The Political Nature of a Ruling Class

Capital and Ideology in South Africa 1890–1933

Bibliographic Data

ID19917285
AuthorsBelinda Bozzoli (corresponding author)
Year2024
Publication date2024-09-18
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueThe Political Nature of a Ruling Class (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9781003545378
OpenAlexW4402596676
ISBN9781003545378
LanguageEN
Citations received9

First published in 1981, The Political Nature of a Ruling Class is a study of the role played by the ‘organic intellectuals’, who were attached to the capitalist class in South Africa, in shaping the processes of state and class formation in the crucial decades when the foundations of modern South Africa were being laid. The book examines how the political and ideological character of the imperialist, ‘British South African’, mining bourgeoisie was formed, which revolutionised southern Africa and remained dominant until the First World War, and how a national bourgeoisie emerged and later came to prevail which differed both as a political force and as the bearer of a new ‘South Africanist’ ideology. In both cases, the activities of the intellectuals are explained in terms of the economic imperatives of accumulation and the capitalists’ conflicts with other classes, and in each case, racism is viewed in the light of the overall system of hegemony created by capital. The origins of South African capitalism are examined finally from the point of view of one group of people—the capitalists themselves. A concrete and readable account of capitalists and their ideologies, this contribution to theories both of class and state formation and of the relationship between political, cultural, ideological and economic forces will be of importance to students and researchers of African studies and political science

Class (philosophy) · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism

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