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Capitalisms Crises: Class Struggles in South Africa and the World

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Capitalisms Crises: Class Struggles in South Africa and the World Democratic Marxism Series Series Editor: Vishwas Satgar The crisis of Marxism in the late twentieth century was the crisis of orthodox and vanguardist Marxism associated mainly with hierarchical communist parties, and which was imposed – even as state ideology – as the ‘correct’ Marxism. The Stalinisation of the Soviet Union and its eventual collapse exposed the inherent weaknesses and authoritarian mould of vanguardist Marxism. More fundamentally, vanguardist Marxism was rendered obsolete but for its residual existence in a few parts of the world, including authoritarian national liberation movements in Africa and in China. With the deepening crises of capitalism, a new democratic Marxism (or democratic historical materialism) is coming to the fore. Such a democratic Marxism is characterised in the following ways: • Its sources span non-vanguardist grassroots movements, unions, political fronts, mass parties, radical intellectuals, trans­­­­national activist networks and the progressive academy; • It seeks to ensure that the inherent categories of Marxism are theorised within constantly changing historical conditions to find meaning; • Marxism is understood as a body of social thought that is unfinished and hence challenged by the need to explain the dynamics of a globalising capitalism and the futures of social change; • It is open to other forms of anti-capitalist thought and practice, including currents within radical ecology, feminism, emancipatory utopianism and indigenous thought; • It does not seek to be a monolithic and singular school of thought but engenders contending perspectives; • Democracy, as part of the heritage of people’s struggles, is understood as the basis for articulating alternatives to capitalism and as the primary means for constituting a transformative subject of historical change. This series seeks to elaborate the social theorising and politics of democratic Marxism. Published in South Africa by: Wits University Press 1 Jan Smuts Avenue Johannesburg, 2001 www.witspress.co.za Compilation © Vishwas Satgar 2015 Chapters © Individual contributors 2015 Published edition © Wits University Press 2015 First published 2015 978-1-86814-920-9 (Paperback) 978-1-86814-926-1 (Web PDF) 978-1-86814-924-7 (EPUB) 978-1-77614-047-3 (Mobi) 978-1-77614-706-9 (Open Access PDF) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accord- ance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978. This book is freely available through the OAPEN library (www.oapen.org) under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 Creative Commons License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/). The publication of this open access volume was made possible by funding from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences as well as the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. Edited by Liz Mackenzie and Mark Ronan Proofread by Lee Smith Index by Clifford Perusset Cover design by Farm Design Book Design by Hothouse South Africa Book layout and typesetting by Farm Design ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS his volume owes a special debt to the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. TWithout their support it would have been impossible to hold a contributors’ workshop in South Africa and to ensure that the manu- script was developed sufficiently for publication. We are also grateful to the support given by Athish Satgoor and Andrew Bennie, organisers at the Cooperative and Policy Alternative Centre (COPAC), who played a central role in organising the workshop convened with contributors and activists from various social movements, including worker leaders involved in building the National Union of Metalworkers-led United Front. Special thanks also goes to Kathryn Joynt who assisted with a language and citation edit and Professor Michelle Williams who gave feedback on the manuscript. Finally, special thanks to the team at Wits University Press, particularly Veronica Klipp, Roshan Cader and Corina van der Spoel for supporting this volume and the Democratic Marxism Series. vii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii TABLES AND FIGURES xi ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS xii INTRODUCTION Vishwas Satgar 1 PART ONE: CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDINGS OF CAPITALISM’S CRISES AND CLASS STRUGGLE 19 CHAPTER 1: From Marx to the systemic crises of capitalist civilisation 20 Vishwas Satgar CHAPTER 2: Activist understandings of the crisis 50 William K Carroll PART TWO: CAPITALIST CRISIS AND LEFT RESPONSES IN THE GLOBAL NORTH 77 CHAPTER 3: Occupy and the dialectics of the Left in the United States 78 Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Isham Christie CHAPTER 4: Austerity and resistance: The politics of labour in the Eurozone crisis 97 Andreas Bieler and Jamie Jordan CHAPTER 5: Beyond social-democratic and communist parties: Left political organisation in transition in Western Europe 123 Hilary Wainwright PART THREE: CAPITALIST CRISIS AND LEFT RESPONSES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH 165 CHAPTER 6: Brazil: From neoliberal democracy to the end of the ‘Lula moment’ 166 Alfredo Saad-Filho CHAPTER 7: The global financial crisis and ‘resilience’: The case of India 189 Sumangala Damodaran CHAPTER 8: Understanding the labour crisis in South Africa: Real wage trends and the minerals–energy complex economy 211 Niall Reddy CHAPTER 9: Seize power! The role of the constitution in uniting a struggle for social justice in South Africa 245 Mark Heywood CONCLUSION Vishwas Satgar 277 CONTRIBUTORS 284 INDEX 287 TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2.1 Groups participating in study of cognitive praxis networks 57 Table 8.1 Real wage growth rates, all workers, 1997–2011 (%) 218 Table 8.2 Union coverage, formal-sector employees, 2001–2012 232 Figure 8.1 Real mean monthly wages, 1997–2011 216 Figure 8.2 Real monthly earnings trends for all workers, 1997–2011 217 Figure 8.3 Per cent change in real monthly earnings, 1997–2011 (2011 prices) 219 Figure 8.4 Real wage patterns for different skill categories classified by occupation 220 Figure 8.5 Distribution of the workforce, 2001–2011 229 xi ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ANC African National Congress ARVs anti-retrovirals BJP Bharatiya Janata Party BNDES Brazilian Development Bank BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa CALS Centre for Applied Legal Studies COPAC Cooperative and Policy Alternative Center Cosatu Congress of South African Trade Unions CRID Research and Information Centre for Development DAWN Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era DGB Confederation of German Trade Unions DPD domestic public debt ECB European Central Bank ECB external commercial borrowings ECI European Citizens’ Initiative EE Equal Education EFF Economic Freedom Fighters EMF European Metalworkers’ Federation EMU Economic and Monetary Union EPSU European Federation of Public Service Unions ETUC European Trade Union Confederation EU European Union FDI foreign direct investment FII foreign indirect investment GDP gross domestic product GLC Greater London Council ICT information and communications technology IFG International Forum on Globalization IFIs international financial institutions IMF International Monetary Fund ISI import substitution industrialisation LAT labour aristocracy thesis LRC Legal Resources Centre MEC minerals–energy complex MST The Landless Peasants’ Movement NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NCEUS National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector xii NDP National Development Plan NDR National Democratic Revolution NEP New Economic Policies NGO non-governmental organisation NUM National Union of Mineworkers Numsa National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OWS Occupy Wall Street PAH Mortgage Victims Platform PALMS Post-Apartheid Labour Market Survey PASOK Panhellenic Socialist Movement PBF Bolsa Família PRC Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Party, Italy) PRIA Participatory Research in Asia PSDB Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira PT Workers’ Party QES Quarterly Employment Survey RBI Reserve Bank of India RosaLux Rosa Luxemburg Foundation SACP South African Communist Party SAHRC South African Human Rights Commission SBTC skill-biased technological change SDS Students for a Democratic Society SGP Stability and Growth Pact SER standard employment relationship SERI Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa SOEs state-owned enterprises SV Socialist Left Party TAC Treatment Action Campaign TAPGs Transnational Alternative Policy Groups TNI Transnational Institute TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership UDF United Democratic Front UK United Kingdom UN United Nations US United States USSR Soviet Union WSF World Social Forum WTO World Trade Organization xiii xiv INTRODUCTION Vishwas Satgar ntil recently, the Great Depression of the 1930s was considered the worst Ucrisis of capitalism. Today, historians, economists and the business media have confirmed that we are now experiencing the worst crisis of contempo- rary capitalism. The early-twentieth-century Great Depression seems to pale in comparison to the ‘great financial crisis’ that occurred at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Despite the massive bailouts given to banks and finance houses, deepening austerity in the heartlands of capitalism and a tenuous conti- nuity in growth rates in countries like China and India, the end of the crisis is not in sight. This, of course, does not mean capitalism is about to collapse – but it is certainly in a state
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