Conquest and unfree labor, not universal Marxist laws, explain South African racial class structure

Evidence

Nor is there a neglect of class relations and the class struggle. The segmentary approach of “pluralism” is specifically refused. “If there is division, the divisions can be seen as functionally integrated within an over-all pattern of political conflict generated by the capitalist development of the country since the mineral discoveries of 1867 and 1886.” The “revision” involved is rather the refusal of any attempt to subsume these into a universal and univocal form—“capitalist class relations” in general. “Clearly what we have here is not something which can be adequately interpreted in terms of some universal Marxist law of class struggle but a specific kind of class struggle there undoubtedly is, namely one in which the classes are groups of varying rights and degrees of rightlessness, according to the kind of conquest or unfreedom which was imposed on them in an earlier period. The history, the structure and the forms of social differentiation which South Africa presents [i.e., its “racial” aspect] are, as in the case of any former colonial society, the product of such conquest and unfreedom.” These two criteria—conquest and “unfree” labor—are the critical conceptual mechanisms through which Rex’s analysis is organized. The “origin” of the capitalist mode in conditions of conquest, coupled with the “peculiar institutions” of unfree labor, thus preserve, at the economic level, and secure its continuing racially ascriptive features. This is a capitalism of a very specific and distinctive kind: “there are a number of different relationships to the means of production more subtle than can be comprehended in terms of distinction between owners and non-owners,” each of which “gives rise to specific class situations … a whole range of class situations.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 592

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hall’s broader project of historicizing capitalism and refusing universalist theory; echoes the reader’s other economic-history material (Milgrom law merchant, Frankfurt School localizing theory) about how a general theory must be qualified by concrete historical capitalist formations. — connects to: Marxists read apartheid’s racism as instruments of class domination — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 564
• DEFINE: Defines Rex’s two ‘critical conceptual mechanisms’ — conquest and unfree labor — as the analytic tools differentiating South African capitalism from the classical type.