Antonio Gramsci opens a passage on the role of working class political parties with the ghastly fable of the beaver. Gramsci writes:
The beaver, pursued by trappers who want his testicles from which medicinal drugs can be extracted, to save his life tears off his own testicles. (1971)
Gramsci uses this fable to illustrate how progressive organisations acquiesce to powerful forces – sometimes fleeing from confrontation in the face of an onslaught, at other times fleeing at the prospect of even the slightest challenge. The story has lessons for trade unions in South Africa, when significant voices are calling for wage restraint on the part of workers, which needs to be understood within the limits of collective bargaining. First, employers need to realise profits to fund wage increases and potentially create jobs. And where government is the employer, it needs to ensure that it meets all service obligations. Second, in the current global financial crisis, winning high wage increases is difficult. These challenging truths are self-evident, because significant job losses have occurred, and COSATU (the Congress of South African Trade Unions) has estimated significantly more job losses to come. However, the wage restraint argument at its most extreme effectively asks trade unions to flee the shop floor – which would be to flee the very heart of trade union activism.
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Posted: April 28th, 2010 | No Comments »
Filed under: Economic Inclusion | Tags: Economics, employment, Wage Subsidy
Dear Ministers, Patel, Davies and Gordhan
Consider this letter a criticism that nevertheless appreciates the value of your recent work on creating the building blocks for a new development path in South Africa. After all, as our collective history indicates, power concedes nothing without demand. To which we might add, demands without mobilisation are futile.
I interpret the call for a new development path as a demand and a deliberate undertaking towards a more equal South Africa. On this matter, you have my support, as it clearly is unsustainable to have the poorest 10% of our population with access to only 0,6% of total national income, while the top 10% account for 53% of total income in South Africa.
Is it any wonder then that we have so many “service delivery” protests?
In this regard, I was particularly struck by the closing quote in Minister Patel’s recent address to Parliament. He closed with a quotation from Franklin D. Roosevelt, an American President and the architect of the New Deal. The essence of the quote is that we must remake society through the means at our disposal and emerge from it a stronger nation with an abundance of opportunity and fairer outcomes. It is a theme that ran through all the speeches you collectively delivered to parliament while presenting your budgets. You have offered an ambitious vision for the future.
However, I am having a really difficult time trying to reconcile this bold recognition of the need for change with the reality of power relations in the economy.
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Posted: April 12th, 2010 | No Comments »
Filed under: Economic Inclusion | Tags: Economic development, Economic liberalism, Economics, New Deal, South Africa, World Bank
This is an interview based a journal article I wrote. The article looks at how the global economic crises is reinforcing poverty and inequality in South Africa. The text is from the Society for International Development website, which publishes Development. The abstract of the article can be found at this link.
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Posted: February 23rd, 2010 | No Comments »
Filed under: Economic Inclusion | Tags: Economic growth, Economic inequality, Economics, Global Economic Crises, Income distribution, Late-2000s recession, Macroeconomics, South Africa
