Re: S. Africa/mode of prod. debate

[LeoCasey@xxxxxxx]

Yoshie:

Despite the formalism of anthropological typologies, I think Matthew's
contribution is helpful to our understanding of the South African social
formation under apartheid in the following way. When we talk of the
articulation of different modes of production, we should not be talking as if
there was one 'ideal type' mode of production here [say, capitalism in the
mining industry], and another 'ideal type' mode of production there [say,
pre-capitalism in the reserves/Bantustans and in the sections of Mozambique
which supplied migrant labor to South Africa] which just happen to co-exist
in the same social formation at the same point in time. As I think Jim D. and
Chris B. have pointed out, this confuses the conceptual abstraction [mode of
production] with the social reality [social formation]. Likewise, we should
not assume that the relationship is necessarily antagonistic, with
pre-capitalist modes of production simply being an historical anachronism
that is being displaced by capitalism.

Under apartheid, the two modes of production were very much intertwined in
ways that had _expression_ within each other. It certainly is not a pure, or
'ideal type' capitalist mode of production where the great mass of the
working class is migrant labor without even the right of residence, and where
the costs of reproduction of the labor force largely fall upon the near
subsistence economy, with a largely female workforce, at the source of the
migrant labor; by the same token, it is not a pure, or 'ideal type'
pre-capitalist mode of production, where a very significant, largely adult
male portion of the population is engaged in wage labor in another setting,
sending even whatever amount of the low wages they received back to their
families. The conceptual abstractions allow us to make very important
distinctions in the historical process, allow us to point to the complexity
that is not captured by a simple dualism -- Is it capitalist or is it
pre-capitalist? Is it class or is it race? -- but they can not be expected to
correspond or conform to the actual historical and social processes.   

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.

-- Frederick Douglass --