Capital Accumulation and South Africa

This article rejects the distinction between national and foreign capital based on the passport, residence, birthplace or other attributes of the owners. It rather suggests that by distinguishing between national and international capital according to the nature of the investment opportunities required to induce investment, it is possible to make a vital connection between externally and internally oriented economic activity. This places into proper perspective the widespread notion of development occurring through merely expanding internal markets and suggests that in an open economy attention must be directed to the problems surrounding the expansion of exports. This expansion is in turn limited in a variety of ways and an analysis of these limits is shown to be critical for evaluating the possibility that South Africa’s past growth rates might be glibly extrapolated into the future. The struggle over the earnings from such exports and the common interest in expanding them, further provides a useful way of looking at political struggle within South Africa