NDR not the end. Tloome, Slovo and Hani.
*The NDR is not The End**The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution: Excerpts*
***Joe Slovo, 1988 <http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?include=docs/history/1988/ndr.html>*
*Stages of Struggle *We do indeed see the current stage of struggle the national democratic phase as the most direct route of advance, in our particular conditions, to a second stage, socialist development. Looking even further ahead, it is valid to describe socialism itself as a major transitional stage on the road to communism.
There is, however, both a distinction and a continuity between the national democratic and socialist revolutions; they can neither be completely telescoped nor completely compartmentalised.
The vulgar Marxists are unable to understand this.It is necessary at once to state a rather obvious proposition, namely, that it is implied in the very concept of stages that they can never be considered in isolation; they are steps in development.
The real question is how to reach a stage *without blocking the route onwards to the next destination*.
We reiterate that *when we talk of stages we are talking simultaneously about distinct phases and a continuous journey.* At the same time revolutionary practice demands that within each distinct stage there should be a selective concentration on those objectives which are most pertinent to its completion. This is no way detracts from the need to plant, within its womb, the seeds which will ensure a continuity towards the next stage.
We, for our part, insist on the need to understand the distinct characteristics of the present stage of our revolution, and also the ideological and organisational bridge between this stage and the socialist aspirations of our working class.
It is not inevitable that final destinations follow from particular preceding stages. Its translation into a reality must be dependent on a number of vital subjective factors. Among the most important of these is the extent to which the most revolutionary class the proletariat is politicised and participates as a leading force in the coming struggles and in the state forms which are constructed in place of the old.
*Trade Unions and the Working Class *The very fact that the workers' economic struggle cannot be separated from the struggle against national domination has helped to blur the border-line between trade unionism and the political leadership of the working class as a whole.
It is, however, vital to maintain the distinction between trade union politics and overall revolutionary leadership.
A trade union cannot carry out this dual role; if it attempted to do so it would have to change its basic character and risk committing suicide as a mass legal force. In addition, the very nature and purpose of trade unionism disqualifies it from carrying out the tasks of a revolutionary vanguard.
*The syndicalist notion that trade unions should act as political parties is so discredited that it has few, if any, open adherents.*But, from time to time, the notion is introduced through the back door in the shape of policies which would, in practice, allocate such a role to the trade union movement.
A worker's political vanguard is guided by the Leninist principles of democracy and centralism, a combination whose precise mixture is dictated by the actual conditions of revolutionary struggle.
An attempt to apply trade union organisational practices to such a vanguard would spell the end of revolutionary political leadership in our conditions. Equally, the trade union movement would be doomed if it attempted to act like a Communist Party.
We do not claim that the necessary democratic practices have always been implemented within the mass democratic movement, or that Communist Parties have never abused democracy on the excuse of centralism. But such illegitimate departures from the norms must be dealt with as a separate problem; they should not become the excuse for insisting on syndicalist practices which, in the case of the political leadership of the struggle, would lead to *organisational constipation*.
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