The Political Nature of a Ruling Class: Capital and Ideology in South Africa 1890-1933 (Routledge Revivals)

First published in 1981, The Political Nature of a Ruling Class is a study of the role played by the ‘organic intellectuals’, who were attached to the capitalist class in South Africa, in shaping the processes of state and class formation in the crucial decades when the foundations of modern South Africa were being laid. The book examines how the political and ideological character of the imperialist, ‘British South African’, mining bourgeoisie was formed, which revolutionised southern Africa and remained dominant until the First World War, and how a national bourgeoisie emerged and later came to prevail which differed both as a political force and as the bearer of a new ‘South Africanist’ ideology.In both cases, the activities of the intellectuals are explained in terms of the economic imperatives of accumulation and the capitalists’ conflicts with other classes, and in each case, racism is viewed in the light of the overall system of hegemony created by capital.The origins of South A