East African Railways and Harbours 1945-60: from ‘crisis of accumulation’ to labour resistance

Weak infrastructure, a low level of development and ‘underdevelopment’ generally can and does inhibit the metamorphosis of the commodity form within peripheral sites of production. Anti-commodity tendencies can also be manifest as ‘the commons’ refusing commodification, or as goods and resources destined for commodification but which resist the full evolution into the commodity form. This is deeply symptomatic of crisis and breakdown. What follows is an examination of a pivotal local crisis which erupted within the spine of East Africa’s transport system during late colonialism, that has received little acknowledgement. The essence of the severe financial crisis which beset East African Railways and Harbours [E.A.R.H.] lay in its prescribed role as the provider of cheap transportation to underwrite the profitability of Kenya's settler economy, a function which it had long struggled to sustain. The function of E.A.R.H. as a state monopoly was to facilitate commodification, fulfilling the transition from goods to commodities. How could E.A.R.H., after years of overwork and neglect, renew its infrastructure to continue in this role of enabling local production? The work draws upon Marx’s work in Capital in an attempt to address these questions. The recurrent crises which beset capital dominate the wage bargaining process where the terms and conditions of commodification are periodically contested. The work brings into view labour power as the anti-commodity par excellence, a living substance whose bearers simultaneously embrace and defy commodification