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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Class, race and subjectivity in South Africa
Author:Hudson, P.A.ISNI
Year:1989
Periodical:Labour, Capital and Society
Volume:22
Issue:2
Pages:347-370
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:race relations
apartheid
political action
class relations
Abstract:This is a critical appraisal of Harold Wolpe's 'Race, class and the Apartheid State' (Paris, UNESCO, 1988). The central argument is that Wolpe has failed to show 1) that under current South African conditions a national liberation struggle can possess an anticapitalist class content and 2) that the achievement of national liberation can itself thus constitute a sufficient condition for the implementation of the anticapitalist class measures included in the definition of national liberation by the ANC/SACP (South African Communist Party) Alliance. The author argues that Wolpe employs an inappropriate criterion in his attempt to establish that racial identity is part of class identity in South Africa and that this leads him to employ an equally inappropriate criterion in determining the class content of a national liberation struggle: racial identity is not part of the working class identity in South Africa simply because it is an attribute of concrete individuals who also bear a working class identity and national struggle cannot acquire an anticapitalist class content in virtue of the fact that it is waged by members of the working class whose objectives are anticapitalist. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
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