Race, Class and Power

Harold Wolpe and the Radical Critique of Apartheid

Steven Friedman

• Publisher: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781869142865
• eBook ISBN: 9781869143480
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Over four decades ago, radical scholars began to suggest a new way of looking at South African society, one that blamed the economic power of those who owned property for the racial bondage of the black majority. Their work, and the debates it triggered, are mostly forgotten: but they and their critics have much to say that sheds lights on today's South African realities. Harold Wolpe was arguably the most influential theorist of this generation. His writing played a major role in a revolution in thought and his celebrated escape from prison in the 1960s made him a symbol of alternative action. Race, Class and Power clearly and insightfully examines Wolpe's work in the political, intellectual and social contexts in which it was developed and to which it gave form. Drawing on interviews with those he worked with, disagreed with and inspired, the book also maps his influence on ideas and the culture that emerged in anti-apartheid circles in the 1970s. Wolpe's writing is a prism through which South African society can be viewed; this book is an intellectual biography both of Wolpe and of South Africa's left. Race, Class and Power also assesses and engages with the ongoing impact of Wolpe's ideas into the post-apartheid present. Moreover, it suggests how Wolpe's work can move us towards a way of thinking about and acting upon South Africa's realities differently.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 The man and the movement: Harold Wolpe and the fight against apartheid
• CHAPTER 2 Class struggle in the classroom: Wolpe and the battle of ideas
• CHAPTER 3 Voice in the wilderness? Harold Wolpe, the SACP and the ANC
• CHAPTER 4 The Marxism of the middle class? The academic radicalism of the 1970s
• CHAPTER 5 Class tells: Wolpe’s critique of liberal and nationalist orthodoxy
• CHAPTER 6 Critique of pure reason: The cheap labour thesis’s critics
• CHAPTER 7 Recognising racial reality: Race and class in Wolpe’s later work
• CHAPTER 8 Real people, real politics: Seeing a strategic opening in apartheid’s retreat
• CHAPTER 9 Beyond them and us: Politics of division, politics of possibility
• CHAPTER 10 Schooled in reality: Wolpe, education and the politics of reform
• CHAPTER 11 A few small areas in the vicinity of Beijing: Harold Wolpe and post-apartheid South Africa
• CHAPTER 12 Questions, not answers: Transcending the Marxist tradition
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index