Building Tomorrow Today : a re-examination of the character of the controversial workerist tendency associated with the Foundation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu) in South Africa, 1979-1985.

[摘要] This report is concerned with unpacking the influential yet misunderstood 'workerist”phenomenon that dominated the major independent (mostly black) trade unions born in thewake of the 1973 Durban strikes. 'Workerism” is widely recognized as being concentrated inthe Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu). Workerism remains a source of muchcontroversy in labour and left circles; this is due to the massive influence it commanded withinthe with black working class in its brief heyday, and the formidable challenge it presents to thelegitimacy of nationalist movements and narratives attempting (then and now) to stake claimson the leadership of the liberation struggle. This controversy has yet to be resolved: bothpopular and scholarly attempts to theorise its politics are marked by demonstrableinconsistencies and inaccuracies, often reproducing existing polemical narratives that concealmore than they reveal. This paper contributes to that debate by deepening our understanding ofthe core politics of the important workerist phenomenon – through an examination of primarydocuments and interviews with key workerist leaders.I argue that workerism was a distinctive, mass-based and coherent multiracial current,hegemonic in the black trade unions but spilling into the broader anti-apartheid movement inthe 1970s and 1980s. It stressed class struggle, non-racialism, anti-capitalism, worker selfactivityand union democracy, and was fundamentally concerned with the national liberationof the oppressed black majority. However, it distanced itself from the established traditions ofmainstream Marxism and Congress nationalism – coming to a quasi-syndicalist1 position onmany crucial questions, although this ran alongside a far more cautious 'stream”, akin tosocial democracy. It fashioned a radical approach to national liberation that combined anticapitalismwith anti-nationalism on a programme that placed trade unions (not parties) centrestage– a notable characteristic that made it the object of much suspicion and hostility.In the longer term, workerists developed a two-pronged strategy. This centred on,first, 'building up a huge, strong movement in the factories” – strategically positioned at keyloci of power in the economy (key sectors, plants and regions), with a view to 'pushing backthe frontiers of control”; second, it incorporated an extensive programme of popular educationto ignite the growth of a 'counter-hegemonic” working class politics, consciousness, identityand culture, thereby 'ring-fencing workers from the broader nationalist history of our country”and continent. Right at the epicentre of this radical project was the creation of a conscious,accountable and active (in workplaces and communities) layer of worker leaders or 'organicintellectuals”.I contend that a simple conflation of workerism with a form of Marxism, althoughprevalent in the literature, is misleading and inaccurate. Rather, workerism cannot beunderstood unless in relation to the far more eclectic and varied international New Left –through which it drew influence (direct and indirect) from a variety of sources, includingrevolutionary libertarian currents like anarchism, syndicalism and council communism, as wellas others such as social democracy, and dissident forms of Marxism.But the unhappy co-existence of these contradictory tendencies (quasi-syndicalismand social democracy) interacted with a New Left-inspired, at times anti-theoretical,pragmatism to leave workerism weakened - hampered by inconsistencies andcontradictions, expressed in ambivalent actions that were at once libertarian and morestatist, revolutionary and reformist, spontaneous and premeditated, 'boycottist” and'engagist”. This left a vacuum in the liberation struggle, paving a way for theresurgence of nationalism under ANC leadership.1 Here I refer to the historical tradition of anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalism, not the so-called'Leninist critique”.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand