Review: C Perrings, Black mineworkers in Central Africa

Charles Perrings, Black mineworkers in Central Africa, Heinemann, London, 1979, pp302, hardback, £10.50. An analysis of the nature of the working class in Africa is of central importance for understanding the class struggle in today's world crisis. The formation of the working class alongside the penetration of imperialism, the relationship between workers and the peasantry and the divisions within the working class itself are vital questions for the revolution- By discussing one of the leading sections of the working class in Africa, Black mineworkers in Central Africa takes up these questions. It provides a wealth of empirical material on the colonial period, particularly on the copper mines in the Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia. Perrings brings out the violent repression and brutality that accompanied the process of creating a working class to serve the needs of A comprehensive description of the mineworkers 'recruited' (by force) and of those taken on by 'voluntary' means is followed by a detailed account of control and repression in the minefields and on the land. Later measures to stabilise the workforce are explained, not as attempts to bring migratory movements to an end, but as devices dictated by the balance between economic necessity and social Perrings' study is illuminating in its treatment of the divisions established within the working class between black and white workers and amongst the black workers themselves. He describes how a small stratum of European workers emerged from South Africa and Belgium after the First World War. These workers were predominantly employed in skilled and supervisory work in the mines. In the Copper Belt, however, they lacked the political influence enjoyed by their counterparts in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. In the field of employment, therefore, they were more vulnerable to replacement by low-wage African workers - a strategy adopted by the mining companies in response to the inter-war recession. To protect their position the white Northern Rhodesian Mine Workers Union advanced their sectional interests against those of the Africans.

'twenties onwards the mineowners From the early sought to stabilise a section of the African workforce. This was a means of reducing the proportion of European workers and an attempt to cope with labour shortages. Welfare benefits were introduced and a system of wage differentials instituted, giving higher pay for long and regular service.

The divisions in the working class as a whole were thus reproduced among the African workers as skilled and semiskilled workers rose above labourers. Drawing extensively from material on the crisis of the 'thirties, Perrings illustrates how capital used these divisions in its attack on the working class. The real wages of black mineworkers were pushed below the bare subsistence level.

The most useful section of this book deals with the eruption of strikes and militant protest among African workers in the late 'thirties and early 'forties. Lacking organisation and political leadership, these spontaneous reyolts against repression and exploitation were crushed by the colonial authorities. Nevertheless, they represented the first major upsurge against imperialist oppression. They 46 marked the first appearance of the decisive force in Central Africa's future development - the working class.

Perrings' empirical research is not Unfortunately matched by his approach to theory, which is an eclectic one.

Perrings rejects Marx's theory of primitive accumulation and endorses Rosa Luxemburg's thesis that the existence and development of capitalism can only take place in an environment characterised by non-capitalist forms of production.

He uses the development of labour migration in Central Africa and the continued survival of subsistence farming to try to refute Marx's theory of the "free labourer'.

Perrings fails to understand that Marx's historical account of primitive accumulation was specific to Britain.

Marx explicitly warned that this account cannot serve as a "model' for the process of primitive accumulation elsewhere.

Marx's point was that capitalist development demanded the separation of the direct producers from their means of The nature of this process and the subsequent fate of the proletarianised layers depends on the specific circumstances in which accumulation takes place.

basis for the expansion of capitalism in Central Africa meant that the transformation of the countryside was uneven and partial. The slow growth of industry restricted the rise of the working class and its absorption into industry. Perrings is wrong to see in this evolution the 'coexistence of both capitalist and non-capitalist social relations' (p3). Subsistence agriculture and the constant flow of migrant workers between town and country do not contradict the overall rule of capital. Indeed, such forms of uneven development are a feature of advanced as well as backward capitalist countries. To label large parts of Central Africa as non-capitalist is to neglect the dominant tendencies inherent in imperialism. The features which Perrings explains as non-capitalist social relations are vivid testimony to the of capital to develop the forces of production Perrings himself realises that a few impressions do not make a theory. He concedes that he is 'seeking less to develop a theoretical position than to harness a closely wrought conceptual framework to the task of interpreting a body of empirical evidence' (p3). As a source of information Perrings' book is valuable. As a work of analysis, it is misleading and confused. Like so many radical writers on Africa, Perrings fails to pinpoint the fundamental contradiction between labour and capital.

Peter Wilson