Capitalism outsources welfare itself to non-capitalist sectors it refuses to sustain

Evidence

This has certain theoretical consequences for those articulated social formations where the non-capitalist sector is “able to fulfil functions that capitalism prefers not to assume in the under-developed countries” (see Wolpe’s development of this argument, above)-and thus for such societies as the South African one, where (as John Clammer extrapolates) “people who are obliged to become wage-labourers in a neoand quasi-colonial situation are forced back on the ‘traditional’ sector to obtain precisely those services which the capitalist does not provide.” Clammer correctly points out that this revives the “dual sector” analysis-though in a radically new form since, as Meillassoux argues, it is precisely the ideological function of “dual sector” theories to “conceal the exploitation of the rural community, integrated as an organic component of capitalist production” (Meillassoux 1972, 1974; for a more extended critique, Clammer 1975). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 613

Categorization

• XREF: Meillassoux’s ‘self-sustaining’ agrarian formations grafted into capitalism echo how ‘Precapitalist Modes of Production’ debates feed into Hall’s articulation thesis, which is the chapter’s core concept.
• SEED: The South African case where wage-laborers are pushed back onto the ‘traditional’ sector could anchor an essay on how modernization narratives conceal capitalism’s reliance on unpaid subsistence.