Introduction

Several recent radical studies of the South African political economy have drawn on social structures of accumulation (SSA) analysis. These contributions have an inadequate empirical basis, and suffer from the same functionalist leanings as earlier radical understandings of apartheid. This chapter argues that if SSA theory is applied in a meaningful way, the evidence suggests that no stable SSA existed in South Africa during the postwar period. Trends in the empirical data (most notably the rate and share of profit) do not reflect any balance between key economic variables.

Falling profitability, however, does not necessarily suggest a fundamental inadequacy in the institutional structure. If a credible explanation can be provided as to why profitability should be discounted as a key indicator of an SSA, then an exception can be made. As argued below, this is not the case as far as South Africa is concerned. Labor market and cost pressures (often exacerbated by apartheid policies) steadily eroded initially high levels of profitability. Trends in the share and rate of profit reflect the absence of any happy marriage of apartheid and capitalism in terms of a stable institutional structure, or a sustainable growth path.

Developments in the radical understanding of South Africa

Radicals found it relatively easy to argue that the institutions of apartheid (at least during the 1960s) were functional to capitalist development rather than a distortion of it.