The Accumulation of Capital in Southern Africa - Centre for Civil

224 Pages·2007·0.95 MB·English

r The
The Accumulation of Capital in Southern Africa o
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Rosa Luxemburg’s Contemporary Relevance a

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u
The revived interest in Luxemburg’s ideas about imperialism is x Accumulation
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not surprising. More than her contemporaries (Lenin, Bukharin,
m
Hilferding), she pointed out the dialectical relations between
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markets and the ‘non-market’ spheres of life, to which we should u
of Capital
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add the environment. These relations are central to a new period g

of ‘primitive accumulation’ that has generated powerful resistance p
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in many corners of the earth. Southern Africa is an especially
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important site to reconsider the dynamics of capital accumulation, it in Southern
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given the reliance of regional businesses upon superexploitative c
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systems such as colonialism, apartheid and neoliberalism. l

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This collection is drawn from a collaboration between the Rosa d Africa
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Luxemburg Foundation and University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre
c
for Civil Society, in which the Rosa Luxemburg Political Education a
t
Seminar 2006 overlapped with the Centre’s Colloquium on i
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Economy, Society and Nature. The event attracted some of the n
world’s leading political economists alongside regional analysts. s
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This volume features work by Luxemburg, Arndt Hopfmann, Jeff m
Guy, Ahmed Veriava, Massimo De Angelis, Elmar Altvater, Patrick in
Bond, Isobel Frye, Caroline Skinner, Imraan Valodia, Greg Ruiters, a
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Leonard Gentle, Ulrich Duchrow, Ntwala Mwilima, S’bu Zikode,
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Salim Vally and Trevor Ngwane. The editors are Patrick Bond, 0
0
Horman Chitonge and Arndt Hopfmann. 6
Capitalists have come to understand that to destroy the subsistence
economy altogether would not be in their best interests for two reasons:
first, and most obviously, the employers are not prepared to absorb
the entire subsistence sector; second, and more subtly, self-provisioning
has provided subsidised wage labour. Luxemburg knew this as well as
anyone, and Southern Africa is an exemplary case. For me, the Durban
conference was an eye-opener. You had poor young people, who live in
shacks constructed of the sort of materials that you could scrounge up in
the nearby dump, going toe to toe with some of the smartest and most
articulate academics you can imagine. There was mutual respect on all
sides, as is evident in this excellent collection.
Michael Perelman, California State University and author of
The Invention of Capitalism: The Secret History of Primitive
Accumulation
rosa luxemburg political education seminar 2006
The
Accumulation
of Capital
in Southern
Africa
Rosa Luxemburg’s Contemporary Relevance
Proceedings of the Rosa Luxemburg Seminar 2006 and the
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Centre for Civil Society’s Colloquium on Economy, Society
and Nature
Edited by
Patrick Bond, Horman Chitonge and Arndt Hopfmann
rosa luxemburg political education seminar 2006
ii –
Rosa Luxemburg (1871 — 1919)
iii –
About Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg, born in Poland on March 5 1871, was an eminent
representative of European democratic socialist thinking and action.
Along with Karl Liebknecht, she was the most important representative
of internationalist and anti-militaristic positions in the German Social
Democratic Party. She was a passionate and convinced critic of
capitalism, as witnessed by her book The Accumulation of Capital, and
from this criticism she drew the strength for revolutionary politics. After
leaving the Social Democratic Party, Luxemburg co-founded the German
Communist Party. She was assassinated on January 15 1919 by military
men who later openly supported German Fascism.
iv –
Published by the Regional Office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation
© The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has a copyleft-policy. All parts of
this publication may be reproduced freely; however a proper reference
to the original publication is requested.
ISBN: 978-1-86840-644-9
2007
Design © jon berndt DESIGN
Layout: jon berndt DESIGN
ROSA LUXEMBURG FOUNDATION
Sable Centre (9th Floor), 41 De Korte Street
Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2001
P.O. Box 32406
Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2017
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
CENTRE FOR CIvIL SOCIETy
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
Memorial Tower Building, Howard College
Telephone: [phone]
Website: www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs
v –
Contents
Contributors vii
Preface ix
Arndt Hopfmann
Introduction 1
Patrick Bond and Horman Chitonge
PART ONE: THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL IN THEORY AND HISTORY
Excerpts from The Accumulation of Capital 7
Rosa Luxemburg
The Accumulation of Capital in Historical Perspective 17
Arndt Hopfmann
‘No eyes, no interest, no frame of reference’: Rosa Luxemburg, Southern 26
African historiography, and pre-capitalist of modes of production
Jeff Guy
Unlocking the present? Two theories of primitive accumulation 46
Ahmed Veriava
Enclosures, commons and the ‘outside’ 63
Massimo De Angelis
PART TWO: CONTEMPORARY ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL
Imperialism and new commodity forms 79
Elmar Altvater
South African subimperial accumulation 90
Patrick Bond
Two economies? A critique of recent South African policy debates 107
Caroline Skinner and Imraan Valodia
New faces of privatisation: From comrades to customers 119
Greg Ruiters
Black Economic Empowerment and the South African social formation 127
Leonard Gentle
vi –
PART THREE: SOCIAL STRUGGLES
Property for people, not for profit 139
Ulrich Duchrow
Challenges for the regional labour movement 158
Ntwala Mwilima
The shackdwellers movement of Durban 163
S’Bu Zikode
Against the commodification of education 166
Salim Vally
Challenging municipal policies and global capital 173
Trevor Ngwane
vii –
Contributors
Elmar Altvater taught at the Free University in Berlin for many years, and is a
leading authority on political economy and environment.
Patrick Bond, a political economist, is research professor at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal where he directs the Centre for Civil Society.
Horman Chitonge is a doctoral candidate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal
Centre for Civil Society. A Zambian, he holds degrees from the University of
Zimbabwe and UKZN School of Development Studies.
Massimo De Angelis is a Reader in economics at the University of East London.
He edits The Commoner website and blog: www.thecommoner.org.
Ulrich Duchrow is associated with the German prophetic faith organisation
Kairos, and is based at the University of Heidelberg.
Leonard Gentle directs the International Labour Research and Information
Group in Cape Town.
Jeff Guy is research fellow at the Campbell Collection in Durban, and has taught
at universities in Southern Africa and Norway. He has published several
books on the destruction of the Zulu kingdom, and Zulu resistance.
Arndt Hopfmann holds a PhD in Development Economics, and was formerly
senior lecturer at the University of Leipzig and the Free University in Berlin. He
directs the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Regional Office in Johannesburg.
Ntwala Mwilima is a researcher based at the Labour Resource and Research
Institute in Windhoek, Namibia.
Trevor Ngwane is a student at the UKZN Centre for Civil Society and general
secretary of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee.
Greg Ruiters holds the Matthew Goniwe professorship at the Rhodes University
Institute for Social and Economic Research.
Caroline Skinner is a research fellow at the UKZN School of Development
Studies.
Imraan Valodia is a senior research fellow at the UKZN School of Development
Studies.
Salim Vally is a senior researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand
Education Policy Unit.
Ahmed Veriava is conducting masters degree research at the UKZN Centre for
Civil Society and works with the Anti-Privatisation Forum in Gauteng.
S’Bu Zikode is a leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban movement of
shackdwellers.
viii –
ix –
Preface
Capitalist accumulation as a whole, as an actual historical process,
has two different aspects. One concerns the commodity market
and the place where surplus value is produced – the factory,
the mine, the agricultural estate… The other aspect of the
accumulation of capital concerns the relations between capitalism
and the non-capitalist modes of production which start making
their appearance on the international stage. Its predominant
methods are colonial policy, an international loan system – a policy
of spheres of interest – and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting
are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment…
Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, p. 432.
Capital now devours human beings: it becomes a cannibal. Every
human activity must now become capital and bear interest, so
that investment-seeking capital can live: schools, kindergartens,
universities, health systems, energy utilities, roads, railways, the
post office, telecommunications and other means of communication,
etc. The anarcho-capitalist dreams go even further. Even the police
and legislation are to be transformed into capital investments. One
receives a licence to live and to participate in any of the spheres
of society only if one pays to capital the fees required in the form
of interest. Capital becomes a ‘superworld’ to which sacrificial
victims must be brought.
Ulrich Duchrow and Franz Hinkelammert,
Property for people, not for profit, p.148.
These two citations present in a nutshell the basic traits of capitalist
accumulation from its origins to its current forms – the dominance of the
capitalist forms in the arena of material production, the continuous use
of coercion, violence and theft in order to increase the rate of profit, as