pandemonium documents
Terrorism & Violence
No. 756
Friends,
exactly two decades ago, I made a contribution to a book, that was used by
African university students in Nigeria. At that time, in 1983/4, all over
Africa we were discussing the apartheid terror, fascist terrorism and nazi
violence in the African context, as they were practized by European and American
imperialism in Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Zimbabwe
and especially in South Africa.
For
the sake of historic reference, I made no changes to the original text, which
indicates my degree of political reflection at that time, but also to reach
students who today still may have a similar degree of historic consciousness.
Of course, the topic has lost nothing of its originality and actuality,
especially not with reference to terrorism and violence in their current
globalized forms. Thus, enjoy this unique writing. It is of emancipatory
significance for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and Latin America.
Franz.
30/07/03.
Leon Trotsky:
Violence, Revolution and Emancipation in South Africa
By Prof. Dr. Franz J. T.
Lee
Professor in Marxism and African Studies
University of The Andes, Mérida, Venezuela.
Contribution to the Book:
Violence in the African
Imagination
edited by
Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures
University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
1984.
THE CONCEPT VIOLENCE
Everywhere we encounter
„violence“. It seems to be a universal process which threatens the very destiny
of mankind. Everybody is talking about „violence“ and „peace“, as if the two
form a unity and contradiction of opposites. But, very few people seem to
know what this concept precisely connotes. In fact, there are just about as
many definitions of „violence“ as there are persons experiencing violence
daily.
In various discussions
we condemn „political violence“, „social violence”, „state violence“, „class
violence“, etc. However, what is violence in essence? Is it really the opposite
of „peace“, and what is „peace“?
TROTSKY AND VIOLENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA
On April 30, 1933,
Leon Trotsky, one of the most famous leaders of the historic October Revolution,
wrote a letter to the „Workers’ Party of South Africa“ (WPSA), concerning
„The National and Agrarian Struggles in South Africa“. 1)
While discussing the „national question“ and the possibility of the „Blacks“,
establishing a „separate State“ after a victorious political revolution,
he emphatically stressed: „ … let them make this admission freely, on the
basis of their own experience, and not forced by the sjambok (whip) of the
White oppressors“. 2)
It is of great interest what Trotsky had contrasted here, the sjambok of
the White oppressors, and, admission freely, on the basis of experience,
práxis-theory. Trotsky, being a revolutionary scientific socialist,
and having experienced Stalin's political terror and violence, knows very
well that in South Africa, in the historic process of the class struggle,
an inexorable dialectical battle was taking place between the forces of „violence“
and those of „freedom“. This was the unity and contradiction of opposites,
the motor of history, and today this confrontation continues with greater
„force“ and velocity.
Now, what is the praxical-theoretical
background of the above contention? Firstly, we have to understand the philosophic
basis on which Trotsky made his scientific analysis, his approach and method.
Without these, it is impossible to grasp such a concept as „violence“ in
its processual manifestations.
According to Scientific
Socialism or Marxism, and, for our purposes, the two are synonymous, the concrete
philosophical basis of dialectical materialism (incidentally, a concept which
Marx never used in his works) is eternal, living matter. Like the concept
„mode of production“, the term „matter“ is an abstract-logical universal
category. Because matter permanently changes, as expressed in its various
forms and content, essence and appearance, probabilities, potentialities,
latencies and tendencies, etc., 3)
because it is in eternal flux, it is impossible for the human mind, for thinking
and theory, to grasp its true reality. Hence, in discussing a concept like
„violence“, which is part of the process of the evolution of matter, we
can only hope to approximate with increasing precision the essence and reality
of this phenomenon. What it was a million years ago, what it is today, and
what it will be tomorrow, all are different, and even the subject analysing
„violence“ permanently changes.
The method of dialectical
materialism is the dialectical method, based on the science of movement, of
evolution, of change, dialectics. 4)
Concerning the elusiveness and immutability of matter, of reality, Goethe
remarked: „Theory, my friends, is gray, but green is the eternal tree of
life.“ Thus, materialist dialectics is the logic of motion, of universal change
manifesting itself on the levels of nature, history and human thought. 5)
On December 15, 1939, Trotsky, criticizing Burnham and Shachtman, pointed
out: „dialectical thinking gives to concepts, by means of closer approximations,
corrections, concretizations, a richness of content and flexibility; I would
even say a succulence which to a certain extent brings them close to living
phenomena. ... We call our dialectic, materialist, since its roots are neither
in heaven nor in the depths of our ‘free will’ , but in objective reality,
in nature.“ 6)
And, some of the laws of the dialectics, discovered by Hegel, and applied
to materialism by Marx and Engels, he enumerated as follows: „Hegel in his
logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development
through contradictions, conflict of content and form, interruption of continuity
(discontinuity), change of possibility into inevitability, etc., which are
just as important for theoretical thought as in the simple syllogism for more
elementary tasks.“ 7)
Like any other science,
which studies a particular kind of motion, dialectics has its laws and categories,
and, even they are not absolute or eternal. Among these categories are those
who will interest us specifically: essence-appearance, absolute-relative,
abstract-concrete, form-content, theory-praxis. They express the dialectical
compound of the contradiction and unity of opposites, which we find in every
object, subject, phenomenon or process.
DIALECTICS AND VIOLENCE
Now, let us look at
the features of the dialectical method, which Engels had described in Ludwig
Feuerbach as „our best working tool and our sharpest weapon“. In this respect,
we have also to look very closely at the oscillation between thought and
reality, the abstract and the concrete, essence and appearance, theory and
praxis. Ernest Mandel, in his major work, Late Capitalism, gave an excellent
synthesis of the dialectical method used by Marx and Trotsky. 8)
Violence as a phenomenon has a cause (or causes) and an effect (or effects),
it has an essence and various appearances, it has specific contents and can
appear in various forms in history and in social life.
Man has developed
science, precisely because appearance and essence are never identical. Marx,
in Capital, stated: „All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance
and the essence of things directly coincided.“ 9)
Violence as it appears on the signs „Whites Only“, as the demarcation SOWETO,
is not necessarily identical with the essence of violence of the apartheid
system. Violence, like everything else, in essence has a historical and material
character. It enters the world, history, under specific material conditions,
it develops into and through various forms, and, in a Hegelian dialectical
sense, eventually „meets its doom“. What is more significant, a thing never
comes-into-being alone, it always is born with its opposite. The unity and
contradiction of these two phenomena is the material for scientific investigation.
Worse even, everything has in its own essence already the unity and contradiction
of opposites. Novack wrote: „The essence of a thing never comes into existence
by itself and as itself alone. It always manifests itself along with and by
means of its own opposite. This opposite is what we designate by the logical
term appearance.“ 10)
Hence, the essence of violence is what is necessary for its appearance in
the world, in history, in South Africa, in the „African imagination“. It is
the totality of qualities without which violence cannot be born, and, if
they disappear, violence necessarily and „rationally“ will perish. And when
a thing changes its essence, it changes essentially.
Logically, it is necessary
to attempt to comprehend how violence had historically, as essence, entered
African reality, and how its appearance forms throughout history had been
reflected in the African „imagination“, in African philosophy. Such a work
would however dialectically surpass the formal limits of this brief essay.
Hence, I will just sketch the essential points of relevance.
Trotsky, as revolutionary
Marxist, in various works, in which he had analysed manifold social phenomena,
especially the October Revolution, had always pointed out that in the development,
the process of a thing, at the beginning its essence is almost wholly submerged
in a particular appearance. Generally, people, using Aristotle’s formal logic,
the mother who had died when the child Dialectics was born, tend to identify
forever the two as an indivisible whole. Gradually a thing „sloughs off“ its
original form, in a sense of how Anaximander had explained the development
of the apeiron, and assumes new appearance forms. In the case of South Africa,
Trotsky in his „Letter“ very carefully distinguished between „appearance“
of South Africa to the world, and to the „Whites“, as „Dominion“, and, its
„essence“, a „slave colony“, as the „Blacks“ daily experienced it in 1933.
In the course of development,
in its material movement, the essence and appearance of a thing, a phenomenon,
for example, violence, commingle at the peak, in the South African case,
in the apartheid system at the end of the 20th century, and then gradually
Hegel’s „doom“ sets in. Currently, apartheid having unfolded historically
its content of social discrimination, political oppression, economic exploitation
and human degradation, slowly is moving toward something else, under the
pressure of the forces of emancipation, its negation, that is, its essence
is fading away. Similarly, violence in South Africa, which is an intrinsic
part of this process, more and more is losing its essence, and permanently
changes its appearance forms. Eventually, apartheid and violence will become
less essential and finally nonessential.
VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION
How the above would be accomplished historically,
Trotsky explained very clearly in his „Letter“: „A victorious revolution is
unthinkable without the awakening of the Native masses; in its turn it will
give them what they are so lacking today, confidence in their strength, a
heightened personal consciousness, a cultural growth.“ 11)
Although Trotsky,
like Marx, Engels and Lenin, appropriated great significance to revolutionary
theory within the realm of political praxis - “without revolutionary theory,
no social revolution“ (Lenin) - nonetheless, we have no „treatise“ on Marxist
political theory, no „cook-book“ for the dialectics, no „recipe“ of how to
make social revolution, and no „constitution“ which fixes the laws of motion
of matter. Trotsky knew that the South African revolutionaries had to begin
with the concrete realities of their daily lives and in the scientific investigation
and analysis of these conditions had to move to the abstract, to a heightened
political consciousness, to a „confidence in their strength“. And, by applying
this „revolutionary theory“, gained from this practical revolutionary experience,
again to the changing reality of South Africa, the emancipatory struggle will
be elevated to a higher dialectical plane, ready to be analysed again in
a concrete-abstract fashion. The above indicates how the categories „concrete-abstract“
and „theory-praxis“ are applied in a social revolutionary process. Earlier
we had demonstrated how revolutionaries have to differentiate between „appearance“
and „essence“, and how these dialectical categories go hand-in-hand.
Concerning the above,
Mandel remarked: „To reduce Marx’s method to a ‘progression of the abstract
to the concrete’, however, is to ignore its full richness. In the first place,
this misunderstanding overlooks the fact that, for Marx, the concrete was
both the ‘real starting point’ and the final goal of knowledge, which he saw
as an active and practical process; the ‘reproduction of the concrete in
the course of thought’. Secondly it forgets that a progression from the abstract
to the concrete is necessarily preceded, as Lenin put it, by a progression
from the concrete to the abstract. For the abstract itself is already the
result of a previous work of analysis, which has sought to separate the concrete
into ‘its determinant relations’” 12)
The above is an excellent
example of how the dialectical categories „cause-effect“ and „analysis-synthesis“
operate. Obviously the analysis of violence in South Africa by the masses
and its revolutionary vanguard, as „abstract“ result, as „theory“, will only
be true if it will be successful in reproducing the „unity of the diverse
elements present in the concrete“, the police terror, personal harassment,
torture, murder, genocide by social order. It is well-known that the master
dialectician, Hegel, considered that only „the whole is true“. And, in our
case, the „whole“ is the unity of the concrete and the abstract, that is
the unity of opposites, which contradict each other. In the South African
context, concerning our topic, the „whole“ is the unity of apartheid violence
and African emancipation, and, the contradiction of the two.
Applying the abstract
again to the concrete is theory-praxis, another important category of the
dialectics, quintessential for social revolution. Mandel continues: „Fourthly,
the successful reproduction of the concrete totality only becomes conclusive
by application in practice. This means, among other things, that - as Lenin
expressly emphasized - each stage of the analysis must be subject to ‘control
either by facts, or by practice ‘”. 13)
The experience of
violence by the South African masses daily is a concrete manifestation, they
feel violence because it is a concentration of many determinations of apartheid
society, the unity of the diverse elements which make up their human tragedy.
Trotsky tried to contribute in an abstract-concrete manner to enable them
to be “liberated from slavish dependence“. 14)
And, although he gave examples from his own revolutionary experience, especially
of the October Revolution, yet he did not consider that the African masses
should „reproduce“ the Russian experience at the „Cape of Storms“. He stressed
that he was „too insufficiently acquainted with the conditions in South Africa“,
and that the Black masses should make admissions „freely, on the basis of
their own experience“.
It is precisely in
the field of „experience“, of daily political práxis, where the concrete
workers of South Africa learn the dialectics, the laws and categories of the
logic of motion. It is when their „heightened personal consciousness“ (Trotsky)
becomes social consciousness, when their abstract reflections approximate
concrete reality, only then, they can find their way through the labyrinth
of South African apartheid ideology, falsifications, rationalizations and
lies. It is when they begin to grasp concrete totality, Hegel’s „whole“, only
then, they are approaching Truth, and nothing is more magnetic than Truth
to an oppressed creature searching for emancipation, and not Messianic salvation.
Although Trotsky is
using the category „race“, in a sense that it was used in his epoch, nevertheless
his views were scientific and not „racist“, he did not „exclude, of course
either full equality for Whites or brotherly relations between the two races“.
15)
But, he was utterly against the „devil of chauvinism“ (Trotsky) and stressed
revolutionary principles in the South African struggle: “... the worst crime
on the part of the revolutionaries would be to give the smallest concessions
to the privileges and prejudices of the Whites. Whoever gives his little finger
to the devil of chauvinism is lost.“ 16)
The point is: these „privileges and prejudices“ have to be abolished, and
not be interpreted in different ways. As I have already pointed out in 1982
in “Political Science in Africa”, in South Africa, „our aim can only be a
dialectical unity of scientific práxis and philosophic theory. Anything
else will land on the garbage heap of history.“ 17)
MARXISM AND VIOLENCE
Now, let us look more
closer at the Marxist conception of „violence“, especially from Trotsky's
cosmovision. In commemoration of all the brave sons and daughters who had
fallen in the South African struggle across the last 400 years, it is pertinent
here to relate Trotsky's own personal experience of political violence, the
murder of his beloved son, Leon Sedov. Leon Sedov, son of Natalia Sedova and
Trotsky, was murdered in a Paris hospital by agents of Stalin's GPU. In Mexico,
two years before he himself would be murdered by Stalin's secret international
police, on February 20, 1938, Trotsky wrote the article: Leon Sedov - Son,
Friend, Fighter. We will quote extensively to demonstrate a great revolutionary's
grieve and love in the face of international violence.
„As I write these
lines, with Leon Hesiod’s mother by my side, telegrams of condolence keep
coming from different countries. And for us each telegram evokes the same
appalling question: ‘Can it really be that our friends in France, Holland,
England, the United States, Canada, South Africa, and here in Mexico accept
it as definitely established that Sedov is no more?’ Each telegram in a new
token of his death, but we are unable to believe it as yet. And this, not
only because he was our son, truthful, devoted, loving, but above all because
he had, as no one else on earth, become part of our life, entwined in all
its roots, our co-thinker, our co-worker, our guard, our counsellor, our friend.
.... Leon was a thoroughly clean, honest, pure human being. He could before
any working-class gathering tell the story of his life - alas, so brief -
day by day, as I have briefly told it here. He had nothing to be ashamed
of or to hide. Moral nobility was the basic warp of his character. ... Together
with our boy has died everything that still remained young within us. ...
Goodbye, Leon! We bequeath your irreproachable memory to the younger generation
of the workers of the world. You will rightly live in the hearts of all those
who work, suffer, and struggle for a better world. Revolutionary youth of
all countries! Accept from us the memory of our Leon, adopt him as your son
....“ 18)
Alas, the revolutionary
youth of South Africa know today, half a century later, very little about
Trotsky, about his thoughts and his work, and practically nothing about his
son, their adopted brother. Violently South Africa, by means of „Suppression
of Communism“ and „Terrorism“ Acts, had waged a life-and-death struggle against
Marxism. But, also the Communist Party of South Africa, which had followed
all the zig-zag manoeuvres of Stalin's foreign policy, and the Soviet Union
itself until today, had done everything possible to blot out the very memory
of Leon Trotsky and Leon Sedov. However, the Truth is the Whole, and one
cannot negate one’s contradiction, without negating one’s self. Historically,
as the 20th century is drawing towards a close, both Leons as revolutionary
heritage of all „wretched of the earth“ are gradually penetrating even the
virgin land of the African „imagination“. And all the defamations of etiquetting
real revolutionaries as „Trotskyites“ or „Trotskyists“ would not stop this
world process - if the true „Marxist-Leninists“ had studied their history
thoroughly, by using the dialectical method, they would have known that even
Lenin was a „Trotskyite“ after 1917, and that Lenin was the first one to criticize
himself in the face of the eternal laws of motion of matter of everchanging
history. It is not the committing of scientific errors which is the problem,
it is their elevation to ossified dogma, by using the Aristotelian forms
of logic, which has severely harmed emancipatory progress.
VIOLENCE AND THE FUTURE OF MANKIND
For mankind, the problem
of abolishing and surpassing „violence“ began in its „cradle“, in Africa.
However, before tracing the history of „violence” until South Africa of the
20th century, let us examine two important dialectical categories, „relative-absolute“
and „affirmation-negation“, which are immensely relevant in elucidating this
historic process. In objective reality, in the processes of matter, „negative“
or „positive“, „absolute“ or „relative“, have no human „moral“ meaning. The
process of „human history“ within the universal processes can be titulated
by us as „positive“ or „negative“, but, in the last analysis, whether „human
production“ as a process perishes or not, is not a matter dependent on „human
will“ or desires. In fact according to Hegel, even history will meet its
inevitable „doom“. Within class society, it depends on class interests how
to define what is „positive“ or „negative“, thus, these categories are „relative“;
absolute only is the relation of both to the universal processes. And, even
then, for the dialectics, nothing is absolute, because the „absolute“ is
relative to the „relative“.
Mandel explains the
above as follows: „To understand motion, universal change, is also to understand
the existence of an infinite number of transitory situations. ... That is
why one of the fundamental characteristics of dialectics is the understanding
of the relativity of things, the refusal to erect absolute barriers between
categories, the attempt to find mediating forces between opposing elements.
... the relativity of categories is only partial relativity and not absolute
relativity, ... in turn, it is equally necessary to make relativity relative.“
19)
Why the „missing link“,
the hybrid process between man and ape, dialectically ever came into existence,
was precisely due to a unity and contradiction of opposites: Nature-Man. Man,
including his most relevant feature, highly-developed consciousness, is a
product, a child of natural objective processes, of the motion of matter.
In the natural process, long before Man’s birth, potentially, in latency and
tendency, the possibility of the evolution of man, including consciousness,
was always present, is still existent, and may be existent elsewhere in the
universe, even after Man has met his inevitable Hegelian „doom“, which is
a dialectical synthesis to another essence and appearance, but surely not
what we generally understand as „divine essence“ and „heavenly appearances“.
MAN, NATURE AND VIOLENCE
For conscious Man,
who had lost himself, namely his umbilical cord to Mother Nature, Nature itself
became a threat, a negation. In a most general sense, this threat to survival,
to human life, was consciously comprehended as „negative“ to Man. Man felt
that he was born in a violent natural surrounding. In all Man’s mythology,
magical and religious beliefs, this threat of „violence“ can be traced back.
But, as he was forced to labour, to use and develop tools, the principle
of hope, the „positive“, the „affirmative“, emancipation also dawned into
human consciousness. Thus, the unity and contradiction of violence-emancipation
was established, but nothing about “violence-peace“ appeared in antiquated
African imagination. Hence, Man is born in natural violence, he did not create
violence, in other words, violence, in this sense, is natural, even positive
to the process of human production. Without this natural violent threat human
society, history could never have developed. From this point of view, „violence“
is not such an ugly word, as the „lords of the earth“ want us to make-believe.
There are „mediating forces“ between the categories „violence-emancipation“,
that is, they are relative to each other, emancipatory violence and violent
emancipation.
In Africa, eventually
the contradiction Man-Nature, gained more „essence“, and developed into Society-Nature,
taking on various „appearance“ forms, and spreading its „content“ across the
globe. With higher specialization, a more developed technology, division of
labour, the emergence of classes, the genesis of private property of the means
of production, etc., a new contradiction was created by Man directly in Society,
a class contradiction, and thus, social class violence entered into the world,
and into Africa. From a primary contradiction, a secondary one developed.
Violence now developed into a new appearance form, class rule, ruling class
violence. And, emancipation became class struggle. Class violence took on
many appearance forms, religious persecution, political repression, economic
exploitation, “racial“ discrimination, degradation of the woman, etc. At
present class violence has reached such an intensity that once more the very
existence, the essence of humanity, is threatened by total destruction, not
so much by a nuclear holocaust, but by capitalism itself. The secondary contradiction
has developed to an immediate primary contradiction again, and it essentially
coincides with the original one: Society-Nature. The very human process of
production, history is at stake.
In this context „violence“
has to be seen in South Africa; this is how Trotsky had conceived it when
he supported social revolution in South Africa; and this is how it should
be truly reflected in the African „imagination“. Whether the end of human
history is „positive“, „affirmative“, „bad“ or „sad“ for mankind, is not the
question. The problem is to comprehend our place and role within the universal
process, in the motion of living matter.
VIOLENCE AND EMANCIPATION
Violence is a contradiction
to Emancipation. In a certain sense, it tends to obstruct, to decelerate the
motion of liberation, but motion itself is a function of totality, and it
is our function, our objective too, thus, we have to be on the move to freedom.
Our current problem is the Marxian dialectical leap to the „realm of necessity“,
and further to the „realm of freedom“. And, in this respect, another dialectical
category, “continuity-discontinuity“, a hybrid situation, gains great significance,
especially in an epoch of „transition“ and transformation. „What is to be
done?“ (Lenin) can be discovered in Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution,
which has its genesis in Marx’s theory-praxis itself. And, concerning what
has been stated above, Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development
precisely explains the problem „continuity-discontinuity“.
That violence can
be eradicated in South Africa, in Africa, in the world, is a material possibility,
and we know the method of how to accomplish this. The method can be found
in the whole process of theory-praxis of emancipation throughout human history,
and not only in the written works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. Philosophically,
already Greek philosophers like Anaximander or Heracleitus had used the dialectical
method to explain the world out of itself. If we study ancient Asian, African
and South American thought scientifically, we will probably discover that
early Man in those regions had also done the same. In fact, the process of
human production, history, could not have developed, if this method had not
been applied, even though it was accidental or unconsciously. The relevance
of Scientific Socialism is that we now know how to make history consciously.
As Marx had stated,
capitalism, which in its essence is violence, violent exploitation, was born
into the world, “.... from head to toe, with blood, flowing from all its pores“.
20)
So it entered Africa and South Africa. And, so it is essentially today still.
Apartheid, Nazism, Fascism are just some of its most obvious appearance
forms. In its essence wages the permanent class struggle, capital versus
labour. In that dialectical struggle violence and emancipation find their
flowing location.
Now, for praxical
purposes, the science of motion, dialectics, operates with the categories
„proletariat-bourgeoisie“,“workers-capitalists“, but they are abstract-logical
concepts, they have constantly to be verified on the real historical terrain.
The Black mineworkers of South Africa are not identical with Marx’s concept
of „proletariat“ in the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Hence, dialectics is
not a dogma or a „Workers’ Bible“, it is the proletariat’s theory of knowledge,
whose práxis is permanent revolution. Knowledge is an instrument to
conserve homo sapiens sapiens, but, at the same time to revolutionize it.
Thus, scientific knowledge is directed against all appearance forms of violence
which threaten human survival. Ernest Mandel: „Knowledge is, therefore, born
of the social practice of humanity; its function is to perfect this practice.”
21)
REVOLUTIONARY PRÁXIS-THEORY
This brings us to
the exposition of the dialectical category: revolutionary „praxis-theory“
in general, and more specifically, in South Africa. Each thing, each movement
has characteristics or peculiarities which are specific to it. Violence in
South Africa has a specific „racial“ oppressive feature, which is not the
case for example, in Switzerland or Venezuela. But, both can only be explained
and comprehended within the framework of a larger entity, capitalist class
violence. It follows, by applying the category „general-specific“, that the
class struggle in South Africa will have its specific „práxis-theory“,
but, it is part of the general world revolution.
Concerning the peculiarity
of the South African revolution, Trotsky wrote in his „Letter“: „In so far
as a victorious revolution will radically change not only the relation between
the classes, but also between the races, and will assure to the Blacks that
place in the State which corresponds to their numbers, in so far will the
social revolution in South Africa also have a national character.“ 22)
Stressing the specificity
of the South African situation, Trotsky appealed to the South African „proletarian“
party to „solve the national question by its own methods“. This is how Trotsky
had operated in revolutionary praxical matters, and not with Comintern directives.
But, he immediately related the specific to the generals „The historical weapon
of national liberation can only be the CLASS STRUGGLE.“ 23)
He gave no relevance, in a revolutionary sense, to the „race struggle“,
„passive resistance“, „civil disobedience“, „non-violence“, etc. These mainly
preoccupied the South African Communist Party, obeying Stalin's directives,
and the „Congress“ movement of South Africa.
MARXIAN PRÁXIS-THEORY
Now, what is the Marxist
conception of „práxis-theory“, which Trotsky was applying here in the South African
context? Marx, in his first critique of Hegel, emphasized that „theory becomes
a material force when it grips the masses“ 24),
that is, when it „heightens“ their consciousness, giving them „confidence
in their strength“ (Trotsky). In concrete terms, it means that the working
masses of South Africa have to convert revolutionary theory, the dialectical
method, into an instrument, a weapon of social revolution. How the relation
práxis-theory comes into being, Marx had explained in the same essay:
„It is not enough that thought should seek to realize itself; reality must
also strive towards thought.“ 25)
It is a dual dialectical movement, and even reality, affected and changed
by praxis, can „strive“. Earlier, in another work, the otherwise very sober
and awake Marx, spoke about a „dream“ to be realized „consciously“: „It will
then be realized that the world has long since possessed something in the
form of a dream which it need only take possession of consciously, in order
to possess it in reality.“ 26)
Finally, concerning
práxis-theory, Marx came to the conclusion, in the Theses on Feuerbach
that it is not a matter of just interpreting the world in different ways,
the point, is to change it. Trotsky had urged the South African „proletarian
party“ that it „should in words and in deeds openly and boldly take
the solution of the national (racial) problem in its hands.“ (
my emphasis) 27)
It is evident that.
the emancipatory movement in South Africa, which is aimed against all forms
of violence, necessitates the essential guide of the dialectical unity of
práxis and theory. Such unity, however, cannot be realized without
a real, concrete revolutionary organization. The eradication of class violence
is not an individual task, it is the historic objective of South Africa's
masses, as a totality, in motion.
Ever since Sharpeville,
and particularly since Soweto, more than ever a true revolutionary organization
is necessary in South Africa to unite the workers’ and students’ struggles.
Ernest Mandel: „The function of a permanent revolutionary organization is
to facilitate a reciprocal integration of student and working class struggle
by their vanguards in a continuous way. There is not simply a continuum in
time but also, so to speak, a continuum in space in the form of a continuity
between different social groups who have the same socialist revolutionary
purpose.“ 28)
In this respect, Trotsky
was not blinded by „racial barriers“, already in 1933, half-a-century ago,
he saw the possibility of revolutionary White students and workers joining
the emancipation struggle: „The revolutionary party must put before every
White worker the following alternative: either with British imperialism and
with the White bourgeoisie of South Africa, or, with the Black workers and
peasants against the White feudalists and slaveowners and their agents, in
the ranks of the working class itself.“ 29)
As we can see, this clarion call for unity was not a simple moral matter,
but a principled question, based on revolutionary práxis-theory. Also,
in this case, the White workers have first to develop a „heightened“ political
consciousness, uniting revolutionary action and thought, because „any form
of theory which is not tested through action is not adequate theory, it is
useless theory from the point of view of the emancipation of mankind.“ (Mandel).
30)
The immediate objective
of the South African revolution, of the workers of South Africa, is the struggle
to acquire political power, State power. On February 4, 1921, when the Bolsheviks
were in power, and Trotsky was making an important contribution in práxis-theory,
writing on The Paris Commune, he stated: „Revolution is the open test
of strength between social forces in the struggle for power“. He continued,
giving a picturesque scene of how the dialectical method functions in theory-praxis,
changing quantity into quality: „The popular masses revolt, set in motion
by elemental vital impulses and interests, often without any conception of
the paths and goals of the movement: one party writes ‘law and justice’ on
its banners, another ‘order’; the ‘heroes’ of the revolution are ,guided by
a consciousness of ‘duty’, or are carried away by ambition; the behaviour
of the army is determined by discipline and fear, enthusiast, self-interest,
routine, soaring flights of thought, superstition, self-sacrifice - thousands
of feelings, ideas, moods, capabilities, passions, throw themselves into the
mighty whirlpool, are seized by it, perish or rise to the surface; but the
objective sense of a revolution is this - it is a struggle for State power
in the name of reconstruction of antiquated social relationships.“ 31)
The above also shows
the movement „concrete-abstract-concrete“, that „truth is always concrete“
(Lenin), and that „truth is the totality“ (Hegel). Classless society in Africa
had produced class society; the South African revolution, as part of the totality
of the African revolution, has the historic objective to produce on a higher
degree again a classless society. Trotsky: „But more important, in all probability,
will be the influence which a Soviet South Africa will exercise over the
whole of the Black Continent.“ 32)
The dialectical category „probability-inevitability“ more and more gains relevance,
as the South African revolution advances. 33)
But, the African revolutionaries have to be clear about what they want to
negate, and whereto they want to surpass. As the dialectician Spinoza had
emphasized: „Every determination is a negation“.
VIOLENCE AND CAPITALISM
It is the essence
of violence in apartheid South Africa, capitalism, which emancipation is determining,
negating and surpassing. Consciously this emancipatory movement, through
emancipatory violence and violent emancipation, currently, is surpassing through
the hybrid, transitory phase of the social revolution in South Africa. To
achieve this goal the revolutionaries are using thought processes, the laws
of the dialectics, as revolutionary instruments, to eliminate the various
obstacles - that is why the students of Soweto exploded so violently, and
why South Africa's Gestapo reacted so violently. But, goals are dialectically
interconnected with means. Mandel: „Only certain means, the sum total of whose
effects will actually bring us nearer to the goal, are efficient from that
point of view. ... Both the capacity for fixing goals (including inventing
new ones), and the constraints which imprison the choices of goals and means,
characterize the dialectics of knowledge.“ 34)
Trotsky was very clear about the political goal of the South African revolution:
„The overthrow of British imperialism in South Africa is just as indispensable
for the triumph of socialism in South Africa as it is for Great Britain itself.“
35)
In particular, it is the overthrow of imperialism in South Africa, and the
achievement of socialism, but this process, in general, is directly dialectically
linked with the overthrow of imperialism on a world scale, and the realization
of world socialism.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, now
it becomes clear why the term „violence“ cannot be „limited“ to its „normal“
(which is generally its bourgeois, ideological) connotation, that is, only
to its physical, moral and psychological meaning. It is because it is the
negation, contradiction of emancipation. Emancipation gives violence its
essential connotation. Also, the term “African“ is an abstract-theoretical
concept, like „mode of production“, it has to be related dialectically to
the emancipatory struggle, 36)
to the world revolution. The „African imagination“ is „African thought“, „African
philosophy“, the particular of the general, „Proletarian Thought“, „Proletarian
Philosophy“, Scientific Socialism, Marxism.
(Written originally in La Pedregosa, Mérida, Venezuela, 28th September, 1983.)
Notes
1)
Parts of this letter are published in: Franz
J. T. Lee, Südafrika vor der Revolution?, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,
Frankfurt am Main, 1973, pp. 185-188. The complete text was originally printed in „Workers’
Voice“, Cape Town, November 1944, Volume 1, No. 2, pp. 18-20.
5)
Novack, An Introduction
..., op. cit., p. 70. Mandel, Introduction ..., op. cit., p. 158
6)
Leon Trotsky, In
Defense of Marxism, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1981, 3rd Ed., pp. 50, 51.
8) Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, Verso, London, 1980, 2nd Impr., pp. 13-20.
9) Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, (Kerr Edition), London, 1972, p. 797.
10) Novack, Introduction ..., op. cit., p. 113.
11) Lee, Südafrika ..., op. cit., p. 185.
12)
Mandel, Late Capitalism,
op. cit., p. 14.
14) Lee, Südafrika ..., p.186.
15)
See: Franz J. T. Lee, „Raíces históricas
y socio-económicas de la ideología del ‘racismo’: Sudáfrica
y Guyana“, in: Guyana Hoy, edited by Rita Giacalone de Romero, Editores Corpoandes,
Editorial Venezolana C. A., Mérida, Venezuela, 1982, pp. 13 - 83. Also see: No Sizwe, One Azania, One
Nation, Zed Press, London, 1979.
19) Mandel, Introduction ..., p. 167.
20)
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Band I, Dietz Verlag,
Ost-Berlin, S. 800-801. My
free translation - FJTL.
21)
Mandel, Introduction
..., op. cit., p. 169.
27) Lee, Südafrika ..., p. 186.
29) Lee, Südafrika ..., p. 188.
30)
Mandel, The Revolutionary
Student ..., op. cit., p. 11.
32) Lee, Südafrika ..., p. 188.
34)
Mandel, Introduction
...,pp. 165, 166.
35) Lee, Südafrika vor der Revolution?, op. cit., p. 188.
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