r The The Accumulation of Capital in Southern Africa o s Rosa Luxemburg’s Contemporary Relevance a l u The revived interest in Luxemburg’s ideas about imperialism is x Accumulation e not surprising. More than her contemporaries (Lenin, Bukharin, m Hilferding), she pointed out the dialectical relations between b markets and the ‘non-market’ spheres of life, to which we should u of Capital r add the environment. These relations are central to a new period g of ‘primitive accumulation’ that has generated powerful resistance p o in many corners of the earth. Southern Africa is an especially l important site to reconsider the dynamics of capital accumulation, it in Southern i given the reliance of regional businesses upon superexploitative c a systems such as colonialism, apartheid and neoliberalism. l e This collection is drawn from a collaboration between the Rosa d Africa u Luxemburg Foundation and University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre c for Civil Society, in which the Rosa Luxemburg Political Education a t Seminar 2006 overlapped with the Centre’s Colloquium on i o Economy, Society and Nature. The event attracted some of the n world’s leading political economists alongside regional analysts. s e This volume features work by Luxemburg, Arndt Hopfmann, Jeff m Guy, Ahmed Veriava, Massimo De Angelis, Elmar Altvater, Patrick in Bond, Isobel Frye, Caroline Skinner, Imraan Valodia, Greg Ruiters, a r Leonard Gentle, Ulrich Duchrow, Ntwala Mwilima, S’bu Zikode, 2 Salim Vally and Trevor Ngwane. The editors are Patrick Bond, 0 0 Horman Chitonge and Arndt Hopfmann. 6 Capitalists have come to understand that to destroy the subsistence economy altogether would not be in their best interests for two reasons: first, and most obviously, the employers are not prepared to absorb the entire subsistence sector; second, and more subtly, self-provisioning has provided subsidised wage labour. Luxemburg knew this as well as anyone, and Southern Africa is an exemplary case. For me, the Durban conference was an eye-opener. You had poor young people, who live in shacks constructed of the sort of materials that you could scrounge up in the nearby dump, going toe to toe with some of the smartest and most articulate academics you can imagine. There was mutual respect on all sides, as is evident in this excellent collection. Michael Perelman, California State University and author of The Invention of Capitalism: The Secret History of Primitive Accumulation rosa luxemburg political education seminar 2006 The Accumulation of Capital in Southern Africa Rosa Luxemburg’s Contemporary Relevance Proceedings of the Rosa Luxemburg Seminar 2006 and the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society’s Colloquium on Economy, Society and Nature Edited by Patrick Bond, Horman Chitonge and Arndt Hopfmann rosa luxemburg political education seminar 2006 ii – Rosa Luxemburg (1871 — 1919) iii – About Rosa Luxemburg Rosa Luxemburg, born in Poland on March 5 1871, was an eminent representative of European democratic socialist thinking and action. Along with Karl Liebknecht, she was the most important representative of internationalist and anti-militaristic positions in the German Social Democratic Party. She was a passionate and convinced critic of capitalism, as witnessed by her book The Accumulation of Capital, and from this criticism she drew the strength for revolutionary politics. After leaving the Social Democratic Party, Luxemburg co-founded the German Communist Party. She was assassinated on January 15 1919 by military men who later openly supported German Fascism. iv – Published by the Regional Office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation © The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has a copyleft-policy. All parts of this publication may be reproduced freely; however a proper reference to the original publication is requested. ISBN: 978-1-86840-644-9 2007 Design © jon berndt DESIGN Layout: jon berndt DESIGN ROSA LUXEMBURG FOUNDATION Sable Centre (9th Floor), 41 De Korte Street Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2001 P.O. Box 32406 Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2017 Phone: +27(0)11-3393130 Fax: +27(0)11-4032344 CENTRE FOR CIvIL SOCIETy University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban Memorial Tower Building, Howard College Telephone: +27(0)31 260 3195 Website: www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs v – Contents Contributors vii Preface ix Arndt Hopfmann Introduction 1 Patrick Bond and Horman Chitonge PART ONE: THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL IN THEORY AND HISTORY Excerpts from The Accumulation of Capital 7 Rosa Luxemburg The Accumulation of Capital in Historical Perspective 17 Arndt Hopfmann ‘No eyes, no interest, no frame of reference’: Rosa Luxemburg, Southern 26 African historiography, and pre-capitalist of modes of production Jeff Guy Unlocking the present? Two theories of primitive accumulation 46 Ahmed Veriava Enclosures, commons and the ‘outside’ 63 Massimo De Angelis PART TWO: CONTEMPORARY ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL Imperialism and new commodity forms 79 Elmar Altvater South African subimperial accumulation 90 Patrick Bond Two economies? A critique of recent South African policy debates 107 Caroline Skinner and Imraan Valodia New faces of privatisation: From comrades to customers 119 Greg Ruiters Black Economic Empowerment and the South African social formation 127 Leonard Gentle vi – PART THREE: SOCIAL STRUGGLES Property for people, not for profit 139 Ulrich Duchrow Challenges for the regional labour movement 158 Ntwala Mwilima The shackdwellers movement of Durban 163 S’Bu Zikode Against the commodification of education 166 Salim Vally Challenging municipal policies and global capital 173 Trevor Ngwane vii – Contributors Elmar Altvater taught at the Free University in Berlin for many years, and is a leading authority on political economy and environment. Patrick Bond, a political economist, is research professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where he directs the Centre for Civil Society. Horman Chitonge is a doctoral candidate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society. A Zambian, he holds degrees from the University of Zimbabwe and UKZN School of Development Studies. Massimo De Angelis is a Reader in economics at the University of East London. He edits The Commoner website and blog: www.thecommoner.org. Ulrich Duchrow is associated with the German prophetic faith organisation Kairos, and is based at the University of Heidelberg. Leonard Gentle directs the International Labour Research and Information Group in Cape Town. Jeff Guy is research fellow at the Campbell Collection in Durban, and has taught at universities in Southern Africa and Norway. He has published several books on the destruction of the Zulu kingdom, and Zulu resistance. Arndt Hopfmann holds a PhD in Development Economics, and was formerly senior lecturer at the University of Leipzig and the Free University in Berlin. He directs the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Regional Office in Johannesburg. Ntwala Mwilima is a researcher based at the Labour Resource and Research Institute in Windhoek, Namibia. Trevor Ngwane is a student at the UKZN Centre for Civil Society and general secretary of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee. Greg Ruiters holds the Matthew Goniwe professorship at the Rhodes University Institute for Social and Economic Research. Caroline Skinner is a research fellow at the UKZN School of Development Studies. Imraan Valodia is a senior research fellow at the UKZN School of Development Studies. Salim Vally is a senior researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand Education Policy Unit. Ahmed Veriava is conducting masters degree research at the UKZN Centre for Civil Society and works with the Anti-Privatisation Forum in Gauteng. S’Bu Zikode is a leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban movement of shackdwellers. viii – ix – Preface Capitalist accumulation as a whole, as an actual historical process, has two different aspects. One concerns the commodity market and the place where surplus value is produced – the factory, the mine, the agricultural estate… The other aspect of the accumulation of capital concerns the relations between capitalism and the non-capitalist modes of production which start making their appearance on the international stage. Its predominant methods are colonial policy, an international loan system – a policy of spheres of interest – and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment… Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, p. 432. Capital now devours human beings: it becomes a cannibal. Every human activity must now become capital and bear interest, so that investment-seeking capital can live: schools, kindergartens, universities, health systems, energy utilities, roads, railways, the post office, telecommunications and other means of communication, etc. The anarcho-capitalist dreams go even further. Even the police and legislation are to be transformed into capital investments. One receives a licence to live and to participate in any of the spheres of society only if one pays to capital the fees required in the form of interest. Capital becomes a ‘superworld’ to which sacrificial victims must be brought. Ulrich Duchrow and Franz Hinkelammert, Property for people, not for profit, p.148. These two citations present in a nutshell the basic traits of capitalist accumulation from its origins to its current forms – the dominance of the capitalist forms in the arena of material production, the continuous use of coercion, violence and theft in order to increase the rate of profit, as