Labour supplies in historical perspective: A study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia

Summary The article attempts to show that W. A. Lewis's model of economic development with ‘unlimited’ supplies of labour has a far more limited application to the Rhodesian experience of capitalist development than W. J. Barber has assumed. ‘Unlimited’ supplies of labour were to a large extent the result of a process of ‘primary accumulation’ in which political rather than market mechanisms predominated and through which the gap between labour productivities in the peasant and capitalist sectors was progressively widened. Thereafter, supplies of labour did become ‘unlimited’ and, for a period of about two decades, the Rhodesian economy displayed the main features of the Lewis model. However, owing to structural changes initiated by World War II (growing dominance of the economy by foreign oligopolies, development of a manufacturing industry, growing ‘superiority’ of capital intensive techniques, etc.), Lewis's assumption that investible surpluses are reinvested in loco so as to ‘widen’ capital ceased to be valid in the post‐war period. Barber's failure to understand the real nature of capitalist development in Rhodesia is attributed to the general antihistorical bias of modern economics.