Materialist history, materialist theory: A response to Charles Van Onselen

Abstract

The publication of Charles van Onselen's two volume Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886–1914 in 1982 is a landmark event in the development of historical materialist scholarship and South African historiography, (Van Onselen: 1982a; 1982b). No other publication has simultaneously been so unique and innovative, so sociologically sensitive and empirically embracing, combining in elegant intellectual fashion the best of social history, historical materialism and sociological theory. Other contributions notwithstanding, van Onselen can be credited with the production of the first sustained, thorough attempt at providing a genuine alternative historical materialist scholarship. ‘In a social context radically lacking in a socialist culture, devoid of a popular movement of institutionalised leftism, van Onselen's Studies... have the status of remarkable intellectual product despite the absence of cultural ferment which one could have used to explain the germination and maturation...