Contenu du sommaire : Classes, État, Marchés.

A conceptual crisis that is welcome. The current debate concerning the evolution of capitalism in Africa is between those who consider it to be a long term and specific evolution and those who, comparing it implicitly to its western model and conclude that there is a lack of capitalist investment and state rationality. In fact there is a logic to the African political system, based on the political expropriation of the masses, first peasants then urbanites. The decisive question within African studies seem to be that of political and capitalist accountability of the dominant classes. All the evidence points towards the reproductive function of the state.

The crisis of the african state. In this paper which presents most of the themes of the author's last book, The Politics of Africa's Economic Stagnation, R. Sandbrook points out the importance of the State in the building of a capitalist economy. The author examines die functioning of african economies and notes the impossibility to accumulate. He describes the various types of political regimes and government. Various sources of legitimacy are then analyzed. The central feature of these systems is personal rule or «neopatrimonialism». The absence of a real bureaucracy leads to the failure of all state economies. Some states are fictitious, others are strong (as Ivory Coast or Kenya). The illegal and informal economy is destroying the state. Sandbrook outlines survival strategies for reform, against a liberal «all for the market» conception.

The original african state : instrument or arena ? The author disrusses first the book edited by Fauré and Medard on Ivory Coast, then the one edited by Bernstein and Campbell Contradictions of Accumulation in Africa. Reviewing the various papers and case studies (Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea, Nigeria, Kenya), Morice demonstrates that we are in the post-dependency era. «Public» and «private» interests are mingled and the state is more than an instrument. The reproductive system is sometimes akin to a mafia kind of government. A clientelist system allows for civil servants, traders, middle men and «bourgeois» to belong to the intimate sphere of the state. Even, and maybe especially, so-called socialist states, are good examples of this system which in no way is dysfunctional. The papers by Kitching and Beckman demonstrate positively this analysis.

Civil servants and businessmen in Mali. Mali is a poor and quite underdeveloped country. It has known nevertheless a very dynamic trading tradition. Today we should distinguish three categories of traders - those of traditional products like cola and traditional practices : - the sons of the latter who, having undergone a modern training abroad, prefer to stick to business and not become civil servants ; - former civil servants who have gone into business : «the new businessmen». Relations between these and the state are of utmost importance. First the private sector has «ruined» successively the «public» sector and so has replaced it. But they have utilized their relations with the state to accumulate. Therefore there is just one class with two components, a bureaucratic and a trading one. Trade is a more successful venture than industry but the trends of accumulation and die dynamism of trade and exchange does not allow us to speak of a «backward», Le. non acumuladve, economy. The cultural background and ethos of the merchant community explains this specific evolution : it is a «rational» one.

Private capital in Tanzania from 1962 to 1982. There is a tripartite system of political decision in Tanzania : the Party, the Government and the President. There was no consensus concerning the policies devoted to private capital. From 1962 to 1966 the government needed capital to invest and relied on private capital. But party activists managed to develop the idea of a state economy. The Arusha Declaration enabled each group to use its rhetoric, both on nationalization and on die need for capital. In 1969-1974 the President favoured radical politics but this led to an economic crisis and from 1976 to 1982 new policies were designed to attract new investment. The ideology of development has sustained too many contradictions and Tanzania still lacks a consensus in this domain notwithstanding the new liberalization process.

Countryside, shanty towns and world bank in Kenya. The overall results of die Kenyan economy have to be assessed in a social perspective : that of the contradictions between the different parts of the country (die different cash-crops growing areas) and especially die countryside and the city (Nat robi essentially). The general recommendations of The World Bank do not take these factors into account. There are two different rural migrations to the city : «modern» holders use urban resources and salaries to expand and modernize, whereas the poor can survive because they try to live off urban employment and not agricultural revenue. In the city there is another division to be found between the formal and the informal sectors. The latter is expanding very quickly but again these contradictions cannot be settled without taking the rural and migratory characteristics into account.