>Of course a good deal of resistance to
neoliberalism in South Africa is incoherent (all "IMF riots"--not just
SA township fury over service cutoffs--have this characteristic). To
get to the point, though, there seem to be three main lines of
argument bouncing around.
It's not just the incoherence of it - the point I was making is that you have the tendency to discover MOVEMENTS when there are none or, alternatively, to substitute a small amount of left discourse (noise) for the real thing. Incoherent riots are not "working class civil society". The fact is most of your examples of action, resistance and criticism, happen to be responses from a small circle of activists and academics. I know a popular movement when I see one. 80 000 people marching to Bisho against Gqozo or the events around Chris Hani's funeral - those were evidence of a movement. Unfortunately they were also its last gasps.
Before you label me an armchair cynic: I don't deny the need to relate to things that are happening. We should however do so on the basis of a realistic assessment of their scale and real potential and also their politics.
>One--implicit because I don't think you or Peter would make it
explicit--is that you need a revolutionary political party apparatus to
make sense of and co-ordinate the struggles. Is that where you LM
folk are going?
I have no idea what Peter thinks. My view is that the party apparatus you talk about is not a realistic option at this time. If you took the trouble to study LM's position you might find that they are also not into party building and consciously wound up their centralised structure as inappropriate and counter-productive in current conditions. That's why (apart from their critique of environmentalism) neanderthals like Proyect resent them so much. I think you are just trying to caricature my argument by dragging out this sort of stuff.
>Another is that nothing's going on in the way of good
class/race/gender/environmental politics--or if there is anything
interesting it's been poisoned by the dreaded petit-bourgeois
NGOs.
Firstly, the combination you mention contains in itself fatal weaknesses. I don't believe that a "movement" trading on the retrogressive and catastrophist outlook of environmentalism has any future. But then we'll continue to disagree on this. Secondly, while you agree with much of what I say about NGOs and particularly the international ones [that they are often mere surrogates of the big powers/IMF/WB], you carry on operating as if there is a tactical approach which can allow progressives to plug into their programmes. As I said above, all this doesn't rule out working with people involved in struggle.
>And so you whinge and moan,
I prefer to call it critique
>and then what, promote a bizarre libertarian LMism that has virtually no
applicability or purchase in the semiperiphery?
I just think you just disagree with my critique of many features of politics in the "new" SA which often bear a scary resemblance to what's going on elsewhere. But anyway, please give a few examples of the "bizarre libertarian" approach you mention - otherwise I may just suspect that you are indulging in Proyect-style guilt-by-association-with-LM politics. You have, after all, retailed a lot of Lou's garbage on the Debate site. As for the "purchase" of my arguments: while a position that challenges current prejudices is never easy to put, I dispute that they have none. Are you suggesting that we should only make the "easy" arguments? Judging by your well-known propensity for bashing your head against brick walls, I doubt it.
>I never grasp where you okes
actually want to go with the cynical critique, because it absolutely
offers no new openings.
Again, when in doubt, caricature. How is my occasional critique of advancing authoritarianism in a humanitarian "left" guise, whingey, moany and cynical? I just think I'm being realistic. Too bad if it punctures your imaginary civil society activist balloon. As for my criticisms of your illusions in some international solution to third world problems based on dubious alliances, I think we just disagree fundamentally on this. As I've argued before, your notion of tactics in this area is coloured far too much by your experience of the US campus solidarity movement of years gone by.
I don't believe my critique offers "no new openings". I merely think that we can't carry on in the old way. To regurgitate the old rhetoric and style of organisation has already completely marginalised the left - despite what well-meaning people in other countries might think - in South Africa, as much as anywhere else.
>Those real militant moments--against not just green/white papers
but against their effect on the ground--offer far more potential than
can be dismissed as mere NGO and radical-academic activism.
I think we just have a radically different view of what constitutes a movement and, for that matter, a "militant moment". I won't talk about other countries as I have no direct knowledge of these. As regards South Africa, however, I am forced to conclude that your observations are clouded by wishful thinking.
Russell