The Story of an African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners' Struggles 1870-1980 (African History Archive) - Softcover

Crisp, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783609761 ISBN 13: 9781783609765

Verlag: Zed Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

A fascinating history of working-class struggle in Ghana's gold mines.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeff Crisp is a research associate at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, and an associate fellow at Chatham House. He has previously held senior positions at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Global Commission on International Migration. He is also a respected historian who has written widely on African labour history and current affairs.

Gavin Hilson is a leading global authority on the environmental and social impacts of the small-scale mining sector and has published over a hundred journal articles, book chapters and reports on the subject. He is currently professor and chair of sustainability in business at the University of Sussex.

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The Story of an African Working Class

Ghanaian Miners' Struggles 1870-1980

By Jeff Crisp

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 1984 Jeff Crisp
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78360-976-5

Contents

Foreword by Gavin Hilson, 
Preface to the First Edition by Robin Cohen, 
Acknowledgements, 
Abbreviations, 
MEU General Strike Poster, 1954, 
AGC Anti-Strike Leaflet, 1955-56, 
Map of Ghana, 
1. A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR AFRICAN LABOUR HISTORY, 
2. THE LABOUR QUESTION AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF CONTROL, 1870-1906, 
3. FROM LABOUR SHORTAGE TO LABOUR SURPLUS: THE RECRUITMENT AND CONTROL OF A MIGRANT LABOUR FORCE, 1906-1930, 
4. THE GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE, 1930-1947, 
5. WORKER MILITANCY AND UNION RESPONSE, 1947-1956, 
6. UNION ATROPHY AND WORKER REVOLT: THE CPP PERIOD, 1956-1966, 
7. UNION ATROPHY AND WORKER REVOLT UNDER MILITARY AND CIVILIAN REGIMES, 1966-1980, 
8. THE LIMITS OF MILITANCY: MINE WORKER RESISTANCE AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN GHANA, 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES CITED, 
INDEX, 

CHAPTER 1

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR AFRICAN LABOUR HISTORY

Without contraries is no progression.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

This book tells the story of Ghana's mine workers, one of the oldest and most militant groups of wage labourers in Africa. For more than 100 years the mine workers have been struggling to improve their conditions of life and employment, encountering in the process enormous and frequently violent opposition from mining capital, the colonial and post-colonial state. This chapter provides a brief examination of the conceptual framework which has been used to describe and analyze the changing pattern of that struggle in Ghana's gold mining industry.

Labour Control and Labour Resistance

The conceptual framework employed in this book is based on the two central themes of labour control and labour resistance. The first, labour control, is used to denote those activities of the representatives, allies and collaborators of capital which are designed to assert authority over wage labour and thereby incorporate it into the capitalist mode of production. The second, labour resistance, is used to denote those activities of wage labour, its representatives and allies, which defy the authority of capital, assert the autonomy of the worker, and thereby obstruct the incorporation of labour into the capitalist mode of production. Labour control and labour resistance are integral and inseparable features of the capitalist mode of production. To rephrase Marx, they presuppose the existence of each other, condition the existence of each other, and reciprocally bring forth each other:

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labour power to the greatest possible extent. As the number of cooperating labourers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity to overcome this resistance by counterpressure. The control exercised by the capitalist is ... consequently rooted in the unavoidableantagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he exploits.

Labour resistance and labour control are, therefore, a necessary manifestation of capital's principal objective, the accumulation of the surplus value created by labour power. More specifically, resistance and control are a function of four characteristics of the process through which capital seeks to achieve that objective.

Firstly, capital cannot accumulate surplus value unless it is able to purchase as much (or as little) labour power as it requires at any time, and bring it into connection with the means of production. It must, therefore, control the supply of labour to, and its occupational and geographical distribution within, the wage labour market. In advanced capitalist societies this form of control is the source of few problems for capital, as the vast majority of the population has been divorced from the means of production and can only subsist by the sale of its labour power. In contrast, in societies where the capitalist mode of production has not fully developed, and coexists with pre-capitalist modes of production, much of the population can subsist, and enter the cash nexus, without entering the labour market. In the absence of sufficiently strong ecological pressures or financial incentives to induce them into the labour market voluntarily, rural producers, traders and craftsmen must be forced to abandon their existing economic activities, to become dependent on wages as a means of subsistence, and to endure the rigours and uncertainties of capitalist employment.

Secondly, to maximize the surplus value which it appropriates from labour, capital must control, and thereby minimize, the wages paid to the worker, and habituate the worker to the unequal distribution of the product of their labour. Workers however, like capitalists, seek to sell the commodity at their disposal, labour power, for the highest price the market will pay. Indeed, they are encouraged to do so by capital, which makes new goods and services available to them. Consequently, workers must resist the efforts of capital to force down wages, and use whatever means are at their disposal to force them up.

Thirdly, capital can also maximize the surplus value appropriated from labour by controlling, and thereby maximizing, the productivity of the worker, and by habituating the worker to the unequal distribution of effort and authority in the workplace. Resistance to this aspect of the capitalist mode of production is again a particular problem for capital in societies where the wage labour force is rooted in pre-capitalist modes of production and has not internalized the norms and values ('ideology') of capitalism. Rural producers, traders and craftsmen who enter the labour market are accustomed to working at a self or communally determined rate. In their previous activities they have individually or jointly controlled the labour process, and have been free, within physiological limits, to sacrifice income for leisure. Consequently they have a marked tendency to resist the efforts of capital to realize their full potential as the creators of surplus value.

Capital's principal objective of accumulating surplus value is, therefore, threatened by the resistance of workers and potential workers to these three features of the capitalist mode of production. One function of the state, an administrative and juridical structure relatively autonomous of capital, is to minimize the impact of such resistance on the rate at which surplus value is created and appropriated. Inevitably, in the course of their resistance, workers come into conflict with the state, and participate in various forms of organization and action in an attempt to make it more susceptible to their interests. To protect capital, and to safeguard their own privileged status, the ruling elites of the state must control this political activity, and induce the wage labour force to recognize the legitimacy of their governing role.

Strategies of Control and Modes of Resistance

Having identified the features of the capitalist mode of production which give rise to the 'unavoidable antagonism' of labour and capital, it is now possible to examine the concrete manifestations of this antagonism. The methods used by capital to assert its authority over labour, and the means whereby labour...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Zed Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783609761
• ISBN 13: 9781783609765
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland