Getting the Land Back “Legislation will always be forced to adapt itself to the imperative wants of society.” (Karl Marx, “The Abolition of Landed Property,” 1869)
In South Africa, such discussion as there is of the “land back” question, is done without the benefit of any consideration of the political economy of the land as it is, or as it could be in any foreseeable future. Without the realisation that we are still in a class-divided society, reproduction of the prevailing class divisions during and after land distribution is inevitable. The “land back” question would then have to be treated as capable of being satisfied by proxy. In other words, the existence of a minority of rich blacks on the land would be held to satisfy, by proxy, the land-hunger of the vast majority of blacks who will never be rich farmers, or landowners of any kind. These difficulties in the “land back” matter have not begun to be discussed publicly in South Africa. Who will actually get the land? Who will be the masters on the land, and who their servants? In his letter to Robert Applegarth of 3 December 1869, on “The Abolition of Landed Property,” Karl Marx says, among other things, that "The future will decide that the land cannot be owned but nationally.” He did not mean that it would then be portioned out, whether as freehold or leasehold.
“To nationalize the land and let it out in small plots to individuals or workingmen's societies would, under a middle-class government, only bring about a reckless competition among them, and cause a certain increase of ‘rent’, and thus lend new facilities to the appropriators for feeding upon the producers,” said Marx. A deliberate return to feudalism is equally impossible to contemplate, or more so. Feudalism still exists in South Africa, but in a corrupted form that is really no more than a disguised form of private ownership. There is no way back there. Without a new determination of the form of ownership, all that can happen is an extension, or reproduction, of the current relations of production on the land. In these circumstances, what is practically inevitable is “new facilities to the appropriators for feeding upon the producers” as Marx put it in the same letter to Applegarth. These “appropriators” are the bankers and others with command of financial resources. In South Africa, the appropriators are white. Even if the imagined new major landowners – black proxy landholders on behalf of the black masses – come into being, they will be beholden to existing, white, sources of finance. Thus, “getting the land back” could be a bonanza – for whites! Who is going to lead the necessary discussion about all this? The demagogues will not. The ANC could possibly do so, but has not yet. Once again we appear to need the good offices of Prof. Steven Friedman! VC