82 Book Reviews
As an advocate of democratic socialism Hanis does not see the NIC model to be of
benefit to the workers of underdeveloped countries. While he does argue that the NICs have
changed the structure of their economies so thattheycannolong~ be considered to be 'Third
World', these changes have, in his view, merely brought new problems, not prosperity, to
workers in the NICs. For Harris the only salvation for the rnajority of citizens in
underdeveloped nations lies in the development of some type of international working class
solidarity. The NICs blossomed in a period where technology, particularly in transport m;I
telecommunications, gave multinational corporations the option of producing where labom
costs were lowest. Frequently this meant relocation of factories from North America m;I
Western Europe to cheap labour 11'ea5 in underdeveloped nations. Foremost among these
cheap labour areas w~e the NICs. It was this sort of foreign investment which was a
precursor to the rise of locally owned multinationals.
But Harris does not think the future economic expansion of undeveloped countries
should rest merely on the llU],JeZ-exploitationof the workforce. He contends that the type of
labour exploitation which occurred in these NICs can only be stopped when labour becomes
as ~ational in perspective as themu1tinational corporation entployers. No form ofloca1
nationalism is enough to deter the rising force of ~ational Capital. Without any
powerful international labour organisations, Harris believes multinational corporations will
continue to gravitate toward nations where labour is cheapest. The result will be superexploitation
in these nations, and millions of unemployed in other countries whose chief
hope for fmding a job will rest m underbidding their fellow worlcers across the globe.
Clearly Harris would be no advocate of trade liberalisation programmes such as
Zimbabwe's new Investment Code. Those who are now championing the liberalisation
canse locally would do well to consider Harris's points. The author clearly knows his
economics. Furthermore, un1ikeeconomists ingenel"al, and Marxists in particular, he writes
in an accessible style that is devoid of rhetoric. His biggest shortcoming is that in offering
international labour solidarity as an alternative vision to rapid capital accumulation, his
suggestions are not very concrete. Some hints about what type of international labour
organisation could effectively serve workers' interests, and how they could develop into a
global force, would go a long way towards making bis argwnents more worthy of serious
contenlplation as an alternative to the present world dominance of the free market idea.
Reviewed by John Pope, Harare.
Africa and Empire: WMMacMUlan, H~an and Social Critic, Hugh MacMilllll and
Shula Marks, Gow~, Aldershot, 1989 (353pp, £29,50).
This fine collection of stimulating essays on Sou~ African historiography is a trifleOVtcgenerous
towards its subject, W M MacMillan. His gentle Fabian approach to politia.was
wholly ineffective in the face of the rapaciouSness of lh>se who gave Southern Africa
segregation and apartheid while removing the gold. His wrirln8s, in retrospect, havenot the
pow~ of Eddie Roux' s Time Longer Than Rope, nor the understanding later to be found
in Simons's Class and Colour In South Africa. One who could write in 1930, when the
......
Conummist Party already had a strong 'black' inembership, that (P70) "the lCIIIi-blrbmic
masses are nowhere near ready to acquire a swamping vote" can hm'dly be called a libenl,
let alone a liberator. The book bathes MacMillan in a warm. yet scOOiarly,lighc"the wartll
are visible, but their size varies in the beholder's eye. Some chapter authors are kinda' than
others, and the work is characterised by healthy conadictions.
Introducing the book, Hugh MacMillan writes "the greatest virtue of MacMillan's
analysis was that 'black' and 'white' workers were the JrOduct of similar and related
pressures of proletarianisation ...by 1930 he had an enlarge4 ... clarified vision of South
Africa as a single political economy". Jeremy Krildel"S penetrating chapta' on MacMillan
and the working class claims the opposite, that for MacMillan (P70) "economics and
political struggle Wel'eradically divorced from one another".
It must be remllIkably difficult to assemble afair academic analysis of one's own father.
Hugh MacMillan has proved himself a highly competent historian in doing so, with Shula
MlIIks' help. Chapter authors include scholars such as. Christopher Saunders, William
Beinart, Robel't Ross and Jeffrey Butler, treating topics as widely varied as the 5el'etse
Khama marriage and Dr John Philip's work towards Ordnance 50 of 1828. Yet the book is
best summarised by examining Jel'emy Krikl«'s excellent chapter.
Krikler traces how MacMillan., son of aministe:r-school teacher from Scotland, defmed
himself against the growing Afrikaner nationalism of his childhood town, Stellenbosch, as
being more in sympathy with the (p38) "coloured people" than with his "white compatriots".
Yetsympathy is not the same as being able to achieve changes in the plight of the oppressed,
and MacMillan's social achievements were small.
A poor man on a Rhodes scholarship, MacMillan was driven by the activities of the
aristocratic bloods ofMel'ton College. Oxford, towards a worker Christianity, and towards
reform not revolution (p4O-1). In vacations he bicycled across England and Scotland,
writing about the lives of the workers and peasants he saw. About the Scottish crofter he
wrote (p45):
''The evils of landlordism have put the people 'against the landlords' at any price and
made the most truly conservativepeople imaginable into the most ardentradicals •..so
we may well say with the suffel'ing Gael ...- 'bas glta 1tllfeidh' - Death to the J)eu".
Back from Britain. as lecturer in charge of Economics and History in Grahamstown,
MacMillan at once attempted Fabian social reform, publishing on sanitary conditions and
on economic conditions generally in the town, setting out how poverty was to be alleviated,
or, rather, prevented, because charity would be inadequate.
No less a Fabian than Sidney Webb reviewed MacMillan 's work in theNew Statesman,
refening to it as being (p49) "on Booth, Rowntret; Bowley lines". But Krikler notes the
boundaries of Fabianism. which meant MacMillan did not challenge the racism around him
(p49):
''The cheap unskilled black workers, argued Macminan, through their competition in
the labour market, tended 'to degrade whites down to and below their level'; this,
he suggested, was 'the solid basis of the native menace ....
Inthis period ofhis life, MacMillan effectively proposed an alliance of 'white' workers
with the 'white' middle class, against the 'black' working class. Krild« observes that,
logically, to end white poverty, the undercutting effect which MacMillan obsezved could
84 Book R,vinfs
only be destroyed by raising the condition of the black workers, rathel' than by combining
against than.
The travels in writing the Agrarlan Problem exposed MacMillan to what he caIlcd the
'poor-black' question. and led to his major work. Complex South Africa (1930) (p6O~ ...
scholarly and passionate interVention against the segregationists". By now MacMilllllbad
come to see that the solution to South Africa's problems lay inraising the condition ofbleck
WOtkers. In Complex Sooth Africa MacMil1l11lwrote (p6O):
"Colour may be a peculiar social complication. but is is still only an accideilt, II1din
economics the blackness of the native makes no difference. The problem he
represents is in essentials that of 'dilution', familiar edOugh to workers in~
when the war trought about IIIl invasion of the skilled engineering trades by
WODle1l".
Krikler concludes this picture of MacMillan by analysing his writings about the 1919
and 1922 strikes on the Rand. MacMillan was strongly opposed to the 'Soviet' direction of
the 1919 incidents, ootwithstanding the follies of the City Council. which precipitated the
strike. He consistently advocated moderation on both sides of the 1922 strike, and, unlike
his friends, became neither a scab nor a special constable. "Iknew that the best of the men
had a case" (p63). Yet Krikler criticises MacMillllll's writings on 1922 (p65):
"A gifted historian such as he should surely have pel'ceived that an insurrectiOlllllY
struggle cannot beexplained by complaining of the implacability of the conteIKlin&
social forces that compose it....What made their clash so unremitting? An analysis
of such questions was more likely to create the sympathy for the strikers which
MacMillan, in his decency, sought to create. Such analysis, howevel', would have
required IIIl emphasis upon the essential class nature of the fateful combat of 1922.
And it was precisely 'class struggle' from which MacMillllll was taking flight".
In short, MacMillan's moderation prevented him from undel'standing the great social
issues of his day. Just as one cannot be moderate about whethel' the earth is round or flat,
amoderate, or classless, analysis of the 1922revolt prevents historical understanding of that
revolt. Similarly, no mattel' the degree of sympathy which MacMillan had for 'black'
people, his racism indenying the (P70) "semi-barbaric masses &Swamping vote" meant that
he was politically the enemy of democracy.
Reviewed by Renfrew Christie, Univel'Sity of the Western Cape, South Africa.
(no references supplied. Ed)
Maids and Madams. Domestic Workers Under Apartheid, Jacklyn Cock, The Women's
Press, LoOOon, 1989 (rev) (206pp, £6,95 pbk).
In the wake of increased international intc'ZestinSouth Africa, the Women's PressofLoOOon
has issued an updated and revised version of Jacklyn Cock's Maids and Madams. This
volume has virtually become a classic of South Africllll social science. Based on Cock's
PhD research in the Eastern Cape in 1978-9, Maids and Madams forcefully depicts the
lives of black women domestic workers under apartheid.