Rethinking the Left
“ This was the period of confusion, disintegration and vacillation ” [1] wrote Vladimir Lenin of what he described as the Third Period of the historical development of Russian Social Democracy. He could very well have been writing about South Africa today. South Africa finds itself at a period of its own historical development in which the fundamental contradictions of society threaten to render deep and lasting scars on the psyche of the populace while denuding the state of even the pretence of democratic institutions as various factions’ battle to capture the state as its chief spoil. The gradual unbundling of the ANC as the hegemonic core to which the broad undefined Left, and the populace as a majority looked to for direction, guidance and leadership, has reached its historical dead end. The ANC and South Africa are not unique in this experience and indeed we are following a path which Karl Marx first pointed to in 1852 and which has proven to be a consi...