PALI LEHOHLA | Beyond BEE vs Musk debates: stop begging, start doing like Boers did, like Traore does

Today we live in a society of abundance where the world of technological networks has removed scarcity and provided for non-rivalry of products that manifest in virtual networks. Yet scarcity abounds. Often those who dominate the world of virtual networks are at insane levels of greed in search of extraction of profits in dwindling and self-destroyed consumption markets, thanks to inevitable technological advancement under capitalism.

Karl Marx’s brilliant analysis of capitalist contradictions embedded in advancement of the productive forces through cheapening labour, and thereby undermining purchasing power for the very artefacts capitalist accumulation depends on, is revealed in chapter 15 of Capital, Volume 1. This chapter is not only a fine articulation of machinery, automation, internet of things, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and what is next, but lays bare the folly and greed of capital in privatising by brute theft of cumulative intellectual work of both spurts of brilliance and unavoidable systemic embedment of the product of labour in the continuous taming and capture of the endowments of nature through labour’s scientific endeavour.

Under the capitalist system of production, the cumulative effect of what seemingly was the initial random discovery of the energy system of the steam engine is attributed to individual brilliance, and the machinic energy out of it is allocated to the invisible hand of the capitalist who appropriates the machine’s effort and leaves labour with its back up against the wall hurling Luddite insults.

In chapter 15 Marx writes: “[Capitalism] destroys both the ancient and the transitional forms behind which the dominion of capital is still partially hidden and replaces them with a dominion which is direct and unconcealed. But by doing this it also generalises the direct struggle against its rule. By the destruction of small-scale and domestic industries it destroys the last resorts of the ‘redundant population’, thereby removing what was previously a safety-valve for the whole social mechanism. By maturing the material conditions and the social combinations of the process of production, it matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of that process and thereby ripens both the elements for forming a new society and the forces tending towards the overthrow of the old one.

A Marxist analysis lays bare the vanity of the vexatious debates of what happens to local capital. The point is this: the internecine capitalist war of international and local capital is now on and it is heightened by the giant of machine learning and autonomous systems that under capitalism thrive on cut-throat aggregation and expropriation of generational global creation of knowledge to which ironically it owes its being.

A Marxist analysis lays bare the vanity of the vexatious debates of what happens to local capital. The point is this: the internecine capitalist war of international and local capital is now on and it is heightened by the giant of machine learning and autonomous systems that under capitalism thrive on cut-throat aggregation and expropriation of generational global creation of knowledge to which ironically it owes its being. To the local fractional capital, the monstrous autonomous system wreaks havoc and to the internationalised division of labour, it sends the lowest rungs to the gallows where they languish in angst and poverty, thus cheapening it while ironically depriving itself of the market that is supposed to purchase its products; in a way therefore weakening capitalist accumulation capability as it advances rapidly to the last vestiges of the markets instead of advancing purposefully in the development of human resources and galvanising the liberative capability of humanity to engage in peaceful coexistence with nature and advance.

The Starlink debacle represents the deceptive face of how capitalist accumulation can strut its stuff. And like colonialism, institutionalised capitalist exploitation similarly trades its dwarf-like deformities in the colonial jungle where it is preceded by the word and then slavery, colonialism and imperialism. The wounds are still raw. It is through Marxist analysis of capitalist development that the modern-day exploitation that is accelerated by the yet necessary liberative technology, which is, however, in what Marx labels as the wrong hands, undermines and limits advancement of productive forces to just a few parasitic species in the name of individual effort.

Marx cuts through this lot like a hot knife through butter. To them he writes: “Just as the individual machine retains a dwarf-like character as long as it is worked by the power of man alone, and just as no system of machinery could be properly developed before the steam-engine took the place of earlier motive powers ... so too large-scale industry was crippled in its whole development as long as its characteristic instrument of production, the machine, owed its existence to personal strength and personal skill, and depended on the muscular development, the keenness of sight and the manual dexterity with which the specialised workers, in manufacture, and the handicraftsmen outside manufacture, wielded their dwarf-like implements.”

Truth be told, Helmut Spinner points out in his analysis of the information society and forms of knowledge that the technological constraints to knowledge dissemination have been overcome by the advent of internet. Today all knowledge of the world in all its forms, good and grotesque, is simply a button away. However, the limitations to this, is in the main the levels of literacy of society and freedoms. The vexed question by Socrates points to freedoms and capacity to participate. In this regard Socrates is known for his critical questioning of politicians, including those who were also merchants. He challenged their supposed wisdom and held them accountable for their actions and beliefs, seeking truth and virtue in their leadership. In this regard it should not be beyond reasonable to seek truth and virtue from merchants turned politicians when they convened in a televised The Apprentice drama at the White House on May 22.

Marie Curie says: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more to fear less.” We should follow what Morena Mohlomi, the mentor to Basotho Nation founder King Moshoeshoe, said about leadership — “a responsible leader pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders, and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value.”

Locating the Starlink debacle in the inevitability of contradictions of capitalist accumulation and division of international labour and capital as explicated in chapter 15 of Capital, Volume 1 sheds the fundamentals needed to understand what is at stake beyond sterile BEE vs Musk debates. South Africa has to contend with policy shifts beyond neoliberalism are necessary.

The Afrikaner when confronted with the question of British hegemony did not create an Afrikaner Economic Empowerment (AEE) nor Broad Based Afrikaner Economic Empowerment BBAEE. They did not ask to be accommodated for they knew they would be under the thumb and knee of the British. They created a brutal system against blacks to continue the colonial and settler colonialism project through apartheid. But they created an economic and education infrastructure that was Afrikaner-led. Five universities were built: RAU, US, UP, UOFS and Potchefstroom Christian University. Then they created an infrastructure of state-led research institutions such as Geological Surveys, ARC and CSIR, which were connected to state-led and state-run industries such as the Atomic Energy Centre, Eskom, Iscor and Spoornet and financing institutions such as Industrial Development Corporation. This was taking over power from the British, not begging inclusion.

Faced with a mammoth task of addressing 90% of the population, South Africa does not need Trump and the US. Instead, it needs the blueprint of the Afrikaner, which was classically born out of heterodox economics and had none of the orthodoxy that they the Afrikaners want to preach against in the minimalist programme and glaring deformities of BBBEE orthodoxy that President Cyril Ramaphosa tried in vain to preach to Pieter Mulder of FF Plus. Mulder laughably knows how they led Broad-Based Afrikaner Economic Empowerment (BBAEE) away from the British. It was not about seeking accommodation but about total takeover of the levers of state power.

In the context of abundance that information technology advancements usher, the government should surely do even better than the Afrikaner state. Ibrahim Traore has contemporised what Africans should and need to do.

• Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.

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