Comprehending Class Compromise in the History of Class Struggle on the South African Gold Mines: Variations and Vicissitudes of Class Power

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article seeks to apply Erik Olin Wright's explication of class compromise to the rise of the National Union of Mineworkers on the South African gold mines. Wright's clear and cogent exercise in analytical Marxism is, however, used more as an ‘ideal type’ to achieve understanding in Max Weber's sense, than as an hypothesis to be proved or disproved. The article challenges conventional Marxist notions of power by introducing a more relational concept of power, developed by Michel Foucault in a final series of interviews during the years before his death. The article thus makes use of Wright's notion of class compromise to frame the history of the NUM, while also seeking to advance a sociological analysis of power (in this case class power), using the ideas of the late Foucault to confront, and at least modify, widely accepted Marxian (and, for that matter, Weberian) concepts of power and domination.