particularly clearly for Trotsky relation to the highest form bourgeois democratic representative organisation: a constitutent assembly (parliament to draw up the constitution of a state) elected on the basis of one person one vote. Trotsky wrote in his Soviets and the Constituent Cor'But if the Cortes (parliament) is to be boycotted, then in the name of what? In the name of soviets? In my opinion it would be wrong to pose the question that way.
*The masses of the town and countryside can be united at the present time only under democratic slogans. These include the election of a constituent Cortes on the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage...
'Soviets are as yet nonexistent. The ... workers - not to speak of the peasants — do not know what soviets are; at any rate not from their own experiences Nevertheless, the struggle around the Cortes in the period will constitute the political life of the country.
'To counterpose slogan soviets, under these circumstances, to the slogan of the Cortes (parliament). would be incorrect on ine hand, it will obviously be possible to build soviets in the near future only by taking place around demands, organisations of the working class, is therefore in no sense unusual. On the contary a ls precisely working class power under conditions of a savagely repressive regime as in While the class nas no anything like the peak of organisation in the Spanish 1930s nevertheless the dynamic of its development - with the combination of the fight for democratic demands and the creation of mass organisation — is totally clear.
black working class organisation was created in South Africa with the Industrial coming Union (ICU). This membership of 200,000 in 1928. Black trade union of tered severe 1930s but rose again sharply amid the wave of other 1945, 40 per cent of all workers in commerce and manufacturing were unionised. To see a combination of a struggle democratic and the creation of mass the road to develops black South African rise yet reached revolutions of the towards Already in the 1920s the first mass Commercial Workers reached a peak membership then sufsetback during the path War II. By African its general as an alternative to mass mobilisati and organisation But neverthek the fundamental issue posed - t of the necessity of mass democratic ly elected organisations — was enti ly correct and vital.
The struggle in South Afri therefore shows a perfectly cohere and logical historical development.
under the slogans democracy. This struggle in turn giv mass blac working organisation and demands for high bourgeois representati democracy — notably the demand f a constituent assembly. Out of t struggle in turn mass developme workers councils, soviet and similar organisations tend although these rea fruition still demand a higher level struggle even than we are seeing South Africa today.
In taking as its axis the fight f democratic demands the struggle South Africa is not choosing a s cond class' route. On the contrary it taking the most historically powerf of development that cou possibly be imagined.
The specific form of struggle ca not possibly be seen in advance. B line of development