The Development of Capitalism in Africa

John Sender, Sheila Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415601962
• eBook ISBN: 9781136856716
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Economics

First published in 1986, this work challenges underdevelopment analyses of Africa's past experiences and future prospects, and builds upon a very wide range of recent historical research to argue that the impact of Capitalism has resulted in economic progress and significant improvements in living standards. In marked contrast to the dependency approach, they propose that the important political and economic differences between the experiences of developing countries should be stressed and analysed. The argument is supported by a detailed look at the emergence since 1900 of capitalist social relations of production in nine different countries.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced profound social and economic changes during the course of the twentieth century. These changes have involved brutality, disruption and suffering for millions of Africans and, as is well known, many millions of Africans continue to starve, remain illiterate and are subject to violence and cruel forms of exploitation. The quality of life of the mass of the population in the 1980s must be regarded as appallingly unsatisfactory by any criteria.

Many authors have made important contributions to our knowledge of the scale and forms of this suffering, both during the colonial period and since Independence. This book, however, does not seek to add to this literature. Rather than re-emphasizing the persistence of poverty and suffering, the focus of the following chapters will be on the identification and analysis of change as opposed to continuity.

The most significant of the long-term changes in sub-Saharan Africa which are documented below are the emergence of capitalist social relations of production and the development of the productive forces. The focus on relations and forces of production is derived from Marx’s analysis of the origins and development of capitalism, an analysis which stresses the interaction of social, political and economic processes. The justification for the use of this analytical framework ultimately rests on the degree to which it is successful in illuminating the actual process of historical development, or, in the words of Dobb, ‘on the extent to which it gives a shape to our picture of the process corresponding to the contours which the historical landscape proves to have’ (1963, 8).

For Marx, the preconditions for a transition to capitalism were ‘that two very different kinds of commodity possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sum of values they possess, by buying other people’s labour power; on the other hand, free labourers, the sellers of their own labour power’ (Marx 1970, 714). Thus, the origins of capitalist development were rooted in changes in ownership and control of the means of production. The consequence of the establishment of capitalist social relations has been an unprecedented rate of technological change, a sustained improvement in the level of development of the productive forces. Changes in relations of production, in the form and degree of control by different social classes of the means of production, have never occurred without major upheavals, struggles, coercion, resistance and violence. It follows that the timing, nature and outcome of these struggles cannot be mechanistically predetermined,¹ and it is certainly the case that in Africa the specificity of pre-capitalist social formations and the capacity of different groups to resist expropriation affected the outcome.

Marx also stressed a further feature of the process of transformation of relations of production, namely the extremely long period required in all areas of Europe for the decisive establishment of capitalist social relations. Within the time-frame appropriate for an analysis of transitions to capitalism the social and economic changes in Africa which constitute the subject of this book have been in process for a very short period of time.²

Much of Marx’s analysis of capitalism was at an abstract level, involving a schematic ‘model’ in which economic processes could be understood in terms of the interactions within and between a class of capitalists and a class of ‘free’ wage labourers. One of Lenin’s central contributions was to criticize interpretations of Marx which regarded the abstract model as a representation of historically specific societies. Lenin argued that capitalist social relations may have been decisively established, may have become dominant, even in conditions where producers retain some access to the means of production and subsistence. He stressed that

capitalism, while still at a comparatively low level of development, was nowhere able to completely separate the worker from the land. … It is therefore obvious that the stock argument of there being no capitalism in our country because ‘the people own land’ is quite meaningless, because the capitalism of simple cooperation has never been connected anywhere with the workers’ complete separation from the land, and yet, needless to say, it has not on that account ceased to be capitalism. (1960a, 209)

The analysis of African social and economic change in this book is informed by a further general characteristic of Marxist methodology, concerning the relative analytical significance of internal as opposed to external forces. The object of analysis is internal change: even in societies where external forces played a significant role, it is not possible to determine their effects, or the degree to which their contribution was significant, unless the focus of the analysis is upon internal change, in particular upon changes in social relations of production. Recent discussions of transitions to capitalism in Europe have re-emphasized this point while noting that ‘economic development historically has taken place largely through the growth of the division of labour in connection with the development of trade’, Brenner argues that

if the growth of the division of labour by region and by productive task was inconceivable apart from the development of trade, this process depended, in turn, upon the growth of the productivity of labour. But rising productivity is premised upon a development of the social forces of production – and this development of the social productive forces could not be directly determined by trade, because it was itself structured by class relations not directly changeable in terms of commercial growth. (1978, 123)

Thus, the discussion in Chapter 2 of the impact upon Africa of trade with advanced capitalist countries focuses on the internal consequences of this trade, and on the complexity and diversity of the interactions between internal and external forces. Several consequences of trade relationships in the colonial period are examined, of which perhaps the most important was the transformation of land-tenure relations, and the rapid but uneven development of markets in land.

Changing relations of production are further explored in Chapter 3, in which the emergence of wage labour and transitions from direct coercion to capitalist labour markets are discussed. The material, political and cultural transformations which were associated with the development of capitalist labour markets are a central theme of this chapter.

The political consequences of independence from colonial rule are the starting point for Chapter 4, in which it is argued that a decisive shift occurred in the possibilities for state intervention to promote further capitalist development. The forms taken by this intervention, and the consequent rapidity of the development of the forces of production in many post-colonial African economies are documented in some detail.

The objective of Chapter 5 is to provide an account of the reasons for economic stagnation or retrogression in certain African countries. One of the reasons for poor economic performance which is identified in this chapter is the absence of a coherent analytical basis on which to formulate effective state interventions and macro-economic strategies. Finally, the political implications of this analytical gap are outlined, since the justification of any attempt at a Marxist analysis of processes of change in Africa must be its relevance to contemporary political debate.

It is an extremely hazardous exercise to attempt to understand processes of change in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, and it is undoubtedly the case that this book will not succeed in avoiding many of the dangers inherent in an exercise covering such a heterogeneous array of societies over such a long period of time. However, as Bharadwaj has argued, ‘we cannot, hiding behind the baffling diversity, refute the possibility of all theoretical abstraction and generalizability … without an effort to theorize, the process cannot be grasped’ (1985, 9).

The attempt to generalize is based upon a review of some of the historical research and socio-economic data available for eleven sub-Saharan countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The coverage of the historical literature is uneven; some data series were not available in a consistent form for all of the chosen countries (especially in the cases of Senegal, Ivory Coast and Mozambique), and occasional reference is made to evidence from other sub-Saharan African countries where this is regarded as illuminating. While the failure systematically to include certain major areas of sub-Saharan Africa – in particular the Sudan, Zaire and the Republic of South Africa – may limit the validity of some conclusions, nevertheless the eleven countries selected are characterized by a wide diversity of colonial and post-colonial experience, and contain a substantial proportion of sub-Saharan Africa’s population.

1 However, Brenner makes the point that such outcomes cannot be considered as ‘arbitrary, but rather that they tended to be bound up with certain historically specific patterns of the development of the contending agrarian classes and their relative strength in the different… societies: their relative levels of internal solidarity, their self-consciousness and organization, and their general political resources – especially their relationships to the nonagricultural classes … and to the state’ (1976, 52, emphasis in the original).

2 To attempt to characterize changes over periods of one or two decades as indicative of the absence of ‘genuine’ capitalist development in Africa is therefore crudely ahistorical.

Chapter 2

Trade and primary-commodity production before Independence

Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the impact of trade with the advanced capitalist economies on the growth of the domestic market in Africa. The chapter will focus on the colonial period. The central argument is that trade in this period had effects which were extraordinarily far reaching. These widespread and dynamic effects arose because of the intimate connection between the growth of export production, the development of domestic markets – for consumer goods, means of production and labour power – and the development of the productive forces.

Any analysis of the general impact of trade with ‘Africa’ has, at the outset, to take account of the issue of the heterogeneity of pre-colonial African societies, the enormous diversity in their levels of material development, in their political forms and external economic relationships. The difficulties of formulating a comprehensive analytical framework in this context are immense. Nevertheless, if the diversity and complexity of micro-historical evidence is to be ordered and comprehended, and if options for political and economic intervention are to be realistically assessed, then an attempt to search for an explicit general analytical framework is necessary.

The analysis in this chapter focuses on the impact of trade with advanced capitalist economies, in particular on the huge expansion in this trade consequent upon colonial conquest. It is well known that many African societies were involved in trade with Europe and other trading partners long before colonial conquest, and that this trade had profound economic, technological and political effects. However, these effects, in all their significance and diversity, are not the focus of this chapter. Rather, particular emphasis will be placed on the quantitative and qualitative importance of the patterns of trade with the advanced capitalist economies established in a range of African societies towards the end of the nineteenth century.

The starting point for the analysis is a discussion of trade relationships among pre-capitalist societies. Pre-capitalist trade, although limited in quantitative terms, was important for two reasons: first, the reliance of those societies on trade for the acquisition of goods necessary for social reproduction; secondly, the reliance of certain pre-capitalist ruling classes on trade as a source of surplus appropriation. Trade implied some commodity production, but nevertheless, non-commodity forms of production predominated. Most production was geared not towards exchange in any market, but either towards satisfying subsistence requirements or towards satisfying the consumption requirements of ruling classes.

Section One of this chapter will discuss the strategies adopted by pre-capitalist ruling classes in certain areas of Africa to maintain control over trade, and thereby to limit its subversive impact. In addition, the section will discuss the conditions under which these strategies could succeed in pre-colonial times. Section Two, which contains the central arguments of this chapter, discusses the dynamic linkages stemming from the growth of trade with the advanced capitalist economies during the colonial period.

Section One: Trade and production in pre-capitalist Africa

Most pre-capitalist societies in Africa engaged in trade, and although rarely significant in quantitative terms when judged by the standards of the twentieth century, trade was important because certain types of commodity were essential for social reproduction. Thus the commodities directly necessary for social reproduction included women, salt and, in some societies, iron, guns and slaves.¹ Other commodities, such as ivory and gold, could be exchanged for these essential commodities. In a number of pre-colonial African societies, trade was also important because of its role as a source of surplus appropriation by the ruling class. Ruling class control over trade had two effects: the restriction and manipulation of access to these commodities, and the appropriation of surplus.

This control over trade entailed coercion, i.e. non-economic forms of domination.² In order to monopolize the gains from trade, ruling classes either established direct supervision of the production process, e.g. in gold mining,³ and/or direct control over the marketing and transport systems, for example, by restricting access to trade routes and entry/exit points.⁴ Both forms of monopoly control implied the need for soldiers and weapons.⁵ However, forms of coercion, applied internally or externally, were not sufficient conditions for the maintenance of control, but contributed to the omnipresent brutality and wars characteristic of pre-colonial Africa. The evidence concerning these characteristics is very widespread: for example, Feierman 1974 notes more or less constant warfare in the Usambaras in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Moreover, ‘Constant warring among different neighbouring clans limited the expansion both of production and circulation at a time when there was scope for surplus accumulation … through the widening of trade networks from a local to a regional basis’ (Mbilinyi 1982, 6).⁶

The problems of maintaining control can easily be imagined: for example, alternative suppliers of tradables might develop exchange relationships which threatened current patterns of trade, and trading partners might attempt to deal directly with subordinate classes, who might thereby obtain access to guns. Thus, Roberts notes that it was impossible for Nyamwezi chiefs to monopolize long-distance trade

as long as hunters retained half their ivory crop and could sell it direct to traders. And towards the end of the century, at least in areas where chiefs were of little consequence, hunters divided their produce not with local chiefs but with traders who supplied them with guns and powder. Indeed it would seem that few if any chiefs were able for long to retain control over trade in and possession of guns. (1970, 7l)⁷

At a very early stage the difficulties of maintaining control in a trade-based state became clear in the case of Malawi:

By the late 17th century, … even the minor subchiefs had alien trading partners and therefore independent sources of authority. The successful Malawi trading kingdoms therefore began to break up because it was impossible to maintain a royal monopoly when alien traders were free to enter the land. (Curtin, Feierman, Thompson and Vansina, 1978, 173–4)

These and other difficulties were a partial explanation for the acute instability characteristic of many pre-colonial societies. In ma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Trade and primary-commodity production before Independence
• 3. The emergence of wage labour
• 4. Trade, industrialization and the state in the post-colonial period
• 5. Conclusion: wishful thinking or effective reality?
• Bibliography
• Index