"Civil Society"

[Mark Jones]

Brian, about 20 people erected barricades around a Dublin post office in
1916 and won a state. But no; if I was suggesting that I'd have said. But I
do believe in judging a party by it's programme, and the DEBATE programme is
all about reforms, now you mention it. Nothing wrong with that, except that
you and Patrick have shifted the terrain of debate: to begin with we were
discussing whether or not Harvey is right to ignore or minimise the scale of
environmental crisis, because that crisis is perhaps a fundamental one for
capital. Maybe the 'green modernisers' and Harvey are both right, and
everything will get sorted out, there'll be no climate change, no disasters,
and life will stagger on. But to know the answer we need to really analyse
the question. What you and Pat are doing is drag the question onto the
related but distinct terrain of struggles for environmental and social
justice here and now, and then in the process to say, see how difficult it
is to talk revolution, people are not interested, they need a raise and a
standpipe etc. Which may all be true but is not the point of our critique of
Harvey. You may in time build a mass movement by the methods you are
deploying and it may very well be revolutionary, but none of that has any
bearing on the issue of whether or not eco-crisis and related issues of
resource-depletion represent the kind of unsurmountable impasse which we
think they do represent for world capitalism.

Just because the question does not connect with the immediate issues you
face in the townships does not make it a wrong question. Trying
honestly to answer it, and then letting the answers form part of the
discourse and practice of your own political work, is surely legitimate is
it not? Our main complaint about Harvey is not that he is wrong, which he
probably is, to minimise the issue, but that he simply ignores it even while
seeming to address it.

Mark

Brian Ashley wrote:


> In response to Mark Jones' reply to Patrick Bond on civil society:
>
> So what do you propose us to do in SA. All 5 of us try and erect a
> barricade to make the pre-revolutionary, revolutionary.
>
> How to break the hegemony of reformist ideas that have become so
> predominant in the "new SA" over the mass of people? It seems to me
> through building social movements, through social mobilisations around
> the very issues that people are desperate for i.e. a living wage, decent
> home, access to water, electricity, health-care facilities etc; promises
> that were made in the Reconstruction and Development Programme a
> programme of popular organisations which was adopted by the ANC in
> December 1993.
>
> It is probably through the long journey of rebuilding the mass movement
> around basic needs that the possibility for challenging capitalism in
> SA, as elsewhere, will occur. It is only under these conditions that the
> necessary class organisations, combativity and consciousness will
> emerge.
>
> If only deprivation, poverty and inequality equalled insurrection and
> revolution wouldn't things be great.
> --
> Brian Ashley
> Alternative Information & Development Centre (AIDC)
> Tel (021) 4485197       Fax (021) 478583
> E-mail Aidc at iafrica.com Home-page http://aidc.org.za
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