AFRICAN WORKERS AND AFRICAN CAPITALISM
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1976.tb00055.x |
| Published date | 01 July 1976 |
| Author | Peter Waterman |
| Date | 01 July 1976 |
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
Vol.
XIV
No.
2
REVIEW ARTICLE
AFRICAN WORKERS AND AFRICAN CAPITALISM
PETER WATERMAN*
IN writing recently
on
the st8te of labour history, Eric Hobsbawm (‘Labour
History and Ideology’,
Journal
of
Social History,
Vol. 7, No.
4,
Summmer
1974,
371-81) warns against the use of concepts or models borrowed for their
fashionableness or originality from the social sciences. ‘I daresay’, he says, ‘that
someone has already analysed labour unions as systems of patron-client
relations’. And he goes
on
to insist that such models be only used if they are rele-
vant to the basic questions being asked. As for the necessary approach to be
taken by labour historians, he says that this must include a model of what
societies are and how they work, an understanding of their subject as being multi-
layered (including unorganised workers and national leaders, the economic and
the ideological), and a balanced combination of quantification with qualitative
statements. Finally, he states, labour history is, like all social sciences, concerned
with changing the world
(‘if
they were not, economics would be merely a sub-
branch of mathematics’). For Hobsbawm this requires both objective interpreta-
tion and
a
clear understanding of the way in which academic theory and practical
policy interrelate. For himself he states as his aim the creation of a world in which
working people can make their own life and their own history, ‘rather than to have
it made for them by others, including academics’.
This long foreword is directly relevant to the work of Richard Sandbrook,t a
man who might endorse Hobsbawm’s aim-yet who has indeed analysed Kenyan
labour unions in terms of patron-client relations. Before considering Sandbrook
against Hobsbawm, however, let
us
open the book and see precisely what it is
about.
In the first place, it is not about proletarians, it
is
about union structure,
strategy and leadership. It is also, to a limited extent (and then more by implica-
tion than by direct examination) about union membership. But the direct treat-
ment
of
workers is confined to a few pages in the background chapter and to
study of ethnic and occupational differences between members and leaders. No
matter, a book studying trade unions within a framework specified as that of a
developing African capitalist state is also something to be grateful for.
If Sandbrook’s subject matter is trade unionism and his perspective political-
economic, what is his concern? It is that of the relationship between organised
labour and the national bourgeoisie, raising specifically the question of whether or
not the working class and
unions
have
a
vested interest in the neo-colonial order.
This is the ‘Fanon Question’ that haunts all younger-generation radicals studying
African labour. For Sandbrook, the answer
seems
to
be
that the unionised
workers are not
a
labour aristocracy (p. 23), but that union leaders are (p.
19
1).
I
say
seems
to
be
because Sandbrook (like the other younger-generation radicals)
does not specify what a labour aristocracy might
be
and how it might
act.
Again,
little matter, since what he actually does is to examine in considerable detail and
with
no
little theoretical ingenuity and sophistication the way in which the unions
and unionised workers are articulated with the ruling class. This is the vital ques-
tion at most places and most times, revolutionary consciousness and action
amongst the workers being historically both rare and brief.
Institute
of
Social Studies, The Hague. Holland.
t
R.
Sandbrook,
Proletarians and African Capitalism; The Kenyan Case,
1960-1972.
Cambridge University
Press,
London;
1975;
ix
+
222
pp.;
f8.00.
220
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