The poverty of Neo‐Marxism: the case of South Africa

Abstract

Belatedly, academic Marxism has arrived in South Africa. Until recently the established English-language, or what the Marxists call the liberal, approaches to South African history have gone unchallenged, except by Afrikaner historians. Liberal historians have typically regarded the history of South Africa as that of a unique society quite different from those Western societies by which it was colonized. In explaining the process of change, the importance of racial factors have been emphasized. Those conflicts which did not just involve the White group have largely been seen as a struggle between races and not between classes. NeoMarxists have rejected this traditional interpretation. For them South African history provides yet another case study of capitalist development. The neoMarxists believe that what appears to be racial conflict is really an aspect of the class struggle in the specific circumstances of South Africa. The purpose of the state, logically enough, is to make South Africa safe for capitalism. By its very nature it is an instrument of capitalist rule. It is an epiphenomenon of the economic process, without independent non-economic purposes of its own. This paper will attempt to examine the validity of some neo-Marxist explanations of important aspects of South African economic history. The main revisionists in the interpretation of South African history, all exponents of some form of class analysis, have been H. Wolpe, M. Legassick, S. Trapido and F. A. Johnstone. 1 They have written prolifically, if not always perceptively, about South Africa. Their leading theme has been that economic growth and white supremacy are complementary. What they describe as the traditional liberal approach, which stressed the conflict between the requirements of economic efficiency and racial discrimination, is rejected as mere 'conventional wisdom'. Economic developnient, it is argued, does not dissolve white supremacy, but reinforces it. According to F. A. Johnstone, the clearest exponent of this argu-