Capitalist exploitation entrenched in Kenya

An important feature of life in Kenya, as in other capitalist countries, is the ever-present exploitation of labour and resources in every aspect of life.

It is so prevalent that it is often taken for granted as a basic condition of life on earth. Yet exploitation is not part of social life as such.

It is, however, part of life under capitalism. The Njaa resistance, the police brutality, lack of food, water, jobs, medical care, education, all result from exploitation of labour that deprives people of the wealth they create.

This wealth is the surplus that is appropriated by capitalists, mostly foreign, but also local compradors, too.

How did we get to this situation is a question that needs answers if we are to restore people’s wealth to people.

The first point to note that Kenya is not unique to find itself in this exploitative situation. It has happened in all capitalist countries.

A few quotes explains the ideology behind this situation. Magdoff and Foster (2023) say: 

"Capitalism has always been based on the expropriation of land, resources and human lives to create the conditions for the exploitation of labour."

The Industrial Revolution, as Karl Marx indicated in the 19th century, was made possible by means of the brutal enclosure of the commons in England together with the even more barbaric colonisation abroad carried out by the European powers, encompassing “the discovery of gold and silver in the Americas, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of those continents, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins”.

Taken together, these forms of “original expropriation” formed the historical basis for the “genesis of the industrial capitalist”.

HOW WE GOT HERE

The Marx Memorial Library shows the background of finance capitalism:

Kenya has seen both these aspects of capitalism — expropriation of peasant land and exploitation of labour.

Expropriation of land started with the early stage of colonialism. Land was then ‘stolen twice’, at Independence, when the comprador government refused to return the stolen land to peasants and instead appropriated it for its own use, and for foreign corporations.

Exploitation of labour followed the expropriation of land from peasants, who were then forced to sell their labour as they had no other means of survival.

The above two processes were the basis of class formation, with workers and peasants on the one side and the bourgeoisie on the other. This provided the condition for the formation of trade unions. Workers in factories, public service, domestic and other forms of employment came together to form trade unions.

These unions united under the umbrella of the East African Trade Union Congress. This was then, what about after Independence?

There was a shift of power from the colonial capitalists to the comprador ruling class, with profits from land and labour mostly expropriated by multinational corporations, plantations and companies from USA, UK and other capitalist countries.

The comprador ruling class controlled state power, which included anti-working people laws and armed forces used mainly to suppress working class resistance.

This economic power of the state was consolidated by international financial institutions, the IMF and the World Bank. The capitalist noose around the people was now complete.

‘IMF RIOTS’

Ha-Joon (2012)4 explains the causes of the ‘IMF riots’: Throughout the 1980s and 90s, when many developing countries were in crisis and borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund, waves of protests in those countries became known as the "IMF riots".

They were so called because they were sparked by the fund's structural adjustment programmes, which imposed austerity, privatisation and deregulation. The IMF complained that calling these riots thus was unfair, as it had not caused the crises and was only prescribing a medicine, but this was largely self-serving.

Many of the crises had actually been caused by the asset bubbles built up following IMF-recommended financial deregulation. Moreover, those rioters were not just expressing general discontent but reacting against the austerity measures that directly threatened their livelihoods, such as cuts in subsidies to basic commodities, such as food and water, and cuts in already meagre welfare payments.

The IMF programme, in other words, met such resistance because its designers had forgotten that behind the numbers they were crunching were real people. These criticisms, as well as the ineffectiveness of its economic programme, became so damaging that the IMF has made a lot of changes in the past decade or so.

It has become more cautious in pushing for financial deregulation and austerity programmes, renamed its structural adjustment programmes as poverty reduction programmes, and has even (marginally) increased the voting shares of the developing countries in its decision-making.

The fact remains that after almost 60 years of Independence, Kenya and its working class have been pushed into the capitalist prison run by the dictates of the IMF, World Bank and WTO. The struggle to get out of this prison will be hard and long, perhaps violent, too, as capitalism does not give up easily. 

This article was first published on countercurrents.org