Some aspects of the development of capitalism from below in Lebowa
Date
1992-09-28
Authors
Sender, John
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Abstract
The field research upon which this paper is based involved over 100
interviews, most of which were completed by Andrew Feinstein over
a period of a couple of months in mid-1991. The Development Bank
of South Africa may, or may not, decide to make available the full
results of this work as a joint publication, for which my co-author
will receive most of the credit. However, the blame for the
content of this seminar paper is my own; it is designed to provoke
academic discussion of the currently fashionable policies of small
business promotion and the views expressed cannot be attributed to
anyone but me.
The issues raised in this paper are not new and it may be useful to
refer very briefly to earlier research, which has provided a
framework for the arguments presented here. In his work on the
development of capitalism in Europe, Dobb (1963) recognised the
critical role of state intervention in, as he put it, "aiding the
emergence of the bourgeoisie". He referred to this support as the
development of capitalism from above. A similar stress on the role
of state intervention in 'short-cutting' the process of forming a
national bourgeoisie in late-industrialising economies is an
important aspect of Gerschenkron's (1962) analysis. More recently,
Amsden (1989) and Sender and Smith (1986) have provided an account
of the economic logic underlying this nurturing role of the state
in a range of East Asian and African economies in the period since
1960. Finally, this paper's interpretation of the data from Lebowa
has clearly been influenced by the results of my own earlier
research in rural Tanzania in the 1970s and 1980s, where privileged
access to state (or parastatal or CCM/TANU) resources was a crucial
element in the accumulation strategies of rural capitalists (Sender
and Smith, 1990). One issue to be explored in this seminar paper is the paradoxical
inefficiency, or the relative lack of success, with which branches
of the South African state (the Homeland Development Corporations,
the Development Bank of South Africa) have intervened to support
black capitalists in rural South Africa.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 28 September 1992
Keywords
Capitalism. South Africa. Lebowa. Congresses, Economic development projects. South Africa. Lebowa. Finance. Congresses