[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Cosatu crits WSF for Morocco venue

[Alan Murphy]

It may be that Unions should be included within 'civil society' in regard to
WSF, however governments certainly are not and since Cosatu is part of the
ANC govenment then a case can be made that it should not be in the WSF.
Alan

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Dominic Tweedie
<dominic.tweedie at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks, Peter, for the useful answers. I will forward them to the
> person from http://www.wsrw.org/ (Western Sahara Resource Watch) who
> wrote to me.
>
> Concerning "Civil Society", Doug, IMHO my brother:
>
> In Marx, "civil society is bourgeois society". This is how he
> introduces and uses the term civil society, from early on.
>
> Meaning that all society is class-dominated, current society is
> bourgeois-class dominated, and the motive force of history is class
> struggle. In other words the term "civil society" is in the basic Karl
> Marx tool kit, but not as we now know it.
>
> The generally intended sense of the current use of "civil society", at
> least in South Africa, is something separate from class struggle,
> separate from political parties, and separate from trade unions.
>
> In the mid 1990s I once asked Gail Gerhart, wife of the late former
> head of the Ford Foundation in SA, if trade unions were part of "civil
> society", according to her. She said: No.
>
> The US amabassador not long afterwards published an article in The
> Star newsapaper saying that business should run the economy,
> Government should make sure that business had everything it needed to
> run the economy, and civil society should clean up the mess. For him,
> this was a neat troika needing little further elaboration.
>
> Things are changing. I don't see much sign of any "civil society"
> these days that wants to stand off from the organised working class in
> general and COSATU and the SACP in particular, while the latter two
> organisations have always kept their doors open for the "civil
> society", a.k.a. "social movements".
>
>
> Domza "Old Social Force" VC
>
>
> 2009/3/22 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>  >
> > On Mar 22, 2009, at 7:18 AM, peter waterman wrote:
> >
> >> South African civil society more generally
> >
> > I'm still vague on just what this "civil society" thing is. In Hegel, it
> was a brutal place dominated by market relations. It's not government, of
> course, which despite being dominated by a bourgeoisie is nonetheless
> subjected to some kind of accountability through elections. It seems mainly
> to refer to a bunch of self-appointed spokespersons operating through NGOs,
> many of which are accountable mainly to their foundation funders. Am I being
> too cynical?
> >
> > Doug
> >
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