Notes for a political economy of unemployment in Africa.pdf

7/29/2019 Notes for a political economy of unemployment in Africa.pdf

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Notes for a Polit ical Economy ofUnemployment in Afr icaClaude AkeThe following are just what the title suggests, notes. Very preliminary andtentative ideas which might be useful for a political economy of unemploy-ment in Africa.

I have treated Africa as an undifferentiated whole by thinking and usingthose ideas and concepts which seem to me to be applicable to the widestrange of African experiences. I am aware of course that unless one thinksconcretely and m akes the, necessary differen tiations one do es no t really sayvery much. But that refinement is for later. I have made no attempt to beempirical. I am groping for a scientific understanding of the problem ofunemployment and it seems to me that the pro per way to start is to theorizeit however tentatively. Before we can examine particulars, before we can beempirical, we have to begin with the very preliminary task of devising someuniformizing concepts and putting them in some systematic relationship. Itis this preliminary task which is being attempted here.The Meaning and Importance of UnemploymentPerhaps the most telling deficiency of our development strategies in Africais their failure to register the singular impo rtance of the problem of unem ploy-ment. Always, on the formal level, the importance of the problem isacknowledged. At every opportunity, the determination to solve it is pro-claimed. But this is never really reflected in actual policies especially at theoperational level. I canno t think of a single African developm ent p lan whichhas placed the question of emp loym ent at the center of the develop m ent ef-fort, nor indeed of any in which it is accorded very high priority.

Yet the problem of unem ploym ent in Africa is so critical tha t, we m aylegitimately resolve underdevelopm ent into this pro blem . L et me clarify. Th ehuman being is first and foremost a worker and work is the most criticalactivity of society. It is by work that the human being fashions the meansto stay alive, reproduce his kind an d achieve civilization. Essen tially, we areas we work.


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Now , whether we conceive of development as economic growth or the over-coming of disabilities such as poverty, ignorance and disease, whether weconceive it as the fullest realization of hum an potentialities, it is ultimatelya matter of how w e w ork or ho w we might work; and associated with that,how we m ight deploy and use the product of our work. Underdevelopmentand development are about work; they are outcomes of determinatecharacteristics of the work process, its social organization and the distribu-tion and use of its product. So much for work. What about employment?

Employment is a particular variant of work. Work itself is a form of ac-tivity conce ived in a rath er und ifferentiated manner. It is purposeful activi-ty involving physical or mental exertion. The vassals tilling the land in them anor are engaged in w ork. This definition makes no further demands onthe quality of the activity except that it entails exertion; it leaves the ques-tion of the purpose of the activity completely open, the particular way inwhich the activity is purposeful does not matter.Em ploy m ent is a m ore restrictive conception of w ork. Conventionally theconcept is used in two related senses, (a) to be occupied in a particular ac-tivity and (b) to use somebody or to be used by somebody; this is a specialcase of being occupied. By extension, the latter usage has come to mean,to use the services of someone or something in return for some compensa-tion now typically monetary or a means of livelihood.One may work without being employed but that is not to say that work

and em ploym ent are d icho tom ou s. Employment and work are part of a con-tinuum. We may think of this continuum as gradations of being employed.At the most rudimentary level of being employed the concept of employ-ment m eets an d merges with th at of work. A t this level employment is essen-tially wo rkin g or doing a jo b , its quality has little or no content except beinga purposeful form of self-exertion . This is arguably the level of employmentin which the bulk of the African work-force finds itself. This is certainlytrue for peasan ts and subsistence farmers, the lower strata of the urban pro-letariat, the informal sector and the majority of women. As a rule theiremployment yields meager material reward; it is often physically andpsychologically debilitating and it offers little or no room for self-deve-lopment.It is a m ute po int w heth er they are employed. For it would seem that oneis not really employed if one's productivity or wage or return is salow that

one is hard ly able to re pro duc e oneself. Nor is one really employed in a jo bwhich offers hardly any scope for self-development.


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reproduction and even some margin of self-improvement. At yet a higherlevel, employment offers the prospect of reproduction at a higher qualitativelevel, the opportunity to be creative and to develop one's potentialities tothe fullest.

It is necessary to emphasize that these levels or phases do not constitutedifferent definitions of employment. They are not discrete but continous,each one necessarily referring to the o thers. It is especially useful to rememberthis in the African context where the extremities of underdevelopment usuallylead to the conflation of employment with working or having a job and thedismissal of the notion of satisfying and creative jobs as esoteric irrelevan-cies. It also leads people to overstate, in a most misleading way, the pointthat having a job, any job at all constitutes a remarkable improvement onprevailing conditions for a lot of people in Africa.

The danger of doing this is that we trivialize the concept of unemploy-ment and with that, its status as a real life p rob lem . If we trivialize the con-cept of employment in the manner suggested we are readily seduced intomodes of thought and action which are dehumanizing. For instance, whenwe assimilate the concept of employment to the provision of jobs, we maybegin to lose sight of the moral and political significance of the differencesbetween the work of the galley slave and that of the a rch itect. O nce o ur sen-sitivities are blunted in this way we are lost. Also if we are as we work, wecannot reasonably settle for a notion of the work process which offers onlybeastly existence.Unemployment and CapitalismUnfortunately, it is quite difficult to escape these pitfa lls. C apitalism tenden-tially trivializes the problem of unem ploym ent even thou gh it uniquely pro-duces it in its most tragic form . It is th e capitalist m od e of prod uc tion whichhas produced the workless person. This phenomenon is engendered initiallyby primitive accumulation and subsequently sustained and increased by themechanics and contradictions of ex panded rep rod uctio n. T he workless per-son is the outcome of two related aspects of capitalism: the atomization ofprecapitalist social structures and the emergence of market society, the societyof individuals who relate to each other according to the calculus of self-interest.

The other factor is the appropriation of the means of production of thesociety by the few through the use of force; this is primitive accumulation,the inescapable prehistory of capitalism. It leaves in its wake, m asses of peoplewith no chance of realizing their la bo ur pow er in pro du ctive ac tivity, having


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NOTES F OR A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF UNEMPLOYM ENT IN AFRICA 99

cumbing to w orklessness for labo ur power like any other com mo dity is sub-ject to the vagaries of supply and demand.The Problem of Unemployment in AfricaW hat is the pro ble m of unem ploym ent in Africa? It can be stated very brief-ly albeit with oversimplification as follows: Africa is a continent in whichthe vast majority of the potential workforce, often as much as 70 per cent,is either workless or marginally employed and generally with very lowproductivity.

In the urban enclaves of Africa, the nature of the problem of unemploy-ment is reflected in the phenomenon of the informal sector. According tosurveys carried out by the International Labour Organization especially theJobs and Skills P rog ram m e for A frica (J ASP A), the proportion of the labourforce involved in some form of informal sector activity is typically over 50per cent and sometimes goes as high as 70 per cent. The informal sector inAfrica has been misrepresented in any number of ways since the ILO Mis-sion of 1972 to Kenya focussed attention on it. Essentially what the infor-mal sector is, is the econ om y of de spe ration . As a general rule, labou r entersthe informal sector when the alternative is worklessness and a real prospectof starvation. It is an expression of the indomitable will to survive in theface of seemingly hopeless odd s, nam ely the lack of a buyer for o ne 's labo urpower and the lack of means of labour to realize it. The survival is oftenachieved by stretc hin g ing enu ity, end uran ce and patience to the outer limits:the creation of cap ital from noth ing as in the case of the street trader whosestock of capital is two packets of cigarettes sold singly; the improbable featof substituting labour power for means of production and hands for toolsachieved by the shoemaker of the garbage dump who rescues discarded tiresand with hands and scraps of metal turns out shoes-of sorts. The sector ischaracterized by minimal availability of capital and supporting infrastruc-tures, maximum physical exertion, inhuman hours, and meager returns foreffort. Th e inform al sector represents one of the most hostile and brutaliz-ing conditions of realizing labour power.

There is some perversity in the tendency to represent the informal sectoras a hopeful development hopeful in the sense that it reduces social ten-sion, provides employment, encourages creativity and self-reliance, the dif-fusion of skills and the redu ction of waste in human an d m aterial resources.No doubt it does all these things to some extent. But we cannot take anycom fort in its existence and its daily grow th. It arises from misery. And whileit may help people to starve off starvation, it subjects them to unacceptableoppression and inhuman conditions of work. The correct attitude to the in-


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pearance, and to move people to more humane, more productive and morerewarding avenues for the realization of labour power. This prospect is along way off. For now it is not disappearing but growing.To understand the informal sector as a manifestation of the problem ofunemployment, it has to be seen in the context of the social formation. Itis organically linked to the peculiar historical character of the capitalist modeof production in much of Africa. The informal sector is a manifestation ofa capitalism which is prone to stagnation and unable to develop the produc-tive forces. Colonialism entailed the institutionalization of capitalism, butcolonial capitalism usually relied heavily on coercive intervention, mademinimal productive investment and leaned heavily toward the role of beinga conduit for the export of surp lus. It attacked the indigenous social forma-tions successfully to get established, atomizing social structures, delinkinglabour power from the conditions of its realization but it was quite unableto absorb productively the m ultitudes it was liberating from their social tiesand means of work. This, a norm al tendency of capitalism, was greatly rein-forced by the peculiar logic of colonialism and limited immensely the develop-ment of the productive forces. The effect of this is the informal sector.

The concept of the informal sector somewhat mystifies the phenomenonit describes, for what is referred to as the informal sector is really the in-escapable caricature of the private sector. It is really by sheer numbers ofthe people involved in it the bulk of the private sector in Africa, a grotesquedeformity just like historical periphery capitalism itself.Rural AfricaAnother perspective from which we may grasp the scale and nature of theproblem of unemployment in Africa is to look at rural Africa and the condi-tions of the peasant producer. Africa's population is predominantly rural.According to the World Bank's World Development Report for 1984, only19.2 per cent of A frica's population was urban dwelling by 1980; this is pro-jected to increase to only 34.9 per cent by the year 2000. (by that time asmuch as 83.7 per cent of the industrialized countries will be urban dwelling.)This rural population consists overwhelmingly of peasant producers. Pea-sant producers are independent producers who having access to means ofproduction which they may own or merely use, do not sell their labour power.Nonetheless peasants are dom inated economically, culturally and politicallyby a class which extracts surplus from them through commodity relations,the control of state power or other means.

The rural economy in Africa is not simply a monolith of peasant householdproducersi It is differentiated and becoming more so. There are capitalistfarmers, small comm odity producers, wage laborers, whose development is


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often linked to the development of capitalist farms; there are peasants pro-ducers proper and subsistence farmers.

These two categories co nstitu te the bulk of the rural population in Africa.Though they are often confused, there are important differences betweenthem . Peasant pro du cers exist in a context of social classes as a subordinatedclass and they are involved in commodity production and exchange. Whenone is dealing with soc ial form ations of contem porary Africa it is somewhatmore difficult to sustain this distinction. Fo r rural producers who would nor-mally qualify by virtue of their limited involvement in commodity produc-tion and exchange are still subject to class domination though it is difficultto exploit them in the strict sense of the word. For expositional conveniencewe shall be referring to these two social categories collectively as peasantproducers.

The confron tatio n of the peasan try with capital has homogenized thesetwo types of peasants in some important respects. For one thing, this con-frontation has turned the subsistence farmers into simple commodity pro-ducers. They c on tinu e t o produ ce use values and may well be spending morelabour time on use value production. But by virtue of the impingement ofcapitalism which pulls them into exchange relations however intermittentlyand which makes the consumption of some commodities such as kerosenea requiremen t for their rep rod uc tion , even subsistence farmers have becomesimple commodity producers. They continue to produce use values evenpredominantly but their induction into commodity production though in ahighly limited way , fundamentally reconstitutes the conditions for their simplereproduction. We can, with good reason, refer to the two categories ofpeasants as simple commodity producers.

The plight of simple com m odity producers who represent the majority ofthe rural population of Africa and indeed the entire pupulation of Africaillustrates the character and the scale of the problem of unemployment inAfrica.The pa rticular m anifestation of the problem of unemployment in this con-text is this: un der pressure from capital, the state and the world market, simplecommodity producers have been suffering simultaneously the devalorizationof their labour as well as the reduction of their productive assets. In con-sonance with other factors which we shall encounter shortly, this trend hasforced some simple commodity producers into disguised forms ofwo rklessness. Som e hav e been obliged to drift into the urban areas to swell

the rank s of the info rm al sector, the majority have slumped into subsistenceexistence. M or e often than no t, simple reproduction is barely achieved. Fo r


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household unit, reduced personal consumption, the replacement of tools andinputs on a lesser scale.We are not dealing with a generic phenomenon. The confrontation ofcapital and the peasantry does not necessarily produce this effect. Why thendoes it lead to these outcomes? That is a question tha t needs to be answered;to do so will go a long way towards seeing how Africa remains unem ployedand by virtue of being unemployed, underdeveloped.

Relations between the rural and the urbanIt will be misleading to treat unemployment in the rural and urban areas asdiscrete phenomena for they are organically related and mutually reinforc-ing. The factors which produce them are the same. And there are fundamentalsimilarities in their character and manifestations. In both areas unemploy-ment mainly takes the form of low productivity, very small reward for ef-fort, disguised worklessness and tenuous access to the means for the realiza-tion of labour power.

There is a great deal of movement between the peasantry and the pro-letariat. This represents some degree of uniformization though nothom ogenization. The pressure of capital, the state and the world market isproducing some rural proletarianization. However, this process continuesto be disguised by the fact that in the countryside, the separation of the pro-ducer from the means of production is rarely ever complete. The samepressures which are proletarianizing the peasantry are also peasantizing theproletariat. Just as overexploitation compels some movement from the ruralto the urban areas, so it also compels some of the proletariat to seek reliefin the rural areas. The pressure of people towards the urban areas wouldappear to be stronger because the chances of higher incomes in the urbanareas are still relatively much higher. Nonetheless the movement to the ruralareas by the proletariat is still a significant countervailing force. For a hard- Ipressed urban proletariat and the members of the informal sector, keepinga foot in the village farm is an important survival strategy. This process ofpeasantization offers one explanation of how simple reproduction is possible with negligible productivity in the informal sector and the less than liv-ing wages in the labour market.As the roles of peasant and proletariat are intertwined, the miseries of bothare increased. One illustration will suffice. The rush of the demands of theurban population on the village land, exacerbates the problems of land scar-City and the exhaustion of the land and this in turn jeopardizes the survivalof the peasant already precarious. The peasant already battling with thecapitalist farmer, the multinationals and the state has one more com petitor


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to contend with. T ha t translates to a diminishing possibility of breaking outof his or her oppressive economic circumstances.

It is much the same thing for the urban proletariat. This worker who isalready threatened by the workless urban dweller and the nearly worklessmasses of the inform al sector is further imperiled by the steady drift of peoplefrom the rural areas eager to take over his or her job. These rural migrantsnot only help to keep wages low even below the level required for simplereproduction but also makes it extremely difficult for them to struggle ef-fectively against their exploitation.Unemployment among other social categoriesBefore ending this discussion of the nature and extent of the problem ofunemployment in Africa, it is useful to mention some specific social typeswhose pecu liar p light sheds some light on the problem . Only two groups willbe considered, yo uth and wo m en.

Youth is conventionally defined as people in the age bracket 15 to 24. Alarge pro po rtion of Africa 's po pu lation falls in this category. This age groupconstitutes about 20 per cent of the entire population and this percentageis rising.According to ILO sources, this age group has an unusually high percen-tage of the un em ployed in Africa, (unemployed in this context meaning the

state of worklessn ess), a percen tage which is as high as 80 per cent in somecases. This may be viewed as a temporary bias which gets adjusted as theyouth acqu ire m ore tra inin g, m ore experience and com pete more effectivelyfor job opportunities. Or it could be a structural feature of Africaneconomies. This would appear to be the more illuminating perspective. Thefactors which constitute this structural feature include the demography ofAfrica particularly the relative youthfulness of the African population as awhole. Ano ther is the objective conditions of ru ral people which are so hostilethat the young, somewhat better educated than their elders in the villagesare resisting induction as successors to this arduous life and the high youthunemployment partially reflects this resistance. It is also to some extent aform of resistance to the miserab le conditions of the informal sector. A con-tributory factor is the age bias of African society. Finally, worklessness amongyouth is the effect of th e geom etry of power. Because of biases against youthand a capitalist m od e of pro duction which values wealth, status and power,(assets which usua lly co m e som ewhat later in life), youth are not a favoredpower grou p and their unem ployment reflects their weak power position withthe sub ord ina te classes. This suggests that remedying the problem m ust also


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The plight of women is worse yet. The oppression which wom en share withthe other social types amo ng the subord inate classes is com pounded by severalfactors, especially the patriarchal tendencies of capitalism and of Africancultures. The problem of u nem ploy m ent here is certainly n ot worklessness,real or disguised. As a general rule, African w om en toil inhum anely, all thetime usually in anony m ity w ithout even the benefit of the recogn ition of thecontribution of their work to production and reproduction. The problemis that w omen are foisted w ith work r ath er th an em ploy m ent, and it is workfor which there is very meager return of any kind. They are in the vortexof the struggle for survival in its instance of raw immediacy. So much forthe nature of the problem of unemployment in Africa. Now why and howdoes this problem come about in Africa?The Genesis of UnemploymentTo answer this question w e need to kno w how African social formations areconstituted and grasp the dynamics of their particular constitution. Withminor exceptions the socio-economic formations of contemporary Africa arecreations of colonialism. They were forged in the context of near-absolutehegemonization of s tate pow er. The state pow er in question w as initially thatof the colonizing me tro po litan social form ation . It was projected and wield-ed with ruthlessness to subordinate the natural economies on the ground,to fashion economies from dispara te territorial entities, to bre ak dow n andfuse widely different social formations into one and to install the capitalistmode of production w hile simultaneously incorporating the fledgling economyinto the world capitalist system.Because state power had to do all this, there was inevitably the overdeter-mination of social structures and social processes by the state. Because ofthe complexity of the tasks and the inevitable clash between colonizer andcolonized at every turn, the process of accomplishing them and the mannerin which they were eventually accomplished, the colonial social formationswere ridden with contradictions.Let us examine these contradictions for they define im po rtantly the characterof African social formations and their dynamics including the genesis ofunemployment.

1. The establishment of capitalism came into conflict with the logic ofcapitalism. For the efficient operationalization of the law of value and forfulfilling its historical role in the development of the productive forces,capitalism requires freedom and competition. The logic of colonialism wasagainst this. Colonialism was an occupying force, a m on um ental act of hostili-


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of exporting surplus from the colonies to the metropole without hindrancefrom the co lonized. Instead of being liberal the colonial state was highly in-terventionist and obliged to apply force to the labour process. Colonialcapitalism was distorted by this contradiction, even when it was quiteestablished it continued to display the characteristic features of primitiveaccumulation.2. The penetration of capitalism including the placement of capitalist in-frastructures an d th e generalization of com modity production came into con-

flict with the exploitative intentions of the colonizers and their concern withrepatriation of surplus back home. Since the colony remained essentially ahostile environ m en t, there was rather little investment in infrastructures andcapitalist institutions; there was not much interest in transforming the col-onial territory into a coherent economy in which the different sectors andregions interlock in co m plim entary economic relations. M ore often than notcapitalism remained an enclave phenomenon in Africa.3. W hile colonial policies were establishing capitalism and arranging to in-tegrate the colonial economy permanently into the world capitalist system,they were simultaneously hostile to the emergence of an indigenousbourgeoisie. The need to nurture an indigenous bourgeoisie was invariablyoverridden by the immediate concerns with preventing the indigenous peo-ple from being in a p os ition t o threaten metropolitan interests economicallyor politically. It was not until the transfer of power seemed inevitable that

colonial policies beg an to be seriously interested in developing an indigenousbourgeoisie.But then it was too late. The indigenous elites associated with the stateapparatus such as teachers, civil servants, leaders of parastatal and govern-ment trade unions organized and inherited political power. This accountsfor one of th e major defo rm ities of the postcolonial state. One of the conse-quences of this event was the asymmetrical relation between political andeconomic power. Those who make political decisions and decisions aboutdevelopment strategies are essentially a comprador bourgeoisie who areremoved from pro du ction. Tho se who prod uce, or at any rate oversee pro -duction, do not make political decisions.

4. Pa rtly because of the way it was founded and sustained by state power,the colon ial state lacked au ton om y and w as imm ersed in class struggle andcould not m ediate it . It could never establish any plausibility as the state forall. Offering very little scope for promoting the interests of the subordinate


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5. The lack of autonomy of the state constitutes a contradiction for thedominant class as well. Following this lack of autonomy it is not possibleto mediate the contradictions between particular capitals and social capital.A mo ng o ther things this contradiction is highly detrim ental t o th e prospectsof extended reproduction.6. On account of the enclave character of colonial capitalism in Africa,limited commoditization and the survival although in a much decayed ordistorted form , of precapitalist social relations of pro du ctio n, there is a pro-

blem of the pen etration and articulation of state structures at the grassroots.Also, civil society is weak, that is, not much developed. This is the sourceof a wide variety of problems including the problem of democracy, massmobilization a nd development. Arising from the limited pen etration of capitalthe producers from the means of production and the fact that productionstill remains largely nonsocialized especially for the rural population. Thisensures an endless struggle between capital and the peasantry over the con-ditions of production and exchange, a struggle which has limited the pro-spects of accumulation and the development of the productive forces.The Post-colonial EraAlthoug h its significance m ight have been primarily political, independencewas not w ithout significance for economic structures and econom ic processesin Africa. The general import of these changes has tended in the directionof re-enforcing th e many negative features of th e colonial econom y especiallythe retarded growth of the productive forces and the associated problem ofunemployment. What were these changes and how did they contribute tothis effect?The Intensification of StatismAt independence, African social formations became even more statist thanthey had been in the colonial period. As we have already seen, it was notthe indigenous bourgeoisie that inherited power. At any rate this class wasnonexistent or rudimentary at best. It was the petit-bourgeoisie associatedwith the state apparatuses which succeeded the colonial regime. By virtueof their locus in the state appa ratuses they were already predisposed towardsstatism. Statism was accentuated by two factors which were m ore imp ortantstill. One has t o do with the embryonic developm ent of th e indigenous cap-talist class and the associated paucity of private indigenous capital. Statismoffered the on ly way to m obilize the econom ic resources w hich would allowthe local po litical class to initiate any kind of developm ent strategy and alsobegin to challenge foreign capital for the control of the economy.


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The one easy and viable option available to them was to use their politicalleverage for the purpo ses of creating a material base. Usually this meant ap-propriating w ealth w ith state p ow er. T o som e extent this was done directlythrough corruption particularly selling the prerogatives deriving from theirpower to m ake or enforce rules for m oney. Mo re often th an no t, it was doneby expanding the role of th e sta te in the economy to b ring more resourcesunder the control of the rulers so that they could all the more easily ap-propriate some of these resources. The tendency towards nationalizationwhich is so widespread in Africa is partly a manifest unfortunate effect onthe deve lopm ent of t he pro du ctiv e forces. Because it is possible for thosein control of state power to amass wealth without acting capitalistically,capitalism has not been able to play with any effectiveness its historical rolein developing th e pro du ctive forces in Africa.Pluralization of Foreign InfluenceAfter independence the foreign influences prevailing on African economieswere pluralized. Th is w as p ar t of th e process of assuming the symbols ofan independent nation-state. Relations could no longer be limited to theformer m etro po litan m asters . They had established links with a broad rangeof countries, som e of which w ere also anxious to explore new territories whichmight foster their strategic or economic interests. With the expansion of thepolitical con tacts also came the expansion of economic interactions. The classin power was very anxio us for this bro ader con tact because it offered som echance of increasing the ir ro om for maneuver by pluralizing their dependenceon more coun tries instead of on jus t the former colonial masters. At the sametime, by virtue of being independent, the new states became eligible formembership in the system of international organizations such as the U nitedNations, the N on-aligned mo vem ent, UN ES CO , the W orld Bank, the Inter-national M on etary F und . A lso the more they got into the international arenathe more they at trac ted and contracted relations with the multinationals look-ing for aven ues of pow er and profit.

To be sure , these developments gave some room for maneuver especiallyin regard to the domination of the old colonial master. But in some impor-tant ways they complicated the problems of escape from dependence andunderdevelopm ent. A s was to be expected, these developments pluralized th edependence of African economies but this was only a transitional momentin the process of collectivizing it. Under pressure from African and otherThird W orld social form ation s asserting themselves, seeking more room formaneuver an d a red istributio n of the wo rld's resources, the West has closedranks and constituted themselves into an immensely powerful composite


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The African soc ial formations already among the weakest in the world systemhave been all too easy to subjugate. African social formations in regard tothe West are l ik e bearers of labou r power in regard t o the c apitalist: relative-ly independent of particular capitalists but decidedly a slave to the capitalistclass. With th e op tions available to the African political leadership drasticallyreduced by the deb t burden, the dom ination of the IM F and the W orld Bankand the cartel tendencies of the European E conom ic Co m m un ity, it has beenrelatively easy fo r the multinationals to have a free run of African economies.Populist DevelopmentalismDuring the independen ce struggle, nationalist politics was the politics of nega-tion, negation of colonial occupation. The new regime could not be definedin terms of being against something. It had to be an affirmation, to standfor something positive. With uncharacteristic unanimity, everyone conceiv-ed of the orientational focus of the new regimes as the pursuit of develop-m en t. It was n o t just the African ruling class alone th at did thi s. It was alsothe m ultina tiona ls, the international organizations and the international com-munity generally. In most of Africa, the idea of development was elevatedto the level of ideology . This ideology which we may call populist developmen-talism, was consciously though not seriously populist. The populism was aconstraint im po sed by the nationalist movem ent. The na tionalist m ovementwas populist and even to some extent radical in that it depended on massmobilization, addressed the issues of oppression and the liberation of op-pressed peoples from their bondage. As the nationalist movement grew, sodid popular expectation of a just society and improvement in their materialwell-being. T ho se w ho came to power had to come to term s with this reality.Much as they were bent on deradicalizing the nationalist m ovem ent they couldnot ignore the state of popular consciousness so they engaged in defensiveradicalism, affecting populist and radical postures which they did not intendto take seriously if they could possibly get away with not doing so.

Th e new orie ntatio n to development was soon to beco me a source of ma-jor co ntra dictio ns. First and foremost th e pursuit of developm ent came intoconflict w ith th e rep roduction of the hegemony of th e political class. Almostas important was the clash between the requirements of capitalist develop-ment and the inevitable concessions to the populist postures. These contradic-tions have been a major impediment to development and even economicgrowth.Class ConflictTh e class character of the nationalist movement w as masked by the domineer-ing figure of the common enemy and the common grievances against it. All


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bourgeois class, intent on a bourgeois revolution. And tha t was precisely whatoccurred. At indep endence the m ask was removed. The African masses con-fronted an indigenous ruling class, which was content to inherit the colonialeconomy and disinclined to transform it.

A few notes on the chara cter of th e social classes in question and the natureof the class struggle is in order here. The class struggle aptly expressed thespecificity of the African postcolonial state. This specificity is thenonautonomization of the institutional mechanisms of domination. In thissense the African sta te w as a contradic tions in terms, deriving its specificityfrom a feature which is really the negation of the differentia specificica ofthe state. For. w ha t d istingu ishes the sta te as a modality of domination isthat the mechanisms of domination are constituted in a way that they arerelatively autonomous of the social classes including the hegemonic socialclass, that is to say tha t the sta te is the concrete expression of the autonomiza-tion of domination.

African states have little or no autonomy, a plight arising from the col-onial legacy an d rela ted objec tive con ditions such as the weak material baseof the African successors of the colonial regime and their association withthe state apparatus in the nationalist era.

The immediate import of the lack of autonomy of the mechanisms ofpolitical do m ina tion is tha t the s tate is imm ersed in the class struggle whichis accordingly u nm ediat ed . T his applies not only to the struggle betweenclasses. The s tate is also by v irtue of its nonautonomization unable to mediate,with any effectiveness, the conflicts w ithin the dom inant class, including thosebetween particular fractions as well as particular capitals. Finally it is alsodifficult given the nonautonomization of class domination to mediate thecontradictions between social capital and particular capitals.

Where state d om ina tio n is not autonom ized as in most of Africa, politicalcompetition becomes Hobbesian, right tends to be coextensive with mightand a very high premium is placed on the acquisition and maintenance ofpolitical pow er since it is the only reliable security and the m eans to everything.These are the un de rp innin gs of th e political instability in Africa which haverendered development all the more difficult. Like the Hobbesian state ofnature, the intense and 'normless' struggle for power generates diffidenceand insecurity and fear of a violen t end even among the most powerful. Th eleadership then become completely absorbed with self-preservation and thereproduction of their hegem ony. Anything else including development is givena relatively low priority.

All the factors m entioned abo ve have contributed to the sharpening of the


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of proportion to what might reasonably have been expected given the stateof the development of the productive forces. The state cannot pretend tobe the state of all; it does not and cannot do very much to register the in-terests of the subordinate classes. What exists is a situation in which thepowerful take wh at they can leaving the weak to suffer w ha t they m us t. Andit is a lot of suffering indeed. Since the sta te cannot restra in t he ruling classand since this class cannot restrain itself the subordinate classes are pressedto extremities an d forced to see ever more clearly the irreconcilable differencesbetween them and their leaders and why they must fight to redeem themselves.

The relation between the dom inan t and the subo rdinate classes ischaracterized by overexploitation. This reflects among other things the con-tradiction between social capitals. In an undisciplined manner particularcapitals are preoccupied with the immediate prospects of capital accumula-tion. To this end they intervene with force in the labour process anddegenerate into primitive accumulation from time to time; they subjectworkers to inhuman toils and inhuman hours and pay wages that do notam oun t to a living wage. In effect they inadvertently endanger the reproduc-tion of the wo rking class the necessary condition of capitalist accum ulation.Relevance to the Problem of UnemploymentIt remains to relate these features of African social formations to the ques-tion of unemployment. Factors associated with these features are responsi-ble for the high level of unemployment in Africa. The major way in whichthey affect unemployment is by retarding the development of the forces ofprod uction . To avo id repetition this m atter will not be treated in detail here;I will merely sum marize a few points th at bring these effects into clearer relief.

First the limited penetration of com m oditization expresses and constrainsthe development of the productive forces. Since the division of labourespecially in rural Africa is rudimentary and the socialization of productionlimited, development, capitalist or otherwise is, constrained. The regressiverelations of production of natural economies which have survived the pro-cess of com m oditization exert the ir own pressures for the ir repro duction andthis, as the story of rural Africa has aptly shown, stalls Africa's progress.Also the persistence of precapitalist social relations of production encouragesforms of ideological and political mobilization such as ethnic consciousnesswhich reinforce t he political and econom ic marg inalization of the masses andunderscores the bottling u p of their creative energy. Th e limited pene trationof capitalism and its enclave character express and reinforce the disarticula-tion of African econom ies which hav e facilitated dep endence, th e expo rt ofAfrica's wealth and impeded autocentric development.


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of development in Africa or even economic growth. Not if we go by theevidence of stagn atio n an d retrea t in the first 25 years of ind ependence .Perhaps things could have been worse without the Western incursion, butthat is a matter of speculation; we will never know. What we know is thatafter over a century of the civilizing mission and over 30 years of the part-nership in progress, Africa is as weak and as marginal as ever and gettingmore so. The multinationals and multilateral agencies bear a large part ofthe blame for th is. The gen eral thrus t of their policies have been inimicalto the interests of A frican econom ies: in creating conditions favourable forthe profiteering of multinationals, in subordinating the interests of Africaneconomies structurally disa rticu lated , in the accentuating of class differencesetc.

Finally, the prob lem s posed by the charac ter of the state. Because politicaldomination is not autonomized the state is conspicuously the state of someagainst the res t, class differences are sharper a nd class alienation deeper. T hepeople are no longer available for mobilization to development. Under threatof coercion they seemingly cooperate in the leaders' development projects,but indifferently, passively o r subversively. In the end the projects getnowhere. Because the state is so powerful and because conflicts cannot beeffectively mediated given the state's lack of autonomy, politics metamor-phoses into warfare, a hostile environment for development.

Development is also impeded by the intervention of force into the labourprocess, the persistence of traces of primitive accumulation, the nonmedia-tion of the co ntrad ictio ns between particular capitals and social capital andthe overexploitation of the subordin ate classes. All these are factors associatedwith the character of th e state in Africa particularly the nonautono mizationof the mechanisms of domination.These are among the major factors which have blocked Africa's escapefrom underd evelopm ent, kept the development of productive forces in A frica

at an em bryonic level. The effect of these factors on underdevelopment havebeen mediated through unemployment. In other words they have contributedto the persistence of underdevelopment by producing the state ofworklessness, by reducing peasants and proletariat to levels of subsistencein which simple reproduction is often problematic, by devaluing the work-ing person's labour etc.For the rest of th is pape r we shall try to understand just how these factors

engender unemployment.1. Imbalance between proletarianization and the labour absorbtive capacity


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economies proceeds in a manner which does not allow for the regulation ofthe supply of free labour. In Africa as everywhere else, there has been atendency to the oversupply of free labour. This is particularly so becauseonce capitalism penetrates a na tura l economy even partially, even subsistencefarmers who still have access to means of production are placed in a posi-tion of realizing their reproduction by partial involvement in com m odity rela-tions. Some of them become intermittent sellers of labour power in orderto ensure their social reprodu ction. Also subsistence and simple com m odityproducers find themselves so hard-pressed as to make some of them occa-sional sellers of labour power. These factors among others tendentiallyengender a bigger pool of labour power than what is required for extendedreproduction.

This imbalance is accentuated by the peculiar natu re of A frican capitalismwhich is characteristically lacking in dynamism and seemingly unable todevelop the productive forces to any significant degree. The reasons whyAfrican capitalism suffers from this deficiency are already clear and will notdetain us here. The effect of this imbalance is the very high incidence ofworkless and virtually workless persons and the ever-swelling ranks of theinformal sector.2. The contradiction between social ownership and public ownership ofthe means of production. This is an important cause of unemploymentespecially in those African countries which are pu rsu ing , in however distorteda manner, a socialist path of development. The point of this contradictionis that it undermines the capacity of the socialist system to develop the pro-ductive forces, a capacity which lies essentially in the rea lization of the lawof the necessary conformity of the social relations of production to thecharacter of the forces of production.But before going into the content and implications of this contradictionit is necessary to first unde rstand its elemen ts. U nder pub lic ownership1, themeans of produc tion are concentrated in the state m ore especially in the hands

of those who control state power, but the rationale for this concentrationis that it is used in the public interest including the elimination of the con-tradictions inherent in private prop erty and th e contradictions of accum ula-tion. However public property is really a form of private property in itsessence. Following Wlodzimierz Brus (Socialist Ownership and PoliticalSystems) we conceptualize social ownership as entailing two elements (1),'the means of production must be employed in the interest of society', and(2) society must have effective disposition over the means of production itowns.' Wlodzimierz argues quite rightly that as a necessary condition forthe employment of th e means of pro duc tion in the interest of soc iety, social


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Africa's socialist and statist economies have public ownership of the meansof production but no social ownership. It is a form of private property inthat it concentrates the con tro l of m ean s of prod uc tion in a few han ds allow -ing them to app ropriate and consum e the produ ct of other peop le's lab ou r,to dominate and exploit the m . B ut it is a form of private pro perty w hichdoes not have the dynam ism of o rtho do x cap italism ma inly because it is n on -competitive and offers very limited incentive to efficiency and innovation.That is why it tend s to be a ssociated with econ om ic stag na tion and disguisedunemployment. But that is only one part of the contradiction.The other pa rt is th at these African socialist systems are in no po sitio nto realize the necessary cong ruen ce between relatio ns of pro du ctio n and th edevelopment of the pro du ctive forces. In achieving this congruence , socialismadvances the development of the productive forces. This advance arisesspecifically from the centralization of decision-making and the removal ofthe anarchy of prod uc tion , from the harm on ization of produ ction w ith socialneeds, from the annih ilation of social relations of dom inatio n and su bo r-dination in pro du ction an d from pu tting an en d to the alienation of th eproducer.

In Africa no such advance is made. All these changes which socialismshould bring are not there, or are there only as contradictions rather akinto those of capitalism. T he social form ation loses on bo th en ds . By the factthat state capitalism or public ownership as a form of private property isuncompetitive an d un dy na m ic and no t conducive to the developm ent of th eproductive forces even in the crude sense of economic growth. And then bythe fact that A frican socialist social forma tions d o no t realize the law of th enecessary conform ity of th e social relations of p rod uc tion with the c ha rac terof the productive forces, which m ean s the absence of th ose con ditions w hichmake socialism cond ucive t o the dev elopm ent of the prod uctive forces. F o rthe most pa rt w hat is really hap pen ing in these social form ations is that subo r-dinate classes are over-exploited an d dem obilized by too m uch coe rcion bya grossly inefficient state capitalism w hich ensures sta gn atio n an dunemployment.

3. The contradiction between pop ulism an d the pursuit of capitalism. O b -jective conditions in A frica ar e conducive to radical consciousness andpopulist if not radical leadership. These conditions include the gross ine-qualities of wealth a nd pow er and their highly visible and ho rrifyingmanifestations, anticipatory socialization to a world of affluence made possi-ble by the com m un ications revolu tion, the spread an d level of po ve rty .Perhaps because of these realities very few leaders in Africa openly ad vo ca te


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Rather, African leaders have generally preferred ideologies with a populistthrust however spurious the populism or radicalism may be in practice.This disposition to appear progressive while acting conservative has notbeen w ithou t cost. This cost appears in the conflict between the con tent andform of policy. Sometimes it leads to serious contradictions which defeatpublic policies and the intentions of those in power especially when conces-sions are made to keep the progressive image plausible; such concessionsbecome a constraint to policy and subvert the ends of the capitalist class.This contradiction is quite evident in the rural development and agriculturalpolicies of many African countries. Here there has been a marked reluctanceto let loose the rigours of capitalization of agriculture. Instead, the preferencehas been to limit capitalization to enclaves. For the rest, the thrust of policyhas tended to support the smallholder to survive and to improve perform ance,a policy very akin to Narodnism. Protagonists of this strategy take a greatdeal of pr ide in its progressiye concern for the independent peasant farmer,for the improved techniques and seedlings and other supports made available

to them through extension services and other institutions. However, it shouldbe noted that this policy is also calculated to arrest the drift to the urbanareas, to reduce unemployment, to maintain regressive social relations ofproduction and associated forms of consciousness which facilitate the domina-tion t>f the rural masses.Whatever the motives for this smallholder strategy, the point of interest

here is th a t it is invariably associated with the retarding of p roductive forces.It confines capital to a regressive form. For it sets strict limits to technicalinnovation, scale of operation and productivity. The peasant farmer is ex-pected to ac t like a capitalist without the means of realizing this . H e is coercedand exploited through the very services which the state provides for his orher benefit: the incentives, manoevers and sanctions which make the pea-sant produce what the state and capital require, loans schemes which lurethe peasant into servitude, the consumption of inputs which are not cost-effective, extension services which ensure subordination. Paradoxically theindependent peasant strategy which is supposed to help the peasant to sur-vive and to prosper often leads to his or her overexploitation. Even if thiswas not the case, the independent peasant strategy would still be regressivefor it sets very strict limits on the expansion of p roduction and accum ula tion .Africa's place in the existing international division of labour is another

source of unem ploy m ent, and here again this effect is mediated by the re tar-dation of the development of the productive forces. Primary production itself


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is partly because it is limiting to productivity, technological advancementand the growth of industrialization and accumulation. And as the historyof Africa has shown very clearly, the primary producer is prone to exploita-tion, the use of the product of her labour to oppress her and even to puther out of work.

Efforts to change Africa's place in the existing division of labour havebeen unsuccessful so far. And the prospects for the immediate future do notlook very good. The deep economic crisis which Africa has been facing forthe last 10 years has brought her increasingly under the domination of Westerndevelopment agencies particularly the International M onetary Fund who haveinsisted on capitalis t solu tions to African problems especially giving free playto market forces. The general effect of their influence is that Africa con-tinues to be tied to primary production where she supposedly has a com-parative advantage to the detriment of her development including the pro-ductive and creative use of her human resources.ImbalancesUnemployment is engendered and sustained by imbalances associated withthe character of the state and of social classes in Africa. We have alreadynoted th at African states tendentially lack autonomy with the result that theyare immersed in class struggle and social conflicts including those betweenfractions of capital and between capital and the subordinate classes. Theseare not adequately mediated if at all. That is one of the causes of the over-exp loitation of the subordinate classes and the difficulties in maintaining theconditions for the operationalization of the law of value. Because theresources follow so rigidly and crudely the geometry of power, the distribu-tion of wealth is very badly skewed in most of Africa; so is the distributionof amenities and opportunities between the urban areas and the ruralperiphery which is largely the object of power. This is a well-known featureof Africa. What is not so well known is that these imbalances are a majorcause of unemployment in Africa. This is so in so far as resources aredistributed to the im mense disadvantage of the vast majority of the society,so much so th at their capacity to survive is hampered if not erased altogether.Some ar e unemployed or virtually unemployed because they have no meansof production such as land. More often than not a few people have suchmeans in such abundance that they merely squander them. Some areunem ployed or ju st marginally employed and marginally productive becauseof poor health or lack of education or supportive infrastructures. The failureto remedy such imbalances to rationalize the distribution of resources andopportunities is a major element of underdevelopment in Africa.A no the r im balance associated with unemployment deserves mention. This


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power is controlled by an indigenous bourgeiosie with strong compradortendencies and a weak productive base. The real productive base of the socialformations is international capital (which supplies the technology and somecapital) and the peasants and workers. Of these constituents of the produc-tive base, international capital influences state power but does not controlit; the peasants and the workers have hardly any influence over state powerexcept in so far as they are objects of its repression^This imbalance between political power and productive ability causes ir-rationalities which produce unem ployment. For instance, it means that deci-

sions emanating from the state favour non-producers, the parasitical classin control of state power and discriminates against the real producers especial-ly the peasants and the workers. Sometimes the discrimination results in theirloss of means of production, the curtailment of the products of their labouraccruing to them to the extent that they lose the incentive to be more pro-ductive or even the ability to reproduce themselves.The imbalance also causes a tendency to accumulate by using state power

coercively or corruptly instead of seeking enrichment by capitalist behaviour.Thus exploitation and the accumulation of wealth are separated from theproductive use of labour power and from the development of the forces ofproduction . A further consequence of this is tha t reward, that is, the privateappropriation of the socially produced surplus bears little or no relation toproductive effort. This is an underlying condition of unemployment and lowproductivity in Africa.ConclusionWe are as we work. For it is by their labour that humans create the meansof their physical survival and reproduction and even the conditions for theirprogress to higher civilisation. If that makes work life's primary activity,it also makes unemployment, the state of worklessness of minimal produc-tivity a critical, if not the critical problem of hum an existence. The problemof underdevelopment is not addressed until we make the problem ofunemployment central to our concerns. The escape from underdevelopmentis ultimately a matter of putting out more energy, being more productiveand more creative, including creating more appropriate property relationsand social relations of production and m ore appropriate modalities for thedeployment and utilization of the social product. An essential preliminaryis to rethink the question of unemployment in a completely different wayfrom that of the hegemonic ideology and social science practice in contem-porary Africa.

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