Review: B Magubane, The political economy of race and class in South Africa

Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane, The political economy of race and class in South Africa, Monthly Review Press, New York & London, 1979, pp364, hardback, £10.75. In the preface to this book, the author confides: 'I feel very lonely just now, for my assumptions challenge authorities on South Africa, and my Marxist methodology is anathema to most liberal minds' (p xiii). Magubane's methodology is best illustrated by his characterisation of apartheid as having a "psychosociological function' (p256). For the author, 'apartheid marks the last stage in the white settlers' neurotic flight from reality' (p240). Liberal minds will not be too perturbed by this. When an attempt is made to explain capital's need to maintain the political oppression of the African population in psychological terms it proves anathema not to liberals but to Marxists.

Magulane's book is no more than a liberal history of Simons' Class and colour in South Africal on most essential points. Like Simons and Simons, history of African resistance so that it conforms with the politics of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and its sister organisation, the African National Congress (ANC).

This book does not even present the wealth of material amassed by Simons and Simons - it is merely an apology Magubane's 'Marxist methodology' leads him to describe the formation of the SACP as a 'potentially major step forward', and to remark that 'from then on, the aims, character, and outlook of the national liberation and labour movements were informed by a scientific ideology' (p282).

The SACP's record shows what this 'scientific ideology' has meant in practice. The party chose to work among South Africa's white labour aristocracy whom it defined as a vanguard. As a result it adapted to the white workers' attacks on the black proletariat during the 1922 Rand Rebellion. Until 1928 it refused to take up the struggle against the oppression of the black population.

Despite this approach the SACP was unable to gain credibility among white workers. Together with growing state repression and a series of directives from the Soviet bureaucracy, this failure forced the party to turn towards the black masses. Whereas before it adapted to the chauvinism of the white working class, the SACP came to uphold the banner of petit-bourgeois nationalism. The main effect of this new orientation was to give the ANC the radical credentials it still likes to crow about today.

The gradual merger of the SACP with the ANC undermined the struggles of the African working class against the racist state. At the very time when the black working class was growing in strength, the SACP and the ANC advised the proletariat to support its oppressors. During the Second World War they backed the imperialist war effort and told African workers to postpone their demands for democratic rights. ANC President Luthuli argued that his organisation 'would rather fight for, and correct the evils of our present State' than agitate for the independent mobilisation of the Magubane conveniently forgets little details like this.

Instead he blames the disastrous consequences of the politics of the SACP/ANC on the African masses. His assessment of the 1946 mineworkers' strike is characteristic: 'The strike ended in disaster, doomed to failure because it was not based on a political will strong enough to carry it through.

The task of the ANC and its allies became that of charting a course of action that would channel energies and resources in such a way that if another revolt became necessary, it would be meaningful in creating a revolutionary situation.' (p294) The strike did not fail because there was no 'political will strong enough to carry it through'. The African working class demonstrated its combativity throughout the 'forties.

African working class and directed its energies into the dead end of reforms. Betrayals like this were repeated all through the next decade. In a situation where reforms are impossible, the SACP/ANC led the African working class into a succession of bankrupt civil rights campaigns - each ending in defeat.

The strength of the African proletariat when it broke from the SACP/ANC. The Alexandra Bus Boycott, for which Magubane falsely gives credit to the ANC, illustrated the solidarity of black workers. Magubane states: 'In 1957 the people of Alexandra township boycotted the bus service for three months because of a penny increase in the fare, and other townships • came out in sympathetic boycotts. After extensive negotiating behind the scenes, the fare was reduced. The Africans were learning the power of united action; they were voting with their feet.? (p305) 47 Magubane is correct to point to the ANC's 'behind the scenes' negotiations, but he fails to mention that these negotiations went on without the consent of the boycotters" and township committees? It was not the negotiating skills of the ANC but working class solidarity that led to the elimination of the fare increases. Indeed, the compromise settlement which the negotiators accepted was overwhelmingly rejected by the workers.

Victory • was won despite the ANC.4 Magubane's rewrite of history is in the well-established tradition of Stalinism. His radical but superficial analysis glosses over the politics of class collaboration.

Charles Longford 1 H J Simons & RE Simons, Class and colour in South Africa 1850-1950, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969.

2 ANC annual conference, December 1941. Quoted in T Karis & G M Carter, eds, From protest to challenge, Vol 2. Staniord A leaflet published at the time referred to the ANC leadership as the "main anti-boycott spokesmen. Ibid. pp394-95

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BUILDING THE REVOLUTIONARY

PARTY AND THE INTERNATIONAL

The working class today faces the consequences of a major their interests workers urgently require revolutionary organisation - nationally and internationally. 'Our tasks and methods' and 'The question of the International' constitute a critical assessment of the degeneration of working politics in the post-war period. First published in the mid 'seventies, these articles provide the foundation on which to build the revolutionary party in the 'eighties.

BOOKS RECEIVED

L Evans, China after Mao, Pathfinder, 1979, pp194, pbk £2.00, cloth £8.00. C Bettelheim & N Burton, China since Mao, Monthly Review, New York & London, 1978, pp128, pbk £1.50, hbk £4.40. N Bukharin, The politics and economies of the transition period, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1979, pp264, £9.50. E Hyams, PJ Proudhon: his revolutionary life, mind and works, John Murray, London, 1979, pp304, £10.00.

M Salvadori, Karl Kautsky and the socialist revolution 1880-1938, New Left Books, 1979, pp373, £9.50.

M Pitt, The world on our backs: the Kent miners and the 1972 miners' strike, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1979, pbk f2.95, hbk £5.95. C Jenkins & B Sherman, The collapse of work, Eyre Methuen, London, 1979, pp182, pbk £3.50, hbk £7.50.

R Rose & G Peters, Macmillan, 1979, pp270, £7.95.

VI Lenin & L Trotsky, Kronstadt, Monad, New York, 1979, pp159, pbk £1.50, cloth £5.10.

A Wilson, Finding a voice: Asian women in Britain, Virago, London, 1978, pbk £2.50. J Rex & S Tomkinson, Colonial migrants in a British city: a class analysis, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1979, J Dorkin, The crime and punishment of 1G Farben: the birth, growth and death of a giant corporation, Andre Deutsch, London, 1979, pp250, £6.50.

W Ananaba, The trade union movement in Africa: promise and performance, C Hurst, London 1979, pp236, pbk J B Cullingworth, Essays on housing policy: the British scene, Allen & Unwin, London, 1979, pp224, pbk £3.95, Corrigan, Ramsay & Sayer, Socialist construction and Marxist theory: Bolshevism and its critique, Macmillan, 1978, £8.95. M Rakovsky, Towards an Allison & Busby, London, 1979, pp139, pbk £3.50.

R Fraser, Blood of Spain: the experience of civil war 1936- 1939, Allen Lane, London, 1979, pp628, £15.00 G Radice, Industrial democrats: trade unions in an uncertain world, Allen & Unwin, London, 1979, pp265, £3.50.

A Nove, Political economy and soviet socialism, Allen & Unwin, London, 1979, pp264, £10.00.

H M Drucker, Doctrine and ethos in the Labour Party llen & Unwin, London, 1979, pp152, pbk £2.95, hbl £6.50. D Sayer, Marx's method: ideology, science and critique in Capital, Harvester, Sussex, 1979, pp208, £10.95.

D A Smart (ed), Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism, Pluto Press, London, 1978, pp176, pbk £2.95.

V Keig (ed), Women's liberation and the socialist revolu ion, Pathfinder, London, 1979, pp96, pbk £1.00, clott £3.60. A Foreman, Femininity as alienation: women and the family in Marxism and psychoanalysis, Pluto Press, London, 1978, ppl68, pbk £2.40, hbk £4.80.

A Kuhn & AM Wolpe, Feminism and materialism, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1978, pp328, pbk £3.95.

B Weinbaum, The curious courtship of women's liberation and socialism, South End Press, Boston, 1978, pp168, pbk £3.95 E B Pashukanis, Law and Marxism, Ink Links, London, 1978, pp195, £5.95. 1978, ppl 09, pbk £2.50, hbk £6.50 pbk £2.30, cloth £7.20. 1979, pp394, £10.75. London, 1979, pp129, £1.95.

Can governments go bankrupt?, U.S. Capitalisin In Crisis ol the current economic crisis Includes over thirty arlicies on work, wornen and social inslitulions 352 pp Economics of Millon Friedman and the Chilean Junta "Chicago School" economics are an integral part of the Chilean Junta's repressive policies Taxes for the Rich and the Rest taxes and lolal lax susiem related lo income and wealth shows how the middle income aroues nav and why they proles!

ECONOMICS

Eastern European Marxism, Subacription: Valume 3, 1979 £12.50 (UK), $ 33.50 (ovarsens) major contemporary issues, conomic policies rom recent issue their inflationary impact.

Academic Press 48 CAke, Revolutionary pressures in Africa, Zed Press, London, Leon Trotsky on France, Monad, New York, 1979, pp271, W Benjamin, One way street, New Left Books, London, Writings of Leon Trotsky (Supplement 1929-33), Pathfinder, London, 1979, pp428, pbk £3.00, cloth £12.80 Jones & Kavanagh, British politics today, Manchester University Press, 1979, pbk £1.60, cloth £3.75.

O Semyonova (ed), Workers against the Gulag, Pluto Press,

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