In this Labour Studies Podcast, Prof Allison Drew discusses "Looking Comparatively at Communism in Twentieth-century Algeria and South Africa."
https://anchor.fm/nalsu/episodes/NALSU-Podcast-Allison-Drew-Looking-Comparatively-at-Communism-in-Twentieth-century-Algeria-and-South-Africa-ejbltt/a-a2imqij
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The radical left and the working class have played a major role in popular struggles, including anti-colonial movements. The settler societies of Algeria and South Africa both had substantial, rooted Marxist communist traditions in the twentieth-century. These traditions shared common values, but their political trajectories varied profoundly. This paper considers how factors like differences in patterns of working-class formation, the socialist tradition of each country, the role of the Communist International, the level of repression, and links to the nationalist FLN and ANC, respectively, help explain divergent patterns.
Allison Drew’s books include South Africa's Radical Tradition: A Documentary History (2 volumes); Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left; We are No Longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria; and Between Empire and Revolution: A Life of Sidney Bunting, 1873-1936. Her work focuses on the relationship between socialism and nationalism, and intellectuals and political movements, and individual rights and collective social justice. She has worked or studied at universities on three continents.
This talk was originally given on 5 August 2015 at Rhodes University, Makhanda. The Labour Studies Podcasts are from our popular Labour Studies Seminar Series, launched in 2015. We cover "labour studies" in the broadest sense: labour and left history, policy and political economy, unions and popular struggles.
NALSU, based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team from disciplines including Economics, History and Sociology, it has active partnerships and relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. It draws strength from its location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and the contradictions of the post-apartheid state, are keenly felt. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, a union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.