Van Wyk, Graham Charles (1994) Money and the restructuring of the South African state. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis is concerned with understanding the changing
dynamic in the relationship between the financial sector
and the capitalist state. The thesis examines the
changing form of this relationship in South Africa in the
three decades that preceded the formation of the
Government of National Unity in April 1994.
Arguing that the political, ideological and economic
forms expressed by the state are the surface appearances
of deeper social processes arising from the production
and reproduction of capitalist social relations, the
thesis attempts to show how the contradictory tendencies
of capital accumulation in South Africa increasingly took
the form of a monetary crisis. In responding to the
crisis after 1976, the apartheid state sought to
depoliticise economic relations by restructuring the
monetary basis of the state. The thesis analyses the
proposals of the De Kock Commission appointed to inquire
into the monetary system and monetary policy and shows
how class struggle conditioned the attempt by the state
to restructure the financial system. While the state
pursued a legislative programme to restructure the
financial system, deepening economic and political
pressures, made it difficult to pursue such a programme
in isolation from the pressures to restructure the
relations of power and domination embodied in the
apartheid state. The thesis traces the development of
this contradiction during the course of the 1980's and
its resolution in the formation of the Government of
National Unity in 1994. The restructuring of the state in
the 1990's and the emergence of a new popular government
has made it possible to take the process of financial
restructuring further. This is because the institutional
restructuring of the 'post-apartheid' state has been
confined within the liberal state form. The liberal state
form allows the subordination of the state and civil
society to the abstract rule of money and law. The thesis
examines the implications for social relations of the
continuity in the apartheid and post-apartheid forms of
restructuring of the administrative, legal, fiscal,
monetary and financial aparatuses.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	South Africa -- Economic conditions -- 20th century, South Africa -- Economic policy -- History -- 20th century, South Africa -- Politics and government -- 20th century, Finance -- South Africa -- History -- 20th century
Official Date:	December 1994
Dates:	Date Event December 1994 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Sociology
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Clarke, Simon, 1946-
Sponsors:	Africa Educational Trust (London, England)
Extent:	vi, 349 leaves
Language:	eng

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