The Peculiarities of African Labour and Working-Class History

Abstract

Richard Sandbrook and Robin Cohen, eds.. The Development of an African Working Class: Studies in Class Formation and Action (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1975) A.T. Nzula, I.I. Potekhim, and A.Z. Zusmanovich, Forced Labour in Colonial Africa (London: Zed Press 1979) Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, Organize or Starve: The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1980) Robin Cohen, Peter Gutkind, and Phyllis Brazier, eds.. Peasants and Proletarians: The Struggles of Third World Workers (New York: Monthly Review 1979) Peter Gutkind, Robin Cohen, and Jean Copans, eds., African Labor History (Beverly Hills: Sage 1978) Charles Perrings, Black Mineworkers in Central Africa (London: Heineman 1979) Charles Van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1919-1933 (London: Pluto Press 1976) LABOUR UNDER CAPITALISM shares common features in the extraction of surplus value as part of the production process itself. Under the operation of capitalist relations of production the working day is divided between necessary labour time and surplus labour time. The proportion of the working day allotted into the two parts, however, differs profoundly. It is not as Adrian Peace would like to argue: In Marxist terms the Nigerian industrial worker is a proletarian. As a member of a propertyless, contractual labour force the worker's position is in this respect, essentially the same as that of his British or American counterparts. On the contrary, the African worker differs from his metropolitan counterpart because s/he was not divorced from the 1 Adrian Peace, Industrial Protest in Nigeria, in Sandbrook and Cohen, Development, 41.