Colonial labour,Tawdenni and ‘L’enfer du sel’: the struggle from slave to free labour in a Saharan salt mine

Abstract

Can we understand the arrival of Capitalism in Africa by tracking labour – from unfree to free, from slave to wage? The question supposes slavery to lie at its heart, yet the conversation between labour and slave studies is in early stages. The sources are problematic: the colonial ‘language of labour’ was often political rhetoric camouflaging ongoing forms of slavery. Then, there was the question of how the metropole-incorporated colonies into its economy: French West Africa’s sun and sand offered few economic resources. One was salt. The Niger Bend economy depended on Tawdenni, a desert salt mine controlled by Saharans and exploited by their slaves. In 1910, it was predicted that the French abolition of slavery would spell the end of Tawdenni: “Never will a man from the South – unless a slave – give himself to this work”; what, therefore, was to be done? The paper challenges the view that engagement with colonial capitalism necessarily led directly or even inevitably from slavery to wage labour by exploring how Tawdenni’s servile labour system responded to French colonial attempts to combine political abolition and economic sustainability.     

Book reviews

Taking issue with the thesis (advanced by Weber, de Ste Croix, and others) about the link between unfree labour and economic decline in ancient society, Banaji claims that between the fourth and seventh centuries the eastern Mediterranean was characterized much rather by economic growth and the emergence of productive aristocratic landowners employing 'free' wage labour. These 'new' agrarian classes become in turn 'evidence' for the presence in late antiquity of early capitalism. The sources for such a reinterpretation, however, are either incomplete or wholly lacking. Locating capitalism in ancient society also reproduces the claim made by cliometricians that capital and labour are ever-present, historically non-specific and thus 'natural' economic categories that cannot be transcended.     

Sugar and unfree labour: Reflections on labour control in the dominican republic, 1870–1935

This article takes issue with theories which suppose an essential contradiction between capitalist production and unfree labour relations. Using the history of sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic as a case study, it is argued that capitalist entrepreneurs tried very hard to restrict free wage labour relations. On the Dominican sugar plantations this goal was reached by a system of differential mechanisation which brought about a rigid separation between the mass of unskilled field workers and the restricted number of (semi‐) skilled workers. This labour division could be reproduced over a long period of time because the field workers were migrant labourers from Haiti liable to strong racial discrimination within Dominican society.     

Wage labour deferred: The recreation of unfree labour in the US South

Contrary to the mainstream economic view that unfree labour in the US ended with the Emancipation, this article argues that an unfree labour system continued to dominate southern agriculture in the post Civil War period. Part I details how the southern land tenure system, contract labour laws, and credit system combined to create a social structure of accumulation [Edwards, Gordon and Reich, 1982] that effectively trapped a majority of sharecroppers in debt peonage. However, unlike Ransom and Sutch [1977] I argue that it was the planter and not the merchant, class who were the chief architects and beneficiaries of the unfree labour system. Part II creates a model showing how this ‘unfree’ social structure of accumulation led to the limited and skewed patterns of industrial development, the low level of technological innovation in agriculture, the eventual creation of a large surplus labour pool, and the depressed wage rates that have characterised the American South up to the 1970s.     

Capitalism and Bonded Labour in India: Reinterpreting Recent (Re-) Interpretations

Examined here is the way the link between capitalism and bonded labour has been interpreted and reinterpreted in the debate over the past half century about rural development in India. A number of those who initially equated debt bondage with a pre-capitalist production relation, and dismissed arguments that unfree labour and accumulation were compatible, changed their minds and espoused the interpretation they had previously opposed. Among the resulting errors perpetuated by more recent entrants to this debate is a misinterpretation of Marxist theory about both relational and systemic transition. The ensuing confusion has prevented them from understanding either the genesis of the debate about the role of unfreedom in advanced capitalism, or why – in the form of deproletarianisation – bonded labour currently serves the ends of the agribusiness enterprise.     

Beyond Liberalism: Marxist Feminism,Migrant Sex Work,and Labour Unfreedom

In this article, I use a Marxist feminist methodology to map the organisation of migrant sex workers’ socially reproductive paid and unpaid labour in one city and country of arrival, London, UK. I argue that unfree and ‘free’ (sexual) labour exists on a continuum of capitalist relations of (re)production, which are gendered, racialised, and legal. It is within these relations that various actors implement, and migrant sex workers contest, unfree labour practices not limited to the most extreme forms. My analysis reveals that many migrant sex workers have very limited ‘freedom’. This is in stark contrast to the classical liberal claim of sex worker rights activists and academics that the vast majority of migrant sex workers are free, and therefore not coerced, exploited or trafficked. I then consider whether the emerging labour approach to trafficking could help achieve ‘freedom’ for migrant sex workers. Advocates argue that anti-trafficking efforts must, and can, be refocused on extending minimum labour and social protections to all vulnerable workers. I argue that this approach is disconnected from material interests and history. Rather, migrant sex workers, sex worker rights activists, and all migrant and citizen workers and activists globally must collectively organise against ‘labour unfreedom’ and hence for meaningful control over their labour and lives.     

Why Unfree Labour is Not ‘So-Called’: The Fictions of Jairus Banaji

In a recent critique of the deproletarianization thesis, which links the reproduction of unfree labour mainly - but not only - in Third World agriculture to class struggle prosecuted by capitalist producers, Banaji maintains in effect that there is no such thing as unfree labour. Equating the latter with nineteenth-century liberal ideas about freedom as consent, he conceptualizes all historical working arrangements simply as ‘disguised’ wage-labour that is free, a theoretically problematic claim first made during the Indian mode of production debate. Such a view, it is argued here, ignores the fact that unfree workers get paid and also appear in the labour market, but not as sellers of their own commodity. Moreover, by abolishing the free/unfree labour distinction, and adopting instead the view that all rural workers are simply ‘disguised’ hired labourers who are contractually ‘free’, Banaji aligns himself with anti-Marxist theory in general, and neoclassical economic historiography in particular.     

Harvests of shame: enduring unfree labour in the twentieth-century United States, 1933–1964

This article reframes the discussion on vulnerable and exploited agricultural labour in twentieth-century United States using the overarching category of unfree labour. In order to do so, it bridges two usually distinct historiographies by linking the phenomenon of ‘peonage’ during the New Deal, with the one of immigrant contract labour in southern Florida, under the H2 visa. Archival research on the practices at the U.S. Sugar Corporation in southern Florida illustrates this link. The article draws on Federal archives, U.S. Government proceedings, papers of political activists and legal and labour scholarship to argue: firstly, that unfree labour has been an enduring feature of agricultural labour relations at regional level during the twentieth century, through both a transmission and a transformation of practices that had their origin in the control of black emancipated labour; secondly, that the introduction of `guest workers’ under the H2 and Bracero programme meant a modernisation in the practices of unfree labour, pivoting on the lack of citizenship rights, racial discrimination, debt at home and threat of deportation; and, finally, that the failure to recognise forms of legal and economic deprivation and coercion as unfree labour has hurt the ability of the United States to enforce protection of human rights at home.     

The development of capitalism in the Atlantic world: England,the Americas,and West Africa, 1450–1900

Abstract

The paper traces the development of capitalism in England, the Americas, and West Africa over a long time period, 1450–1900. The developments in these major regions of the Atlantic Basin during the period were strongly interconnected and ultimately gave rise to the nineteenth-century Atlantic economy which integrated the major economies of the Atlantic world. The development of capitalism in the three specified geographical areas is analyzed in the context of the interconnected developments. Central to the historical analysis is a discussion of the contending conceptions of capitalism as a socioeconomic system. The paper shows that the original conception by Karl Marx, which identified free wage earners separated from their means of production and entrepreneurs who own those means of production as the defining elements, was generally accepted by supporters and critics for several decades; attempts to redefine began in the 1960s. The paper contends that, unlike the original Marxian conception, the new conceptions fail to capture precisely and accurately the dynamic elements which distinguish capitalism unambiguously from other forms of socioeconomic organization and do not facilitate a sharply focused historical investigation of its development over time. The employment of enslaved Africans in large-scale commodity production in the Americas was critical to the development of capitalism in England and in the Americas, but the adverse effects on West Africa’s economies held back the development of markets and the market economy and, ultimately, the development of capitalism in the region.     

The Sexual Contract,Youth, Masculinity and the Uncertain Promise of Waged Work in Austerity Britain

Abstract

Economic restructuring, the rise of service sector employment and precarious forms of attachment to the labour market have coincided with the financial crisis and the subsequent austerity programme in Britain to disadvantage young working-class men. In the context of high rates of youth unemployment, the consequences for the social construction of masculinity, for young men's labour market disadvantage and for the distribution of responsibilities between generations are explored though the lens of a comparative case study in two English towns, Luton and Swindon.     

Global capital and local labour. Strategies and labour relations in the Hex River Textiles factory from the 1940s to the early 1990s

ABSTRACT

This article analyses labour relations and management strategies in the Hex River Textiles factory in Worcester, South Africa, from the 1940s to the early 1990s. The factory was established by a French textile manufacturer in 1946, who relocated an entire mill from Bradford in England, to exploit the low wage labour provided by primarily coloured women. The strategy also included investments in new technology. The workers who were drawn into capitalist production resisted exploitation despite government attempts to crush the trade unions. In the late 1980s, trade union activity was rekindled, not least because there was a core group of coloured workers, who carried on the tradition. The strategy in the 1980s was less militant than in the 1950s, but, arguably more successful.     

Non‐capitalist relations of production in capitalist society: The khammessat in Southern Tunisia ∗

The khammessat is one of the most ancient social institutions regulating agricultural labour in the Magrheb. This article seeks to answer three questions: (1) What is the nature of the relationship between agricultural labour and landowner in a society dominated by a non‐capitalist mode of production? (2) What was the impact of capitalism on such labour relations? (3) Is there any possibility of the development, within the khammessat system, of a labour organisation and the demand for rights?     

The Feminisation of Finance

Abstract

This article focuses on recent reconfigurations of the home as a space of financial calculation and speculation that requires new kinds of domestic labour. It considers the 2008 financial crisis, but redirects the analysis towards the ordinary and normalised presence of financial capitalism at the level of domesticity, home-life and the everyday ‘calculative agencies’ which households are now regularly called on to perform. It also examines the constitution of ‘women’ as a target group for personal financial products and services, and addresses the various strategies that promote financial inclusion as a means to secure individual responsibility, autonomy and entrepreneurial consumer participation in a financialised ownership society. The article argues that this feminisation of finance suggests a considerable challenge to received understandings of the relationships between gender and economy, production and reproduction, and life and labour.     

Women's right to work: The interplay of state,market and women's agency

This article addresses questions central to the conception of women's citizenship: Do women have the same right to wage work as men have? That is, do women have the same access to and chances to keep jobs as men? Is women's right to employment perceived as an individual right, disconnected from men's traditional prerogative to hold jobs as breadwinners? Women's right to work is conceptualized as a complex structural and ideological construct, shaped by the interplay of the labour market, welfare state and women's agency. The empirical analysis takes one of the Scandinavian welfare states, Norway, as its main case. The study concludes that women's individual right to work was significantly strengthened from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s.     

Back to the factory: the continuing salience of industrial workplace history

ABSTRACT

Factories remain significant sites of employment, crucial to capitalism. In the twentieth century, scholars registered achievements in documenting their history, but since the late 1980s, and for a generation, the field lost impetus within labour history although insights continued to accumulate through work in adjacent disciplines. The factory has not featured on the agenda of ‘transnational’ and ‘global’ labour history, but we suggest that it can and should contribute to that broader global project, reinvigorating labour history, not least by contributing a dimension close to workers’ everyday experience.     

Marx's third class: Capitalist landed property and capitalist development

This article consists of a detailed discussion of Marx's theorisation of a landed class in the capitalist mode of production. It is argued that Marx does not consider landlords as feudal leftovers but does indeed succeed in providing a sophisticated theory of capitalist landed property as an independent class, which conforms in all major respects with his theorisation of capital and wage‐labour. Moreover, the role of landed property in the process of capitalist development of relative surplus‐value extraction is analysed. It is argued that it is possible to speak of different forms of capitalist relations according to whether landed property or capital provides the leading force behind the development process. Capitalist development is then shown to be the outcome of a class struggle between landed property, capital and wage‐labour. This process is briefly illustrated with reference to England in the 1840s and Latin America in the 1960s.     

Fordism: a review essay

ABSTRACT

Fordism is a central concept in American labour history. This essay, the first survey of the range of historiographical and sociological approaches deployed to understand Fordism, suggests that Fordism and Americanism are inseparably intertwined. Previous scholarship has emphasised that the technological and managerial efficiency of Fordist practice were a hallmark of twentieth-century Americanism. Historians of labour have demonstrated that these aspects manifested as a relentless system of control in the workplace that paradoxically helped to unify worker resistance. Historians of capitalism have tended to used Fordism to refer to an ethos underpinning mid-twentieth-century capitalist development marked by a balance between mass production and mass consumption. They identify increased social provisions and class compromise between labour and management as features that made Fordism attractive to states rebuilding their economies following the Second World War. New transnational histories of Fordism have begun to bridge the gap between these two main interpretations to show how Fordist practice and ethos were exported together internationally as part of an ideological project to modernise nations in America’s image. This essay concludes by assessing the usefulness of Fordism to historians and suggesting avenues for future research.     

Is bonded labour a bound category? ‐Reconceptualising agrarian conflict in India

This article discusses the position of ‘agrarian struggle’ within agrarian labour relations in India. It is argued that local labour relations and conflicts should be understood within the context of a wider balance of power between the concerned groups, regionally as well as locally. When examining local relations from this perspective, a number of well‐established positions on agrarian conflict can be challenged. The interrelationship between patron‐client relations on the one hand, and (what is here labelled) class‐caste struggle on the other is reassessed, and it is found that they are not mutually opposed. The categories ‘unfree’ and ‘bonded’ labour relations are also reassessed. Such relations do not seem to necessarily entail the dominance normally expected. ‘Bonded’ labour relations may, in fact, not hamper collective initiative among the landless, whereas the ‘ general political dominance of the landed groups certainly may. The article is based on fieldwork data from Uttar Pradesh.     

Becoming Responsible with Solar Power? Extending Feminist Imaginings of Community,Participation and Care

ABSTRACT

Solar power has long incited feminist imaginings of socio-environmental justice and a commoning of energy, despite its associations with military technology and precarious labour. This article addresses the question of responsible collaboration with a form of power that remains indifferent to human pursuits. It does so through a situated inquiry into a solar energy initiative in the Czech Republic considered as a technoecological phenomenon. Feminist technoecology is developed in terms of a double process of associations and dissociations – or technoecological dis/articulation – through which a collective and its milieu and ethos are constituted. It thereby attends to the immanent tensions and exclusions in the economic, political and ecological work of solar panels in particular encounters, including relations with the land and racialised labour, that differentially produce an ethos of interest and indifference. In this light, the non-participation of local Roma in the solar installation does not signal the absence of a relation but makes responsiveness, and responsibility, towards the indifference they constitute, possible. In a mode of speculative re-articulation, immanent frictions and potentialities are reworked to expand an ethos of caring and communing that incorporates extinguishment, non-participation and indifference.     

Slavery and capitalism

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I look at the relationship between slavery and capitalism through exploring the counterfactual of industrialization without slavery in the United States and by analyzing the deeper connection between slavery and capitalism. As we will see, slavery, and war capitalism more generally, played an important role in industrialization, and slavery and capitalism share an underlying connection that if obscured can facilitate higher levels of exploitation under capitalism at present.