Articulations, more articulations … and accumulation

This review article considers Steven Friedman’s Race, Class and Power: Harold Wolpe and the radical critique of apartheid, delves further into Wolpe’s classic ‘Capitalism and cheap labour power in South Africa’ (Wolpe 1972), and explores it further with the notions of primitive accumulation and the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). The article proceeds to engage with other related texts, including Gillian Hart’s Rethinking the South African Crisis: nationalism, populism, hegemony given Hart’s discussions of Wolpe and the NDR (2013). It concludes with brief considerations of works studying various African social formations influenced by the ‘modes of production’ tradition.