Development and Class Struggle: The Political Economy of Labour Precarity in South African Forestry

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In this paper, we draw on a Marxist framework to discuss the significance of labour precarity for contemporary South African capitalism. We argue that the rise in precarious employment constitutes a deliberate strategy by capitalists to weaken the bargaining power of workers and re-assert their control over production through economic coercion. The paper focuses on forestry workers, who have experienced major restructuring characterised by chain subcontracting where pseudo-entrepreneurs employ precarious workers squeezed by a task-based payment system. We explore the failure of unions to resist the rise of precarity but disagree with authors who dismiss the working class as a horizon for progressive transformation. Hoping for benevolent top-down intervention to mitigate precarity ignores the uneven, dialectical character of capitalist development, whose engine remains class struggle. The weakness of labour’s resistance to capitalist strategies not only undermines workers, but the progressive character of capitalism itself.