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
Date:	December 1994
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
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/36138

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