tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6746824529019468965.post3345256924180272339..comments2024-02-04T09:45:34.836+02:00Comments on SudanSeen: والشعب محال يبلغ آمال ان لم "يدرس" شأن العمالSudanseenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00975413774167369426noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6746824529019468965.post-60913529604101781062017-05-15T17:23:34.537+03:002017-05-15T17:23:34.537+03:00Thanks, Amjed for an interesting piece. Actually g...Thanks, Amjed for an interesting piece. Actually grounding the Sudanese communist party and the socialist movement on a non-existing industrial working class was a great miss. If you do not have a developed, extensive industrial sector, you cannot have a classical proletariat of the type Marx, Engels and Lenin pontificated about. So the stress on the proletariat was a doctrinaire exercise even though Abdelkhalig did his best to Sudanize Marxism. <br />And even though the party privileged the proletariat in rhetoric, in practice it exerted much efforts to organize farmers and tenants but in ways that were conscious of not stepping too far to be accused of going Maoist. However, the party's effort among farmers were even more tragic, for it did not seek to organize the poor, migrant agricultural workers but chose to ally itself with semi feudal, rich, polygamous landowners. This alliance with rich landlords, coupled with total disregard to the poor, landless agricultural workers was probably motivated by the fact these workers were mostly ethnic minority immigrants from western Sudan and west Africa, when the party was dominated by northern Sudanese intellectual elite. And here was the racist moment of the party.<br />And yet, pretenses about industrial and agricultural proletariat apart, the party remained in essence a representative of the Sudanese urban, educated, intellectual middle class, hence it has never been a truly communist or a Marxist party and remained forever a left- liberal, social democratic force. There is nothing wrong with educated bourgeois elite getting politically engaged to further the cause of social justice but the party should have been conscious of its true class nature to constantly transcend the limitations it poses.<br />That being said, the anarchist critique of Marxism is highly relevant here. The problem in society, and with orthodox Marxism, is power, not only class. Economic class is only one dimension of power, not everything. Thus political activism should aim at dissolve illegitimate power wherever it lies, whether it is based on class, race, gender or whatever. In that sense, any progressive party should examine the power structure in its own society and tailor its program to dissolve, or at least civilize, that power. This does not hinge on whether or not you have an industrial proletariat. Even in advanced western capitalist societies the orthodox Marxist focus on the proletariat has lost its mojo because the nature of the economy and production changed so much that the proletariat has lost all size and qualitative significance. Even though this transformation can bewilder the orthodox Marxist, a progressive movement based on hostility to illegitimate power and exploitation however and wherever they exist would have no problem adapting itself to post-industrial societies as well as adapting itself to pre-industrial ones like Sudan.<br />This is a complex, interesting topic that deserves much more time and needs to be seriously debated by all progressive forces in Sudan.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13540695684124965962noreply@blogger.com