Visions of Socialist Democracy from South Africa: A Critical Review of Three Recent Contributions

Abstract

The reviewed books, written by South African and South Africa-based authors, offer three possible ways forward for those who wish to deepen democracy and address capitalist inequalities in the contemporary world. Roughly speaking, the ways offered are Trotskyist (Legassick), anarchist (Schmidt and Van der Walt) and radical-democratic reformist (Williams). The review focuses on the issue of democracy, and offers democratic-theoretical grounds for skepticism about Trotskyist and anarchist proposals, both generally and as rendered in these books. While all the reviewed writers emphatically reject the political model associated with the former Soviet Union, the review suggests that Legassick and Schmidt and Van der Walt do not always do so for the right reasons, and that their models of democracy, if implemented, would be liable to reproduce the authoritarianism associated with the systems they reject. The review finds more reasons to pursue something like Williams's radicaldemocratic reformism.