Labor in Transitional Societies: Conflict, Democracy, and Neoliberalism

Labor in Transitional Societies:Conflict, Democracy, and Neoliberalism

Zak Cope

This article examines the role that labor has played and can play in transitional societies, that is, insocieties moving away from endemic violent conflict and/or authoritarian rule, and toward ostensiblydemocratic political norms. Specifically, it looks at the position of labor in Northern Ireland, Poland, andSouth Africa before and after the “double transition,” that is, the transition not only toward a fullerdemocratic dispensation, but also toward neoliberal socioeconomic structures. The aims of the article are,first, to question the compatibility of democracy with neoliberal capitalism and, second, to describe how thestratification of labor established by international capitalism has profoundly shaped the social context inwhich the organized working class acts to advance its goals. The article concludes by making somesuggestions relevant to strategies appropriate to the struggle to make labor a united and leading force forsocial progress.1

This article examines the role that labor has played and can play in transi-tional societies, that is, in societies moving away from endemic violent conflictand/or autocratic rule, and toward ostensibly democratic political norms. Spe-cifically, it will examine the position of labor before and after the “doubletransition,” that is, transition not only toward a fuller democratic dispensation,but also toward neoliberal socioeconomic structures.2

The central aim of the article is, first, to question the compatibility ofdemocracy with neoliberal capitalism. I will argue that neoliberal economicstructures have typically ran counter to the extensive and intensive enfranchise-ment of the working population. In the second place, the article describes howthe stratification of labor established by international capitalism has profoundlyshaped the social context in which the organized working class acts to advance itsgoals. Specifically, hierarchical divisions based on nation, gender, and class haveensured that the labor movement has been unable to act consistently as a unitedand progressive social force. Not only is organized labor shown to be profoundlyshaped by hitherto existing social divisions, it also actively participates in theperpetuation and entrenchment of these in certain contexts. The article showshow the ruling classes of Northern Ireland, Poland, and South Africa were ableto take advantage of divisions within the working class to cement their rulebefore, during, and after transition.

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WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society · 1089-7011 · Volume 17 · December 2014 · pp. 455–489© 2014 Immanuel Ness and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The struggle between capitalists and workers to retain their respective sharesof socially created wealth is the principal locus of class conflict in the modernera. However, this conflict is mediated by a range of variables connected to thehistorical political economy of imperialism such that the losses and gains of thecapitalist mode of production, including in its neoliberal phase, are unevenlydistributed among groups of workers. Before proceeding, then, it is useful tohighlight those divisions that exist within the working class.

In Table 1, horizontal divisions are based on socially ascribed identity whilevertical divisions correlate with economic ones. Perfect segregation of the labormarket exists when workers with a distinct social identity occupy a commonposition in the economic hierarchy, whereas perfect integration exists when saidgroup of workers holds the same proportion of vertically divided positions in thelabor market as it holds in the overall labor force. The global division betweenthe First World and the Third World (between the global North and the globalSouth or between what have been referred to as consumer states and producerstates) overdetermines local, national, regional, and international divisionswithin the working class. Thus, for example, members of the lower stratum ofworkers in the world’s richest countries earn significantly more for their workthan many middle- and upper-level workers in the world’s poorer nations.

The world’s trade union movement is disproportionately composed of theworld’s best-paid workers employed in the services sectors of the developedeconomies.3 Table 2 shows that the OECD (excluding Czech Republic, Greece,Iceland, Israel, Italy, Luxemburg, Slovenia, and Spain) contributes around26.8 percent of world trade union membership. Excluding China, however, theOECD contributes 61.8 percent of the world’s trade union membership.4 Mean-while, the OECD supplies 22.6 percent of the world’s full-time equivalentindustrial workforce.

The struggle against neoliberalism and for a more inclusive, participatory,and egalitarian society necessarily requires strengthening, expanding, and revi-talizing the labor movement (Pons-Vignon 2010). However, this goal can onlybe achieved provided trade unions honestly and critically examine their prior

Table 1. Labor Segmentation and Stratification in the Capitalist World System29

Third World / Global South First World / Global North

Superexploited SuperwagedProductive v. Unproductive Supervisory v. Subordinate Mental v. ManualNationality Gender ‘Race’ Religion Ethnicity

Wage/Salary; Precarity/Underemployment; Income/Assets; Cultural Capital; Occupation

Lower stratum (factorylaborers, migrant farmworkers, domestics,unskilled serviceemployees, day laborers)a

Middle stratum (foremen,skilled workers, unionized workers)

Upper stratum(“white-collar”employees, civil servants,office managers,“proletarianized”petty-bourgeoisie)

aClass designations adapted from Amin (1980).

456 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

Tab

le2.

Tra

deU

nion

Mem

bers

hip

asC

ompa

red

with

Indu

stri

alE

mpl

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ent

Inte

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Year

Num

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rs

Year

Tra

deun

ion

mem

bers

hip

aspe

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tage

ofto

tal

paid

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ent

(%)

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deun

ion

mem

bers

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tage

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untr

ies

sam

pled

Year

Full-

time

equi

vale

ntin

dust

rial

wor

kfor

ce

Indu

stri

alw

orkf

orce

aspe

rcen

tage

ofw

orld

tota

l

Aus

tral

ia20

101,

787,

800

2011

18.0

0.46

2009

2,07

0,33

20.

48A

ustr

ia20

091,

011,

600

2008

28.1

0.26

2009

900,

000

0.21

Bel

gium

2003

2,72

3,00

020

0952

.00.

7020

0992

6,14

40.

22B

razi

l20

0917

,141

,877

2009

16.8

4.43

2009

17,0

64,9

573.

99C

anad

a20

104,

240,

000

2009

29.4

1.10

2008

3,84

4,41

50.

90C

hile

2010

858,

571

2009

15.8

0.22

2009

1,53

3,41

00.

36C

hina

2010

239,

965,

000

2000

90.3

062

.01

2010

121,

009,

245

28.3

2D

enm

ark

2011

2,04

2529

2009

68.8

0.53

2011

485,

759

0.11

Est

onia

2009

51,8

0020

097.

70.

0120

1118

5,02

00.

04Fi

nlan

d20

032,

168,

924

2009

69.2

0.56

2011

512,

502

0.12

Fran

ce20

098,

676,

900

2008

7.6

2.24

2011

5,30

4,44

21.

24G

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any

2009

11,3

56,1

1020

0819

.12.

9320

119,

974,

618

2.33

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gary

2008

1,13

1,22

2009

16.8

0.03

2011

1,09

8,75

30.

26In

dia

2005

8,71

1,00

020

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2.25

2010

40,1

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929.

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1,00

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1420

1133

3,20

70.

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pan

2008

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65,0

0020

0818

.52.

6020

1013

,844

,376

3.24

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ea,R

ep.

2009

1,64

0,00

020

0910

.00.

4220

1034

,238

,00

0.80

Mal

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a20

0880

5,56

520

0810

.10

0.21

2010

2,51

2,42

80.

59M

exic

o20

096,

407,

900

2009

13.9

1.66

2010

9,61

3,50

02.

25N

ethe

rlan

ds20

081,

878,

000

2009

19.1

0.49

2011

1,12

5,16

20.

26N

ewZ

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nd20

1138

4,64

420

0921

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1020

0940

7,75

90.

10N

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ay20

081,

621,

073

2009

54.3

0.42

2010

427,

293

0.10

Phi

lippi

nes

2008

1,94

1,72

720

0810

.90

0.50

2011

3,11

5,29

20.

73P

olan

d20

092,

548,

500

2009

15.0

0.66

2010

4,56

9,56

21.

07P

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gal

2010

739,

000

2009

20.1

0.19

2010

1,29

0,82

00.

30R

ussi

a20

1024

,200

,000

2009

31.9

6.25

2009

17,6

42,2

864.

13Sl

ovak

Rep

ublic

2009

872,

298

2008

17.1

0.23

2010

844,

396

0.20

Sout

hA

fric

a20

083,

298,

559

1993

57.8

0.85

2011

3,36

2,63

40.

79Sw

eden

2010

3,34

3,61

220

0968

.40.

8620

1082

4,25

80.

19Sw

itzer

land

2008

752,

173

2008

22.5

0.19

2011

771,

205

0.18

Tur

key

2008

3,20

5,66

220

095.

90.

8320

115,

343,

460

1.25

Uni

ted

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gdom

2010

6,53

6,00

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0927

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6920

115,

026,

547

1.18

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0915

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,000

2010

12.0

3.96

2010

21,8

91,0

285.

12W

OR

LD

(App

rox.

)38

6,97

5,94

620

1042

7,26

6,69

210

0.00

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ces:

Inte

rnat

iona

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orld

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k;C

IA.

Cope: Labor in Transitional Societies 457

inability to protect the interests of less advantaged workers and make a breakwith the ideologies, institutions, and practices of capitalism. Thus, to repositionthe labor movement on a more radical basis, socialist trade unionists must payspecial heed to the structural position of organized labor within the context ofthe global economy and seek to find the best way to uplift labor as a whole at theexpense of capital, and not piecemeal at the expense of other workers.

We may now proceed to examine three case studies of labor in transitionalsocieties, those of Northern Ireland, Poland, and South Africa. Each of thesecountries has experienced a transition either from autocratic regimes withlimited democracy or violent civil conflict to ostensibly “normal” and “peaceful”market democracies. As we shall see, in each case the social relations of produc-tion have had a profound bearing on the activities and strategies of the respectivetrade union movements. The present article has not drawn attention to themajor contrasts between the labor movements in each of these divided societies.It is, of course, clear that the varying social conditions in Northern Ireland,Poland, and South Africa produced distinctive strategies and responses from thecontending social groups therein. Thus, the historical origins of social divisions;the structure, goals, and social composition of anti-systemic organizations; theintensity, mode, impact, and propagation of political violence; the level of theproductive forces and the position of the economy within the capitalist worldsystem; and the role of distinctive ideologies in fostering and maintaining soci-etal conflict were relatively unique to each country and shaped their respectivelabor struggles accordingly. However, the present article proceeds on the basis ofa parallel comparative history of labor in transitional societies in order to arrive atsome general conclusions valid for each of the cases (Skocpol and Somers 1980).In doing so, I hope to show that the difficulties experienced by the labormovement in attempting to transforming deeply divided societies into moreinclusive ones have a more general relevance to the strategies employed bysocialist organizations.

Labor, Conflict, and the (Neoliberal) Transition in Northern Ireland

The major political conflict in Ireland has for centuries revolved around thenational question, that is, whether Ireland is to form a united and sovereignnation5 or whether it is to be ruled in whole or in part from Britain. Asthroughout Irish history, antagonistic class relations played a central role in thedevelopment of the recent phase of the national conflict there (from the out-break of widespread armed violence in Northern Ireland in 1969 to the signingof the Belfast Agreement in 1998). Social class has also been a central factor indetermining how the attempt at conflict resolution in Northern Ireland hasfared since. Although in Northern Ireland, as in other developed countries,“[changed] work practices and accelerated consumption have . . . served to blurthe boundaries between previously distinct social strata” (Coulter 1999, 77), thishas not meant that social identity has become simply a matter of individualchoice. Rather, social position matters in terms of the particular forms ethnic,


national, and cultural identities take for those groups adopting them. Distinctsocial groups will tend to adopt those national, cultural, and ethnic identitieswhich they perceive as most in line with their own class interests. Class inthis sense, as Coulter (1999, 78) points out, provides a more pertinent,though certainly not stand-alone, measure of the living conditions andlife opportunities of individuals than a cursory look at their particular“identity” (narrowly conceived in purely ethno-national terms). It also verylargely dictates which people engage in and/or suffer from political violence (seeMcKeown 1989; Thompson 1989). A 2005 study finds a strong causal relation-ship between unemployment rates and political violence in Northern Ireland(Honaker 2005).

At the turn of the last century, Irish industry, and hence the working class assuch, was largely confined to the northeast and mainly around Belfast. Ireland’smajor engineering and shipbuilding industries that had grown up on the basis ofthe expansion of the linen industry depended on the British Empire for theirmarkets. So as to better compete internationally, Irish industrialists demandedprivileged access to a restricted Imperial market. As such, the social base of thestruggle against the Irish independence movement shifted at this time from theall-Ireland landed gentry to the export-oriented capitalists of the Belfast area andtheir largely Protestant workforce (Anderson 1980).

During the period of industrialization in the late nineteenth century, Belfasthad attracted thousands of dispossessed Catholics from the countryside lookingfor employment. In response, established Protestant workers in Belfastattempted to guarantee themselves the best paid and most secure jobs. Patterson(1980) argues that what may appear to be sectarianism on the part of the labormovement is really the sectionalism of skilled workers. However, as Rolston(1980, 71–2) points out: “[The] sectionalism and exclusivity evident in thedevelopment of trade unions elsewhere became in the north of Ireland preciselysectarian sectionalism and sectarian exclusivity . . . Craft unionists who were alsoProtestants found themselves threatened by an influx of non-craft unionists whowere also Catholics.”

The major ways in which Catholics were systematically excluded from theworkforce (see Table 3, Figure 1), particularly its most important sectors, were:

1. Much industry was located in places which were difficult or dangerous forCatholics to reach;

2. Catholics who sought employment were less likely to be hired;

3. Once companies acquired the reputation of not hiring Catholics, Catholicsstopped bothering to apply;

4. Trade unions “did little or nothing to end discriminatory practices in theworkplace” (Coakley 2012, 181). Rather, unions frequently acted as hiringagents and constituted a hidden but effective barrier to Catholic recruitment;and


5. There was frequently no public recruitment. Employers relied on word-of-mouth hiring through existing staff (who told relatives and friends of vacan-cies) and through other social contacts (e.g., the Orange Order).6

Unequal employment practices and opportunities (including many to befound in British security forces and prisons) ensured that the largest and best-

Table 3. Distribution of Catholics and Protestant Workers in Industry, 1971

Industrial category Catholic (%) Protestant (%) Not stated (%)

Shipbuilding 4.8 89.5 5.7Vehicles 11.7 79.5 8.8Gas, electricity, water 15.4 78.2 6.4Mechanical engineering 16.0 77.0 7.0Insurance, banking, finance 16.2 75.2 8.6Metal manufacture 18.2 72.0 9.8Electrical engineering 19.3 72.6 8.1Administration, defense 19.6 71.7 8.7Instrument engineering 19.8 73.8 6.4Food, drink, tobacco 21.4 60.9 7.7Textiles 23.6 69.1 7.3Construction 37.0 52.9 10.1Leather, leather goods, fur 39.8 50.7 9.5Clothing, footwear 40.1 50.7 9.2

Source: Northern Ireland Population Census (1971) cited in Rowthorne and Wayne (1988, 35).

Figure 1. Unemployment, Gender, and Religious Affiliation in Northern Ireland, 1971–1999.Source: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) (2001).27


organized section of the working class in Ireland was dominated by Protestantworkers with a strong vested interest in maintaining an unfettered connection tothe British market and to the class of capitalists and landlords who could therebyguarantee their relative prosperity, in no small measure through suppressionof the civil rights and democratic demands of their working-class Catholiccounterparts.

In the previous century, Northern Ireland’s ruling Ulster Unionist party wasthe party of large farmers, industrialists, and senior administrative personnel,both in terms of the social background of its leadership and in terms of theprincipal social interests it served.7 In order to cement British rule, Unionistpoliticians deployed populist Protestant and Orange propaganda and worked toensure that the grievances of working-class Protestants did not unsettle thecross-class Unionist social compact:

As the First World War came to a close many Protestant workers becameheavily involved in a spate of important industrial disputes. Those wealthy menat the helm of Ulster unionism quickly moved to stem the seemingly rising tideof proletarian radicalism. In 1918 the Ulster Unionist Labour Association(UULA) was formed . . . Over the next half century the UULA provided achannel through which representatives of the unionist working classes wereassigned to the lesser positions within Stormont administrations . . . The asso-ciation would appear to have performed with considerable success the role forwhich it was designed. During the period of devolved government at Stormontthere were a few occasions when the unionist working classes sought to pursuethose substantial interests held in common with Catholic workers. In the main,however, working class Protestants proved content to exist as subordinateswithin the unionist class alliance. [Coulter 1999, 93]

Despite the emergence of socialist and communist and even republicanvoices within Northern Ireland’s Protestant working class, the alliance betweenit and property-owning Protestants was never radically disturbed, even by suchfleeting and uneven episodes of working-class unity as the Dockers’ Strikes of1907 and the Outdoor Relief Strikes of 1936.8 “Sectarianism” or, rather, theopposing national (British/Irish) and class trajectories of the two communities inNorthern Ireland, meant that a united and militant labor movement able to exertits power over the business elite did not emerge.9 In its place, a divided workingclass meant that working-class Catholics and, to a lesser extent, working-classProtestants bore the brunt of seven decades of Unionist rule and the violentstruggle that arose because of it.

By the final decades of the last century, the economic bases of the Protestantcross-class alliance (in particular, the shipbuilding and engineering industries)had gone into terminal decline with changes in the global economy. Meanwhile,the middle-class Catholic population that had developed in the construction,alcohol, and grocery retail industries, as well as in the lower ranks of the civilservice and the professional classes, was eager to see an end to the anti-stateinsurgency being waged by equally war-weary urban and rural working-class


Catholics. In order to end the violent conflict and facilitate Northern Ireland’sfurther integration into the hegemonic neoliberal framework, a peace settlementwas reached between the major contending parties there. Labor was decidedlymarginal to proceedings.

As one of the eight signatories to the 1998 Belfast Agreement, Labour wasa very loose coalition of a handful of left-wing parties and received 0.85 percentof the vote in the 1996 Northern Ireland forum elections (it gained no seats atall, but was entitled to sign the Agreement because it was the tenth largestpolitical party). Thus, despite intermittent opposition to anti-Catholic discrimi-nation in the workplace and concerted efforts by some trade unionists to curbloyalist violence (negatively equated with that of republicans), organized labor’sgoal of preserving the formal unity of Unionist and Nationalist members seri-ously restricted its willingness to challenge state repression of the wider Nation-alist community.10

When it did venture into the realm of national politics, the Northern IrelandLabour Party (NILP, existing between 1924 and 1987) became increasinglyunequivocal in its support for the union with Britain, and at its 1949 conferencevoted in favor of its retention. Thus, Boyd (1985) noted: “The Walker-Midgley[partitionist] philosophy has dominated the NILP since 1949. It has turned thatunfortunate organisation into something little better than a shadow of the UlsterUnionists.” As if to make the same point, Roy Mason, Labour’s Secretary ofState for Northern Ireland, wrote to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions(ICTU) annual conference in 1977 that he was “very conscious that we [theBritish government] have been well served by the trade union leadership at alllevels” (Irish Times, May 12, 1977).

In fact, those issues most pressing to the trade union movement, primarilyeconomic ones relating to conditions at the level of the workplace, were at someremove from those facing the wider working class, in particular, housing dis-crimination, electoral discrimination, and even job discrimination, these ulti-mately hinging on the national question (Finlay 1992). It is clear, moreover, thatthe already deeply split labor movement (the virtually autonomous NorthernIreland Committee of ICTU was set up in 1964 as a precondition for recogni-tion of the trade unions by the Unionist government) would have completelysplintered had the leadership chosen to ignore the political preferences of itscore, Unionist constituency.

The partition of Ireland bequeathed a legacy of economism and reformismto Unionist-dominated labor in Northern Ireland. This ensured that it played alimited role in bringing about the relative peace that followed the signing of theBelfast Agreement in 1998. As a result, the replacement of counter-insurgencyand conflict-avoidance Keynesianism (Coakley 2012, 181) by neoliberalism,loudly trumpeted as a “salve for sectarian antagonism” to this day (Kelly 2012;Nagle 2010), went largely unopposed.

In practice, restrictions placed on the redistributive powers of the UK statefollowing neoliberal fiscal policy, particularly in the proportion of tax revenuesmade available for social security and poverty amelioration, has exacerbated


inequality and damaged the prospects of many Catholic and Protestant workingpeople. Reversing a trend toward greater parity during the conflict years, North-ern Ireland now has higher rates of poverty and lower wages than anywhere elsein the UK, with the number of people on incapacity benefit some 74 percenthigher than elsewhere. Median private sector wages are lower than in the publicsector and, according to the UK government’s definition, some 43 percent ofhouseholds live in poverty or are vulnerable to poverty (see Hillyard et al. 2003,29; Hillyard, Rolston, and Tomlinson 2005, 47; and Ruddock, 2006).

In recent decades, increased prosperity and greater levels of equality haveundoubtedly lessened the appeal of violence. Indeed, as some commentatorssuggested in the early 1990s (Brennock 1991; McKittrick 1991; Rolston 1993),greater prosperity for many Catholics has led them to modify their commitmentto a united Ireland (Portland Trust 2007). However, fifteen years after the BelfastAgreement, the poorest and longest-suffering areas of Northern Ireland havenot seen the full benefits of the long-awaited “peace dividend” (Clark 2013).Moreover, although unskilled and poorly educated working-class Protestants areincreasingly devoid of job opportunities and access to social amenities, Catholics(with a smaller overall population) remain disproportionately affected bypoverty. A 2013 report commissioned by the Northern Ireland CommunityRelations Council states:

Community differentials still persist between Protestants and Catholics: on arange of indicators Catholics experience much greater socio-economic disad-vantage. The deprivation indices show that 22% of Catholics live in householdsexperiencing poverty, compared to 17% of Protestants. Sixteen of the top 20most deprived wards are Catholic, and only 6 of the least deprived wards areCatholic. The recession is having different impacts on different sectors. Con-struction has suffered the greatest job loss and this affects Catholics more thanProtestants. Conversely, shrinkage in security has had more effect on Protes-tants. Youth unemployment is on the increase and a community differential hasopened up: 15 per cent of Protestants in the 18–24 year-old age group areunemployed but for Catholics in the same category the figure is 20 per cent.There are stark inequalities in health. The gap in life expectancy between themost deprived and the least deprived areas is 11.6 years. There is also a com-munity differential: the life expectancy of a Protestant male is 77.6 years but thatof a Catholic male 76.3 years.11 [Nolan 2013]

Supporters of neoliberal peace-building strategies have claimed that thedevelopment of a culture of entrepreneurial initiative encourages social actors toview themselves not as members of communal groups, but purely as individuals,thus decreasing the possibility of ethnic conflict (Strong 2010). However, withinthe parameters attendant to consociational12 political forms and outside ofa more-class-based approach to social welfare, the diminution of public fundshas undoubtedly exacerbated ethnic competition over increasingly limitedresources.

There is no guarantee at all that neoliberalism must lead people towardindividualist solutions to social problems as opposed to seeking solace in


traditional ethno-politics, especially insofar as “entrepreneurial capitalism”exalts the spirit of competition. Indeed, neoliberalism itself relies upon nationalchauvinism, both to foster support for those political vehicles at the forefront ofits implementation and to provide a kind of social adhesive to bring togetherwhat neoliberalism has rent asunder. In short, “market competition, when it isreproduced through ethnic cleavages, can easily degenerate into ethnic violence”(Nagel 2010, 229).13

Labor, Democracy, and the (Neoliberal) Transition in Poland

In a Labor Day Speech at Liberty State Park in New Jersey on September 1,1980, U.S. President Ronald Reagan spoke of bringing labor and managementtogether for America. Reagan, not typically known for his commitment toworkers’ causes, pronounced:

These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland. The values thathave inspired other dissidents under Communist domination. They remind usthat where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away fromextinction. You and I must protect and preserve freedom here or it will not bepassed on to our children. Today the workers in Poland are showing a newgeneration not how high is the price of freedom but how much it is worth thatprice.

President Reagan, working in close conjunction with the AFL-CIO (theAmerican Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), theCIA, and the Vatican, backed up his words with action, providing the Polishtrade union Solidarity (Solidarnosc) with clandestine aid of up to US$50 million(Judt 2005, 589; Bernstein 1992).

Solidarity began life in 1980 with a militant working-class following. By1981, it had 9.5 million members, no less than one third of the total working agepopulation of Poland. Its leadership and strategic vision, however, quicklybecame dominated by the Catholic Church and market reformers. The rise ofSolidarity led to the collapse of Poland’s welfare state and the consolidation of aneoliberal economy in the country.

The People’s Republic of Poland (PRP, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL)was established in 1952 as a “People’s Democracy,” a political form midwaybetween a bourgeois republic and a socialist state.14 It was set up principally bymeans of Soviet intervention rather than indigenous revolutionary class struggle,since otherwise the UK and U.S. would have set up their own anti-Sovietgovernment representative of the former propertied elites (primarily landownersand the clerical bureaucracy, given the decimation of the fledgling Polish bour-geoisie at the hands of German imperialism) and consisting of the remnants ofthe right-wing dictatorship established in 1926 by a coup d’état led by JozefPilsudski, leader of the Polish Socialist Party (PSP, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna,PPS) (Hehn 2002, 64–5; Werth 1971, 66). Poland had invaded the USSRbetween 1919 and 1921, when it forcibly seized large swathes of Soviet territory


east of the Curzon Line, and in 1941 German imperialism had used Poland as abase from which to launch an attack on the USSR.15

In 1947, after elections in which anti-communist parties and organizationswere banned, particularly the Polish People’s Party (PPP, or Polish Peasant’sParty, Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL), a new government was set up by theDemocratic Bloc (Blok Demokratyczny).16 With the merger of the Polish Work-er’s Party (PWP, Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR) and the PSP in 1948, however,the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza,PZPR) was formed and took complete control of the state. The ensuing periodof social transformation principally entailed the dispossession anddisempowerment of the former privileged classes. While possessing a popularsupport base,17 this social transformation did not result from mass mobilizationor any revolutionary initiative taken by the working class and allied peasantry, asin the USSR. Rather, change was largely imposed from on high by governmentdiktat. Moreover, in keeping with its claim to represent all of the contendingclasses in Poland, albeit with the working class ostensibly playing a “leadingrole,” ideologies of militant class struggle were very much downplayed by thestate, concerned as it was to preserve stability in the war-ravaged country.18

Between 1949 and 1958, Polish society began to develop from a largelysemi-feudal, agricultural country into a typical industrial country of the “SecondWorld” (see Table 4). In 1956, however, pro-market reforms introduced by thenew Gomulka government ended outright the collectivization of agriculture,already in its infancy, and a virtually capitalist farming sector was reintroduced.19

Further, there began an increase in the proportion of production carried out byindependent producers, small craftsmen and traders. These changes catalyzed ashift of power from the state to “civil society” (Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000,111)20 and were ideologically crystallized as a belief in “market socialism” or theconvergence of capitalism and socialism in a new social order combining market,state, and democracy. At the same time, Poland’s economy became increasinglyimbalanced insofar as nationalized industry was disproportionately gearedtoward Soviet military requirements while the production of consumer goodsbecame ever more commoditized (i.e., individual plants and producers organizedproduction so as to maximize profits rather than produce for social use accordingto a comprehensive democratically determined plan). The scarcity of consumergoods relative to rapid industrial growth and the resultant increase of effectivedemand led to chronic high inflation and waves of strikes.

In the early 1970s, Poland’s production both expanded and modernized asthe state opened up the economy to high levels of Western loans and investmentto resolve its internal weaknesses. A decade later, these loans began to berecouped by creditors, and per capita GDP growth declined precipitously(United Nations 1984, 152). To obtain hard currency to repay its foreign debt,the state had to slash internal consumption and reorient production and invest-ment to increase exports (Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000, 115). Price increaseswere implemented to achieve this end, but the ensuing strikes from a workingclass long used to subsidized living standards forced the government to increase


Tab

le4.

Ach

ieve

dL

evel

ofP

erC

apita

Out

put

Equ

alto

that

ofP

olan

din

1949

and

1958

Ele

ctri

city

Stee

lC

emen

tSu

lfuri

cac

id

340

kwh

832

kwh

Incr

ease

achi

eved

duri

ng

94kg

196

kgIn

crea

seac

hiev

eddu

ring

94kg

175

kgIn

crea

seac

hiev

eddu

ring

11.3

kg19

.9kg

Incr

ease

achi

eved

duri

ng

Pol

and

1949

1958

9ye

ars

1949

1958

9ye

ars

1949

1958

9ye

ars

1949

1958

9ye

ars

USA

1915

1927

12ye

ars

1897

1905

8ye

ars

1906

1922

16ye

ars

1900

1913

13ye

ars

Bri

tain

1929

1942

13ye

ars

1887

1915

28ye

ars

1927

1949

22ye

ars

1870

1881

11ye

ars

Ger

man

y19

2619

3913

year

s18

9819

1012

year

s19

1319

3724

year

s18

9319

0411

year

sFr

ance

1928

1951

23ye

ars

1911

1926

15ye

ars

1926

1951

25ye

ars

1900

1913

13ye

ars

Ital

y19

3719

5619

year

s19

55—

—19

3419

5429

year

s19

1319

2613

year

s

Sour

ce:S

okol

ow(1

959)

.


its levels of borrowing to dole out renewed subsidies. By the end of the 1980s,however, the Polish state, penalized by punitive sanctions, cut off from foreigncredit and lacking sufficient markets in the West, could not borrow its way tosocial peace as it had previously, nor could it generate adequate domestic growthwithout endangering the privileged position of the ruling elite and the salariedmiddle class (see Table 5). The “property rights” of such individuals, their accessto material goods, foreign travel and holiday homes, were bolstered by theirparty membership and/or positions of authority. The embattled governmentthus implemented austerity measures to reconcile domestic inefficiencies withobligations to foreign capitalist economies (Abonyi 1982, 196).

From the late 1950s onward, the Polish government sanctioned increasinglyobvious inequalities in the name of productivity. While gradually introducingever-greater elements of capitalism into the economy, the Polish state did not atthe same time politically incorporate the workers and intellectuals whose par-ticipation they relied upon, thus leaving the state fully intact as the main focus ofpopular discontent (Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000, 124–5). The Polish workingclass had a long tradition of militancy, exemplified by strike waves in the 1930s,1956, 1970–1971 and 1988–1989. This tendency was strengthened by the con-centration and centralization of industry in the PRP, “making strategic strikesmore potent than they would have been in a more decentralized economy—potent enough to bring down the government in 1980 and force the state toimpose martial law” (ibid., 116). Martial law was lifted in 1983 and alloweddisaffected groups, particularly among the intelligentsia, to organize with ready

Table 5. Occupational Groups and Monthly Earnings (Łódz, 1967, 1976, 1980)

Occupational group Year Mean average in Zlotys Ratio to lowest earnings (%)

Professionals 1967 3,419 1981976 6,021 1931980 7,728 160

Technicians 1967 2,681 1551976 4,434 1421980 6,045 125

Office workers 1967 2,258 1381976 4,780 1531980 6,350 132

Foremen 1967 2,378 1311976 4,429 1421980 6,805 141

Service workers 1967 1,924 1121976 3,923 1261980 5,859 121

Skilled workers 1967 2,056 1191976 3,911 1251980 5,859 121

Semi-skilled workers 1967 1,851 1071976 3,585 1151980 5,403 112

Unskilled workers 1967 1,722 1001976 3,117 1001980 4,821 100

Source: Janicka (1986, 62).


foreign support. In 1988, another attempt by the government to raise prices asa means of shifting income away from consumption and toward investment andloan repayment met with a further wave of strikes. The government was thenforced to negotiate with the organized working-class opposition, Solidarity.

Solidarity was a very diffuse trade union organization that incorporatedsocialists, syndicalists, liberals, and all shades of Catholic and nationalist opinion.It also included many grades of workers, both unskilled and skilled manualworkers, as well as civil servants, managers, and technicians. Many of the lattergroups had been incorporated into the ruling apparatus as part of a state that triedincreasingly to combine capitalism with socialism on the basis of a practical denialof workers’ self-government and a growing mistrust of socialist ideals.21 It wasthese most affluent and influential sections of the working class, in fact, thatdominated the organization (Biezenski 1996; Phelps 2008). The Round TableAgreements of 1989–1991 between the increasingly neoliberal and privatelyfunded Solidarity leadership and the decidedly pro-capitalist PUWP governmentfacilitated the transition in Poland that led to the demise of the PRP and thefoundation of the Third Polish Republic.

In 1990, neoliberals David Lipton and Jeffrey Sachs wrote a seminalarticle summarizing the neoliberal position on Poland, advocating an open,market economy and the complete dismantling of the socialized sector (Sachs andLipton 1990). Draconian cuts in public spending, tight restrictions on the moneysupply, and high interest rates were introduced overnight. Public sector workersimmediately saw a decline in their living standards as their wages were restrictedby high inflation. While the redistributive aspects of the state were curtailed, itspower was undiminished as Poland saw the implementation of complex androbust legal frameworks meant to facilitate the free flow of capital and therestructuring of firms through mergers and acquisitions (Hardy 2009, 33). Theimmediate beneficiaries of the introduction of full-blooded capitalism to Polandand the fire sale of vast swathes of state assets were a fractious group of formerparty nomenklatura, foreign investors, and organized criminal networks. Yet thePolish elite, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, was not exclusively populated byformer party leaders. Rather, already becoming assimilated to the new neoliberalorder, Solidarity activists, too,

had defined reform by redirecting their efforts from political to economicactivity and preaching a new philosophy; form a club or lobby to do what needsdoing and finance it through entrepreneurial activities. Some people who hadpreviously exchanged underground leaflets at private gatherings turned totrading software and financial schemes. [Shields 2004]

Solidarity leaders were one among several domestic classes working to posi-tion themselves to take advantage of the new property dispensations oftransition-era Poland. One of the main forms they were able to do so wasthrough worker–manager buyouts of small- and medium-sized firms. Even dis-regarding their inherently capitalist nature, it was typically the managers whobecame the owners of such enterprises, concentrating stock in their hands with


only token shares going to the workforce (Hardy 2009, 50–51). By this time,established groups served as recipients of Western “aid” while the intelligentsiagained employment as consultants, brokers, partners, and scholars for the newneoliberal elite (ibid., 49–50; Wedel 2001).

Social democratic Solidarity leader and economist Tadeusz Kowalik (ibid.,26) has argued that “one cannot deny the considerable popularity of the system[in the Eastern bloc countries], extending well beyond the handful of its directbeneficiaries within the party and the party structures.” Indeed, an opinion pollconducted in 2003 asking the question “when was life easier—in communistPoland or today?” found more than 50% of respondents preferring the oldsystem and only 11.5% the existing one. More than two thirds of respondentssaid that the system established in Poland after 1989 had has had an unfavorableimpact on their lives, particularly in regard to the advantages of full employmentand universal social security (Kowalik 2011, 25).

The initial period of “primitive accumulation” in post-communistPoland involved wholesale privatization of national property. It was followed by“industrial cherry picking” in particular strategic sectors of the economy and,subsequently, by a period of wide-ranging service sector investments, includingthe re-establishment of equities, banking, and financial markets, the latter espe-cially crucial to the augmentation of the neoliberal project. In this phase ofeconomic development, particular emphasis was placed on the idea of cultivatingan emerging middle class through the reinvigoration of the service sector. Yetthe neoliberal transition in Poland has “predominantly occurred through sig-nificant personal continuity from the state-socialist period and through ‘exter-nal’ foreign investment” (Shields 2012, 6). Despite rising real per capita GDP,the benefits of the transition have been unevenly spread.

The capacity of Polish industry, according to the Vienna Institute for Com-parative Economic Studies, fell by 50 percent between 1988 and 1992, onlyreaching the level of the last “communist” decade in 2002. Between 1989 and2003, neoliberal “shock therapy” in Poland, following the reorientation offoreign trade and the establishment of new export branches on the basis ofrelatively cheap labor, led to a rise in Poland’s foreign debt from US$42 billionin 1989 to US$83 billion in 2003 (Hofbauer 2006, 60). The country is today theeighth most indebted in the world. As a result of declining birth rates andemigration, it is estimated that Poland’s population will shrink from its current38 million to a little over 35 million by 2035. Undoubtedly, economic conditionsare fueling emigration from Poland, with unemployment in Poland averagingfully 18.8 percent in the peak year of 2004, nearly double Germany’s 9.5 percentin the same year. For Poles under twenty-five years of age in 2004, the joblessrate was 39.5 percent, whereas in Germany it was 15.2 percent. Dustmann,Frattini, and Rosso (2012) found that between 1998 and 2007, emigration fromPoland was largest for semi-skilled workers and that it was wages for this skillgroup that increased most. The authors found that emigration led to a slightincrease in wages overall, but that workers at the low end of the skill distributionmade no gains and may actually have experienced slight wage decreases.


Labor, Apartheid, and the (Neoliberal) Transition in South Africa

As in Northern Ireland and Poland, the struggle for democracy in SouthAfrica is incomprehensible when considered apart from class struggle. In par-ticular, understanding South African history requires investigating the dynamicsof white political and economic domination, land deprivation, and unfree blacklabor (Terreblanche 2003, 6; Worden and Crais 1984, 3). During the long periodof European colonialism and imperialism in South Africa, colonialists weremostly the winners in group conflicts and the indigenous population mostly thelosers. The white descendants of settlers from colonial Europe were the con-querors of South Africa and therefore in a position to enrich themselves at theexpense of indigenous people (Terreblanche 2003, 6). The long and difficultstruggle waged by the country’s African population successfully overturned thebaleful system of apartheid that had existed between 1948 and 1994 (perhaps notcoincidentally contemporaneous with the Cold War between the USSR and theU.S.). It did not, unfortunately, lead to the national liberation of the Africanpopulation, the realization of its democratic aspirations, or an escape from a lifeof grinding poverty.

To some observers of South African history, issues of class are ancillary tothose of race (Emery 2008, 410). Indeed, struggles against white supremacy andracism are of primary concern in and of themselves, and can neither be reducednor be seen as peripheral to class struggles. However, “racial” conflicts areimpossible to understand and combat outside the context of social relations ofexploitation, oppression, and class domination. The contention that racialoppression cannot be overcome except through class struggle ought, therefore,to be upheld insofar as white privilege and class privilege both within SouthAfrica and, also, on a world scale (Alexander 1996), tend to be mutuallyreinforcing.

There have been two major left-wing approaches to South African history,namely, “orthodox” Marxism and split labor market theory, the former empha-sizing racist policy as a divide et impera tool of capitalists and the latter its popularorigins as a means of securing privilege for white working- and lower middle-class strata.22 Such theories developed through opposition to the liberal ideologythat the full development of market relations in the country would inevitablyerode the basis of “pre-modern” Afrikaner racism and that, in the pursuit ofmaximum productivity, the social significance of race would be undermined bythe advance of capitalism (De Kiewiet 1941; Macmillan 1930; Marais 1939;Maylam 2001). Against this demonstrably false view, it is possible to argue that,within limits imposed upon it by developing national and class relations, theruling bourgeoisie oversees the construction of segmented and stratified labormarkets for its own ends. In delivering relatively affluent living standards to aminority of nationally superordinate workers—by means of paying them higherwages, securing them better jobs, and providing them greater social, political,and cultural advantages—the capitalist class ensures that this minority is bothdisinclined toward socialism and ready, as a condition of its own privilege, to


assist in the enforced dispossession of its poorer, nationally subordinate coun-terparts (Davies 1979, 30). The repression, control, and containment of themajority working class as facilitated by the subvention and support of a workingelite ensures not only that capitalists are able to maximize the rate of exploita-tion, but also that the role of the working class in liberation struggles that mightwrest all of the nation’s wealth and resources from the imperial power isrestricted. However, in circumstances where

1. mass revolt threatens to overturn the entire capitalist power structure;

2. an oppressed-nation leadership exists that may be co-opted to accept pre-vailing property relations; and/or

3. the privileged working class threatens to enforce an unacceptably costlysocial-democratic compromise (albeit within the prescribed bounds of theRacial Contract) (Mills 1997), the capitalist class may modify its support forentrenched structures of national inequality in favor of a neocolonial com-promise formation.

Throughout the twentieth century, the South African state managed tocreate a privileged white layer within the wage earning classes, regularly inter-vening in the process of class formation to ensure that particular places in thedivision of labor were assigned to white rather than black workers, that eco-nomic concessions were available to white workers, and that white workers wereincorporated into various industrial relations apparatuses from which Africanworkers were excluded. Several authors have analyzed and described the role ofwhite workers as an allied and/or “supporting” class to the bourgeoisie(Poulantzas 1973, 285), and the conditions under which the white working classin South Africa became committed to securing sectional privileges and providingpolitical support for the exploiting classes insofar as these were forthcoming(Davies 1973, 1979; Kaplan 1974, 1976; Legassick 1974a, 1974b; O’Meara 1976,1983; Simson 1973, 1974). The South African state’s efforts to ensure theassignment of white workers as opposed to black workers to particular places inthe division of labor and to secure economic concessions for white workerswithin racist “industrial relations” apparatuses, far from representing the actionsof a state compelled to follow the logic of irrational racial prejudice, “repre-sented on the contrary, the typical interventions of a bourgeois state acting topreserve the coherence of the capitalist social formations under particular con-ditions of class struggle” (Davies 1979, 32).

The South African state could afford to placate and incorporate whiteworkers in this way, but not African workers, for two basic reasons. First, whiteworkers were a small and initially militant minority of the total labor force,whereas African workers were a large majority upon whose exploitation theaccumulation of capital was critically dependent. As such, granting economicconcessions to white workers was a relatively small burden for capital in SouthAfrica, whereas any similar moves toward Africans would have seriously upset


the capital accumulation regime. Second, the oppressive relations the rulingclass maintained with dominated African classes obliged the power bloc to seeksome degree of support from all white classes (ibid., 33).

In 1948, the white working class in South Africa, fearing its displacement inthe mining industries by “uitlanders” or black Africans, attempted to consolidateand expand its social and material mobility by means of a white supremacist andprotectionist alliance with rural settler capitalism as embodied in the NationalParty (Davies 1973). The outcome of this alliance, Apartheid, an all-encompassing political mechanism intended to regulate the segregated supply ofcheap, forced labor, was a condition for rapid industrialization in South Africa,especially during the country’s 1960s “economic miracle.” The extension ofcheap “migrant” labor to the manufacturing sector of the economy and controlover the same (as embodied in the I952 Native Laws Amendment Act thatinstituted National Party influx control) constituted a primary determinant inthe institution of apartheid. At the same time, industrial relations laws, inparticular, the 1953 Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act were the majorfocus of ruling class efforts to corral and subject African labor on the shop floor(Lichtenstein 2005).

Super-exploitation helped to finance the quickening tempo of South Africaneconomic expansion. Average black wages ranged from R400 to R692 a yearfrom 1960 to 1970, while those of whites rose from R1,921 to R3,595 (one SouthAfrican rand equalled 69p at the time) (Jordaan 1974). Under apartheid, Africanssuffered a double oppression, first as disenfranchised workers from whom asurplus was extracted, and, second, as blacks from whom an additional surpluswas extracted by means of legal enforcements such as the Pass Laws, the migrantlabor contracting system, and the system of labor bureau (ibid.). The 1.5 millionwhite workers, by contrast, constituted a “labor aristocracy” par excellence (seeTable 6):

With their monopoly of the franchise, [whites] can pass laws in [Parliament] tostrengthen their trade unions and dictate conditions of service. With the inter-vention of the state, part of the surplus extracted from the blacks is appropriatedto provide superwages for the whites . . . The wage gap between white andAfrican miners increased from 11.7 to 1 in 1911, to 17.6 to 1 in 1966, thenreached 20.3 to 1 in 1971. The average black miner received less in real termsin 1966 than in 1911, despite the fact that the productivity of black minersincreased more than whites during this period [Davies 1973, 54–55, Table II andIII; Wilson 1972, 46]. The depressed wages in mining and agriculture derivedfrom the bias of the state, “a vast engine of labour,” for channelling moreAfrican labour to these two sectors. Less labour is directed to manufacturing,which pays Africans better rates. Consequently, the gap between white andblack wages in this sector is smaller. It increased from 5.2 to 1 to 5.8 to 1between 1965 and 1970; and, in construction from 5.4 to 1 to 6.5 to 1 over thesame period. [ibid.]

Most of South Africa’s white wage earners were not, in fact, productiveworkers producing surplus value. In 1970, for instance, over 700,000 of the 1.27


million white wage earners were employed in the tertiary sector, comprising thecivil service, banks, commerce, finance, professions, the wholesale and retailtrades. What is more, whites used the industrial color bar to monopolize certainskills, the scarcity value of which they exploit to keep their wage rateshigh. Many whites in the production sectors were merely overseers of blackworkers whom they slave drive to ensure superwages for whites (Simson 1974).In 1961, the South African Communist Party (SACP) was forced to conclude thefollowing of the white working class:

“From 1922 onwards, the purely ‘white’ labour movement in this country wastransformed step by step into an emasculated adjunct of the boss class, exchang-ing their independence for concession and privileges, the price of their supportfor white imperialism in its brutal oppression and exploitation of the Africanpeople” [quoted in Lerumo and Harmel 1980, 52]

The black trade union movement, emerging as the labor wing of the AfricanNational Congress (ANC) in the 1960s, played a major role in the overthrow ofapartheid in South Africa. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) formedin 1982, in particular, was at the forefront of working-class struggle against theruling National Party (Allen 2005). Mass strikes by African workers against lowwages broke out in January and February 1973 in Durban, after Johannesburg,the second largest manufacturing center in South Africa. These strikes werealmost entirely spontaneous, however, since the African trade unions in thecountry at the time were in their embryonic stages. Thus, without union orga-nization and leadership to advance their goals, most strikes lasted less than threedays, with the longest lasting seven days.

Table 6. White Clerical Wages Compared to Average Wages of New Petty Bourgeois White Supervisorsin Mining Industry and to Average African Industrial Wage (Rand)

1910 1924 1960 1974

Average white clericalwages

Male R40per month

R57 per month(9.5×)


Clerks in bank (maleand female)

R375 (5.3×)Female R17

per monthR26 per month

(4.3×)R83 per month

(2.7×)Clerks in building

societies (maleand female)

R343 (4.8×)Average wages paid to

white employees insales

Male R33per month



R275 (male andfemale) (3.9×)

Female R14per month



Average wages paid towhite employees inthe mining industry

R47 per month R57 per month(9.5×)


R454 (6.4×)

Average wages paid toAfrican industrialworkers

R6 per month R31 per month R71 per month

Sources: Economic and Wages Institute of South Africa (1926, table I, p. 272); Economic and WagesInstitute of South Africa (1964, table H, p. 19); South African Institute of Race Relations, Annual Survey(1974). Table from Davies (1979, p. 22).


The more centralized South African trade unions that emerged in theaftermath of the 1973 strikes attempted to prevent a concentration of power inthe hands of oligarchic officials by upholding traditions and principles ofworkers’ control and democratic accountability “through a system of mandateddecision making and regular reportbacks” (Buhlungu 2004). Such principles ofworkers’ control over the trade union movement were molded by members’experiences in various forms of collective organization (ibid.). However, in thepost-apartheid era, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) hasabandoned its earlier outlook and constitutes a central bulwark of the tripartitealliance between it, the ruling ANC and the South African Communist Party(SACP). This political coalition, in which COSATU and the SACP are juniorpartners, has overseen the neoliberal restructuration of the South Africaneconomy and the consequent maintenance of deep-rooted structures of socialand class inequality, especially entailing low wages and high job insecurity.

Following the hard-won abolition of Apartheid in 1990, in the first halfof the decade, through what Satgar (2008) calls the phases of negotiations(1990–1993) and democratic advance (1994–1996), an agenda of democraticcorporatism was pursued by South Africa’s labor movement. The labor move-ment, led by COSATU, had already struggled to reform South Africa’s laborlaws, and their efforts had led to the creation of the National Manpower Com-mission, set up in 1980 to advise the Minister of Manpower Utilisation onmatters affecting workers, and the National Economic Forum, set up in 1990 asa joint initiative between South African business, labor, and government todiscuss and develop economic policy. In the early 1990s, labor had some successin influencing fiscal policy, especially as regards progressive tax reform. At thistime, labor considered that it had the initiative in South Africa’s transitionprocess and began formulating a democratic corporatist state solution as part ofa reformist strategy to achieve a class compromise with capital (Adler andWebster 2000).

This strategy led, inter alia, to the formation of the National EconomicDevelopment and Labour Council (NEDLAC) in 1995, providing for macro-level bargaining consensus between government, labor, and capital on fiscal andmonetary policy, trade and industrial policy, and labor market reform (Satgar2008, 49). Labor also had significant input in the formation of South Africa’sIndustrial Strategy Project (ISP), set up in 1993 to investigate the reasons forSouth Africa’s poor manufacturing performance over the previous two decades.Although disputing neoliberalism’s emphasis on lowered factor costs (i.e., thecosts of land, labor, and capital) as a means of achieving a competitive edge,Satgar (2008, 49) argues that the ISP did articulate a neoliberal commitment toexport-driven, market economics, albeit tempered by a commitment to work-place forums. With the election of the new democratic government, COSATUwas well positioned to take forward its democratic corporatist solution with itsformer general secretary, Jay Naidoo, being given the portfolio of Reconstruc-tion and Development Programme (RDP) Minister and one of its leadingintellectuals, Alec Erwin, eventually becoming Minister for Trade and Industry.


The post-apartheid polity and the creation of a black capitalist andbureaucratic-capitalist class gave added impetus to the neoliberal restructuringof the country’s economy, particularly as regards export-oriented industry. Theneoliberal economic agenda was encapsulated in the Department of Trade andIndustry’s 1995 policy document, Support Measures for the Enhancement of theInternational Competitiveness of South Africa’s Industrial Sector. Its preconditions,however, were the new democratic government’s support for moves by the IMFand the World Bank to further liberalize the country’s economy. Ultimately, theinsertion of South Africa into a global market economy dominated by globallyNorthern monopoly capital ensured a huge shift in power away from labor andtoward capital. Satgar (2008, 52) writes:

Hence, for the social democratic politics of COSATU, its dream of a democraticcorporatist state, underpinned by a class compromise, was born in a globalcontext in which social democracy was moving to the right and increasinglybeing assimilated by transnational neoliberalism. Similar shifts were alreadydiscernable in the South African context. By 1996 an Afroneoliberal shift thatwas in the making for a few years (going back to “talks about negotiations” inthe pre-1990 period) through the twists and turns and shifting relations of forceunderpinning South Africa’s negotiated political settlement became moreexplicit. This was clearly expressed with the adoption of the Growth, Employ-ment and Redistribution (GEAR) macroeconomic policy framework in 1996.. . . This conservative macro-economic framework was more than a stabilizationpackage, but actually provided the most important and unambiguous signal tomonopoly and transnational capital about the direction the new ANC govern-ment was taking the South African economy and further confirmed commit-ment to restructuring the economy according to the requirements of aglobalizing neoliberal capitalism.

Given the centrality of the trade union movement in struggles againstcolonialism and neoliberalism across Africa (Baskin 1991; Beckman andSachikonye 2010; Buhlungu 2002; Friedman 1987; Kraus 2007; Siedman 1994),and the fact that the trade union movement represents the largest and mostorganized civil society grouping on the continent, a new class-based politics inSouth Africa will gain little momentum without the support and involvement ofCOSATU. In the last six years, South Africa has witnessed a massive increase inlevels of industrial action and township unrest and an upsurge in class struggle.However, whether or not South African trade unions currently have the abilityto spearhead a new left-wing political movement with a “solid class outlook” isquestionable (Beresford 2012, 571).

South Africa’s union movement has encountered several obstacles in the wayof its ability to maintain democratic practices and militant mass mobilization.First, the tendency for COSATU to support the ANC while adopting anincreasingly defensive posture toward its economic policies is both confused andconfusing for its members. As a National Labour and Economic DevelopmentInstitute (NALEDI) 2006 report states: “There has been a tendency byCOSATU . . . to respond within the terms set by the neoliberal political climate


advanced by the ANC, rather than challenging these much more boldly anddecisively.” Second, the “brain drain” resulting from union leaders “enteringinto government positions and senior private-sector jobs, and by the unionsthemselves setting up investment companies” has exacerbated a feeling of bewil-derment, distrust, and demoralization among union members (Beresford 2012,571; Iheduru 2002). Third, there has been a marked tendency in recent years foran increasingly bureaucratized (not to say extremely wealthy) trade union lead-ership to “bypass democratic procedures by reaching compromises and accom-modations with management without the mandate of their more militantmembership” (Beresford 2012, 571; Desai 2002). Fourth, unions have disen-gaged from organizing and supporting more marginal groups of workers such aswomen, youth, and casual laborers, particularly in rural areas (Tshoaedi andHlela 2006). Fifth, union leaders have frequently been accused of usingtheir positions for personal advancement (Buhlungu 2002; Maree 1998; Woodand Harcourt 2000). All of these tendencies have resulted in “a decliningparticipatory culture in the unions, in which members are increasingly becomingpassive recipients of officials’ initiatives” and have placed formidable obstacles inthe way of grassroots militancy, industrial action, and political activity not in linewith support for the ANC government (Beresford 2012, 571).

These weaknesses are in no small measure due to the failure of South Africanunions to reverse the mollifying effects of divisions within the South Africanworking class. Within industry itself, affirmative action and employment equitypolicies have contributed to the creation of a socially mobile upper layer ofworkers and the consequent enlargement of divisions among members of theNUM. These divisions have been particularly pronounced in the case of unionofficials and shop stewards, in particular, those having accepted supervisory ormanagerial positions within Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned power company.They have contributed to declining grassroots participation in the trade unionmovement and a growing sense of mistrust and resentment between workers onthe shop floor (ibid.).

Conclusion: Labor, Democracy, and the (Neoliberal) Transition

In Northern Ireland, the discontent of less affluent sections of the unionistcommunity, pained at the (in many respects more apparent than real) loss ofUnionist ascendancy and manipulated by middle- and upper-class politiciansand loyalist paramilitary leaders, has in the last two years spilled over intowidespread right-wing populist violence. Unfortunately, the nonreformist left inNorthern Ireland, as in all other countries of the global North, has become littlemore than a militant wing of social democracy, with “austerity” its bête noire andthe will o’ the wisp of cross-community unity the condition for its resurgence.However, within the imperialist countries, the absence of an exploited workingclass creating material values ensures that left positions centered upon advocat-ing a downward redistribution of “national” wealth (much of which consists ofunrecompensed value transferred from abroad) are incapable of challenging the


social bases of monopoly capitalism (Cope 2012; 2013). As such, labor aristo-cratic class interests founded upon privileged access to the best jobs and highestwages in the global economy provide a weak platform upon which the laudablegoals of equality between Protestants and Catholics and universal provision ofdecent jobs, housing, child care, schools, and hospitals may be effectivelyadvanced.

In Poland, recession, unemployment, and the semi-proletarianization of theworkforce (the return to subsistence production by many workers) have pro-vided new opportunities for Poland’s capitalist elite to discipline and disaggre-gate labor (Shields 2012), with foreign and rural workers disproportionatelybearing the brunt. Yet despite engagement in many protests aimed at overcom-ing its fragmentation and marginalization and against sweeping governmentausterity measures,23 Polish labor has largely sought to remedy its position withrecourse to a national chauvinist and xenophobic populist program in combina-tion with demands for higher wages. The Polish left has responded to neoliberalhegemony with calls for national developmental statism, but the main responsehas by and large come from right wing populists. As Shields (2012, 7) writes:

The idea has been formulated that capitalism can overcome problems of tran-sition provided that it is a national capitalism, and that the real enemy is foreigncapital, foreign workers, and those perceived as internal social enemies. Theirony is that neoliberalisation has provided the most fertile ground for thematerialisation of nationalist populist sentiment as “it is in the very nature ofcapitalism to intensify the contradiction between its expansionist imperativesand the territorial divisions of its original political (and economic) form.”[Wood 2003, 30]

Populism in Poland, pitting the nationally homogeneous “pure people”against a “corrupt elite,” has seen a major resurgence in recent years and haslargely dovetailed with the marginalization of the left and the rise of a new right.The nationalist and ultra-Catholic right has struggled to arrest certain aspects ofthe neoliberal project while aiming to reproduce the overall social relations ofcapitalism as an international system. Corruption scandals demonstrating thevenality of right-wing populist forces in government have not significantlyreversed the popularity of this tendency.

Contrary to some understandings of Poland’s place within the global divi-sion of labor, the country has not been integrated with Europe on the basis of alow-cost “maquiladora” economy, though nor is its relatively skilled and edu-cated workforce necessarily a recipient of high-grade foreign investment (Hardy2009, 93). For the time being at least, the benefits derived from being a (periph-eral) part of the developed world have not escaped the notice of Polish workers.Indeed, popular perceptions of Western European and North American afflu-ence and, according to Kowalik (2011, 16), of their origins in social democraticinstitutions, as opposed to imperialism, had a profound influence on Polishworkers’ opposition to the socio-political structures of the PRP. Hence, whileprotests against EU membership have been muted at best, anti-immigrant


feeling is very much to the fore in the country (Ost 2006). Today, Solidarity itselfhas strong ties to the far-right nationalist and pro-NATO Law and Justice(Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, PiS) party, which stands on a nominally left protectionisteconomic platform.

On August 16, 2012, hundreds of South African police opened fire at point-blank range on workers at a platinum mine in Marikana, who had staged awalk-out in protest at miserably low wages as well as hazardous working condi-tions, overbearing, and adversarial management and arduous work demands(Alexander 2013, 607). The workers at the world’s richest platinum mine, ownedby London-based multinational conglomerate Lonmin, hoped to raise theirwages from R4,000 (US$480) to R12,500 (around US$1,500) a month. Thirty-four strikers were killed and another eighty or so seriously wounded. Twohundred and fifty-nine striking workers were arrested. The NUM, whose lead-ership had been roundly rebuffed in its attempts to persuade the workers to goback to work, including the use of shop steward violence, found that the strikerswere at fault and charged them with being “anarchists” practicing “dual union-ism” (Ford 2012). The SACP, meanwhile, whose national chairman is NUMpresident Senzeni Zokwana, claimed that the massacre was a “barbaric actcoordinated and deliberately organized by AMCU [Association of Mineworkersand Construction Union]24 leader Mr. Mathunjwa and Steve Kholekile” andcalled for their immediate arrest (Sambatha 2012).

Less than a week after the slaughter, U.S. Black Agenda Report writer GlenFord (2012) summarized the situation well:

The massacre of 34 miners at Marikana lays bare the central contradiction ofthe South African “arrangement.” Back in 1994, the ‘revolution’ was put onindefinite hold, so that a new Black capitalist class could be created, largely fromthe ranks of well-connected members of the ruling party and even unionleaders. The regime now represses Black workers on behalf of capital . . . The1994 agreement between Nelson Mandela’s ANC and the white South Africanregime was a pact with the devil, which could only be tolerated by the masses ofthe country’s poor because it was seen as averting a bloodbath, and because itwas assumed to be temporary. But, 18 years later, the arrangement has calcifiedinto a bizarre protectorate for foreign white capital and the small class of Blacksthat have attached themselves to the global rich. Apologists for the AfricanNational Congress regime will prattle on about the “complexity” of the issue,but the central truth is that South Africa did not complete its revolution.

Indeed, white-owned capital continues to dominate South Africa’s commer-cial, agricultural, and industrial sectors, despite the growth of a subordinate, butpolitically powerful, black bourgeoisie. Black investors currently own 18% of theavailable share capital in the top 100 companies listed on South Africa’s StockExchange (85% of total market capitalization), according to a 2010 study bythe Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).25 Despite the phenomenal growth inblack capitalism, the majority of South Africa’s black population remains miredin dire poverty. In 2012, the richest ethnic groups in South African society werewhites, with an average annual income per household of about R365,000


(US$42,000; £26,000), followed by Indians at R251,000, people of mixed race atR251,500, and blacks at R60,600 rand (around US$6,700) (British BroadcastingCorporation (BBC), 2012).

In conclusion, we may draw some broad lessons from the above survey oflabor in transitional societies.

In Poland, Northern Ireland, and South Africa alike, the “double transition”from conflict and repression to democracy and, simultaneously, from a decidedlyundemocratic capitalism to an ostensibly democratic, neoliberal capitalism hasbeen an elite transition whereby capital has been able to maintain and, indeed,enhance its economic power. In all three countries, where national self-determination was at the core of anti-systemic struggles, the most disadvantagedsections of the working class were the leading force for political change.However, whereas in Poland and South Africa the organized labor movementplayed a leading role in the transition, in Northern Ireland, its basis within therelatively established and privileged section of the working class ensured that itsradicalism was decisively curbed. In Poland, organized labor, despite seriousrestrictions on its ability to exercise power, constituted a formidable socialinstitution, paradoxically deriving much of its strength from the very govern-mental framework whose policies it opposed. In the first half of the last century,organized labor in South Africa had been even more of an adjunct to the rulingclass than had its counterpart in Northern Ireland, despite being at least asmilitant. However, the burgeoning black labor movement from the 1960sonward became a principal vehicle in the struggle against apartheid and fornational liberation in South Africa, particularly as led by COSATU and theSACP.26 In Northern Ireland, Poland, and South Africa alike, a patentlyundemocratic system of authoritarian national capitalism was replaced by a moreinclusive and pluralistic, but unequal, system by way of side-lining the strugglesof the historically oppressed and restoring the rule of a fully globalizedmonopoly capital.

Although workers in different countries face distinct challenges, and those inthe societies discussed herein have struggled in very different contexts, we maynonetheless suggest some preliminary lessons for the international labor move-ment. In particular, it is vital to guard against the following:

1. Politicism. Organized labor cannot fully engage in struggles opposed toundemocratic state practices without positing a clear, labor alternative tocapitalist economy. In particular, a necessary, though not sufficient correctiveto attempts to incorporate working-class struggles within anti-workers’regime-change agendas is for trade unions to insist upon the developmentand extension of direct democracy in the workplace and to insist upon theestablishment of a functioning system of transfer payments benefiting themost vulnerable citizens.

2. Economism. In its purely economic struggles, the labor movement mustrecognize that its efficacy ultimately depends upon political context. The


ability of workers to achieve local gains is very often predicated upon com-promise with a big business agenda that can only damage working-classinterests as a whole and over the long term. Labor struggles must be used toconcentrate state power in the institutions of the working classes.

3. False Solidarity. Not all workers within the workplace, industry, country,region, or world have the same, “objective” material interests or strategicgoals qua workers. This is particularly apparent at the level of the globaleconomy. Thus, in 2010, COSATU International Secretary BonganiMasuku issued an appropriate statement directly criticizing the globallyNorthern constituents of the International Trade Union Confederation(ITUC):

It is now even clearer that the designs of the global political economy are suchthat all structures and institutions in the [global] north serve and reinforce theagenda of the global ruling class. In this regard, even trade unions see their mainresponsibility as, first and foremost, the protection of the capitalist system,except questioning its excesses. They scorn every attempt to question its legiti-macy and call for its challenge. It was deliberately designed by imperialism thatthey must see their future as tied to the existence and success of the system. Thisis why they defend with passion all that is seen to threaten the core elements ofthe system. The defence of the global markets and trade system that furthersour underdevelopment, the interests of their ruling classes in the Middle East,and their unfettered control over the international trade union movement andits related systems, all help to sustain the dominant system and protect it fromthose who are its victims and would want to see it removed. This is the basis forthe ideological and political choices made by our comrades in the north inpursuing the trade union struggle.

From this perspective, it is crucial for trade unions to prioritize support forlabor organization in the global South as a means of challenging the rule ofcapital at its most vulnerable points.

Despite the uneven gains and losses of workers in each of the transitionalsocieties examined herein (see Appendix), the experience of struggle and theexercise of agency by working people in all three case studies has undoubtedlyleft a legacy in their collective memory that will determine their capacity to facenew challenges. The struggle against neoliberalism today is, at the same time,the struggle against capitalism, and the best means of its successful accomplish-ment lie in consistent egalitarianism and working-class internationalism.

Zak Cope obtained a PhD from the School of Politics, International Studies andPhilosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. He has a degree in Scholastic Philoso-phy and a Master’s degree in Political Theory and Social Criticism from the sameuniversity. Dr. Cope is the author of Dimensions of Prejudice: Towards a PoliticalEconomy of Bigotry (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2008) and Divided WorldDivided Class: Global Political Economy and the Stratification of Labour under Capi-talism (Montreal, Canada: Kersplebedeb, 2012). His most recent research is


within the field of international political economy (IPE) and labor studies. Dr.Cope’s work has aimed to explore the effects of the evolving international divisionof labor on the global class structure and, especially, the ramifications of profoundglobal wage divergences on the prospects for workers’ internationalism. Addresscorrespondence to Dr. Zak Cope, 30 Windsor Road, Belfast, BT9 7FQ, UK.

Notes

1. This research was made possible by funding from Trademark, a Belfast-based anti-sectarian unit of theIrish Congress of Trade Unions. The views expressed herein, however, are entirely those of the author.

2. Neoliberalism is an ideology stressing open and deregulated markets and private enterprise as the principalengines of economic and political development. For a critique of neoliberal policies, see Harvey (2006),Duménil and Lévy (2005), and Rodrik (2001).

3. See also Waddington (2005) on similar trends even within the European trade union movement.

4. Unions in China today have a special status: most are linked to a single workplace (danwèi) rather than toan occupation and do not typically engage in collective bargaining.

5. Though for more realistic Irish nationalists, at the very least with respect to the British-descendedpopulation of the north east, Massimo d’Azeglio’s famous aphorism of 1867 rings just as true in Ireland:“We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.”

6. The Orange Order was formed in 1795 as an Episcopalian society evolving out of land conflictsin rural Armagh. It was encouraged, and soon dominated by landlords as a force to combat therepublican alliance between southern Irish Roman Catholic peasants and northern Irish Presbyterianmerchants, manufacturers, and professionals in the Presbyterian-led United Irishmen (Beresford Ellis1997).

7. On the class background of Ulster Unionist MPs between 1921 and 1969, see Harbinson (1972, p. 169),cited in Rumpf and Hepburn (1977, p. 177). A mere 7.6% of Unionist MPs in this period were from thebroad working class, half of whom were from the supervisory, clerical, or lower professional strata, and2.5% of the rest being skilled manual workers.

8. On sectarianism, nationalism, and the Outdoor Relief riots, see Brewer (1998) and Rolston and Munck(1987).

9. The term sectarianism, as routinely applied to the conflict in Ireland by the media and liberal intellectuals,has the unfortunate connotation that it is over the true path to religious salvation rather than revolvingaround material inequalities of class and nation. “Racism” has similarly imprecise connotations in the U.S.context.

10. Among a handful of counterexamples, the formation of the Trade Union Coordinating CommitteeAgainst Repression (TUCCAR) in 1977 is notable. TUCCAR, set up by left republican trade unionists toprotest the increasing curtailment of civil liberties by the British government, did gain popular supportamong nationalists in working-class areas of Belfast, but it had little or no support from the majority tradeunion membership or leadership.

11. See also MacInnes et al. (2012). Statistics on social deprivation are contained in Northern Ireland Statisticsand Research Agency (NISRA) (2010, 27).

12. Consociationalism is form of parliamentary government based on group representation, as distinct frompurely party-based representation.

13. On the impact of neoliberal policies on existing racial and ethnic hierarchy in Britain, policies that haveproduced stark inequalities in income, wealth, education, and quality of life, see Burnett (2013).

14. From 1944 to 1952 the Republic of Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska) was the name of the Polish state. ThePeople’s Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1989. On the typology ofpolitical systems developed under Soviet tutelage, see Woodall (1982, 6–8).

15. The Curzon line was proposed by the Allied Supreme Council after World War I as a demarcation linebetween the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). TheCurzon line followed an ethnic boundary whereby areas west of the line contained an overall Polish


majority while areas to its east constituted parts of the respective national territories of Ukraine, Byelo-russia, and Lithuania, as well as containing many Jews.

16. The Democratic Bloc was a coalition composed of the Polish Workers Party (PWP, Polska PartiaRobotnicza, PPR), Polish Socialist Party (PSP, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS), People’s Party (PP,Stronnictwo Ludowe, SL), and Democratic Party (DP, Stronnictwo Demokratyczne, SD).

17. Anticommunist Polish historian Kersten (1991, 170) writes: “Nothing could be more incorrect than tocharacterize society as a whole in 1945–1946 as having an aversion to the USSR, to the Communists, andto their political power. Society was divided, and the dividing line was extremely convoluted.”

18. On the state of Polish society in the interwar period, and the effects of WWII, see Piotrowski (1998).

19. Around 75 percent of Polish agriculture was private, mainly in the form of small farms. Only in 1974 didindustry surpass agriculture as Poland’s largest source of employment (Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000,122–23), while as late as 1980 around 40% of the Polish population lived in the countryside. As Boswelland Chase-Dunn (2000, 123) comment: “Poland’s two generations of industrial workers have maintainedties to their peasant past, a heritage that includes traditional Eastern European rural values, particularlyreligious attachment to the Catholic Church and suspicion of state authorities. These values resonateagainst the regulation and regimentation of industrial work in Poland.”

20. The term “civil society” is in quotation marks because it is ideologically charged with a definite liberal bias,not only in respect of assuming an inherent contradiction between the origins and aims of states and “civilsociety” bodies, but also in respect of the distinctive and often conflicted agendas of various “civil society”bodies.

21. See Mason (1983) on the preponderance of skilled white-collar and engineering and technical personnelin Poland’s workplace organizations.

22. See Emery (2008) for an overview of the two perspectives.

23. Previously, protests staged by workers had increased throughout the 1990s, but this trend ended in1999–2000. For much of the following decade, the number continued to fall with 2004 seeing thesecond-lowest number of events with workers’ participation. According to Wenzel, Ekiert, and Kubik(2009), this reflected the falling number of controversial privatization cases, the diminishing role of thegovernment in managing, as opposed to regulating, the economy, and the lack of workers’ organization inPoland’s private and service sectors.

24. The AMCU, currently with 50,000 members, was formed in Mpumalanga, South Africa in 1998 as abreakaway faction of the COSATU-affiliated NUM (currently with over 250,000 members). It wasformally registered as a union in 2001. According to Mining Weekly, the union sees itself as distinct fromthe NUM in that it is “apolitical and non-communist” (Creamer 2012).

25. By removing foreign ownership from the calculation (which by definition excludes all South Africans),however, an estimated 36% of available share capital is held by black shareholders (Johannesburg StockExchange (JSE) 2010).

26. On the history of organized labor in Poland, see Reynolds (1978); Macshane (1981); Raina (1981);Staniszkis (1981); and Pravda (1982); in South Africa, see Thomas (1974, 1979); Williams (1979); Lerumoand Harmel (1980); Du Toit (1981); and Coupe (1995); and in Northern Ireland, see Connor (2008);Morgan (1991); Patterson (1980); Hirst (2005); Reid (1980); Purdie (1996); Boyd (1984); and Rolston(1980).

27. Catholic unemployment rates have been consistently higher than those of Protestants, with thedifference being most marked among males. Over the period 1990–1999, the Catholic unemploymentrate fell by 45.0% (from 16.0% to 8.8%) and the Protestant unemployment rate by 41.9% (from 8.6%to 5.0%). Among males, the percentage decrease was higher for Catholics (49.3%) than for Protestants(46.2%). The converse was true among females with the Catholic unemployment rate falling by25.0% and the Protestant rate falling by 31.7% (Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency(NISRA) 2001).

28. 1938 figures for both Latin America and the World are each from 1940. Per capita GDP figures use 1990International Geary–Khamis dollars. The Geary–Khamis dollar, or international dollar, is a hypotheticalunit of currency that has the same purchasing power parity that the U.S. dollar had in the U.S. at a givenpoint in time, in this case, 1990. It is based on the concepts of purchasing power parities (PPP) ofcurrencies and the international average prices of commodities and shows how much a local currency unitis worth within a country’s borders.


29. On the relation between global, economic, geographic, and sociological differences within the capitalistworkforce, particularly as these relate to the development of imperialism, see Cope (2012).

30. The full-time equivalent industrial workforce was obtained by multiplying the economically active popu-lation (EAP) in each country by the rate of full employment for its corresponding global income quintile(Köhler 2005, 9) and then by multiplying this total by the percentage of each country’s workforce inindustry. The figure thus obtained was then multiplied by 133%, since I define “underemployment” asbeing employed for only one third of the hours of a full-time worker.

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Appendix. Neoliberalism, Income, and Inequality

It is useful to consider the impact that neoliberal policies have had on livingconditions for the populations of our three case studies.

From the beginning of the neoliberal era in 1980 until 2005, although realper capita incomes rose on average for the sampled populations as a whole (i.e.,for Poland, South Africa, Latin America, the UK, the former USSR, and theworld combined) growth rates for the same have been significantly lower thanthose seen between 1950 and 1980. Thus, whereas between 1950 and 1980 percapita income growth rates in 1990 international dollars rose by an average27 percent in the countries and regions surveyed, they only rose by 12 percentbetween 1980 and 2005 (Figure 2).

To obtain a more accurate picture of the extent to which living standardshave improved for the societies we have chosen to focus on, however, we mustlook at the extent to which rising per capita income has been accompanied bygrowing income inequality.


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http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/gurn/00287.pdf

In Figure 3 below, per capita GDP growth rates are compared with thepercentage growth in income inequality in Poland, South Africa, the UK, andthe world to garner a clearer picture of whether or not living standards haveimproved for the majority in each country. In a given decade, where incomeinequality has rose more in a country than has real per capita income, it can beassumed that the margin of improvement in income has accrued to a minority ofthe population such that the living standards of the majority have, in fact,declined.

From the illustration above, we can infer that between 1980 and 1990, themajority of people’s incomes declined in Poland and in South Africa, while theyrose in the UK; between 1990 and 2000, the majority of people’s incomes rosein Poland and in the UK, and also rose in South Africa; and between 2000 and2005, the majority of people’s incomes rose in Poland and the UK but declinedin South Africa.

Figure 2. PPP GDP per Capita in 1990 International Geary–Khamis Dollars, 1929–2005—SelectedCountries and Areas.28

Source: Maddison (2007).


The above calculations cast considerable doubt as to the benefits ofneoliberal economic policies for the average citizen, particularly in the under-developed countries of the global South.

Figure 3. Per Capita PPP GDP Growth Rates (1990 International Dollars) vs. Income Inequality GrowthRates for Selected Countries, 1980–2005.

Sources: Maddison (2007); United Nations University World Institute for Development EconomicsResearch (WIDER) (2008); World Bank Gini Index.


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