Wage Labour and the Political Economy of Colonial Violence

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Periodical article

Title:	Wage Labour and the Political Economy of Colonial Violence
Author:	Kaniki, Martin H.Y.
Year:	1981
Periodical:	African Social Research
Issue:	31
Period:	June
Pages:	1-26
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Africa
Subjects:	colonialism political economy labour Labor and Employment Economics and Trade History and Exploration Law, Human Rights and Violence
Abstract:	The relationship between the use of violence and the interests of those with economic power is examined through a focus on the application of violence in the creation and control of wage labour in colonial Africa. Examples are chosen from settler and non-settler dependencies in order to underline the fact that colonial economic relations were essentially alike despite the absence of a dominant white settler population in some dependencies. Violent intervention by the colonial state on the side of capital featured prominently in colonial industrial relations. Moreover, any private member of the employer class could count on the eager and unquestioned intervention of the police on his behalf. African workers were not only super-exploited under colonial capitalist relations of production, they were despised and degraded, in brief treated as colonised people, as well. The contradiction between labour and capital was further reinforced by the colonial relationship. Notes, ref.