Itis one of the purposes of this article to test the validity of the assumption of an interaction between economic base and superstructure in explaining the historical development of Rhodesia, and in interpreting recent political events there. Tothis end the economic base of the Rhodesian social system before World War II is analyzed and related to the coexisting set of socio-political events and attitudes. In and after World War II external stimulants induced a process of development which altered the economic base and saw the emergence of an African proletariat and a manufacturing capitalist class. But this process of development was subsequently interrupted because of the resistance of those classes who owe their economic and social status to the superstructure of the old production relations. In the light of this analysis some conclusions about the present political conjuncture are drawn. Giovanni Arrighi The Political Economy of Rhodesia The most important single element determining the nature of economic and political development in Southern Rhodesia, was the British South Africa Company’s overestimation at the end of the 19th century of its mineral resources, and the persistence of this overestimation for roughly 15 years. The reasons behind such a misconception can be partly detected in the political interruptions which characterized the early period of colonization (Jameson Raid, Matabele and Mashona rebellions, Boer War). The costs incurred in the meantime increased the stake of the Company in the country and led to additional heavy development investment particularly in railways. The over valuation became apparent when, eventually, the Rhodesian gold fields failed to yield 35 deposits comparable to those of South Africa. For example, even in 1910 against a profit of close to £7 million from the eleven leading Johannesburg gold mines, the ten leading Rhodesian mines yielded a profit of only £614,000. Large-scale workings were uneconomic be- cause the deposits were scattered and the ore itself often of a low quality. The desire to recover the original heavy outlays induced the Chartered Company to foster the formation of a white rural bourgeoisie which, by developing the country would raise the value of its assets in the area— viz. the railway system, the mine claims, and especially land. Settlement gathered momentum after 1902 when small workings of mine claims on a royalty basis were extended. ‘The influx of peoples, European and African, to the mining camps brought about a deriva- tive demand for other products. Between 1901and 1911the European population doubled from 11,000 to over 23,000. Farmers began to settle and to feed the growing population and commercial undertakings became established in the growing towns af Salisbury and Bulawayo.’1 Thus a cumulative process was started leading to a class structure which crystallized during the depression of the 1930’s. The White Rural Bourgeoisie Within this class structure the white rural bourgeoisie was the founda- tion of the capitalist sector of the economy. This bourgeoisie consisted largely of both owner-workers of small and medium-sized mines and farmers who were economically committed to the development of the country. This national character of the white rural bourgeoisie, even at that time, distinguished Southern Rhodesia from practically all other African colonial territories north of the Limpopo and South of the Sahara, where exploitation of resources was carried out by large-scale international capitalism. In these other territories, where exploitation was based on large-scale mining or plantation or monopoly trade, capitalist interests in the economy were not permanent but lasted until, for example, deposits were exhausted or the raw material was sub- stituted in the industrial process overseas or some more economic source of supply was found. In inter-war Rhodesia about a third of the Europeans gainfully occupied belonged to the rural bourgeoisie, but to assess the full strength of this class, it is important to take into account the would-be agriculturalists. In fact ‘even the civil servant, business and professional man, miner or railway employee looked forward to retiring to a plot of land.’2 Inter- national capitalism was represented mainly by the British South Africa Company which, apart from its control over the railways, the bulk of gold production and coal mining, also owned land in part exploited for productive purposes (maize, cattle, citrus, etc). In accordance with its interest in encouraging the growth of the white rural bourgeoisie, it also experimented with new crops. 1Report of the Urban African Affairs Commission.Salisbury 1958. 2R. Gray: The Two Nations.London, 1960. p. 13. 36 Large estates had been given to companies and syndicates for certain interests acquired by the British South Africa Company.3 Other big companies were already dominating asbestos and chrome mining.4 Control over tobacco production was exercised indirectly through monopsonistic practices by the United Tobacco Company which, in Huggins’ view, ‘was aiming at becoming the country’s sole tobacco buyer, and managed to draw the best experts out of the government service’. A third class consisted of craftsmen engaged in manufacturing, whose activity was totally dependent on the rural bourgeoisie and big international capital, mainly the British South Africa Company. It was typically a petty bourgeoisie and, indeed, the Colony’s official Year Book of 1932does not even mention the manufacturing industry. White Wage-Workers Much more significant was the class of white wage-workers formed by artisans, semi-skilled workers, foremen, clerical workers, administrative employees, etc. Demand for their labour was concentrated in mining, transport (mainly railways) and service activities (civil service especi- ally). It is important to notice that, unlike South Africa, or Algeria, their settlement was a consequence of, and did not precede, capitalist development in the country. Therefore they had to be attracted by the offer of high wages, and with their skills they brought union organizing abilities. This phasing of white settlement and capitalist development is at the root of the absence of ‘poor-white-ism’ in Southern Rhodesia. This class of white wage-worker, together with the white petty bourgeoisie, i.e. handicraftsmen, shopkeepers and small employers in agriculture and mining, already in the pre-war period constituted the bulk of the European population in Southern Rhodesia. Africans The Africans were still essentially a class of self-employed rural cultivators. The African wage workers, the African middle-class and petty bourgeoisie5 were merely appendages of the peasantry rather than independent classes. Land was not a saleable commodity but each adult had rights to its use. The system of cultivation involved a form of land rotation whereby it was used until its fertility was diminished and then abandoned and left to recover until fertility was restored. Within the peasantry some division and hence specialization of labour could be observed.6 The role of men was to regulate the community’s relation- ship with animals (tending cattle and hunting) and to provide develop- ment works such as bush clearance and building huts. The women’s role on the other hand consisted of routine tasks: sowing, weeding, threshing, fetching water, preparing food and making beer. Communal 3M. Yudelman: Africans on the Land.London. 1964. p. 141. 4W. J. Barber: The Economy of British Central Africa. London. 1961. p. 119–22. and L. H. Gann and M. Gelfand: Huggins of Rhodesia.London. 1964. p. 175. 5Middle-class and Bourgeoisie (or capitalist class) are distinguished by the fact that the former consists of white-collar employees or self-employed professional men whereas the latter is formed by employers of labour for the purpose of profit. The members of the petty bourgeoisie are characterized by the fact that though employers of labour they themselves provide part of the manual labour. 6M. Yudelman. op. cit.,p. 12–13. 132–133. Barber, op. cit.p. 46. 37 ties were very strong7 and when the peasant left to seek wage employ- ment he left his family behind and kept close links (through a flow of goods, cash or occasional labour) with the peasantry to which he be- longed and meant to return, even after several years of absence. At the same time the size and number of holdings under cultivation within the rural areas contracted and expanded as the wage labourers left or returned to their wards. Thus, given this security in land tenure, we cannot, strictly speaking, refer to the African wage-workers of the 1930’s as a proletariat.8 On the other hand the African middle class and rural (petty) bourgeoisie were numerically and economically insignificant. For example, by 1930, i.e. before the Land Apportionment Act was introduced, Africans had managed to acquire only 45,000 acres in the open market while Euro- peans had purchased about 31,000,000 acres.9 The reasons for the failure of these classes to emerge are a consequence of the class struc- ture itself and therefore they will be dealt with at a later stage. To sum up: we can discern five main classes in pre-war Rhodesia. There were (a) the white rural bourgeoisie operating in mining and agriculture, national in character; (b)large-scale international capitalism controlling transport (railways) and power (coal) and engaged in primary production and speculation in land; (c)the white wage-workers whose entrance into the economy followed and did not precede the capitalist development of the country; (d) the white petty bourgeoisie operating in all sectors of the economy but especially trade; (e) the African peasantry and wage-earners. Political Implications of Pre-World War II Economic Base The key to understanding the outcome of the struggle for political power in the period under discussion, is the different degree of class consciousness—that is the awareness of their own interests, displayed by the various classes. While the classes within the European section of the population were characterized by a remarkable degree of class con- sciousness, particularly in periods of economic depression, the Africans were not. In a scattered peasantry, whose economic conditions had not yet notably worsened, and which still used the traditional mode of pro- duction based on kinship relations, rather than impersonal market relations, class loyalty could not possibly substitute tribal loyalty. ‘In 7Report of the Mangwende Reserve Commission of Enquiry.Salisbury 1961. pp. 18. 37. 8By proletariat is here understood the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. This definition is however, too broad and must be qualified to exclude the middle-class. Such a distinction is unnecessary, and indeed impossible, at a high level of abstraction when labour is defined as a homogeneous quantity, i.e. as abstract labour. In the present analysis however, this would be an oversimplification preventing a correct assessment of the class structure. The proletariat will therefore include only manual and semi-skilled labour. The distinction has its rationale in the fact that the middle class sells its labour in a seller’s market, or at any rate in condi- tions less unfavourable to the seller than is the case for the proletariat. 9Gann and Gelfand. op. cit.p. 79. 38 Mashonaland . . . the small and broken tribes, scattered and restricted to their separate and distant reserves, were prevented from developing any cohesion or a wider outlook, while in Matabeleland the only rally- ing point of national feeling—the family of Lobengula—was becoming . . . more a family and sentimental affair than a national aspiration’.10 At the same time the wage workers still belonged to the peasantry and furthermore their incessant movements ‘from job to job, from loca- tion to kraal, from the Protectorates to the Union’ prevented them from ‘developing, as a community, any corporate independence, initiative and self-respect’11 It is true that protest movements were already appearing in the 1920’s but either they were concerned with the status of the negligible nucleus of educated Africans or they were vague and ill-directed and disappeared as soon as they were faced by official repression. In consequence the African masses were politically inert, passive and hence virtually powerless. The only signs of a class struggle were therefore to be seen within the European section of the popula- tion. The rather mild character of such a struggle can be ascribed precisely to the political inertia and passiveness of the large majority of the population which created the possibility of a deal between the different interests of the white classes. White Coalition The class structure sketched above obviously could lead to a coalition of all white classes national in character (i.e. rural bourgeoisie, wage- workers and petty bourgeoisie, whose interests were compatible, if not identical) in opposition to international capitalism; the conflict being mainly focused on the issues of overhead capital expansion and monop- sonistic practices. This is, in fact, what happened. Two stages of political evolution can be discerned. At first the community of interests of the Chartered Company and the rural bourgeoisie materialized in an ambitious programme of investment and in legislation aimed at obtaining labour from the indigenous population. The latter included (a) the expropriation of land while encouraging the dispossessed pea- santry to remain where they were as tenants, their rent being commuted for labour; (b) a hut tax which virtually compelled the adult African males to spend between one and three months a year in wage-employ- ment, and (c)a Pass Law intended to direct labour where it was wanted.12 Labour could have been expanded in three ways: (a) through a system of forced labour; (b) by lowering the opportunity cost of the peasantry, i.e. by progressively reducing its overall productivity; and (c) by means of the proletarianization of the peasants. Alternative (c) however, runs against the other interest in limiting competition from Africans, since the proletarianization of the peasantry would bring about the emer- gence of a black agrarian bourgeoisie bound to compete on the markets of produce and of factors of production. Probably more important is the consideration that, by preserving the traditional system of land tenure, wages could be kept lower in the long run, since part of the real cost of the means for the subsistence of the migrant workers’ families would be borne by the peasantry. In fact, forced labour was the solution relied upon at this stage. 10Gray: op. cit.p. 159. 11Gray. op. cit.p. 269. 12C. Leys: European Politics in Southern Rhodesia.Oxford 1959. p. 10. 39 With World War I the economic power of the national bourgeoisie and white wage-workers vis-à-vis international capitalism had grown stronger. Hostilities and their aftermath had produced a widespread shortage of skilled white labour and of world supplies of raw materials. This relative strength lasted throughout the 1920’s and by the time the depression of the 1930’s had set in, the coalition of the white national classes had managed to obtain a good share of political power. A deci- sive step toward greater national control was the achievement of responsible government as opposed to amalgamation with the Union of South Africa. This latter course was, according to Gann and Gel- fand, favoured by international capitalism because of the reliability of Smuts as an upholder of Imperial interests. Responsible Government Responsible government merely meant a greater share of power for the national white classes and by no means their undisputed rule. Economic dependence on foreign capital forced the settlers’ government to adopt middle of the road policies, compromising between the interests of the national bourgeoisie and white workers on the one hand and of inter- national capitalism on the other. The result was that these conflicts fell into the background and that greater national control over legislative power found expression in an institutional framework strongly biased in favour of the interests of white national classes, which would regu- late future class relations. This is reflected in the legislation passed before World War II (especially in the 1930’s when the depression stiffened the class consciousness of the white classes) to regulate the supply of labour, the reservation of produce markets, government expenditure, monopsonistic practices and the expansion of overhead capital. Though the railway system and coal supply remained under the con- trol of the British South Africa Company, the Government took im- portant steps in other spheres to provide basic facilities for the economic development of the country in line with the class interests of the nation- al bourgeoisie and white workers. Government intervention increased remarkably and moved in two directions; expansion of overhead capital and strengthening of the bargaining power of the national bour- geoisie on the raw materials market. Public works, especially in road building, were carried out on a large scale; several state enterprises were founded in the 1930’s and early 1940’s, including the Electricity Supply Commission power stations, the Rhodesian Iron and Steel Com- mission foundries and mills, and the Cotton Industry Board mills. Raw materials processing plants (e.g. a roasting plant for processing low grade ores and the establishment of a Sugar Industry Board) and marketing organizations were also set up. A side effect of these develop- ments was a reduced economic dependence on international mono- polistic interests. More direct steps were however taken to strengthen the bargaining power of the white farmers vis-à-vis the United Tobacco Company. The Tobacco Marketing Act (1936), by limiting competition among growers, attempted to replace the monopsonistic market with a kind of bilateral monopoly. Whether the attempt was successful is a different matter. It is interesting that in 1943, seven years after the im- 40 plementation of the act, the Southern Rhodesian Finance Minister still maintained that the price of leaf was controlled by powerful interests outside the Colony.13 The Land Apportionment Act More significant was the legislation passed to ensure an expanding supply of labour and to divide the economy into non-competing racial groups. This was achieved by a series of legislative measures and finally by the Land Apportionment Act. This Act put a definite limit to the land available for African permanent settlement and in consequence made necessary the transformation of the traditional system of cultiva- tion from shifting to continuous cultivation. The change was also en- couraged by the Government which ‘centralized’ the African rural areas, i.e. divided them up into permanent arable and permanent graz- ing land. Given the techniques employed by the peasantry and the type of soil allocated to them, this move from shifting to continous cultiva- tion produced progressive soil erosion14 and thus decreasing produc- tivity of African land. However, since the criteria employed for allo- cating land to Africans was an average acreage per family rather than income off that acreage, the progressive decreases in the productivity of land were tantamount to a progressive decrease in the overall pro- ductivity of the peasantry. Thus a built-in trend of decreasing peasant productivity was established, which would ensure an expanding supply of labour. Apart from these long-term implications, the Land Appor- tionment Act provided the European farmers with a pool of labour straight away. This was achieved by allowing a European farmer to enter into an agreement ‘whereupon a native or his family shall be permitted to occupy a portion of such land under condition that he supply labour to such owner or occupier’. Similarly the hut tax guaran- teed a steady flow of labour from the tribal areas. Furthermore as time went by and contacts with the money economy increased, new needs were felt (especially for education and clothes) altering the means of subsistence.15 In consequence the demand for cash was itself growing and, given the limitations on the production of cash crops a further element was at work to expand labour supply. The distribution of the total African labour supply between the different capitalist sectors on the other hand, was not left to the law of supply and demand but was also legislated for, mainly through the Native Registration Act (1936). This Act tightened up the Pass Law and effectively contributed to the maintenance of a wage structure whereby the white farmers constantly paid unskilled labour lower wage rates than other employers.16 13Gann and Gelfand. op. cit. pp. 175–76. 14For the effects of continuous cultivation over African agriculture, see K. Brown: Land in Southern Rhodesia. London 1959. pp. 6–10. Also Second Report of the Select Committee on Resettlement of Natives. 15It is therefore assumed that a historical and social element (besides a physical element) enters into the determination of what is socially accepted as subsistence income and consumption. For a discussion of the meaning of ‘Subsistence’ see Maurice Dobb: Wages.Cambridge, 1959. 16Recruitment of labour outside Southern Rhodesia was certainly one of the major factors in determining both the rise and distribution among sectors of the total African labour force. 41 The second implication of land apportionment was to be the division of the economy into noncompeting racial groups. Racial competition could potentially take place between (a) white agrarian bourgeoisie and African peasantry; (b)white and black bourgeoisie in both the pro- duce and the labour markets; (c) white and black petty bourgeoisie in retail trade and (d) white and black wage-workers in the skilled labour market. In restricting competition in these markets the Land Appor- tionment Act drew the general lines whereas more specialized legisla- tion tightened the restrictions in the individual spheres. Reduction of African Competitiveness The competitiveness of the peasantry on the produce markets was restricted in a number of ways. In the first place the Africans were con- fined to the poorer land resources of the country. Secondly the con- version of part of the peasantry into tenant-labourers inevitably re- duced the marketable surplus. Thirdly, the same effect resulted from the decreasing productivity of African agriculture. Fourthly, the clear separation of land between Africans and Europeans made it possible to direct capital expenditure in roads, dams, etc, so as to widen the differ- ential in overall productivity of European and African agriculture. These were indirect checks on African competition. At the same time more direct steps were taken in order to discourage African sales through discriminatory price policy (e.g. Maize Control Act of 1931). Competition from an African rural bourgeoisie was potentially much more dangerous. Its emergence was accordingly prevented or at least contained within well-defined limits. This was achieved by preserving the traditional system, whereby land was not a saleable commodity in the African areas. Native Purchase Areas, where Africans could hold land in individual right, were set aside, but the African rural bourgeoisie was nevertheless bound to remain negligible. For land in the Native Purchase Areas was to be allocated by the Government and thus the for- mation and growth of the African bourgeoisie could be indirectly con- trolled by the very class which feared its competition. However, the total land to be allocated constituted only 8 per cent of the total land areas of the country and it was generally located even farther away from markets, railway lines and main roads, than that of the traditional peasantry. Furthermore, though land once allocated was owned in- dividually, there were many limitations to its transferability, such as maximum size of holdings and sales to Europeans. Among other things this meant that the extension of credit (which could possibly come only from European sources) to African farmers was hampered and there- fore a constant lack of finance was bound to hold back their develop- ment. In other words, quite apart from direct discriminatory practices in granting credit, the preservation of the traditional system of land tenure prevented the consolidation of land-holdings so that administra- tive difficulties made credit extension to Africans impracticable. Interracial competition was also prevented in trading activities since the Land Apportionment Act, by prohibiting African ownership or lease of premises in the European areas (which included all towns and cities) banished African traders to the poorest markets, implicitly 42 preventing their growth. Furthermore under the Native Registration Act of 1936 mentioned above, even hawkers were restricted to the African locations: only sales of curios, baskets, and similar articles were allowed in the towns whereas sale of such goods as chicken, eggs, butter etc. was prohibited.17 White Wage-Workers’ Consolidation The greater political power achieved by the white wage-workers, through their coalition with the national bourgeoisie, also found ex- pression in a number of Acts and policies which aimed at improving their social and economic conditions, and at perpetuating the scarcity of skills on which their bargaining and political strength was based. Under the Industrial Conciliation Act (1934) and its Amendment of 1937, machinery was set up for settling disputes in practically all in- dustries employing white labour. Agreements between employers and employees in the Industrial Councils were to become legally binding in the industry concerned. The Act explicitly excluded African workers from its definition of employee, but all the same wage rates and condi- tions of employment negotiated by the Industrial Councils were appli- cable to skilled white and black workers alike. In practice this meant that Africans were debarred from climbing the industrial ladder since no white employer would have employed an African if, for the same wage, he could obtain a European. Even more significant was the pro- vision which empowered the Industrial Councils to regulate the condi- tions of apprenticeship. This provision created a situation strikingly similar to that governing competition between the white and black agrarian bourgeoisies. In other words, here too, remarkable power was given to a white class (wage-workers) to control the rise of African competition. Thus the white workers came to control the scarcity of their own skills. This scarcity was also guaranteed by the Government immigration policy which was, especially in the 1930’s, highly selective and against any large-scale immigration of whites. This body of legislation and policies was well summed up in the pre- vailing ideology of the period: the doctrine of ‘parallel development’ or of the ‘two-pyramids policy’ according to which inter-racial competi- tion ought to be prevented. Having shown how the economic base has produced a certain superstructure we now turn to deal with the effects of the superstructure on the economic base. War and Post-war Economic Development The desire for industrialization and the progressive decrease of the peasant’s productivity, implicit in the institutional framework produced by the class structure of the 1930’s, were inconsistent with each other. For a necessary condition of industrialization was an expanding internal demand, whereas the deterioration of peasant productive capacity in- evitably led to the opposite—an internal demand which, if not stagnant, grew at a negligible rate. In fact a growing population combined with constant per capita income in the subsistence sector, simply means 17Gray. op. cit.p. 154. 43 greater subsistence output rather than expanding aggregate demand for capitalist production. Thus, notwithstanding increased government intervention to foster economic growth, the system lacked an internal force sufficient to start development. The result was stagnation and in fact in the 1930’s, after nearly two decades of self-government, the country still had a typically colonial economy with no industrial sector apart from the railway workshop and small firms engaged in wholly subsidiary activities. There was a second inherent contradiction in the institutional frame- work. The preservation of the traditional African system of land tenure was meant to prevent the emergence of a proletariat which, nonetheless, was an inevitable consequence of the decreasing productivity of the peasants combined with labour migration. Once the process of deterioration of African agriculture had started, it became cumulative since the lowered and continuously decreasing opportunity cost of the peasantry in the traditional sector was bound to force an ever-growing number of men into wage employment. This was true, even though the average per capita income in the traditional sector remained constant, for two reasons: (a) the ‘effort-price’ of that constant income increased, by extension of the acreage under cultiva- tion; (b) a constant average conceals important variations from area to area. Furthermore the process was accelerated by the fact that cattle was the most important of the few forms of investment open to Afri- cans, so that the population explosion was accompanied by remarkable increases in the cattle population which worsened pressure on the land. Thus in the long run the savings of the wage-workers would not corres- pond, in the traditional sector, to an increased productivity of the peasantry that would make the production of a surplus above subsis- tence possible. Therefore when the limits of land available had been reached, the attempt by wage labourers to realize their ‘savings’ would be frustrated, their security would be lost and a proletariat arise. The upshot of this was that the institutional framework established in the 1930’s, while it could not lead endogenously to economic growth, was unable to prevent the formation of a proletariat. World War II The lack of internal demand represented a brake on industrialization and development, and the progressive decrease of overall peasant pro- ductivity increasingly worsened this obstacle. World War II was the external stimulant which more than offset the hindrance and started economic growth in Southern Rhodesia after the stagnation of the 1930’s. Goods previously imported became practically unavailable, thus creating a demand for local industries; chrome and asbestos assumed strategic importance; world shortage of agricultural produce provided a rapidly growing outlet for farmers’ output. More specific- ally an air training scheme was implemented in the country, in associa- tion with the British Government, whereby Southern Rhodesia had to supply air stations, quarters, land and buildings. ‘The air training 44