E.C. Webster

This paper was written as a response to the somewhat abstract discussions that sometimes take place in university seminars on the relative weight of class, race and ethnicity in explaining human behaviour. It rests on the assumption that conceptual clarification has limited value, unless conceptual analysis is followed by a concrete historical or sociological analysis of a particular social situation. The Durban 'riots' of 1949 was chosen as a case-study because it has been widely used by 'separate' development theorists' as an example of the inevitability of conflict between the races, without any attempt being made to relate this conflict to the political economy. This paper is an attempt to develop a theoretical recognizes the embryonic and partial nature of class formation in a 'plural society' through the notion of class 'suppression', but nonetheless attempts to derive a meaningful frame of reference for explaining a class based will introduce the theoretical framework. Part II, III and IV is an attempt to give a portrait of the participants in the riot, analyzing their composition, ''motives and how activity was generated among them. Here a note of caution needs to be introduced. I am still at a tentative stage in my research in two crucial areas; firstly, on the 'consciousness' of the participants I have to date only had access to written material such as newspaper and reports. These sources are partial perspective - this includes in particular, the official Government Inquiry into the riots. Hopefully I will have a fuller picture when I have extended my data gathering to of participants. Secondly, I realize that in a crucial area of my argument among the African traders I am still at an early research. Part V tries to place the conflict in a wider perspective of the social structure.

Classes emerge or form when an aggregate or collectivity of people who share the same relationship to the means of production become aware of their common interests and unite to promote them - in Marx's oft-quoted language, a transformation ' place from a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself. Preceding from the assumption that white and black workers shared a common class situation, early Marxists saw their task as making workers aware of their common interests in order to create a class in the full sense of that word 1. The failure of inter-racial class solidarity in 1922, was explained in terms of racial and cultural cleavages which, it was held, obscured and inhibited the perception of a potential for common class action. Racial and ethnic chauvinism were together under the rubric of 'false of consciousness' and the problem was defined in terms of consciousness rather than in a deeper analysis of the social structure and the mechanisms which produced, maintained and reinforced South African capitalism. I will call this dogmatic Marxism. Confronted by the fact that there appeared to be a greater members of different class colour groups than between persons of the same class who belong to different colour groups, sociologists have argued that this demonstrate thee limited value of class as an analytic tool in South African society which recognizes race and ethnicity as the central organizing principle.

Van den Berghe, for example sees South African society as a form of pluralism. Societies, he says, are pluralistic 'insofar as they exhibit to a greater or lesser degree, two basic features: segmentation into corporate groups that frequently though not necessary have different cultures or subcultures; and a social structure compartmentalised analogous, parallel, noncomplementary but distinguishable sets of institutions 2 Kuper, suggests that consciousness of class is contained within the colour-class and not experienced outside it. Where class divisions (objectively) coincide with antagonistic colour groups, it does not follow that there is merging of the two. They may coincide 'objectively' but the crucial subjective perception of class (the necessary condition for class consciousness) is absent. He suggests that race and nation differences in culture and institutional and constitutional rights are major determinants of political affiliation and ideology, and Marxist theory cannot be applied without qualification'. He goes on to suggest 'racial pluralism as an alternative approach 3. It is being argued that in S.A. prior distinction are made on the basis of non-economic criteria - ascritive criteria and these criteria of colour and ethnicity lead to the differential incorporation of groups into the social structure. It has been suggested more recently, that "from an analytic point of view, marxism and pluralism need not be rivals except in the sense that marxism can be regarded not only as explanatory theory but also as a philosophy of action". The notion of differential incorporation is then used to explain the emergence of South Africa's form of inequality, largely with reference to pre-industrial South Africa. It is suggested that M.G. Smith's notion of 'corporate category' and 'corporate group' has greater explanatory value in South Africa than class. 4

The central criticism of the pluralists has been their failure "to apply a perspective that truly integrates the analysis of cultural rivalries and segmentation with political economy. Ethnic conflicts are often viewed as being unrelated to questions of material well being ... If one is not to presuppose inherent aggressive tendencies among members of different racial stock, then the struggle for scarce resources among segmented groups has to be seen as the decisive reason for ethnic strife" 5. A similar criticism has been made by Hudson:

"Conflict is about something, it is a function of a conflict of interests. The concept of class specifies interest differences, whereas the concept race does not. As soon as the questions in Kuper's terms one is implying, not that racial differences are related to interest differences, but that racial differences themselves might constitute a cause for 'conflict' that is might constitute a 'conflict' of interest. One is also accepting a key in the legitimating ideology of the colonists: the idea the races are necessarily antagonistic to one another, and so have to be kept apart, or else kept in order by a dominant group. One must ask not 'Are the antagonists differentiated by class or race?' but 'Why do 'racial' categories become salient in this particular class conflict?'. To ask as Leftwich does, "how do we express the conflicts and clashes of interest which have been manifested in strikes? is simply to beg the fundamental question: how else does one explain economically based conflict other than in class terms?

The second direction sociologists have taken is to attempt to develop Marxism in a South Africa idiom - using class as the central analytic tool it involves recognition of the colonial nature of South African society - a colonialism, it is held somewhat loosely, of a special type. John Rex, for instance, suggests that classes can be seen as "groups" of varying histories and ethnic origins who enter the modern society with varying degrees of rightlessness according to the kind of conquest and unfreedom which was imposed on them in an earlier period. He argues that the "relationship to the means of production of the native workers is quite different from that of the white working class. The latter have the means to defend their liberties and their job security as well as negotiating the price of their labour. The former have none of these things. Hence it is not sufficient to dismiss the differences between white settlers and native workers as status differences only.

Both actually and potentially, as class-in-itself and class-in-itself, the native workers are distinct from working class settlers" 6. Hence it is argued that the colonizer-workers' access to political power is a crucial aspect of his position, defining it as antagonistic to that of the black worker. In essence the white worker constitutes an 'aristocracy of labour' because he shares with the owners of the means of production, the 'surplus' extracted from black labour. It is held that the South African state is not simply the instrument of the capitalist class (although it is primarily that) - it involves a coalition of classes which includes white workers as well as industrial, commercial and landed capitalists. This coalition of classes has used the state as a mechanism for the suppression of the collective bargaining power of the Black, particularly the African, working class. What has happened in South Africa is that race has been used in the wider conflict between labour and capital. The white worker, rather than identify himself with a working class overwhelmingly consisting of what he has been taught to believe is an 'inferior 'race, has preferred the rather reluctant acceptance he has been given at the lower ranks of the ruling white society. Within white society 'class conflict' has been substituted for class collaboration. 7

In this paper I want to make a plea for what Robin Cohen has called "a minimalist definition of class; one that recognises the incomplete and embryonic character of class formation and development on the one hand, but that nonetheless attempts to derive a meaningful frame of reference for explaining a class-based act on the other" 8. This process of partial manifestation of class-consciousness and incomplete class formation I wish to label class suppression 9. Class suppression implies two things: firstly of class - the common awareness of a shared interest is inhibited by ethnicity and race prejudice. This obscuring of 'objective' class interests can be 'explained' in two ways: it can be seen as the result of the deliberate manipulation of racial the dominant group. This posit clearly stated by Cox when he says "race prejudice is a social attitude propagated among the public by an exploiting class for the purpose of stigmatising some group the exploitation of either its resources may be justified" 10. Racism is seen here as an ideology belief - that is the product of needs of the capitalism system and imperialism.

Alternatively, or in addition, this obscuring of 'objective' interests may be seen as the result of a belief system developing a force independent of material interest in the narrow sense. This seems to be the concept of social class that Genovese has when he says class subsumes both ideological and material interest. "To affirm," the priority of a class interpretation need not lead us to underestimate the force of racism.... slavery in the Americas had a racial basis and therefore must be understood not simply as a class question, but as a class question with a profound racial dimension.... A class analysis in short, is not enough and can only serve as the basis for a much more complex analysis. But then, no one has ever seriously suggested that it could do more" 11. What seems to be suggested here is that a racist ideology can become so much part of the socialization process -the institutions of what Althusser has called Ideological state apparatus (I.S.A.) - that it can be held even when it is not in one's immediate material interest.

Secondly, class suppression involves the idea that the emergence of a class is 'stunted' through restrictions on its ability to organise or promote its collective interests either by statutory or non-statutory means. In the case of the working class social and political institutions, particularly among Africans, e.g. the trade unions and working class political parties. Or it may mean the limits placed on proletarianization contained within laws such as the Urban Areas Act which places obstacles in the way of Africans settling permanently in the urban areas. In the case of an entrepreneurial class it would mean restrictions on capital accumulation 12.

The changing mode of production introduced first through colonial conquest and later through the spread of industrial capitalism led to the embryonic formation of two broad social classes among blacks in urban areas - in the first instance a large relatively undifferentiated class of wage-labourers stratified broadly into an unskilled sub-proletariat of 'migrant' workers living in compounds and shacks, and a more settled semi-skilled manual work force. A small non-manual elite of clerks, nurses, interpreters and teachers existed within this wage labouring class. A second embryonic class can be seen emerging in the early stages of urbanisation of self-employed blacks, mostly traders. I will call them petty-bourgeois, although this term is somewhat- of a sponge 'catch-all' concept.

Because of the need to make distinctions within the colonized, a further sub-divisions can be made here between the Indian trading class or the secondary colonized p the small African traders could then be categorized as the colonized petty-bourgeois. Similar distinctions could be made within the working class between Indians and Africans.

The parameters of corny between these two broad classes are shaped by the colonial nature of South African society and white racism. Hence it is essential in the making of the social structure. In the first instance - colonialism involves conquest with its concomitant of dispossession, the introduction of a new mode of production and the imposition of a new status hierarchy involving differential treatment of the colonised groups.

I have tried to provide evidence of this process of differential incorporation into the social structure in the third part of the paper. Cox grasped this point clearly when he wrote of white racial prejudices. Whenever there are two or more races in same racial situation with whites, the whites will or explicitly influence the relationship between these subordinate groups.

In other words, the whole racial atmosphere tends to be determined by the dominant race.... and the competition among subordinate races for white favours. Thus more or less directly the dominant race controls the pattern of all dependant race prejudices" 13. Consequently within the colonised, ethnic and racial cleavages emerge which cut across common class interests and the process of class formation is inhibited by the dominant white group. The conflicts that emerge among the colonised I shall call non-fundamental as they do not contradict the basic assumption upon which the colonial relationship is founded. It is non-fundamental because conflict between colonised groups do not threaten the basic structure of the society - they are in fact a deflection of African frustration onto a vulnerable minority group- what could be called 'displaced aggression'.

My task in this paper is to identify these cleavages among the colonized in order to facilitates our understanding of why a society, ridden with such sharp conflicts, continues to function. In this sense my contribution to this conference is a case-study in the problems of inter-racial class solidarity, rather than any clear development of a theme in the making of a working class.

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