[lbo-talk] (Fwd) Washington discussion, Friday, on Southern African poli-econ

Patrick Bond pbond at mail.ngo.za
Thu Apr 26 07:28:06 PDT 2007


(Apologies for cross-posts and late notice... similar chats scheduled for Palo Alto on Monday, Berkeley on Tuesday and NYC at MR on May 7 - details at http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs)

BROWNBAG LUNCH DISCUSSION: Patrick Bond on Southern African Political Economy: new theories, analyses, strategies DATE: Friday, April 27 TIME: 12:30-2pm VENUE: ActionAid's new office: 1420 K Street, NW Suite 900

Patrick Bond - who directs the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa - will be in Washington, DC on Friday. At ActionAid at 1420 K, 12:30-2pm, he will discuss new ideas in political economy drawing upon two books copublished by CCS this year:

* The Accumulation of Capital in Southern Africa * Beyond Enclavity in African Economies

These books (free for download at http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs), as well as the March 2007 special issue of the Review of African Political Economy (on 'primitive accumulation'), include papers from a 2006 Colloquium on Economy, Society and Nature. They capture the new ways that 'superexploitation' - profits drawn from beyond the sphere of market transactions, by use of theft and piracy, coercion and violence, and extreme commodification - is being understood. The idea applies to old challenges like the race/class debate in a context of systemic migrancy (and rural women's role in the reproduction of cheap labor), as well as recent problems as diverse as new-generation corporate welfarism in economic development, microfinance evangelism, health system degradation, water commercialization and carbon trading ('the privatization of the air').

CCS is part of an informal network in Southern Africa and around the world - which ActionAid also contributes actively to - searching out insights of analysis, measurement, and resistance strategy/tactics under conditions of globalization, persistent economic volatility, excess corporate power and the fusion of popular resistances. The two recent books and the Roape special issue draw upon the work of the late Southern African economists Guy Mhone and Jose Negrao, as well as German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. A further volume on superexploitation in South Africa devoted to the legacy of the late Harold Wolpe - *Transcending Two Economies: From Wolpe to Mbeki and Back* - is also due out shortly.

***

THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

NEW BOOK, FREE TO DOWNLOAD: http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/files/RL%20Capital-africa.pdf

HARD COPIES AVAILABLE: Berlin: at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung head office, after 19 February Durban: at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, after 22 February Joburg: at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung office, after 22 February Cape Town: at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Seminar with AIDC, ILRIG and LRS, 28 February (Launch details to follow)

***

The Accumulation of Capital in Southern Africa: Rosa Luxemburg’s contemporary relevance

Edited by Patrick Bond, Horman Chitonge and Arndt Hopfmann

The revived interest in Luxemburg’s ideas about imperialism is not surprising. More than her contemporaries (Lenin, Bukharin, Hilferding), she pointed out the dialectical relations between markets and the ‘non-market’ spheres of life, to which we should add the environment. These relations are central to a new period of ‘primitive accumulation’ that has generated powerful resistance in many corners of the earth. Southern Africa is an especially important site to reconsider the dynamics of capital accumulation, given the reliance of regional businesses upon superexploitative systems such as colonialism, apartheid and neoliberalism.

This collection is drawn from a collaboration between the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, in which the Rosa Luxemburg Political Education Seminar 2006 overlapped with the Centre’s Colloquium on Economy, Society and Nature. The event attracted some of the world’s leading political economists alongside regional analysts. This volume features work by Luxemburg, Arndt Hopfmann, Jeff Guy, Ahmed Veriava, Massimo De Angelis, Elmar Altvater, Patrick Bond, Isobel Frye, Caroline Skinner, Imraan Valodia, Greg Ruiters, Leonard Gentle, Ulrich Duchrow, Ntwala Mwilima, S’bu Zikode, Salim Vally and Trevor Ngwane.

***

Capitalists have come to understand that to destroy the subsistence economy altogether would not be in their best interests for two reasons: fi rst, 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

***

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.

Contents

Contributors Preface – Arndt Hopfmann Introduction – Patrick Bond and Horman Chitonge

PART ONE: THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL IN THEORY AND HISTORY

Excerpts from The Accumulation of Capital - Rosa Luxemburg

The Accumulation of Capital in historical perspective - Arndt Hopfmann

‘No eyes, no interest, no frame of reference’: Rosa Luxemburg, Southern African historiography, and pre-capitalist of modes of production – Jeff Guy

Unlocking the present? Two theories of primitive accumulation - Ahmed Veriava

Enclosures, commons and the ‘outside’ – Massimo De Angelis

PART TWO: CONTEMPORARY ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL

Imperialism and new commodity forms – Elmar Altvater

Luxemburg and South African subimperial accumulation - Patrick Bond

Two economies? A critique of recent South African policy debates – Caroline Skinner and Imraan Valodia

New faces of privatisation: From comrades to customers – Greg Ruiters

Black Economic Empowerment and the South African social formation – Leonard Gentle

PART THREE: SOCIAL STRUGGLES AGAINST ACCUMULATION

Property for people, not for profit - Ulrich Duchrow

The regional labour movement - Ntwala Mwilima

The shackdwellers movement of Durban – S’Bu Zikode

Against the commodification of education – Salim Vally

Challenging municipal policies and global capital – Trevor Ngwane

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.

***

BEYOND ENCLAVITY IN AFRICAN ECONOMIES: THE ENDURING WORK OF GUY MHONE

Edited by Patrick Bond for the IDEAs Conference in memory of Guy Mhone: Sustainable Employment Generation in Developing Countries 25-27 January, Nairobi

GUY MHONE (1943-2005) was the leading economist to have worked across post-colonial Southern Africa. His employers included the International Labour Organisation in Lusaka, Harare and Maseru, the Southern African Political Economic Series Trust, the South African Department of Labour, and the University of the Witwatersrand; his heart and labours were largely for the benefit of progressive civil society organisations, especially organised labour. Mhone’s books included The Political Economy of a Dual Labour Market in Africa (1982); Malawi at the Crossroads (edited, 1992); The Case for Sustainable Development in Zimbabwe (coauthored, 1992); and The Informal Sector in Southern Africa (1997).

Sponsors: The University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, International Development Economics Associates, the Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management and the University of Nairobi Institute for Development Studies and Department of Economics

Financial support: Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa and ActionAid Malawi

CONTENTS 1) Guy Mhone’s Life - Patrick Bond 2) Labour Market Discrimination and its Aftermath - Guy Mhone 3) Enclavity - Adebayo Olukoshi 4) Guy Mhone at Work - Judica Amri-Makhetha 5) Guy Mhone as Mentor – Omano Edigheji 6) Guy Mhone as Teacher – Tawanda Mutasah 7) Personal Reflections on Guy Mhone - Thandika Mkandawire 8) Honouring the Memory of Guy Mhone - Codesria

CONTRIBUTORS

Judica Amri-Makhetha is Director of the International Labour Office for Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland, based in Pretoria.

Patrick Bond is Director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

Omano Edigheji is Research Director at the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg.

Thandika Mkandawire is Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva.

Tawanda Mutasah is Director of the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa in Johannesburg.

Adebayo Olukoshi is Director of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, Dakar.



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