measures which the
         domination implies.... Thus he necessarily finds himself in an
         unsolvable dilemma. What he can do contradicts all his previous
         actions, principles and immediate interests of his party, and what
         he ought to do cannot be done. . . . Whoever is put into this
         awkward position is irretrievably doomed (Lewin, 1976).
   Irretrievably doomed: it turns out this has meant not necessarily doomed to
be swept from power, but to betray his party's goals while remaining in power
in the name of these very goals. Bringing Engels into twentieth-century history,
such seizures of power in circumstances of underdevelopment have not led to
a socialism worthy of the name. And we need not be the ones to pass such
judgement: such socialisms seem fated to receive the harshest judgement of their
own people, being swept from power once free expression is permitted. History
is vindicating not Lenin and Trotsky's boldness in seizing power, but Martov's
Marxist caution about needing to wait until the productive forces are sufficiently
mature.
                                         10


TRANSFORMATION                                                              ARONSON
VI
   There is yet another difficulty with the insistence that socialism is on the
agenda in South Africa, namely, that no one, especially we on the Left, is quite
sure what socialism is anymore. Anyone talking about 'the socialist revolution'
in 1990, as de Klerk knows only too well, hasn't been listening to the rest of the
world. Not only have popular revolutions been undoing many of the historical
examples of socialism, but they have passed decisive judgement on one whole
model, that of a one-party state which centrally controls most or all of the means
of production and sets as its primary task the 'primitive accumulation' Marx saw
taking place under capitalism. 'Stalinist' forms used to be rationalized by their
most sophisticated apologists as dispensing with democratic processes in order
to - preserve the party, overthrow capitalism, industrialize, create or protect
socialism. In other words, certain structural, developmental and institutional
changes were so decisive that pursuing them justified authoritarian practices
and structures. But look at what those changes have come to. The 'socialism'
thereby created not only never evolved in a democratic way and instead created
its own privileged ruling class; it has been totally discredited by the revolution-
ary actions of its own people. It is not just that this and other ideas of socialism
have been repudiated: as I have argued elsewhere (Aronson 1990), those of us
inspired by Marxism have become idealists because, 100 years after Marx's
death, we have no historically viable example of the alternative we favor.
  To say, as tentatively as we now must, that we favor a social system that might
be more humane, productive, and democratic than capitalism, is to confess to
the crisis of socialism today. Of course we can say, militantly, that we favor
increasing equality, democracy, human rights, and public responsibility for
appropriate areas of social life. And we can argue, plausibly, that only social
ownership of the means of production and a concomitant transformation of
social life, can fully realize each of these. But it is devilishly difficult to say,
today, what shape this process would have, except that we know what shape it
would not have: communism.
  Anyone who speaks confidently as if he or she knows what socialism is after
communism, in fact, is only posturing. Short of much more practice, much more
spelling out, considerable political education and debate, we must admit that we
simply cannot say. To be sure, anyone talking to ordinary black people in South
Africa will carry away a strong sense of their sympathy for socialism. But if
one presses hard what this means, what they have in mind by redistributing or
sharing wealth, one is left with the vaguest of ideas. This mood is important,
and I will return to it, but to argue that South Africa is ripe for socialism because
of it is to fall into a sentimentalist populism that does no one any credit.


ARONSON                                                         TRANSFORMATION
VII
  If objective, subjective, and world-historical factors all conspire to force us to
speak of socialism with question marks and perhaps even between quotation
marks, there are urgencies built into the current situation, tasks for the Left, that
do not have to be spoken of so tentatively and uncertainly. One of these involves
moving South Africa towards democracy. Many people argue that one of South
Africa's great priorities of the moment is to build a democratic political culture
- a climate of discussion and respect and tolerance and personal security in which
important questions can be resolved by majorities and without violence. Ob-
viously any steps in this direction would be as important to the internal
functioning of organizations and parties as it would be to the society as a whole
- police-state practices in the one cannot help but lead to police-state practices
in the other. And certainly a major goal is creating a climate where differences
can be aired openly, where struggles for power can take place with a minimum
of violence, within an agreed-upon framework in which the will of the majority
prevails. If ending apartheid and achieving majority rule has been the main goal
of the democratic movement in its various incarnations, an intimately related
question is whether these changes will be accomplished democratically and lead
to democratic processes.
   The minimally acceptable change, of course, is an end to racial rule, and I
would insist that no matter how this is achieved, no matter what the shape of
post-apartheid society or its government, the end of colonialism in Southern
Africa will be a major historical achievement. But everyone agrees that this
alone will not be enough and is indeed inseparable from broader political, social
and economic changes. Even if it is conceivable apart from such other changes,
the lifting of apartheid by itself does not deserve the name democracy. Besides
removing every last racial law, the most minimal definition of democracy would
entail a government constitutionally responsible to all the people, elected by the
majority in free elections after open campaigning featuring free public debate
of all issues. What many on the Left have long derided as 'bourgeois'
democracy includes all the protections of open discussion - a free press, access
to the media, guaranteeing and protecting individual rights and liberties.
    This is, obviously, far more than a narrow class project, and in fact represents
an achievement or goal of mass popular movements everywhere, including
working-class movements. It entails a political culture in which it is possible
to speak out freely and openly without being assassinated, arrested, detained,
bullied, or intimidated. It entails habits of restraint and mutual respect that have
simply not been part of South African political culture. It means creating a
situation where even enemies can find bases for compromise. This means
developing new ground rules, mutually agreed upon, in which the bitterest of
                                          12


TRANSFORMATION                                                             ARONSON
opponents agree to disagree within a political and legal framework that protects
their right to do so.
   Is it possible to imagine such a democratic culture being achieved without
both a revolution and a long process of social and economic development that
genuinely establishes new ground rules by sweeping away the more ruthless and
violent forms of exploitation and repression? It is worth stressing that violence
has been a decisive weapon for arriving at relatively nonviolent structures - the
United States, France, Britain and Germany all attained a certain degree of
consensus (and the capacity for 'moderation') only after revolutions, civil wars,
extended wars, or other protracted struggles (Barrington Moore, 1966).
Moreover, such societies permit a range of dissent that remains more or less
narrow, and still employ violence to maintain the status quo (as well as
continuing to engage in neo-imperial rule, terrorism or violence beyond their
borders). I agree that none of them is qualified to preach peaceful change to
South Africans. Still, even after chronicling the bloody American labor strug-
gles of the 1930s, counting the deaths in our civil rights movement of the 1960s,
or showing how state force continues to sanction breaking labor struggles to this
very day, I would argue that improving South Africa's political climate need not
await another hundred years of political development - it is possible to take
concrete steps toward a more tolerant, more open, more democratic, and less
violent society, even while working for and awaiting its transformation.
   In reply, it can be argued, correctly, that violence is intrinsic to class society
and must be any state's last resort to the degree that it enforces and legitimizes
privilege, domination and exploitation. And further, that violence and in-
tolerance are inseparable from colonialism, which after all, is able to sustain
minority rule in no other way. Moreover, I would agree that South Africa is a
society undergoing a revolutionary transformation, which above all lacks con-
sensus on its future shape and structures. Until this is hammered out, even if
provisionally, competing demands will be made in the only way suitable to a
revolutionary situation, by force. Indeed, in the long run, whoever prevails will
do so only by force. But certainly if these qualifications suggest limits con-
straining any movement towards a more democratic political culture, the Left
can help test and critically evaluate each and every restraint on democracy - and
can decide to systematically press for its widest extension and its deepest
rooting. The Left can advocate the fullest possible discussion of every alterna-
tive, demand the widest possible public participation in decision-making. It can
criticize intolerance everywhere on the political spectrum, and insist on respect
for opposing positions. It can uphold processes of deliberation and election that
effectively enfranchise the greatest number of people. It can seek to keep the
masses active rather than passive. It can reject political bullying and intimida-
                                          13


ARONSON                                                         TRANSFORMATION
tioo. In short, it can promote an internal climate of democracy that will add
force to the demand that South Africa's future be decided by South Africa's
people.
VIII
  It is obvious that a democratic culture has been allowed to develop only within
the narrowest limits among white South Africans - up to the internal boundaries
of tolerance, dissent, criticism, and democratic decision making that a privileged
minority oppressing the great mass has been able to tolerate. More important,
this has been wholly denied to black South Africa; since rule by force is of the
essence of colonialism, open discussion among the majority is incompatible
with minority rule. Creating itself literally under siege, the internal democratic
movement has never had the opportunity to develop an internal democratic
culture - this is virtually prohibited by definition to an anti-colonial resistance
- although it has developed a variety of forms for rooting itself in, and remaining
responsible to, the masses who created it. Moreover, when an exile leadership
has to function abroad, under constant threat, and as a leadership, this situation
is obviously inimical to developing practices of open, public debate. Under-
ground conditions do not encourage democratic processes; they must breed
in-group loyalty and coherence, along with suspicion towards those who
threaten these. Under such conditions, disputed issues cannot be submitted to
constituencies for a decision; habits of leadership decision-making by a small
group, once they sink roots, are hard to overcome even when objective condi-
tions appear to change. After all, hasn't there always been, won't there continue
to be, a mortal enemy threatening to undermine the movement? Doesn't the
state keep its police apparatus alive and functioning, deliberately keeping the
movement off balance and unable to organize itself in conditions of security?
In these circumstances internal opposition and open public criticism easily
become labeled as treason.
   The danger, and perhaps the historical logic, is that this particular legacy of
apartheid will continue to poison South African political life into the future.
Indeed, looking down the road, will the rulers of post-apartheid 'democratic'
South Africa continue to repress and control the people in ways reminiscent of
apartheid? Granted that there are powerful objective reasons leading in this
direction, it is important to stress mat the movement need not compound its
problems by its own actions and attitudes. After the collapse of Eastern
European communism, it should be clear to all that contempt for 'bourgeois'
forms of democracy (as if they inherently deny the 'will of the masses'), sneers
for 'parliamentary democracy' (as if it necessarily reflects 'class domination'),
sound more and more transparently like arguments for domination by a new
                                          14


TRANSFORMATION                                                              ARONSON
elite than commitment to a more authentic, more radical form of democracy.
The fact is that free elections, free discussion, the protection of civil rights and
civil liberties - the political components of the bourgeois-democratic or liberal
heritage - are vital accomplishments of all humanity, and not just a facade for
concealing class power. They do not exhaust the entire range of democratic
processes and structures, but only stipulate the bare minimum. Still, in South
Africa they would represent ways of consolidating the struggle against apartheid
and become necessary starting points for more radical democratic projects.
   I am arguing, then, that ending apartheid demands extending parliamentary
democracy and its accompanying conditions, both formal and informal, to all
South Africans. But can this process be led by organizations that are themselves
not accustomed to functioning democratically? Creating a democratic culture
requires that the ANC and the SACP (to the extent that the latter remains central
to the process of South Africa's transformation) metamorphose into above-
ground, mass-based democratic organizations in which debate, discussion and
criticism are open and free, where proponents of opposing points of view are
not harassed and bullied, and which even develop new practices of reflection
and deliberation that encourage controversy and active mass participation.
Otherwise these organizations will find it inviting to consolidate themselves as
cadre organizations with a passive mass base of supporters - those who carry
out and support policies arrived at by the center, and in return expect jobs and
privileges or other material rewards in the future. Needless to say, we are talking
about faithful cogs of a future political machine, not active citizens of a future
democracy.
   I do not speak in condemning tones. One should not expect a former exile
leadership, still subject to a repressive apparatus, to initiate, or even to welcome,
the kinds of mass participation and democratization that would restrict their
room for maneuver and limit their authority. Holding tight to existing organiza-
tional reins, identifying the leadership's own wisdom with the organization's
(and thus the movement's) survival, has played an important historical role; it
certainly does not imply corruption. It rather reflects the accustomed - and until
now necessary - state of affairs, especially given the difficult conditions of
struggle. Open and legal functioning can change all this, and to be meaningful
must result in organizations that function openly. Perhaps this can only be
initiated at the base, and will have to be fought for at the base and against the
top, against old habits, old structures of command, old routines of authority.
And placing this on the agenda will depend on a successful campaign for the
end of all remaining state harassments, detentions, and repressions.
                                           15


ARONSON                                                        TRANSFORMATION
IX
   I began by talking pessimistically about the prospects for socialism, and then
turned to stress a more urgent task - creating a democratic culture in South
Africa. If I have so far avoided economic issues it is not because they come
second to the political, but because I am arguing that the fall of communism in
Eastern Europe teaches us that the spirit andprocesses through which economic
issues are approached, as well as the structures that are created, are decisive.
Who decides? And how do they decide? These are the overriding questions.
    Does this mean that if socialist policies and structures cannot solve South
Africa's pressing needs, they can be best addressed through the most rapid
possible economic expansion under capitalism? The democratically expressed
voice of the people of South Africa would probably agree that economic growth
is important, but it would probably insist on asking, 'Growth for whom?' and
'Controlled by whom?' It would probably insist that the future human shape of
South Africa must not be sacrificed to economic growth that benefits primarily
those who are already well off. When we look at some of the country's most
pressing material needs, we see how these questions are further intertwined, and
we see equally that 'economic growth' by itself will not solve them.
   It is obvious that 'socialization of the means of production' on the one hand
or the determination to produce as much (and as profitably) as possible on the
other may have little positive effect in dealing with South Africa's most
immediate questions - for example, with the education, health care, or housing
crises. The decisive issues in each case do not turn around capitalism or
socialism. They are not matters of how the process of production is organized,
or even according to what priorities. They will not be solved by more profits
or productivity, or by social control over the economy. Rather, the crises are
 linked with the deep historical processes of transformation of South Africa, from
the beginning of colonialism to the current rampant urbanization. Instead of a
structural solution or more growth, they demand dozens, perhaps hundreds of
different approaches at dozens, perhaps hundreds of different sites and levels.
   Yes, democratic availability of and control over resources is one of the keys,
but I would first point to another, one equally related to the question of
democracy. I am talking about the need for massive mobilization of the energies
of hundreds of thousands of people - to learn, to organize, to construct. These
problems can be best addressed not by any single structural change, but by a
series of campaigns to overcome the heritage of the past and meet people's
needs, by developing their skills and by mobilizing their activity. It will be
necessary to create the mood that these are truly national causes, people's causes,
and that they can be approached only by the large-scale self-organization of as
many people as possible to build and train, to impart and learn skills.
                                          16


TRANSFORMATION                                                          ARONSON
  Democracy means far more than parliamentary democracy: it includes collec-
tive self-organization, inconceivable under apartheid, and attempted usually
only by revolutionary governments. Local forms of democracy have already
been developed significantly, in the struggles of the 1980s - in civic organiza-
tions, constituency organizations, and in trade unions. Such self-organization
can be encouraged and set free to take its own directions, within broad national
parameters. Considering the depth of the various crises, and considering that
housing, education, and health-care problems might best be addressed through
mass efforts, such an activist approach of mass mobilization holds out consid-
erable promise. It will be best encouraged, and set free to follow its own paths,
by a government that sees itself both as expressing a national movement and as
committed to developing the most democratic possible processes in the future
South Africa.
X
   I am arguing that the Left should abandon fantasies about how close South
Africa might be to a socialist transformation, and that we not waste time
lamenting how far the new dispensation will be from some abstract concept of
socialism. And I am suggesting that within the current situation, a close study
of real prospects and possibilities yields significant tasks for the Left: arguing
and struggling on behalf of the most democratic possible transformation of
South Africa led by the most democratic possible ANC, and mobilizing the
democratic energies of the masses of people as active participants in meeting
some of their most pressing needs. I am urging that the Left abandon its
preoccupation with ends and structures, yes, with socialism, in order to struggle
for democracy on many levels. It is imperative that post-apartheid South Africa
learn to allow political struggles without murder and intimidation, to allow
people to express their will openly, and to be governed by that will. The
maximum possible democracy - this is a goal worth pursuing for its own sake,
and should draw the attention of all those on the Left who are not so fixated on
the end, socialism, to ignore one of its major defining traits, democracy. Those
on the Left who are willing to postpone everything else until the achievement
of what they call socialism, or are willing to bend everything to this magical
goal, have learned nothing from the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
They would eagerly reconstitute in South Africa the attitudes, practices, and
structures that have so justly been overthrown. Indeed, what more can be said
about those who invoke a transcendent end which no longer has a common
meaning, and would justify undemocratic practices on behalf of it? If we accept
that democratic practices are paramount, we can see that those who would
dismiss or minimize them risk poisoning South African politics with attitudes
                                         17


ARONSON                                                         TRANSFORMATION
and practices that should have finally gone into history's dustbin.
  There is yet another reason for putting democracy in the center of, rather than
as an afterthought to, the Left's politics. The most democratic possible settle-
ment would invariably be one that would have the best chance of harvesting the
fruits of the past seven years of popular struggle. A democratic non-racial
government genuinely responsive to those who have struggled during these
years could not permit existing discrepancies of wealth and poverty to stand. It
would strive for the maximum possible racial reconciliation, yes, but its
genuinely democratic commitments and functioning would drive it to place this
reconciliation within the framework of the maximum possible social change,
given the current balance of forces. It could not permit a tiny minority to
continue to control the wealth of South Africa. It could not allow the economic
future of the country to be presided over by a handful of white men.
     In other words, out of a commitment to the most democratic possible
settlement, the issue of socialism's relevance will pose itself all over again, and
in a new way. Another way to put the goal of a democratic non-racial govern-
ment would be to avoid an 'American solution' - where blacks achieve political
rights without corresponding changes in their social or economic power. Black
rule in cities like Detroit allows a modicum of black power and pride, the
building up of a black bureaucracy and political class, and creating the condi-
tions for the rise of a small number of blacks in businesses affected by
government contracts. But the real levers of power, corporate levers, national-
political levers, remain firmly where they always were, outside of the purview
of any conceivable black (or indeed working-class) power. The majority of
blacks, deprived of their traditional leadership - those one-time pillars of ghetto
cohesion, inspiration and discipline - by new possibilities of social, economic,
and residential mobility, only sink deeper, and displace their despondency onto
drugs, internalized violence, and crime.
    I am talking about the built-in limits to 'equal opportunity' in a society
systematically built on class privilege that has historically evolved intertwined
with racial oppression: poverty and inequality become 'hereditary.' This, and
the accompanying intensification of an ever-narrowing black nationalism, have
been the spontaneous American responses flowing from a narrow, 'political'
solution: it has been possible to talk about 'equal rights' and "equal opportunity'
in the abstract but not to talk about a concrete right to adequate housing, health
care, schooling or employment. Such a non-bourgeois conception of human
rights, and the economic policies to implement it, are of the essence of a
non-racial democracy. Otherwise, political equality becomes swallowed up by
economic inequality.
   The American lesson is a painful but simple one: because we have failed to
                                         18


TRANSFORMATION                                                            ARONSON
make these universal rights available to everybody regardless of race, class or
national origin, the heritage of racial domination continues to perpetuate itself
'on its own.' And it leads in turn to race-specific demands by blacks, who see
no other path out of their inherited and structural poverty, and to backlash by
poor and working whites, unable to conceive of these rights belonging to them,
who thus hear blacks demanding special preference. In the United States this
impasse has stemmed from the minority position of American blacks and their
consequent inability to contest the hegemony of formalistic bourgeois solutions
to social problems. Without vigorous political action on the national level,
without social transformations stretching far beyond 'affirmative action' and
'equal opportunity,' South Africa's black majority will follow in the pattern of
America's black minority, reproducing itself 'spontaneously' in a hereditary
poverty.
   South Africa, however, is not the United States: it has a black majority, and
struggles jp South Africa have ideologically leaped far beyond the narrow
bourgeois boundaries of the American struggles. When Mandela speaks of
non-racialism he has in mind these expansions of human rights as universal
demands, and the Freedom Charter has always seen them as being an intrinsic
part of a non-racial vision. There is a wide sympathy for' socialism' and a wide
identification of capitalism with apartheid. Social needs are urgent, and any
post-apartheid government will feel enormous pressure to move towards meet-
ing them.
    Moreover, symbolic political questions will loom as important as material
ones: demonstrating that a genuinely post-apartheid South Africa is being built
entails both non-racialism and the strong demand for economic, as well as
political, action that ministers to the needs of the long-oppressed majority. A
strong sense of economic and social as well as political justice has grown with
the movement, and a meaningful non-racial future demands concrete steps
toward greater material equality between white and black, as well as government
action to demonstrate that the economic apparatus, built by the people, belongs
to, and can be controlled by the people. All of these reasons have only
strengthened the ideological attraction to socialism of workers' organizations.
And they add up to significant pressures to move a democratic post-apartheid
South Africa away from institutionalizing a settlement firmly within the
economic and social status quo.
   What should we call this necessarily exploratory direction, radical insofar as
it rests on the needs of, and will of, the overwhelming majority? How to describe
a social-political-economic direction that remains committed to democracy in
traditional as well as new forms, that must mobilize great masses of people in
order to address some of their most crying social needs, that will ha ve to continue
                                            19


ARONSON                                                          TRANSFORMATION
the democratic movement's initiatives in creating new local governing struc-
tures to replace the discredited apartheid institutions, that has no ideological
attachment to the wholesale nationalization of industry or to other of the
now-discredited strategies of communism, that sees the end of apartheid in terms
of social and economic as well as political justice but is not powerful enough or
focused enough (or clear enough how to do it) to overthrow capitalism, but that
will insist on at least symbolically asserting social control over the economy
and a redistribution of wealth? I have strongly insisted that socialism in the
Marxian sense is not on the agenda and that we cannot even be clear what its
meanings and structures are. But it is equally true that any South African
government that tries to base itself on, and seeks to reflect, the will of the masses
will be impelled in a direction traditionally associated with socialism. The best
way to describe this direction, I would argue, is as democratic socialism.
  Yes, the term is ill-defined and open-ended. Yes, none of us knows precisely
what it means. But this is part of its attraction. 1 emphasize such an ill-defined
term for two reasons: the stress it puts on democracy, and the very fact that no
one knows exactly what it means. First, it has no historical baggage to over-
come, unlike communism and social democracy - this means that democratic
socialism will have to be defined as it is developed. It is intended as a term that
is intrinsically exploratory, indefinite, open-ended. Democratic socialism
projects a direction that is clearly not Marxist-Leninist, but is clearly not
social-democratic - that is, on the one hand its focus is not on party power or a
state-controlled and centrally planned economy, and on the other hand, its focus
is not on creating a welfare net for softening the harshness of the capitalist
economy.
  If we are not sure precisely what it means, the meaning of democratic socialism
will have to be debated, created, described, and explored, in theory and practice.
This is why /suggest it. The Left here as well as everywhere else in the world
has had a new historical task imposed on it by the overthrow of communism -
to redefine its project, to spell out meaningful new directions, to articulate new
visions. Nothing is clear, nothing is given - except that there is a Left, that it
exists for good reason, and its various struggles have achieved important
victories.
    Democratic socialism is the best rubric under which to articulate a new
direction for South Africa - because it demands consolidating some of the gains
of the struggle and yet disavows communism. At the same time, it expresses a
radical commitment to democracy. It acknowledges that the balance of forces
does not favor a full-scale revolutionary transformation, and that we do not even
know what that would look like. It acknowledges that building a democratic
culture is one of the very great priorities for post-apartheid South Africa. It
                                         20


TRANSFORMATION                                                             ARONSON
allows such measures as the partial nationalizations of the major monopolies,
in the name of democracy and need, but also acknowledges that the new South
Africa will respect fundamental human rights.
   And it presses the SACP, in a comradely way, on two of its most vulnerable
flanks: Will the Party follow Joe Slovo's critique of Stalinism by democratizing
itself, beginning with carrying through the same kinds of transformations as the
German and Italian Communist Parties (now the Party of Democratic Socialism
and the Party of the Democratic Left)? Will it openly discuss and debate its
vision of the task at hand, perhaps committing itself, at the behest of its
membership, to the kinds of radical changes I have been suggesting? Or will it
rather see its role as occupying a key position in a limited transfer of power that
essentially abandons the struggle for a social transformation of South Africa?
XI
   As I draw this letter to a close, it is with the bitter-sweet awareness that
something is probably passing from the scene among South Africans at home
and abroad, as well as among those of us who have become involved in your
struggle over the years. The conditions are passing which led some of us to
discover South Africa and to so powerfully love it, you, and your struggle. These
conditions will, we know, be replaced by new ones, in which some of the
oppressions of the past will be removed, some will continue, and some will be
transformed into new oppressions. The absolute moral character of the struggle
against the absolute evil of apartheid is being replaced - by a series of ever-more-
complex grey-on-grey struggles to find the most democratic possible direction
for overcoming the negative effects of the three hundred year-old colonial
encounter. I said earlier that the community of resistance, developed under the
world's most brutal social system, intensified by police-state conditions, is
beginning to fragment. Many, in South Africa as well as overseas, will probably
become disillusioned and discouraged by this process, as the space widens
between one-time comrades. But we can console ourselves that not only is it
inevitable, but it is the sure sign of a movement's success.
   Those who refuse disillusionment and continue to struggle will have to find
new resources in themselves, based on new ways of grasping what they have
always sought: a society characterized by democracy, equality, and social
justice. I remain hopeful about South Africa, because a number of important
positive changes are definitely on the agenda. I remain hopeful because of the
deep and principled non-racialism of the movement, which can teach black and
white Americans so much about what post-colonial race relations might be like.
There is no reason to bewail the fact that the current balance of forces does not
favor a deeper social transformation, because it is premature to be arguing, let
                                          21


ARONSON                                                                          TRANSFORMATION
alone struggling, for structures that none of us can define with great clarity or
self-confidence. Paradoxically enough, the other hand, perhaps the very im-
passe which has led de Klerk to propose negotiations earlier rather than later
may improve the chances for creating a democratic culture - for the simple
reason that no party can now impose its will on any other. Accommodation,
toleration, compromise - developing these habits, and the processes to en-
courage them, will be the order of the day, for whites as well as blacks, for all
social classes. No force can win a total victory under current conditions, and
this may impose a willingness to follow democratic procedures on all sides.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this will lead to a spirit of self-restraint and tolerance on
all sides that will have long-run benefits for South Africa's future.5
     So I do not find reason to lament that the tasks are not maximalist or
revolutionary in traditional terms. What is to be done is of the utmost impor-
tance for the fate of South Africa, tasks worth pursuing for their own sake and
because the struggle for social transformation begins with the struggle for
democracy. The specific goals spring from this particular moment in South
African history: to build a democratic culture, to demand the maximum possible
democracy, to strive for the maximum possible racial reconciliation within the
maximum possible social change. For the Left this is a full and pressing agenda.
 Notes
 1.1 should add that my recent visa application, unlike the first, was referred to Pretoria. Between
                 . - . . - - ... - ..              . . _ . . . - .. _ . .          __ my politic.
on record. Although I applied two months before departure date, I had not received my visa two
weeks before I was supposed to leave; only emergency telephone calls to the SRC, ana
subsequent calls to Pretoria, produced a visa ten days before my departure.
2. From this point of view, De Klerk has clearly answered the questions I posed in Stay Out of
Politics: 'When, if ever, will realistic strategic calculation prevail among whites? Or will
hysteria and siege mentality win out?' In term of my analysis there, what De Klerk and his
Afrikaans-speaking constituency have succeeded in doing is to free themselves from the myth of
Afrikaner identity and to assert instead a class identity, reaching out to English-speakers to create
                                                                       .                        /cut
                                                        - that large number of Afrikaners whose
well-being depends on their Afrikaner identity or the color of their skins. They will oppose the
settlement, perhaps to the death, screaming about identity and betrayal, but being cut adrift as a
lower-middle and working class to take their chances under majority rule. Indeed, they are the
ones who are likely to lose the most under majority rule - robs, status, a sense of belonging, petty
privileges. Lacking the skills, power, self-confidence, ana capital of their Afrikaner brethren,
they will have to compete against more able blacks for the jobs they now hold as a benefit from
being part of the Afrikaner cross-class coalition. That coalition is now being shattered inasmuch
as it has performed its historical function for the Afrikaner bourgeoisie, and now stands in the
way of a new consolidation and stabilization. The historical origins of this process are presented
byt>anO"Meara(1983).
3. It would say 'not yet,' arguing that unrestricted free enterprise is the answer for South Africa.
Apartheid, and the Afrikaner determination that the state intervene in the economy in other
decisive ways, are argued as being contrary to the modem, capitalist spirit, the free flow of labor
                                                    22


  TRANSFORMATION                                                                           ARONSON
  and capital, the process of genuine economic freedom and competition. And this hes ahead.
  This position obscures the early capitalist stake in apartheid (particularly mining capital) as well
  as subsequent capitalist complicity with apartheid. For the capitalist arguments see Merle Lipton
   (1985); for my criticism of this position see Aronson (1990:105-26).
  4. This is one theme of Pallo Jordan's critique of Joe Slovo's 'Has Socialism Failed' in
  Transformation, 10. I have explored the question at length in Aronson (1984).
  5. Just as (another heresy on the Left) SWAPO's failure to win a two-thirds majority in the
  elections for a constituent assembly may be a long-term blessing for Namibia?
  References
  Aronson, R (1984)       - The Dialectics of Disaster: A Preface to Hope (London).
  Aronson, R (1990)       - 'Stay Out of Polities': A Philosopher Views South Africa (Chicago).
  Aronson, R (1990)       - "The End/s of Socialism', in Theoria, 2.
  Friedman, S (1987)      - Building Tomorrow Today: African workers in trade unions, 1970-84
                          (Johannesburg).
  Lewin, M (1976)         - Lenin's Last Struggle (New York).
  Lipton, M (1985)        - Capitalism and Apartheid (Aldershot, England).
  Lowy, M (1981)          - The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development: the theory of permanent
                          revolution (London).
  Moore, Barrington, Jr (1966) - Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: lord and peasant
                          in the making of the modern world (Boston).
  O'Meara, D (1983) - Volkskapitalisme: class, capital, ideology in the development of Afrikaner
                          nationalism, 1934-1948 (Cambridge).
                                 TRANSFORMATION
                                        WORKSHOP
Research in the social sciences in South Africa, inside and outside the
universities, has had a major effect on both the maintenance of
apartheid and attempts to dismantle it.
TRANSFORMATION proposes to hold a workshop late in 1991 on the
role of such research. Areas to be covered would include:
* the historical role of research;
* state research institutions;
* servicing the research needs of organisations;
* research for and in a post-apartheid South Africa.
IDRC, who are funding the workshop, aims to bring participants from
Latin America and Africa to contribute a comparative dimension.
For more information contact:
Research for Transformation
PO Box 37432
4067 Overport,
South Africa.
                                                     23